Blog

Posted on

The Relationship Escalator

In the reading I’ve done on non-monogamy, there’s a concept that I really like called the Relationship Escalator. I don’t have the link with me right at this moment (will add later – here is the original essay!), but the general gist is that in our society, we have this concept of RELATIONSHIP that goes from DATING to COHABITATION to ENGAGEMENT to MARRIAGE to BUY HOUSE to HAVE BABY, with only minor deviations or reordering permitted.

The idea of “stepping off the relationship escalator” means that you are allowed to opt out of any or all of these steps, without guilt or feeling like you are Doing The Relationship Incorrectly. For monogamous people, this can mean accepting that it’s fine to never get married, if that’s what you want! Or even never cohabitating – some people are just happier living alone. It can also even help with framing around asexual relationships: not every relationship needs to involve sex in order to be considered just as important and valid!

For non-monogamous people, more specifically polyamorous people (who are concerned with the construction of multiple loving relationships), stepping off the Relationship Escalator can mean establishing a different kind of relationship with different partners, according to the varied needs and desires of the people involved. Having the explicitly-outlined option of “we don’t HAVE to do all of those things in order to be in a loving relationship together” allows for a lot more flexibility in creating long term relationships.

I have a set of polyamorous friends where one married couple has been together for fewer years than the wife has been with her non-marital partner. Number of years together is not assumed to be an indication of the relationship’s Seriousness, or of any Expected Next Action To Be Taken. She has dated one person for longer, but she has married and had children with the other one, because those are the choices all of them made.

Carolyn Hax (one of my favorite advice columnists) calls it the Conveyor Belt: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/advice/carolyn-hax-they-are-ready-on-paper-for-a-baby-but-what-about-the-real-thing/2021/03/23/a0e198b4-836a-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html – different word, but same concept.

I think this is a good framework for anyone who’s in (or wants to be in) a relationship to reflect on: what do you want, out of your relationship(s)? How much do you want one thing versus other things? What are you willing to compromise on?

Other people have called this concept the Relationship Smorgasbord (to avoid defining various choices as Above other choices). I’ll find that link, too, and add it here. It’s a good thing to talk about with potential partners, to think about what you want with someone else in general or in specific.

Bonus links:

https://solopoly.net/2012/11/29/riding-the-relationship-escalator-or-not/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/09/27/relationship-escalator-marriage-polyamory/

Posted on

Short game review : Harvestella demo

This past weekend, I played through the prologue demo of Harvestella. It was pretty fun, but I’m not sure if I’m going to eat the full game cost. Maybe for Christmas.

I just think I’d probably pay $40 for it, and I’d definitely pay $20; but $60 is just more than I’m willing to do right now. I know that’s probably irrational. And it is a very pretty game. I just have others, that I already own and haven’t finished, that I’m inclined to finish before shelling that out.

I like the concept, though. I enjoy related-but-different-genre games, like Pokemon Conquest or Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King. (“Now, with more colons !”)

I did really appreciate that there’s a non-binary option for your character. Even though I think it’s just for pronouns.

Posted on

History is something that we make

Seeing all the retrospectives on Queen Elizabeth II’s life today makes me remember when my own family did that, at the end of my great-aunt’s life. (She lived to be 100 years old. We think she was holding on for that milestone, at the end.) She remembered when Amelia Earhart went down. She lived through both World Wars and the Great Depression. I don’t know if she ever had her own bank account.

I love this quote, from Terry Pratchett, about the speed of monarchic succession:

“The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles — kingons, or possibly queons — that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.”

Terry Pratchett, Mort

And the title of my post comes from this video by John Green.

It has been a long century. The next one will also be long. History is something that happens to us. But it is also something we make together.

John Green

Read her obituary here in my local newspaper.

Posted on

Everything doesn’t happen for a reason

Years ago, I read this essay by Tim J. Lawrence, “Everything doesn’t happen for a reason.”

One of my extended family members goes into hospice this week, so it’s been on my mind.

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried. 

He is one of the kindest people I have ever known. So was the first uncle I lost that I really knew well. (The first member of that generation to pass away in my family was an uncle who sustained brain damage at age 2, and as such I never really got to know him.)

I have already lost people my own age (though not in my family). I have already lost members of older generations. But the creeping onset of mortality is just getting more real, year after year.

But the goal, here, remains the same: Make your own purpose in life. And be kind to one another.

Posted on

Your kids aren’t feral. They’re TODA.

A few years ago, my mom group started looking for a term for those little moments where your kid is being, by any objective measure, a complete asshole to you and everyone else around you, but you don’t feel right being mad at them because it’s developmentally normal for them at that age.

Eventually, one woman came up with “Totally Obnoxious, Developmentally Appropriate,” or TODA, and it stuck. I’ve started using it in other groups, and I hope the concept spreads, because it’s just so important to be able to hold both things in your head simultaneously: that yes, it’s normal for your kid to behave this way; and yes, it’s normal for you to be upset with that. Both of these things are true.

Since I’m now seeing a big age gap between my child and my peers’ younger children, it’s been helpful to have the reminder that “this child has no control over their limbs, hates clothing, and wants to touch anything and anyone without a single care for that person’s consent” is not/NOT that child being feral! It’s that child being Totally Obnoxious, Developmentally Appropriate. And soon, they will grow into wonderful little humans who respect other people, because their brain will get there. Just as my child’s brain got there.

And boy howdy, am I not looking forward to adolescence. 😂 I think that’s when my friends with their sweet little upper elementary schoolers will wonder if my teen is feral. But she won’t be feral. She’ll just be TODA.

Posted on

Saving for your children

Today I saw this Tweet, and wanted to highlight it here:

There are a lot of responses to her (some in good faith, some not). I’m glad that she is also prioritizing her own retirement accounts! I’m guessing the account she mentions is a custodial (UTMA/UGMA) account; that’s a good way to save a relatively small (couple thousands?) amount of money for a child, but if you have Lots Of Money ™, you should really consider other vehicles, such as a trust. I suspect that as this woman’s nest egg for her daughter grows, she will take stock of the situation and adjust her investments accordingly.

Most 18-year-olds would not be able to handle a sudden influx of cash like that. However, if you do a good job of explaining money and savings and delayed gratification to your child, then this sort of savings can be a gift, rather than a burden or a source of regret and pain. While I’m hesitant about the idea of “here, have money!” upon turning 18, my guess is that someone like this Internet person would have done all the legwork to make sure that her kid would have the skills to handle that money, not just have the money itself.

Posted on

Children are an {individual|collective} responsibility

A few years back, someone linked me to this essay by Barbara Kingsolver, from 1992: “Everybody’s Somebody’s Baby.” It’s a beautiful reflection on the nature of children in society, and what it means when we treat them the way we do.

My second afternoon in Spain, standing on a crowded bus, as we ricocheted around a corner and my daughter reached starfish-like for stability, a man in a black beret stood up and gently helped her into his seat. In his weightless bearing I caught sight of the decades-old child, treasured by the manifold mothers of his neighborhood, growing up the way leavened dough rises surely to the kindness of bread. 

Kingsolver

My working theory, here, is that in America, we see children as Not Belonging in public life paradoxically because so many of us have been pressured into having them. I know that I am lucky: I wanted children, and I have an amazing child. But other people are childfree by choice, and while some are benevolent towards the mere existence of children, others cannot stand to have them around.

I think the optimal solution, like most optimal solutions, lies somewhere in the middle: We stop pressuring people to have kids when they don’t want them; and we stop acting like kids are this horrible Other Species, barely even human (see the man who called a child “it” in the essay).

It’s absolutely appropriate to say that children should not be in some places; not every location, every entertainment, is intended to be enjoyed by every human. But bans like that need to be considered thoughtfully and reasonably. Take weddings, for example, the source of so much internecine drama. It’s absolutely fine for the people getting married to say “We would like to have a party that is just adults” – it sets a certain tone, it allows for fragile objects to be placed on tables, etc etc etc. But the spirit of that request does not mean banning the 17yo twin when her 18yo twin had the good fortune to be born at 11:47 pm, rather than 12:01 AM. It does not mean banning a nursing infant who is not even ambulatory yet (a ban which functionally also bans the other half of the Nursing Dyad). Acknowledging that children are part of our world means making places for children – not just banning them from things. Allowing the 17yo twin or the nursing infant does not require you to also allow the shrieking, running 5yo. (Though if you want the 5yo’s parents to attend, the best chance of that happening is to provide on-site childcare, since the logistics of babysitting in a strange city are dicey at best, and all the normal family caregivers are likely at the wedding already.)

And all this comes back to the question raised in the subject line here: are children an Individual responsibility, or a Collective one? My feeling is Collective.

(And I will ask another friend if I can get a copy of her essay “Parenthood, and the Irrational Concept of ‘Choice’,” to also post up here, because it handles the question of Individual vs. Collective so well.)

I found this tweet today, and it seems quite applicable.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRfKUh7L/https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRfKUh7L/

This TikTok expresses a similar idea through an explicitly leftist lens: that if you build a community that is inhospitable to children, you functionally make it inhospitable to women, and all you will do is reconstruct the existing patriarchy.

Posted on

Insulin should be free

Today I saw this tweet, and I agree.