comment on symbolism in relationships

[jay]

Dredged up from a conversation still going on in a month-old entry of mine...

[quote from bikerscum:]
Why does it devalue to you a sincere offer to babysit if you know that similar offers are made to others?

(grin) it doesn't! That's not my context. My context is: if offers to babysit are made to others, but not to me, then *I'm* devalued (not the offer) with respect to whatever set of others, in the network of the person making the babysitting offers. In a connectionist sense, my link-weighting estimate is reduced.

If the given person makes babysitting offers to a stranger-with-kids he's just met, but I'm supposedly a close friend of his and he's never offered (or refused my past request), then my estimation of the value of my friendship in that person's eyes is placed lower than that of someone he's just met -- i.e., practically zero.

In a third-grade context... (grin)

If mommy gives all the other kids a cookie but won't give me one, that means that she must love all of them more than me... If she gives one to the new kid that just moved in down the street, but not to me, then she must not love me at all, because she doesn't love the new kid at all (and I'm even less important that he is, because he gets a cookie and I don't).

That's over-simplified, but how I feel about symbolism... especially for publicly-displayed things. The "cookie" may be unimportant in itself, but as a token it conveys information about the state of a given friendship or relationship.

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Again - maybe we were socialized on different planets.

(grin) maybe... I've said before that we seem like opposites, yin/yang in our socialization.

I ask myself - first about my feelings about R.

That's a key difference between us -- I find my own feelings to be unreliable and not very trustworthy. External inputs are more valuable to me.

Am I too (much or little) emotionally involved for my own taste?
I would mostly ignore my own feelings/taste, and look instead on how that degree of emotional involvement was affecting R and those around R and myself....

I tend to measure my own fulfillment in terms of happiness, YMetricMV

(nods) I place less importance on my own happiness, as we've discussed before. Duty, obligations to others, external impacts or validation all loom large for me.

I don't perceive that my relationship with R has been devalued.

Since your value of that relationship is driven internally -- by your own happiness with R -- I can see that whatever happens with S is of little importance to you (unless it affects R's availability or attitude towards you personally).

how one would go about categorizing this, or choosing to order it

Usually, I just ask R how R sees our friendship or relationship. Then I subsequently compare with those others to whom R refers similarly.

why are you setting your expectations based on other people's other relationships rather that on your own wants and interactions?

Again, my own reactions to my own wants and interactions are untrustworthy and unreliable. People's other relationships can be observed with more objectivity, I think. If R is going out three times a month with R, that's observable. My own feelings about my interactions with R are likely to be hard to describe (and change frequently).

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Make that, "If R is going out three times a month with S"...