Rowan says...

Thing #1: "I like to let all my relationships find their own level." This is usually brought up in response to an inquiry along the lines of "So where do you [think this is going | want this to go]?". It is as if the person feels that saying out loud what they want from a relationship will somehow bind it forever to be that thing. Of course, refusing to say what your expectations or desires are is a very handy way to avoid being confronted later about behaving inconsistently with those stated expectations and desires.

It is sometimes accompanied by, "I have no wants or expectations about this relationship," which to my mind is usually, if not always, bullshit. Human minds are finely-tuned machines for churning out expectations; it's how we survive in the world. The likelihood is that they're there, even if you don't want to admit that to yourself or anyone else, even if it's nothing more than, "I expect things will continue on as they have been indefinitely."

Thing #2: "All my relationships are equal." This is equally patently bullshit, or it should be, in my opinion. If you treat and value the person you starting boinking last week the same as your life partner of five years, there is something deeply wrong with that. If you don't, then there is a power imbalance there that should be acknowledged explicitly; your life partner has a greater claim to your resources than your new lover does, and denying that truth is only going to leave everyone drowning in a sea of uncertainty about where they stand and what the boundaries are (and more importantly, when those boundaries have been crossed).

Now, before I start getting flamed all over the place, let me make something clear: I am all for allowing the possibility of fluidity and change in relationships. What I am against is using the desire for fluidity as an excuse to avoid doing The Work -- The Work being: examining one's own wants, intentions, and boundaries; communicating them clearly to all those concerned; finding out that of the other(s) one is involved with; sticking to what you have communicated; and then doing it all over again, and often.

Edit: A further edit to add more clarification on what exactly I object to about Thing #1. ;-) I don't object in any way to the idea of relationships "finding their own level". I like to live this way myself, in fact. What I object to is, as I said above, not doing the work of discussing with the other involved parties what's happening with the "level finding", where you would like things to end up, where they would like things to end up, etc.

I also don't object to the act itself of saying the words, "I like to let all my relationships find their own level." I object to people using that to mean, "I like to let all my relationships find their own level, so I refuse to talk about where it might be going, where I want or expect it to go, or how this relationship affects the other people I'm involved with." There seem to be some people who believe that relationships find their level through a mystical process, possibly involving fairies ;-), and that any discussion or direction of this process with contaminate it with observer bias. Instead of, say, finding the level yourself using introspection, discussion, and negotiation. But that's much less romantic than fairies.