quotes from Playing Monogamy by Simon(e) van Saarloos

Monogamy is a performance, even though it’s often believed to be the very definition of love.

Monogamous relationships fit the ideal of predictability that keeps capitalist industry afloat.

For this reason, being single is not a status but an art. It’s all about the ability to react to things that life involves by its very nature: chaos, setbacks and growth. Life is risky. And as a small, single unit you are constantly aware of the burden of risk.

The antifragile person is a ‘rational flâneur’, who breaks with ‘the illusion that you know exactly where you are going, and that you knew exactly where you were going in the past, and that others have succeeded in the past by knowing where they were going. The rational flâneur is someone who, unlike a tourist, makes a decision at every step to revise his schedule, so he can imbibe things based on new information.’

If you are with someone and there is a shared awareness that something might get in the way, you’ll seize the moment with all your strength. Being together is subject to pressure, so the relationship has a special intensity. Each of the lovers is present as an act of will; there are always external circumstances, hassles, or other people.

Seeking safety through comparison and categorization is a colonial approach, whether in the past or now.

Intimacy is the feeling that you’re not being evaluated.

I wanted to show that a rejection of the ideal of monogamy is in fact a call for more romance, not less.

Romance is a game, the rules of which need to remain unclear.

Romantic gestures provide new layers of meaning.

In any case, a new form should not feel too practical or natural. Living things need dissatisfaction as a nutrient.

It’s not the technology that’s driving us crazy but the continual sense that it’s not real life, that it’s all about something else entirely, that the iPad helps us to control all kinds of peripheral aspects of life, that before real life can begin we have to make things less hectic. But what if it’s real life that’s hectic? What if we think we get up in the morning because there are certainties (the children need help getting dressed), whereas we really get up because there are uncertainties (are the children still in their beds?)?

The defiance of chaos, rather than the taming of it, is the art of living that love needs.

Eros and love are like faith and religion: there is the human predisposition, and then there is the formalized structure.

I think intimacy is an ephemeral experience of sharing that occurs in various forms only when you stop trying to get a grip on it. As soon as you attempt to turn it into a constant state, you betray the capricious, multifarious and momentary character of intimacy.

The belief that a good sexual and intimate life is created by setting boundaries, by remaining true to yourself, arises from a discourse of criminalization. How would it be if we were to formulate our desires from the point of view of consent rather than boundaries? If we fantasize from the starting point of consent, we make speculative space for being together where the wish, the feeling of possibility, is central, rather than the lines we draw. As long as we continue to start out by thinking of boundaries, we formulate sex and intimacy in response to repression, or the fear of it.

Many people think that love is simple and it’s finding the right person that’s hard. The object of our love is regarded as the most important thing. If it doesn’t work out with one person, we project all our hopes onto another. The person we once loved has merely turned out to not be right for us. Or we blame ourselves: I’m just not likeable and attractive enough. The main question for most people is therefore: How can I get love? Fromm argues that we have a collective obsession with love but that love is not really present anywhere. Love is not about finding the right match. Love is an activity. Love does not serve a goal to be reached or a profit to be gained; it is the exercise of love that matters. Love is an exercise in giving.

In our quest for closeness, love is created. Love is therefore not something that suddenly hits like a bolt of lightning. It’s all about movement.

Love is the faith that something is worthy of attention, but love also arises when we pay attention to something.

The polyamorist learns to feel safe in a variety of interactions. The security of love is not simply seen as something the other person can offer you. Rather, it is defined as something you must find for yourself.

To play a role is not to renounce your identity, it’s an exploration of possibilities and as such it’s important less because it brings enjoyment and pleasure than because it abolishes assumptions and extends empathy.

The real world is made up of playing fields. The belief that there is one true life and one true self removes the serious possibilities from all play.

I’m sometimes told that seeking alternative forms (in relationships and love, for instance) is experienced as ‘making difficulties’. I don’t see what else life is other than making difficulties and I prefer to do so explicitly.