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That was so wild. Here's the article. Somehow I recall Scott coming down much harder on Adam's side, which is strange. Besides that, it was just fascinating to watch marriage get redefined in real time.
Scott then says,
Just so wild to me that people think this way. Sounds like he and others have decided to take marriage, separate it out into what they believe to be its component parts, and then only pick the ones they like while abandoning the others. Maybe, they think, you can keep the positive commitment of marriage, without the stifling confines of sexual exclusivity.
There are just so many problems with this approach.
People are not robots. We find it easier to self-police when there are hard rules in place set a safe distance away from truly dangerous behavior. Break a rule once, and it becomes much easier to break that rule again, or break it harder. It's much easier and safer to simply never try meth than to only try it once, even assuming that single try definitely won't get you addicted. The rule "I will never try meth" is so, so much easier to mentally enforce than something like "I will only take meth on Mondays in July". It's very easy to modify the latter rule whenever you'd like until you are taking meth every day. "I will never sleep with anyone besides my spouse" is an easy rule to defend, while "I'll only sleep with others at the fetish club" can so, so easily become "OK our relationship started at the fetish club" and then from there it can burgeon into a full second relationship. This kind of rule-breaking is guaranteed given human nature.
People are not robots. We are all affected by society and culture. Marriage has ideas and values fundamentally associated with it, and if you decide you can pick and choose which of those to honor, that decision is final. If you write into a contract the clause "the terms of this contract can be changed by any party at any time" then of course the contract doesn't mean as much as it would without that clause. There's a reason these gay men have decided to get "married" rather than "committed" and it's because they see something good in heterosexual marriages and want to emulate it. They are not geniuses, though, and cannot arbitrarily reinvent an ancient institution to fit their own needs, no matter how well they think they understand themselves.
People are not robots. Sex generally does (and should) lead to feelings of romantic commitment, and vice versa. People frame casual sex as "physical but not romantic", but I think in truth good physical relationships always lead to romantic attachment and feelings of intimacy, and being promiscuous is not so much preventing those feelings from forming as it is denying and dismissing them once they have formed. In other words, you are working hard to cheapen romance itself, in your own mind, by regularly making a deliberate effort to deny its meaning.
People are not robots. We are weak, and sexual exclusivity is protective. Most marriages go through hard periods, which is when commitment is tested. Sure, Adam is committed now, but if he continues to sleep with randos at the club while his relationship with his husband suffers, I can't imagine his commitment will be helped by the arrangement.
I could go on, but I think that's enough of an unprovoked diatribe for now.
Now, I don't actually think Adam and Steve are real people. Scott includes a note at the end:
which I think strongly implies that the couple was actually hetero, but that he was worried this would make the correct answer rather obvious (don't let the guy cheat on his wife).
Could have been a woman wanting to cheat on her husband - less likely, but still possible. The interesting bit there is that by implication ("one side or another") Scott's saying that that would make the answer obviously "controlling husband should loosen up", whereas e.g. most of the future members of theMotte would have started worrying about the potential for cuckoldry.
Good point, and again just so crazy.
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That probably comes from this comment:
HAHA yeah that might have been it. There's a kernel of truth there, exaggerated way out of proportion. What a crazy perspective.
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