This post might (no promises) become the first in a sequence, and a likely theme of one post in that sequence is how this all used to work. Main claim: it is possible to get one’s needs for benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable met from non-romantic relationships instead, on some axes that is a much better strategy, and I think that’s how things mostly worked historically and still work in many places today. The prototypical picture here looks like both romantic partners having their separate tight-knit group of (probably same-sex) friends who they hang out with—he hangs with “the boys”, she hangs with “the girls”. And to some extent this is probably a necessity, because at the population level there’s a pretty severe mismatch between the kinds of benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable which men and women want vs can supply each other.
(To be clear, that does not mean I think everyone should pursue that strategy or even that it should necessarily be the default target, but I do think that it should at least be on one’s radar as a possibility.)
Indeed!
This post might (no promises) become the first in a sequence, and a likely theme of one post in that sequence is how this all used to work. Main claim: it is possible to get one’s needs for benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable met from non-romantic relationships instead, on some axes that is a much better strategy, and I think that’s how things mostly worked historically and still work in many places today. The prototypical picture here looks like both romantic partners having their separate tight-knit group of (probably same-sex) friends who they hang out with—he hangs with “the boys”, she hangs with “the girls”. And to some extent this is probably a necessity, because at the population level there’s a pretty severe mismatch between the kinds of benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable which men and women want vs can supply each other.
(To be clear, that does not mean I think everyone should pursue that strategy or even that it should necessarily be the default target, but I do think that it should at least be on one’s radar as a possibility.)