Good morning lovelies, and welcome to another episode of Adventures in
Misandry! I am Cambrey Payne, your friendly neighborhood misandrist witch,
here wishing you a terrific Tuesday. As you've noticed, I'm not in my usual spot. Even
though the sun is out, my house is freezing, and because I don't really
fancy the idea of hypothermia, I've locked myself in my study and you can't
make me leave! I'll be back there next week... probably... maybe... Freezing my butt
off. I also apologise for my voice, I'm still sick, so I hope it's gonna make it through
this video, we'll see how we go while I talk about - or rather rant about - why
emotional infidelity should not be a thing. Okay, so I know I talked about how
we have some really harmful ideas about romance,
if I remember I'll link to that video in the description. I'm just going to
briefly cover that again now, because it's important for us to understand that
our ideas of the ideal romantic relationship are just not possible.
They're unrealistic, and stifling, and harmful. So this first idea, that people
can only really be in love if they're monogamous, is bullshit. Humans are capable
of loving as many people as they'd like, we have big hearts, we are, we can
feel affection for more than one person at once, we can feel a whole range of
kinds of affection, from deep meaningful friendship to romantic love to romantic
and sexual love to... There is, there's a whole spectrum of ways, and a whole
spectrum of levels of relating to other people, of loving other people, of feeling
affection, but we've limited ourselves down to friendship or romantic love,
there's no in-between, there's no crossover. If you if you feel too
strongly for someone you're obviously in love with them, in romantic love, and
that's bullshit, that is absolute bullshit. You can be,
you can be as close to someone as you are to anyone, that doesn't mean
you're romantically attached to them. It might, but it doesn't necessarily mean that,
and we've all bought this idea, and we all struggle with it as we attempt to
form healthy relationships. And that's really sad, because it does lead to us
limiting who we relate to and I would like to to at least start to change that.
This idea that we can be everything to one person is, is nonsense. You can't. No
one is capable of that, we all need different people in our life, different
kinds of relationships, different, different relationships that have
different levels of intimacy, and, and love and affection, and just because you
have two or three people that you're really close to, doesn't mean you're
cheating on the one you labeled your romantic partner, it just means that
you're sharing the load, you are, you're taking part in a beautiful other
relationship. And that's fine, it's not cheating.
We're also taught to prioritise our romantic partnerships over
everything else, and this is, this is terrible, terrible advice. It didn't used
to be the advice we were given. Paradoxically enough, before we
started to get into this idea of equal relationships and gender equality,
there was one aspect of - I mean it was still problematic, and I'm not
saying we should go back to this - the one aspect of this was actually positive is:
partners were weren't expected to be each other's everything. You know, women
tended to spend a lot of time with other women, they were very close, they
supported each other, they had true deep friendships, and I mean it, that wasn't
the case for everyone, this is the ideal version of course, and men went
and spent other time with other men. I mean there's a lot of problems with that, but
at least they could acknowledge that your romantic partnerships didn't have
to be the center of your life, they didn't have to provide everything for
you, and I think we can really learn from that and take just, just a modicum of
that - minus the gender inequality - and apply it to our lives now. Um our idea of monogamy is
just stifling and unrealistic. It also assumes that we just stop desiring other
people, we stop desiring their affection, or their love, we stop loving them as
much just because we're in a monogamous relationship. And it also assumes that
everyone is naturally monogamous, which is clearly nonsense. Not many people are
naturally monogamous - I'm saying this as someone who can't actually comprehend
trying to have a romantic relationship with more than one person, because honestly I
don't know how I would have a romantic relationship with one person, so I guess
I'm probably naturally monogamous? Maybe? sort of? This is kind of
complicated, but hardly anyone is naturally a monogamous, I mean we have
feelings for all kinds of different people, that's just part of being human,
it doesn't make us bad. We don't always act on them, we end up relating to people
in different ways, and that's, that's good. So how do we solve this problem, how
do we address this idea that we've got about monogamy and romance that's
actually doing us harm, that's preventing us forming other really positive healthy
relationships? So the first thing we can do is let go of the idea that romantic
monogamy needs to limit us so much. We can be open about our friends, we can
share our lives with more than one person in meaningful ways, and that can
be really healthy. It can be really healthy for that romantic monogamous
relationship. We can also let go of the idea that there's only one healthy way
to form a relationship, that you have be monogamous. Now I want to be really
clear here that if you are hearing this and going "actually I am NOT naturally
monogamous maybe I can explore that part", you need to make sure you discuss this
with your partner. You should never ever force non-monogamy on anybody. Your
relationship has to be consensual at all levels at all times. Everything that goes
on in that relationship needs to be consensual. If you can't manage that you
need to get out of that relationship because you need to be treating people
with respect at all times. So, moving on, we also need to recognize
the jealousy that comes with this romantic relationship, the jealousy of
other people that leads us to come up with the idea of emotional infidelity. We
need to recognise that jealousy for what it is, where it comes from, what's created
it. We need to recognise that we aren't entitled to our partners at all
times, we aren't entitled to everything about them, we aren't entitled to even
being prioritised at all times. We are entitled to their respect, obviously,
there's no point being in a relationship if you aren't, you know, mutually
affectionate, if you're not spending time together, that's you know, there's no point
being in a relationship that makes you miserable, but we also need to let go of
this sense of entitlement that we often have toward our romantic partners, and
and let them explore what they want and and also recognise that we can do that,
exploring ourselves in a healthy and open and honest and not hurting each
other kind of way. Not in a "they cheated on me so that means I'm gonna cheat on them" revenge kind
of way, but a "we had a discussion, we realised where this came from,
I'm going to let myself see how I feel, I'm going to explore the relationships
that I have in my life, maybe spend more time with my friends", you know, that's
fine. So this leads me me to a really important point. Talk to your partners,
talk about how you feel, talk about if you feel you're missing out on anything,
talk about if you feel you're being limited, or maybe too dependent on your
partner. Don't keep secrets from your partner,
don't keep secrets about other relationships, other friendships - you
don't have to tell everything, but if you are feeling the need to hide something,
then obviously there's something not working, you're afraid you're going to
hurt your partner, whatever, that needs to stop. You need to respect each other, you
need to talk about each other, and you need to be willing to face the idea that
maybe what you're doing isn't working, isn't healthy, and that's okay. Not
every relationship lasts forever, and not every relationship is going to work, and
just because you got into it with misguided ideas doesn't make you a bad
person. So you can explore new ideas, you can
even explore the idea of leaving a relationship if it's not working, and
that doesn't make you a bad person. Um As always, respect
your partner, respect to the partnership that you agreed on when you created it,
never make any changes without consent, always talk to your partner, and just
because you are feeling bad about something, doesn't give you the right to
manipulate, to argue, to force your partner into anything else. You need to respect
them they are, they have the right to feel good, and if that
relationship's not working, then you leave it, you don't force them into something
that they're not happy with. So I think that's all I have to say about that for
now. I am really interested in these kind of topics, so I will be talking about
them some more in the future, but not next week! Next week I'm going to be
talking about why I don't argue with people when, just because they demand it, so
that'll be fun. That's really it for now, so I guess I will see you next week!
Until then, misandrist witch out!
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