Thread: Screw Marriage: Bring on the Communes

Yea it happened to me Leo quickly skimmed over every point I made that he didn't have a witty retort to and then personally insulted me. In a completely illogical way.

STD's Leo, what about that? Do you even know what they are? Also, you're ideal society seems to be pretty dependant on the pharmaceutical industry. Great plan. How exactly will this work in areas of the world that lack proper health care, birth control, and paternity tests? I suppose ideally, all of these other people will just disappear.

You say I'm ignorant of history, and I do not claim to be any scholar. But just how far back are we going here Leo? Bronze Age? Chimpanzee-ish? (I'm aware we simply share a common ancestor) Life crawling out of the ocean? Exactly when did we all get together and decide to start this nuclear family "experiment?" How exactly did every single person spread out on a vast planet get together and decide that this ideal communal way of living was getting a bit old and they want to experiment with something new? Usually, when huge social shifts occurs simultaneously all over the world, it is a sign of social evolution. Sorta like fire, and the wheel. Again, I'm not a historical scholar, but I'm not an ignorant ass. Please provide me with detailed information about when this experiment began. I'm still waiting for the divorce laws too.

We aren't living in small cave dwelling tribes anymore. With huge amounts of land between us and the next tribe. Lots of space, with little competition for resources. Intimate knowledge of the people in your community. If you are going this far back in history, I really don't see the point. We live in huge industrialized nations where we rountinely interact with strangers we know nothing about. It is impossible to develop the kind of communal relationships with every person we meet. We form micro communes and sub tribes within this huge, impersonal super tribe. These mini villages are composed of your extended family, friends, acquaintances, etc. How would we transition to a truly communal society on this scale? I should have been more specific. I was referring to a huge complex society composed of millions of individuals type of commune when asking for an instance when this has actually worked. Since it is our natural state to live this way, no matter how large the village, it has to have happened somewhere. I'm sure you know. If you are referring to smaller communes existing outside of society, there are several that have been working for decades. Complete with nuclear family units and personal freedom. Of course, your society would be dependant upon a larger industrialized society to provide the birth control and health care you will need to fend off the STDs.

Everybody wants to be an animal when it comes to walking around naked and knocking boots without consequences. But there aren’t so many takers for foraging for grubs in the forest, without healthcare. We do not live the organic, natural lifestyle of most animals. Even monogamous animals do not spend nearly as much time raising their young as we do. We are a unique animal. It doesn’t make any sense to me to reference the mating habits of other animals. Birds don’t form industrialized societies, complex religions, and spend half of their natural lifespan nurturing the same set of offspring. They also don’t transmit AIDS to their partners as a result of the “quickies.”

But after re reading some of your replies, I'm starting to think that I don't fully understand your intent here. It seems that this may just be some Utopian rambling. You're ideal world. At first I thought you were actually proposing society can and should move forward with such an ideal in mind. I mean, you won't address any actual problems converting 6.5 billion people from completely different cultures to this way of life. Therefore, you aren't really serious, just dreaming. Sorry if I blew your buzz. But it seems that you have a natural filter for logical points that you don't agree with; I'm sure your fantasy will be fine.

And could you please clear one thing up. Exactly how is promiscuity going to be discreet, or even actually exist, in a society where there are no monogamous relationships. If there are no monogamous relationships, then wouldn’t all sexual relationships be promiscuous? And if all encounters could be defined as promiscuous, doesn’t that erode the meaning of promiscuous? What a quaint, Victorian notion. Everyone is supposed to have sex with whomever they please without any real world attachment or responsibilities. But all hush hush and behind closed doors. So we're forming breeding pairs now? Or Alpha relationships? I figured we'd all just have kids with whoever got pregnant. We are to maintain the mommy daddy charade for the good of the children, so they don't know we are all naturally primal sex crazed beasts that can't stand each other! All while teaching them that monogamous relationships and family units are unnatural? A nuclear family unit with benefits? I thought Donna would have children with Bob and Tom. Her son with Bob has a sister by Julie, who also has a daughter by John, who is a sister to his daughter with Marie, who has also has a son with Tom. And who pray tell gets to have sex with these children? You’re a pretty big forced sex with children, how does this factor into communal living arrangements? Are you allowed to have sex with your own children? What about the siblings of your children who aren’t yours? Hell it would be so hard to tell who is your child that you may as well not even worry about it.

But alas, you are right. I do frequently sit at my window, brushing my long princess hair, anxiously awaiting my knight in shining armor. In fact, I have a Disney movie going right now. Romantic Optimist. Geez, if you only knew me. I guess I should have gotten a little more personal. I don't think most marriages are that great. I don’t think there is any “ideal.” In fact, I think we are pretty much just fucked. There are too many violent morons and not enough time to reorganize the planet before it combusts. I check for raining sulphur every morning. I mean we’re going to collide with Andromeda before the sun even gets a chance to explode, why bother with any of it? How’s that for romantic optimism? And FYI, I've been in a monogamous relationship for 7 years. We've lived together and seen each other virtually every day for almost the entire time. We officially decided to get married because, well, we actually recognize that we exist in this society and not some utopian dreamworld. Taxes, health benefits, emergency decisions, not having to refer to your partner as “my boyfriend” at 40 and dealing with the resulting dismissal of our relationship, etc. That is why we got married, but not why we are in a relationship. I'm not a nagging whore. He isn't a drunken sports crazed bastard. We are actually individuals, with many, many common interests. And, we both laugh like kids when one of us farts, especially when it really smells, and both wear clothes off of the floor. And we don’t have or intend to have children, though we may adopt. The world is a bit too FUBAR to make procreation worth our while. We both have our separate friends and interest and take no one offense when someone needs to spend time alone. We both recognize that we wish to remain desirable to the opposite sex for self esteem reasons. But we still end up spending most of our time together. We miss each other terribly when separated for a few days and have phenomenal sex. 2 people, in their sexual prime, voluntarily remaining monogamous without children. But I'm guessing that your narrow mindset can't quite comprehend this. Of course to you, I am simply a deluded woman with a cheating spouse. Feel free to expound upon that, it’s a viewpoint we deal with everyday. I’m not saying we are the norm, or that we will live happily ever after. But it is working, and I know of many different kinds of relationships (or lack thereof) that work for different kinds of people. Swingers, Never marrieds, Perpetual bachelors, Ex spouses who are best friends. There are more that 2 types of people on the planet, and who you are and what you like is not determined by your genitalia. I think it is pretty futile in such a large, complex society to define one type of family or relationship as “right.” It really is difficult for me to understand the way you think. The idea that someone so intelligent in the scholarly sense of the word, can be so ignorant to actually believe that in individual instance, not generalizations, men and woman could have nothing in common but physical attraction and emotional attachment. How exactly do people fall in love? If that is all men and women have in common, then why do people have a “type?” You know, some men are actually friends with some women, without a sexual agenda. I’ve always had a pretty equal number of close friends from both genders. What basis for friendship do two people have with no common interests? Of course, to you these relationships don’t even exist. I've read your thoughts on generalizations and conclusions, but good god man, we aren't all walking stereotypes. Useful and sometimes frighteningly accurate as they are, stereotypes do not describe actual individuals to the T. And if even if they do, couldn’t that be because we perpetuate them and take them to an extreme?

Oh and thanks for “commending my intellectual honesty.” I love it when a man insults me masked in a compliment. I find it interesting that I “proved your point” by “enumerating all of the divorces and personal family tragedies that are within my own knowledge.” Umm, those were divorce, gender inequality, and financial statistics, dear. That I stated because they directly contradict your misogynistic ranting. I only sited 2 incidences that were actually personal knowledge. Again, because they directly contradict your inaccurate ranting about divorce proceedings. Which I suppose you conveniently didn’t notice. And I never touted marriage as the ideal. But I do think that blaming all of society’s problems on modern gender “equality” and marriage is absolutely insane. Your are basically saying that the world is collapsing because people can’t tolerate other peoples quirky hygiene habits. And saying that all of these problems would be fixed with massive polyamorous communism. All the while, complete ignoring real world problems with this “Utopia.” You don’t “discreetly” give the mother of your children the clap.

It seems that you have rationalized your hatred to the point where you actually think you have factual evidence that women are destroying the world and bringing down society. I don’t think you even recognize it has hatred. Maybe this will help. Lets say I had the time or the desire to find everything hateful bit of misogyny you’ve shared with the community and replace every instance of the word women with the word Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Gays, Handicapped, etc. All those posts warning young men to keep away from evil women would be about the evil Japanese. How hateful and bitter would you seem then? If someone castrated you, it sounds like a personal problem, not a reflection of society. I see you spreading this fear propaganda to any young man you stumble across that even remotely touches upon the subjects of family, relationships, or women. I have yet to see you actually state anything of substance that proves this. Where are these divorce laws? Where is the demographic? What exactly do you have to say to support your views about women and family that isn’t personal opinion and hearsay? Unlike you, I am interested in the actual state of marriage and the family in this society and I like looking at data about it. If you actually can provide me with something that contradicts what I’ve found out, I’d like to hear it. I don’t really even like demographic data, or basing opinions solely on science, but everything has its purpose. I don’t form stagnant unwavering beliefs about anything, mainly so I don’t end up a bitter old woman who can’t acknowledge actual facts because they threaten my perception of the world.


So who is the self contradicting Romantic Optimist who “can’t even see it.” The woman that thinks Marriage doesn’t really work, Communism doesn’t work, basically nothing will work because we are simply too numerous, inherently too violent, and too deeply programmed by the misconceptions of the past and present, which leaves us all just kinda screwed? Or the Goddess loving misogynist Catholic child rape advocate, that actually thinks we can fix all of our problems by getting along and forming communes, while discreetly cheating on the spouses that we don’t even have and spreading disease, for the good of ourselves, the children, and the future?

Originally Posted by AdAstra

...Or the Goddess loving misogynist Catholic child rape advocate


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So you had a problem with me being unfair to you, and to show how much better you are than I, this is what you have to say?

Well, if you had completely read me, the way you want me to read you, then you would know that there are two types of Catholic -- the Paulist Bishops with their hireling Secular Raper Priests, and the entirely Holy and Spiritual Marians of the Pure and Heavenly Spiritual Religious Orders.

And go F__K Y__RS_LF Y_U BIT_H!

yeah, I can Imagine you'll make somebody a great wife. I have a great imagination.

In what group, really, where there're more than 3 people, is everybody friends with everybody?
I don't know what you mean by friends, Leo, but with the modern-day-definition of it I think children being raised in a group, would take more suffering than benefits from it.
Each adult made his/her experience in life - totally different from one another. That is what those adults will pass on to all the children in the group ... totally different views and experiences on things in life, that children can't grasp, because they are too young, their minds are not developed enough - they suffer lack of experience. Soon they will notice "wtf everyone is saying something different - no matter which way I try, it won't work like I want it, even if I listen ONLY to adult a. or adult x."
So their conclusion will be "I stand alone. I blindly try the adults' advices and it's not satisfying. I try my own ideas, and they work for me - but I barely get support." Because in a commune, there is a distance of love from adults to children .. four adults can't have enough warmth of heart for 10 children - so it's impossible to get to know all of the children how you should get them to know.
In a commune you would have to pay the adults to be there and care and raise children - and even then, you couldn't tell if they only fake and fuck the children behind everyone's back.
While in a family you were raised by someone who is "pretty much like you" .. there you have two loving people you know you can trust, you know they want the best for you - you know they'll always listen, they are interested in you and what you do, even though you didn't ask them about an advice.
Being raised by loving parents you get to be yourself - you have your principles and views - you'll have a good chance of becoming happy.

The requirement, to have a living of two loving people work out: those two have to grind deeper into their relationship than most people do today. They had to grind deeper within their own personalities to find out what interests they want to be active in in life, what way of living they want in general - what are views on things, what am I able to tolerate in my relationship/what not etc. Only then they can go and search for a partner; then they found themselves and have this feeling, always, when the other one is around, that makes you just know "My love couldn't be more true".
I see a lot of people living just next to each other - I don't see how they can call it "love" what they are living .. they're missing out on the part where you grind into the other one's personality. The total sacrificing to the other one in love and trust, caring and sharing is what makes a partnership last; it's an enrichment - not inner-self-killing compromises.

Originally Posted by Slight

In a commune you would have to pay the adults to be there and care and raise children - and even then, you couldn't tell if they only fake and fuck the children behind everyone's back.
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I agree wholeheartedly with this. This is my biggest gripe against the ideas of communes. There are a phenomenal amount of commune-related rape and pedophilia cases to back this up, and some cases are pretty horrific. Of course, there's also a lot of similar cases of rape and sexual abuse within more traditionally structured family groups. But even so, at least in a closer family, there's LESS chance kids are gonna ger raped and abused.

To a large extent, I think all this ranting about the joys of communes seems to be just a long-winded justification for non-exclusive sexual arragements. Such non-exclusive arrangements, while not neccesarily wrong or immoral a priori, seriously impact any romantic relationship. This is quite telling, in my opinion, in the fact that most outspoken proponents of the whole commune idea are often male. I think males have a greater propensity towards a desire to "sleep around" than do females. For the male, romance is often a tool to get sex. Whereas for the female, the two are perhaps more closely intertwined. So, I think the male's tendency to advocate family situations which allow for more sexual variety is to be expected.

I'm not passing judgement, but, I think that communal situations foster what is potentially a self-destructive situation for any romantic relationship. Males often join out of the idea of an opportunity to sleep around, perhaps. But, the motivation for females seems to be often quite different... instead, it is the idea of having a larger family and support network. I also believe that many females who join such communal situations do NOT expect or desire that they and their husband (or boyfriend, whatever) will engage in sexual relationships with other partners.

Originally Posted by Leo

Remember, Irish, no matter how much you love each other, you are talking about being ROOMATES. No relief ever from each others personal and annoying habits. How can ANY marriage work?

Try something new. Do get married. But you take a flat with a nursery for you and Baby, and he take a flat not far away. That way you will always be eager to see each other. He will not be dropping his socks in the hallway and won't be farting outloud in the kitchen. And you won't be bitching to him about it.

and when you schedule to see each other, see each other with mutual friends. Be like that TV show "Friends" who would have all hated each other had they paired up and never had any relief from stifling couples.

Take myself as an example. My ex-wife claims to anybody that I am a wonderful man, and a fabulous father, a man destined to be a mile-stone of History... but as a roomate one of the greatest ASSHOLES who ever lived, and she would have killed me with her own hands had the divorce taken another 2 and a half minutes to go through.

It might have worked, had we been married but not been imprisoned together as ROOMATES.

You are a woman.

Your fiance is a man.

Face it. Besides your love you have absolutely nothing in common.

So get separate places and keep on with the LOVE, and then it might work forever.
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But i like his personal annoying habits. They might be annoying to other people, but not to me because i love him, and they are part of him.
We've done the long distance thing for a year, and while it has it's good points (each of us being able to retire to our respective 'spaces' ie, my house, and his) i'd far rather we were together all the time.
I'm sure that at some point we will get on each other's nerves, but we're understanding enough of each other to be able to sort it out pretty sharpish.
What's this about imprisoned?
If we were living together, my boyfriend wouldn't bat an eyelid if i said i wanted to go for a walk by myself.
I wonder if the problem is that two people living together are too afraid to speak their mind to the other person, which leads to resentment, which then leads to anger and hate.
And then people split up.
And it doesn't become a case of 'i'm too afraid to ask him such a thing' it becomes an attack on all their little ways and habits.
The real issue gets buried under petty arguments, which wear people down.
I wouldn't mind if he dropped his socks in the hallway.
When you decide to make your life with someone, you have to take the rough with the smooth, and the good with the bad.
you said that besides us being in love we have nothing in common.
If we had nothing in common, we wouldn't have fallen in love in the first place, we wouldn't even have become friends!
Love grows from a mutual understanding. And if things are right, that should carry over to when you live together and respect each other's need for their own little corner.

Originally Posted by Leo

So you had a problem with me being unfair to you, and to show how much better you are than I, this is what you have to say?

Well, if you had completely read me, the way you want me to read you, then you would know that there are two types of Catholic -- the Paulist Bishops with their hireling Secular Raper Priests, and the entirely Holy and Spiritual Marians of the Pure and Heavenly Spiritual Religious Orders.

And go F__K Y__RS_LF Y_U BIT_H!

yeah, I can Imagine you'll make somebody a great wife. I have a great imagination.
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I don't exactly see where you were unfair to me. Sorry to bust your phallic bubble but, you are not in a position of authority over me and can choose to treat me fairly or not. It's not like I actually expected you to change your opinion or speak rationally. I'm not going to correct your assumptions about me or my marriage. You made it perfectly clear, that because you now know I have a vagina, that you will not respond to anything I have to say other than to call me a bitch. Thanks for, sorta, coming out and saying it. You are truly funny in the way you view profanity, while advocating all sorts of morally reprehensible ideals. Ironically, when I first started to post on this forum, you told me my dreams were telling me that I shouldn't define myself by my physical body. But I think you thought I was a man.

Since you skim to the bottom of people's posts and ignore every rational point they make, I'll put this at the bottom.

Please, tell my how such a community would deal with the issue of sexually transmitted infections and diseases. Pretty please. Or I'll fart in your general direction.

I'd ask again if you knew what they were. Thanks to Viagra, senior citizens are getting STI's at an alarming rate, because they don't understand how dangerous sexual promiscuity is today. Yes, STD's have existed for centuries, but they were not so lethal and widespread. But something tells me you are not this spiritual, scholarly, experienced, old man that you claim to be.