WTF, Over?

[colligocarus.livejournal.com]

We've noticed a trend in other multiple groups that we don't understand, to wit: When one person in the group decides they no longer like a friend of theirs, have a falling out, or otherwise end up actively disliking another (outside of the body) person, quite often the entire group decides that they no longer like the person. Likewise, we notice that when one person in the group falls in love or otherwise romantically pursues someone, the whole gang often seems to get involved.

We just don't get this.

Each of us has our own interests and friends. If I decide I hate my friend Bob, it in no way obligates anyone else here at ColligoCarus to hate him. Most likely, others here will try to either help smooth over the disagreement, or ignore the fact that I hate Bob because it isn't relevant to their lives, but unless Bob has committed criminal acts against me, no one here is going to jump on the I Hate Bob wagon just on my say so.

So I was wondering why other groups do the "We ALL don't like you" thing. And I was wondering if other groups besides us have the situation where one member is friends with someone another member actively dislikes, or if it is just us.

And of course this leads into:
How do the various groups here handle the question of variant romantic attractions / attachments? I'm sure it's been asked before, but the membership does change here. I'll be checking memories be assured, but if anyone has any new ideas on this, let us know. :)

Comments

[pthalo]

for us, it depends on whether someone stops liking someone because the person's a dick or whether they stop liking them because they don't mesh well. If you're a dick to my headmates, I probably won't want to hang around you either. If you just don't get along with some of my headmates but you're otherwise a good person, that's a different story. If I don't like someone because I don't have much in common with them, don't agree with their political views, don't like their music, I wouldn't be surprised if others who feel differently about politics or music and who have more in common with them still choose to hang out with them.

[squnq.livejournal.com]

I'm part of a somewhat traditional disordered system. I, being the dominant person in it, am the one who generally forms relationships with others. Because my peers still try to shield me from harm's way they way they did in the past, they usually follow my likes or dislikes for people and if people are disliked or not trusted by me, they're very quick to get snappy towards such people, though there's sometimes one or two who dissent.

[weirdiguess.livejournal.com]

When one of us falls in love, the rest of the system generally feel a degree of affection, because basically, yay @ somebody who can make said headmate happy. Often though the system doesn't get all lovey with the individual, or even get along with them. there's just a respect/happiness that somebody is involved with a member of the system.

the dislike? Dislike goes on a person by person(within the system) basis. If there's a huge falling out however, it's easier for us as headmates to empathise with each other. Whether people outside of the system agree or not (though they typically do), us inside usually see what's happened and are equally appauled by it.

If I don't like somebody, my headmates may not agree. But if somebody hurts me deeply, through malicious, immoral behaviours, whatever, then my systemmates generally are going to be horrified by it, and be more concerned with my welfare than being nice to whoever 'wronged' me.


I guess pthalogreen phrased it better. Not meshing is one thing. If you actually dick about with my headmates though, that's different. they're my friends, and my family. I'm not going to feel particularly cuddly if you've just made my headmate stay up all night crying.


We do tend to warn our system members off people who we percieve as especially dangerous. But people we just don't get along with.... we leave that decision to them. We're more than happy for system mates to date who they choose, within the limits of the body's fiancé.


~Selene, babbling too much as usual.

hard to explain

[our-menagerie.livejournal.com]

Ok im sure this will probably be a very unpopular opinion or whatever but for some reason i feel i need to attempt our answer. The answer is really simply that its not a "we all dont like you" thing, its that even if some of us do still like the person or people, for us our reality is that we can only seperate everyone including ourselves to a certain extent that extent is pretty far extended most most days, but in certain cases it comes to a point where we just cant seperate certain things anymore.

Is there any point where the "core" if there is one, or the system as a whole should be held responsible for the actions of someone in particular in a system? We feel there is but i suspect that is because we have a "core" or whatever you want to call her and she feels responsible for all of us in that way.

Its odd you asked this now because i was just talking to my Mistress this morning about something very similar. Oh and yes...when sj fell in love with Mistress the whole system did too and Mistress doesnt get why that happened either. Ive heard that it is more common for that not to happen but really i dont know.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

We do and we don't. Often we can maintain a certain level of separateness in our various friendships and things, partly because we have different tastes and partly because one thing we value in close friends is that they interact with us as our individual selves.

But if a relationship goes Horribly Wrong and people are very upset and have a period of radiating pissed off ness and rehashing all the things the frenemy has done to them lately, there can come a point where it simply is not worth it to the rest of us to work through the dark cloud of yuckiness to continue the friendship. Ultimately, we are entirely stuck with each other and so if push comes to shove, we'll chose the side of ourselves. Fortunately those times are rare.

I've actually found as we gain more and more experience living plural it gets easier not to let things get to that point. We get better at meeting people's needs and helping them with boundaries (internal and external) so they don't get to the high drama point as much as they used to. Although that doesn't mean never. :)

For our romantic attachments we're physically monogamous and emotionally and romantically polyamorous.

[ques-nova.livejournal.com]

Ignoring the first question for my own sake.

The second question though: Polyamory.

[ques-nova.livejournal.com]

Okay, it's not hurting my head so much and I found a reasonable analogy. How often when two people in a group of friends have a bad falling out does that group of friends get stuck in the middle and end up taking sides?

[meirya.livejournal.com]

You beat me to it. ^_~ And I think it a lot of cases, since all the people in a multiple system live in the same body, it's easier to view the outside-body person as the "outsider", which means that most of the system-members side with other system member(s) and against the "outsider". That's just typical human behavior, really.

Falling in love - well, I can't speak first-hand, but I'm dating three out of six members of one multiple system. (We're all polyamorous, though some of the system members aren't.) The other three are not interested in me romantically, nor I them. So there's an example of some headmates falling for someone and some not. (Going by his history, there's been plenty of cases where one of them loves someone and none of the others do, etc. So.)

[cirquels.livejournal.com]

we tend to be seperate with alot of things like that as well. specialy little kai. she tends to like everyone, even if everyone else would rather not be around them. and only now do all of us feel love for the same person.

thats the problem with me and my live-in boyfriend. sometimes one of us will get mad at him and not want anything to do with him, while at the same time - i want to get laid. ya know. so it causes alot of problems at times. but weve managed to handle it pretty well. just talk it through amongst ourselves. and whoever doesnt want to be around will go and do something else in their head for a while.

We3

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

It's not always as simple as "you had an argument with one of us, therefore we're all annoyed with you".

About ten years ago, I had a pleasant and unique friendship with a woman in another House. Other people in her House used this attachment in order to lure my House and myself into the situation I describe here (http://www.astraeasweb.net/politics/personalfms.html). (My friend is not the person described as "B" in the hypothetical you will read there.)

Bear in mind, my friend in that group was very disturbed about what had happened, because it interfered with her ability to conduct our platonic relationship according to our own styles and preferences. In fact, several of our frontrunners had developed friendships with members of that House. However, it could not have worked out long term, because of the manipulative behaviour of the de facto hosts (who would never have described themselves in those terms), the abusive behavior of other people in that group, and their determination to take complete and utter control over our House. Which, of course, cannot happen.

In order to break free, we had to cease all contact permanently; I had to lose my friend.

As for your second question, we have found that we can only have an intimate relationship with another plural. We are neither promiscuous nor polyamorous and we have not had good luck with singlets except as non-romantic friends. Various ones of us might have affairs (or more likely, deep and lasting commitments) with members of sethrenn, and we also have numerous such relationships in-House, some of them going back nearly forty years.

[arivat.livejournal.com]

That's sad about your friend. Haven't you ever checked to see if those headmates are still around or if you can be friends again?

hated people and relationships

[fireincarnation.livejournal.com]

I aggree with other posts that there are two differant kinds of not getting along-ness: the minor and the major kinds. Either way, I personally treat the others' recommendations as I would a friend's recommendations. If one of my friends suddenly hates someone, I'm gonna wonder why, and if I trust that friend's judgement, it will definately influence my decisions with the person they hate. Some people have violated trust to such an extent that they are on the banned list, meaning that someone in my system who wants to talk to that person has to get it approved with everyone else, and have a good reason in order to assocaite with them. (But this is only in very serious cases, such as one's ex-roommate who bashed your head into the floor until you passed out because you "moved your hands too much while you were talking.")

There are two solutions to the relationship thing:
1. Either some form of poyamory, (I imagine this choice saying"pick me, pick me!) or
2. One person has a relationship, while noone else is allowed to have any.

Re: hated people and relationships

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Isn't there kind of a 'door number 3' here, though? You could have a relationship with someone who is also multiple and various people in each system hook up with each other. (Well, I guess this depends on your definition of poly, but mine restricts it to the involvement of more than two physical bodies.)

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

We've been in both situations, really. Often it had to do with whether the person had actually caused harm to any of it, or just had character traits that some of us found unpleasant. If someone has actively hurt us, it's more common for others besides the one(s) who got hurt to develop a dislike for that person, and want to keep away from them. (Or will actively try to get others in the system out of association with someone they think is causng harm.) If it's just a question of some of us being put off by someone's personality, it's more likely that a few of us will stay in contact.

Romantic attractions: The only thing we've found to work for us is relationships with another multiple, which we're in right now. Generally speaking, various people in both systems end up paired off. We don't do well in relationships where more than one physical body is involved.

[colligocarus.livejournal.com]

Why do you not do well in relationships where more than one physical body is involved?

[lion-azure.livejournal.com]

We do neither the "we all hate you" nor the "we all love you" thing. There's people I'm friends with that my headmates don't like, and vice versa. Everyone decides for themselves if they want to associate with somebody or not. It might happen that everyone chooses not to associate with somebody for the reason that they fucked one of us over - we can get very protective of one another.

At the moment, we're in a situation where our individuality concerning social relations is challenged quite a bit... one member of the system actively hates sombody I (the host) am aquainted with, and I'm trying hard not to let his emotions spill over to me. What makes this situation totally ironic is that a few years ago, the situation was sort of reversed - I hated that person, but he wanted to stay in contact because that person was host to his bf...

- Fireez

[nat-leia.livejournal.com]

We as a group agree with Your observations, ColligoCarus group (if that is not a way how we should adress You, our apologies). Here it goes alike; when somebody dislikes some outsider, it is their *private* matter and there is no single reason why the same outsider shouldn't be contacted by someone else. Though IRL that tends to be problematic, with people asuming we're singleton--- so we just try to be as kind as posible in general to avoid possible later confusions. Thanks for bringing this thread of conversation up!

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

We don't really do the 'sudden mass hate' thing. If it appears so, it's because some of us on the inside had reservations about $person beforehand, but one (or more) others wanted to give them a chance. If it turns out that $person didn't deserve it, well then. (Such situations are quite rare, though. We generally listen to eachother the first time around.)

On the other hand, the lot of us do tend to at least like a person if one of our brainmates is in love with them. To an extent, all of our emotional reactions are interconnected - sharing a physical substrate is like that, for us. And when someone is spending a fair bit of time thinking (in an overhearable way) about wonderful person X, it's hard not to pick up at least a bit of that rose-coloured filter.

- Quincy et. al.

[scream-aloud.livejournal.com]

Can't really answer your first question, but as to the second: A lot of the people in our system *came out* while around Josh, making him one of the central people in their lives. diana started dating him first, then slave manifested, and Rose, and so on. Josh is Master to slave, Daddy to Rose, and boyfriend/Master to diana.

I am not dating him currently, though we do have this whole friends with benefits deal going on now. I'm starting to think polyamory is really good right now....

[asqmh.livejournal.com]

We're not an all-or-nothing system. I was dating a guy for about a year and a half that most of my system was either opposed to or indifferent concerning him. The littles couldn't care less. He didn't deal well with learning that we are a we, though, and he was uber-possessive -- all danger signs that I should have listened to when my others were pointing them out. C'est la vie.

[random-element.livejournal.com]

lol, I've personally never experienced this. Whenever I or any or my past bfs have broken up, I end up giving them mixed signals for months afterwards. Hell, some of them are still getting over a guy from a couple years ago and hate my finace. It's life, but in the end, it's up to time and a lot of trust on everyone's parts/

[thehumangame.livejournal.com]

umm. he loves me. he's crazy attached to her. i like her because he obsesses over her and obsessing is good for him because it's actually feeling something instead of being uncaring. and because she's cute. she likes me too. but she's seeing someone else.

~s

[tempusfrangit.livejournal.com]

Well, there are times when we've decided that (for the self preservation of the system) someone HAD to go. By mass decision they just had to be out of the life in general. Usually, though, this means that they were decided amongst ourselves and our 2 strongest outter friends, to be harmful to us.

On a flipside, there was a time when two members of two other systems were angry at me, but others there maintained contact with others here. Because they weren't potentially damaging to our way of life as we know it.

As far as romantic stuff goes, I used to try and just date to make me happy, and figured out that didn't work. Since most people I dated were 100% ZOMGTHEBODYISMIIIIIIIIIINE! But.. um.. so we've been single for awhile. Even mentioning to people BEFORE they find out about the system that this body is polyamorous. Just to prep them for the possibility.

Don't even know if we're going about this right, but hey, it's what we figured out and it's what mostly works for us.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Short on time, will probably only be able to read the other comments later, so my own hypothesis before I forget it (with the disclaimer that others may have already said parts or all of it, probably better):

In a situation where there can be direct mental communication between people sharing a brain, in relevance to friends you see the person you're sharing a brain with's point of view/side almost by definition.

Or to put it more coherently: stuck in a brain with someone, you see their memories from their point of view. One can empathise with the person outside the brain, but by default you're 'closer' to the person in the brain. Disregarding other things, that's probably the most intuitive method of putting it... when two friends quarrel, you're likely to stay friends with the friend you're closest to, and break off the friendship with the friend you're farthest from: taking sides, as it were. This may be unfortunate, but happens frequently in many situations. In the case of people sharing a brain, due to close proximity it's far more likely that a person will be closer to and will choose the side of the person in the same brain as them, as opposed to someone outside.

For love: the same sort of thing as above (proximity leads to likened perceptions), plus the matter of affection-related hormones staying in the bloodstream and (probably) affecting all entities in that brain equally or near-equally.

Such matters only have a given amount of influence over how events go, but that influence can be significant.

*having written out, sends and reads other comments*

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Yep, said already. *nods slightly*

As others have said

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

It depends on the nature of the falling out. If someone is fucked up to her, there is a decent chance I'm going to get irritated, and vice versa. Then again, we're dating, so that might get touchy in it's own right.

As for the other situation, our tastes differ, starting with our sexual orientations. That said, some people get intimate with those they are close to. See the concept of "best friends with benefits". Also, if the other person already knows, it might be viewed by the other people as a "safe choice", someone they don't have to worry about freaking out.

--Me

Our relationships

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

Ah, didn't notice the last question.

We are both individually non-monogamous, although in different ways. This was an issue well before we became as co-aware as we are now. We have a history of serial monogamy. It was great, except for how much it sucked, and how many people we emotionally fucked along the way.

At any rate, as we are individually inclined to seek multiple partners, hoping for a monogamous relationship from the group is kind of a stretch. We're not really looking to get back on the serial monogamy wagon.

However, if someone outside the system is dating one of us, we don't see it as a poly relationship with us as a group, but rather, a poly relationship between the individuals who are romantically involved. I am not in a poly relationship with her fiance. They are in a poly relationship, and he also understands that I seek other relationships, despite the fact that she and I are also in a relationship.


--Me

[notquitequiet.livejournal.com]

Not so with us. Two of the other members in my system are still friends with my ex; as long as I don't have to be out when they hang out I'm fine with it XD

[garden-keep.livejournal.com]

All of us have our personal preferences.

Eve doesn't want to have anything to do with romantic relationships. She doesn't make friends easily, either.

Mindy is dating David ("outside" person). She has a crush on someone else, and gets hit on a lot, but doesn't act on it.

Chris hates David with a passion and tries to break up with him. She tries to set herself up on dates, but we usually catch it and squash the idea before anything happens.

I have a crush on someone, but I'm not going to disrespect David. He's my best friend, although I did have a minor fling with him at one point. Funny, because Mindy is dating my best friend, and I want to date her best friend.

The kids (Meghan, Leesha, and Hope) all like David. I think Meghan had a puppy love crush on David at one point, but now she calls him "Uncle David".

Other than that, we tend to stick together. If someone hurts Mindy (who is our usual frontrunner), most of us get pretty upset about it. Then again, she had a fight with one of our friends. She doesn't talk to him anymore, but occasionally we'll see him online and chat. I guess it just depends on the circumstances. If a person is a jerk to one of us, chances are that zhe's going to be a jerk to most of the rest of us.

Sorry if I'm not making much sense. It's late, and I can't sleep.

~Janessa