X Years Ago Today

[sorcyress]

A year ago today, it was 2008, and I wrote a pretty decent essay on friendship privileges. If your name is macaroniandtuna, didn't you promise to give me thoughts like...eleven and a half months ago or something?

The actual posting of that one involved little bits and pieces of drama that I don't feel like going into. And when I originally wrote it, I will admit there was a little bit of a "HINT HINT!" involved for someone certain, which I so got past by the time I posted it. I try very hard not to hint hint people in my livejournal.

(Okay, really, I just try very hard not to hint hint people. If I want a relationship, I should be man² enough to ask the damn person if there's any hope for us. It's amazing what a little bit of communication will do.)

I was pretty happy with the writing of that one, though, and since I think at least half of the goal of this project is to find really good things that I've written and bring them back to public attention, go read!.

~Sor
MOOP!

((OH! Also, twenty one years ago today it was 1988, and muzikmaker21 was born. I didn't bother blagging about this at the time, which was a massive oversight. Sorry dude. Have a good birthday, 'k brotherfather?))

1: I have the nasty habit of being dumped by boys I'm not dating. I'm pretty sure it's happened three, maybe even four times now.³

2: Woman enough, awesome enough, fuck, I don't know. It's just the way I talk, I talk kinda misogynistic, okay? I don't like it either.

3: Ahahahaha, notetoself, if you're going to decide to delete a part of the entry you're writing, delete the relevant footnotes as well. Although this one amuses me. Consider it your Fun Sorcy Fact of the day or something.

Comments

[macaroniandtuna.livejournal.com]

Yeah...they're gone. Lost Thoughts. 'Cause see, if I didn't write them up then and there, it had to have been something that would have taken me a while to write up, what with me being kind of verbose sometimes. So I'll try to come up with some more I guess.

1) "Snog them thoroughly" - that's kind of sexual assault.
2) I agree with your initial theory wholeheartedly. One of the communities I'm in had a post asking people for the best pickup line they'd ever used/had used on them, and a lot of people in there said the best one was "Nice shoes. Wanna fuck?" So based on that, I think a lot of other people do too.
3) Instead of being worried that you're leading on someone who's interested in you by continuing to give those friendship privileges, you could always ask them point blank if they're interested in you. That'd clear up all that confusion right away, 'cause presumably after they tell you whether you are or not, they'll want to know whether you are or not. So no more mixed signals. (Of course this is all easy to say and hard to do.)

[marcmagus]

1) I've always been concerned with that aspect of verbs like "snog" and "fuck" as well. Although even with the implication of it acting on another person, it's not implied one way or the other whether the person consents.

3) I think the problem Sor was talking about was that she fears giving friendship privileges to someone who's interested in her is inherently leading them on. That is, even if she's been clear about not being interested back, because the actions involved in the privileges can be read as suggesting interest, it creates a mixed message in that context. Or that showing her tits to someone who's interested in her might be cruel, in that taunting someone with something they can't have sort of way. I could be wrong, though.

[macaroniandtuna.livejournal.com]

True, but such a person would be aware of the lack of mixed messages, and if they find themselves unable not to interpret the friendship privileges as such and not as leading them on, they could back off/pull away a little so as to prevent their feelings being hurt. Or they could simply say that they see the privileges that way, and that it hurts. Although people tend to be emotionally masochistic up to a point, so I don't know how well that would work.

I don't know that giving friendship privileges to someone who's interested is automatically leading them on; it could just be continuing the friendship, and not treating the interested person differently. It seems like the only alternative in that situation is a less close friendship, and I think that might be worse (again with the emotional masochism though).

[marcmagus]

I agree. I was putting words in Kat-of-a-year-ago's mouth.

Personally, I try to expect people to own their own Stuff. In this case, that means that if we had a friendship where they were comfortable with my casual nudity before they revealed having an interest in my and I turned them down, I expect they will either continue to be comfortable with such, or they will inform me and ask me to change my behavior accordingly. At least, that's the goal; my reality doesn't always live up to my ideals. I certainly expect them to recognize that if I do inadvertently hurt them in this manner, it's through ignorance, not malice, and will not be repeated if the ignorance is corrected.

I do think a lot of people operate in such a manner that the revealing of interest causes these sorts of fundamental changes. Such is life.

[macaroniandtuna.livejournal.com]

They definitely do, and they shouldn't. A friendship where both know that one person is interested isn't any different than that same friendship where only the interested one knows. If anything it should be that much closer of a friendship just by virtue of the trust implied in that sharing of feelings. But like you said, reality doesn't always match "should."