Editorial Note: This post was written by Wes Fenza, long before the falling out of our previous quint household and the subsequent illumination of his abusive behavior, sexual assault of several women, and removal from the Polyamory Leadership Network and banning from at least one conference. I have left Wes’ posts  here because I don’t believe it’s meaningful to simply remove them. You cannot remove the truth by hiding it; Wes and I used to collaborate, and his thoughts will remain here, with this notice attached.

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Wes here.

I don’t believe in either contra-causal free will or objective morality. I don’t know many skeptics who believe in either of those, but I do run into a lot of skeptics who seem to feel that bad behavior can be excused by explaining that the behavior was the result of forces outside of the control of the actor, such as mental illness or a history of oppression. I find these things to be in conflict.

First, without objective morality, calling an act or a person “better” or “worse” than a different act or person becomes merely a subjective judgment, based on the speaker’s preference. When I say, for instance, that being honest with your friends is better than lying to your friends, what I really mean is that I prefer to live in a world where people are honest with their friends, not that there is anything objectively superior about such behavior. When I say that “Sam is a better person than Pat,” what I mean is that Sam helps move the state of the world and/or my subjective experience of the world toward my preferred ideal more or better than Pat does.

Second, without contra-causal free will, all actions are caused by external forces, and nobody is truly responsible for hir own actions. The main implication of this view is that all evaluations* of someone’s behavior must be forward-looking. Traditionally, the morality of an action is judged in a backward-looking way. An act’s morality, and its associated blame or praise, has traditionally been based on an evaluation of what exactly the actor did what what hir motivation was at the time of the behavior. The focus is on the past. When you take contra-causal free will out of the equation, this approach makes no sense. Because all actions are caused by external factors, the only relevant inquiry into the myriad causes of a person’s behavior is the extent to which an understanding of such causes allows one to predict and/or influence that person’s future behavior.

Consider two parents who beats their children. Alex was abused as a child, and beat hir children because that is hir only understanding of the parent-child relationship.** Assuming that the statistic that 70% of abused children turn into abusive adults is true. Terry has lived a life of luxury and privilege, and beats hir children because ze has anger management issues. Which one is morally worse?

The intuitive answer is that Terry is worse, because Alex is a victim of circumstance, and Terry seems more in control of hir own behavior. However, without a belief in contra-causal free will, one must view everyone as a victim of circumstance. Terry has no more meaningful “choice” in hir behavior than Alex does.

The reasonable inquiry in such a circumstance is: what is each person likely to do in the future? How will each respond to efforts at rehabilitation? What sort of conditioning*** must each be given in order to prevent future instances of child abuse? It may very well turn out to be the case that Alex’s behavior is more ingrained, and thus Alex must be subject to stronger conditioning & stricter monitoring in order to prevent future abuse. While this is intuitively unjust, it is the only rational conclusion.

This is not entirely counter-intuitive. One of the reason that crimes of passion are punished less than crimes involving forethought is that crimes of passion are less likely to be repeated. It is also the reason that repeat offenders are punished more harshly than one-time offenders.

The idea that all evaluations of a person’s behavior must be forward-looking is equally applicable to all acts and personality traits. This comes into conflict with our natural sympathy for the oppressed. Skeptical communities tend to be liberal communities, which are sensitive to things like oppression, privilege, poverty, society’s influence, brain chemistry, and similar concepts. This is generally a strength of the community. Often, however, some members of the community (and a number of people that I know personally) make use of such concepts in order to excuse bad behavior.

Consider mental illness. Many people have diagnosed mental illnesses that cause them to behave in ways that I (and many others) see as unacceptable from healthy people. I do not think this is a controversial statement. Often, the behavior caused by such illness is exactly why it is classified as an illness in the first place. Mental illnesses can cause people to be excessively prone to anger and violence, to have poor social skills, to behave irrationally, to suffer delusions, and many other behaviors that I consider “bad.” This is not a moral judgment, as I do not believe in morality. I have tremendous sympathy for those who suffer from such things, often because they recognize the illness in themselves, and they find it much more objectionable than I do.

The same goes for victims of oppression. Oppression (especially of women and minority groups) is rampant in our society, and oppression can make it completely understandable why someone would be more suspicious, hostile, or quick to anger than someone more privileged. An understanding of oppression and privilege is critical for anyone who actually cares about other people and/or society. The skeptical community’s awareness of such is growing, and the community is much better for it.

However, mental illness and oppression are not excuses for bad behavior. They are merely reasons. The fact that such are out of the actor’s control does not differentiate them from any other explanation for a bad act. The biggest jerk in the world is a jerk for reasons outside of hir control. Any evaluation of the person’s behavior, to be at all useful, must be forward-looking. Some mental illnesses make a person completely intolerable, and I don’t think there’s any shame in saying so. Sometimes a person’s history of oppression can give hir a giant chip on hir shoulder such that ze is unpleasant to be around. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be sympathetic, but neither does it mean that we should view such behavior as any more (or less) forgivable or tolerable than someone who does the same thing for a different reason.

This is not to say that reasons for bad behavior are irrelevant. On the contrary, understanding of a person’s reasons for their behavior is critical to an understanding of how likely ze is to repeat such behavior. Often, a diagnosed mental illness is much easier to deal with than a standard personality flaw, because treatment is available. An understand of an oppressed person’s history makes it easier to predict what will trigger the objectionable behavior. These are all very relevant lines of reasoning.

However, understanding a person’s reasons for behaving the way that they do is only part of the inquiry. I think that the relevant inquiry when evaluating someone’s actions is an inquiry into that person’s future behavior. This is the inquiry which allows me to decide if I consider that person a force for good or bad (in the subjective sense, as I’ve defined them above).

Everyone has reasons for their behavior which are outside of hir control. A reason is not an excuse, and we shouldn’t treat it as such.

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Side note – this post has concentrated on explaining away a person’s bad behavior for what I consider bad reasons. I see these concepts as equally applicable to the excessive glorifying of a person’s good behavior. Just as all bad acts are the result of forces outside of a person’s control, so are all good acts.

* When I talk about evaluations of a person’s behavior, I mean the process by which we, as individuals, decide things like what role we want a person to have in or lives, how close we can/should be to someone, how often we want such person around, how attracted we are, how dangerous someone is to us, etc. Such decisions are reliant upon the ability to make accurate predictions of a person’s future behavior, which is why that’s where my focus is. Society also makes collective evaluations, through the legal system, to which I think these principles are equally valid. However, for purposes of this discussion, I’m concentrating on individual evaluations.

** Disclaimer: I know nothing about the psychology of child abuse. This may be a completely unrealistic hypothetical. Please consider it only for purposes of the point being illustrated.

*** I use “conditioning” in place of “punishment,” because I don’t think punishment is very effective at rehabiliting antisocial inclinations, notwithstanding that it is the only system that our society uses.
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(H/T polyinthemedia)

There’s a guest post at Friendly Atheist by Todd Stiefel, criticizing the wording of some proposed harassment policies. It’s clear that Stiefel isn’t seeking to minimize the problem of harassment, or argue against the adoption of harassment policies, but only to make specific criticisms of points where he feels they need tweaking.

Overall I agree with his points: he mentions one thing in particular that I had noted, which is that some policies prohibit “unwanted sexual attention,” without specifying what that means: is asking someone for a date if they’re not interested unwanted sexual attention? Technically, I’d say it is, and yet I think asking someone for a date shouldn’t necessarily be prohibited. The addendum he suggests makes the boundary much clearer.

His criticisms seemed so reasonable to me that I was surprised that the first several comment responses I read were negative. The objections were all along the lines of, “Well obviously no one’s going to go running to the conference organizers if someone just asks them on a date or pats them innocently on a shoulder… and to say otherwise implies that women are irrational.” They seemed to be in agreement that the purpose of a harassment policy was to serve as a safety net, so that if something does happen that makes someone uncomfortable, they have someone to turn.

I disagree, and I said so in a comment, but wanted to make a wider response. Harassment policies are there as a safety net, yes, but I don’t think that is, or should be, their only purpose. The other purpose should be to set clear norms and boundaries for what is considered appropriate behavior. I think this is important for three reasons.

– First, as JT Eberhard illustrated a while back, some people have a hard time grasping social rules that aren’t explicitly laid out. I have a mild version of this impairment myself, and a lot of sympathy for those with the more difficult versions. Some people really do work better, and with much less anxiety, when it’s spelled out: This is what you can do, this is what you can’t do.

– Second, some people claim to have this impairment as an excuse to not give a shit how their behavior affects other people. Having accurate guidelines, that we actually expect people to follow, takes away the excuse from these people, while it helps the sincere and well-meaning folks above.

– Third, I really really hate rules that everybody knows aren’t meant to be followed literally most of the time. Please tell me I’m not alone on this. They can function as a nasty kind of trap, wherein somebody who’s behaving perfectly according to the accepted norms can get tagged for breaking a rule — one of those rules that nobody follows. Maybe that’s because they’ve, wittingly or unwittingly, crossed an unspoken boundary. Or maybe it’s because somebody in the group doesn’t like them and sees an opportunity to get them on a technicality. It’s just not to anybody’s benefit to create an elaborate list of rules, then expect everybody to function by a different, more relaxed set of rules under most circumstances. As Wes (who’s sitting right behind me) says, “When you make rules that you don’t expect people to follow, you breed contempt for the system.”

As you may have noticed, there has been a sort of blog-around going on here at Polyskeptic about the idea of polyamory as a sexual orientation.  Alex, Shaun and Wes have all weighed.  I’m not the kind of person to miss out on a party, so I thought I might say a few words about this.  I want to talk about how my personal experience has led me to believe that polyamory is not my sexual orientation, but rather my philosophy on relationships.

That, my friends, is what we call a Thesis Statement.  Awwwww shit.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, Wes and I were monogamous for the first 5 years of our relationship.  Non-monogamy didn’t really enter our collective consciousness until then.  I don’t quite know how we started to think about it or where we learned about open relationships (specifically polyamorous relationships).  I can probably safely blame Dan Savage for this since he talks often about  the idea that often a long term relationship can be helped with the introduction of non-monogamy.  Regardless of how we got to the idea, one thing is certain: Though I was always monogamous in all my relationships before this, I never fully understood why so many relationships went to hell simply because partners cheated or expressed interest in people outside their relationship.

This might sound hilarious to those of you who know that I have definitely been the jealous one here.  I have spoken about this often (mostly to get over the shame of being so flawed in this way.  Jealousy really bothers me and I hate that it is part of my laundry list of things I have to deal with all the time in my own head).  I can speak about it more freely these days as it rarely causes a problem now, but in the beginning problems were many.

When Wes and I talked about opening up I was completely onboard from a rational and logical point of view.  The philosophy of non-monogamy made perfect sense to me.  I am committed to Wes.  I wish to spend my life with him.  It seemed absurd to assume that over the course of a multi-decade relationship that neither of us would never find ourselves attracted to other people.  And, as we are committed to our mutual happiness as individuals and as a couple, it also seemed absurd that we would wish that the other would deny each other chances at additional happiness.  The distinction between “in addition to” and “instead of” means everything here.  Wes and I wanted to be able to seek out happiness opportunities in addition to what we already have (and will continue to have) with each other.

So my wanting to be open had everything to do with believing in it philosophically.  The practice of what the philosophy entails was initially tumultuous because handling something emotionally is very different from handling it logically.  I was an emotional wreck for a long time.  My insecurities were fierce and they led to nasty bouts with jealousy when I feared that all of my insecurities were founded.  It was awful.

But I never wanted to pull the plug.  To me this was not an interesting experiment that Wes and I would look back on down the road, having “gotten it out of our system” and safely returned to monogamy stronger and wiser than we were before.  We chose this lifestyle because we logically, rationally, and philosophically believe in it.  If I could not work through my personal issues that were getting in the way of enjoying the possibilities that polyamory presented, it would be dishonest to blame the philosophy itself for my failings.  Viewing relationships through polyamorous spectacles illuminates things about yourself and those relationships.  If you can work through the things that scare you about being that vulnerable, about trusting that much, you can adopt a polyamorous philosophy if you want to.

In this way, I agree with Shaun’s assessment that many people could be non-monogamous if they chose.  I do not view sexual orientation as something you choose.  But, to me, polyamory is all about choice.  I could have demanded Wes and I go back to monogamy when I was at my lowest, but I chose not to because I believed that the potential freedom that polyamory could afford would ultimately lead to much greater happiness and strength of our relationship.  This is not because I was in the closet for years about my deepest darkest desires to have relationships with multiple people, but rather because the ability to trust Wes so deeply required me to tackle a number of awful things in my brain that were getting in the way of my own happiness.

At this juncture, I know that polyamory is the right “lovestyle” for me. Practicing it makes me very happy because I have the benefit of support and love from more than one person.  I would not want to go back to monogamy because that would mean not having the wonderful life I currently have.  But I do not feel that it is my sexual orientation.  I liken it to atheism and skepticism, not bisexuality.  My commitment to skepticism means that I view the world through skeptical spectacles which means that I follow the scientific method in my approach to all things.  Skepticism colors my point of view of the universe.  Atheism is the same way.  I do not believe that there is a god.  I really don’t.  I must allow for a small amount of doubt of this belief because while I don’t have any evidence that there is a god, I don’t have completely definitive evidence that there is not.  But I live my life as though there is no higher power governing what I do.  This is the philosophy which colors my point of view on morality.  Polyamory is the philosophy which colors my approach to relationships, whether I have one or several.  It is a philosophy where self-introspection, personal growth, honest communication, and truth are major tenets.  Though practicing polyamory means that I can love who I want to love, it does not dictate the type of person that I love, but rather how I love.

As part of Jessie’s various birthday-related shenanigans last week, we decided to see Brave over the weekend.  Oh, who am I kidding? We would have seen it anyway because it just looked awesome but Jessie’s birthday week gave us an “excuse” to go because we didn’t have a specific birthday activity yet for that day.  Yes, we celebrate birthdays for a week.  We got the idea from our friend Gina and haven’t looked back.  Yeah, it’s gluttonous.  Whatever.

Anyway, yes, we went to see Brave and I absolutely loved it.  Apparently there are reasons that you can hate and be offended by the film (even without seeing it!) as outlined here.  I like this blogger generally and get what she is trying to say but I think it’s a stretch to say the least…especially when you haven’t gone to see it to see if there’s anything really offensive going on.  I just find it hard to characterize Brave as thinly veiled racism.  And I don’t see the movie as a vehicle to make fun of Gingers.  Basically, the movie is a joy to watch and these criticisms just don’t ring true with me.  I mean, if you’re going to say that about Brave, then you might as well say it about Braveheart.  As I recall, there’s a big mooning scene in that too and everyone loved that.  But perhaps that’s because Mel Gibson can do no wrong…or because it predates the Mel Gibson Can Do Nothing BUT Wrong Era.  But yes, Braveheart is a beloved movie to many and definitely had a “We wear kilts without underwear” joke in it.

I have a general love/hate relationship with Pixar.  OK, I’m really only talking about Wall-E.  I hated it and it’s a good thing I don’t believe in hell because I’m sure I’d be going there for hating it.  My reasons for hating it say much more about my twisted brain than the film itself (I am very attached to post-apocalyptic visions and I just couldn’t stand this particular one), but needless to say, I walked out wondering if it was just that I’ve outgrown cartoons.

But really, perish the thought.  I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow cartoons.  I remember being in 6^th grade and having my teacher ask, “Aren’t you too old for cartoons?” and I reminded her that I was 11 and that I like would never be too old…for ANYTHING (Hear that Hotpants Emporium? Watch out!).  So, yeah, I’m allowed to hate Wall-E for strange adult reasons just like I can think Felix The Cat is really stupid for smart people reasons.

But Brave was good on all sorts of levels.  Pixar is always impressive visually of course and the Scottish landscape and characters that were created were no disappointment.  But it was really the story and the strong female protagonists that made this movie so wonderful.  And it came just in time since I’m still recovering from the Epic Beauty Showdown that was Snow White and The Unimportant Character Who We’re Supposed to Care About but Don’t.

Growing up I didn’t have a lot of strong female role models in media.  The Disney princesses who had been around were not particularly inspiring to me.  And even when they did seem to have independence and intelligence as part of their characters, the happy ending for each of them was determined by the man they ended up with.  Prince Charming did nothing for me as he was simply a standard “Good Looking Member of Royalty Who Seems Nice Enough”.  The closest thing to impressive I remember was Beauty and The Beast simply because Belle was apparently “book smart” and fearless in certain ways and she fell in love with the Beast even though the townspeople wanted to light him afire with Angry Mob Torches due to his beastliness.  But still, he ultimately was a rich nobleman and so by being less judgmental she was afforded the ultimate prize: To never have to work again.  And she’s so beautiful, so she totes deserves it.

No, I ignored most of them not really seeing how they applied to who I was and how I wanted to live.  Instead, I was drawn to female characters such as Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor.  These were women who continued to fight long after all the (non-robotic) men in the story were dead and did so not because they’re pretty impressive for girls, but because they were able bodied people with a will to survive.  While their movie situations were horrifying and in many ways ridiculous, I viewed these women as strong women who could exist in my universe.  As a kid, I didn’t remember being particularly affected by the scary things happening, but the respect and awe I had for those particular characters in the face of that kind of adversity has always stuck with me. I made the decision long ago that I would never be a Cinderella or a Sleeping Beauty.  I would do my best to be a Ripley.  (I mean…I don’t really want to BE Ripley.  That fourth movie is pretty weird, and the ones that proceed it aren’t a walk in the park.)

But my parents were weird and let me watch that kind of stuff when I was 7 (thank you so much mom and dad!).  Brave is a movie that parents will let their kids see and finally there is a Disney princess to look up to.

I don’t really feel like going into a plot summary here.  You can find that if you like and I encourage you to see it.  But there are many things about the interaction of characters that made this movie stand out to me.

Merida (the princess and main character) belongs to a family that is filled with love.  Yes, they are royalty, but this doesn’t seem to be a particularly important point.  The relationship between Merida and her parents is a loving one.  Her father is unconcerned with the fact that his eldest heir is female and teaches her about the interests she and he have in common.  Her mother is charged with her education and teaching her to “be a lady”, which causes strife between them.  The plot thickens when Merida is supposed to marry the most “worthy” boy in the kingdom.  A lot of other stuff happens.  But ultimately, mother and daughter learn the usefulness of both their strengths.  Survival skills, compassion, and eloquence are ultimately proven to all be incredibly valuable.  Merida learns these lessons without having to be rewarded with “the right man”.    There is no lesson for viewers that if you are good enough, you will be rescued by the best possible boy and that if you fail you will be punished by having to live out your days with a useless, ugly man, or worse…no man!  The movie doesn’t even try to validate her choices and strengths by showing her become queen.  Her efforts are instead rewarded with happiness in the form of life as she knew it and wanted it, and with the love of her family.  She made naïve mistakes, like anyone would at her age, and then she faced these mistakes.  Her courageousness, intelligence, and resilience won the day and this meant that she could go back to being a kid and enjoying life as such.

Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but I think overall the movie teaches an important point of view for young kids to see.  The lessons of our parents often come in very handy as we grow in the world, but it is also very important to be true to ourselves and shape our own world as we see fit.  This is each of our responsibilities as we navigate life.  We must challenge and reject as needed without losing sight of the wisdom present in the things people we respect tell us.  And on a superficial level, getting the best looking, nicest guy doesn’t mean that you have succeeded in life.  This shouldn’t be a person’s only goal.  The best relationships are between those who continue to grow and change as their knowledge of the world increases.

I hope that movies like Brave will be the trend of many films and other media for young people.  It’s time to stop validating old bullshit (I’m looking at you Snow White Huntsman Crapfest, also Twilight).  If we really start to see women being portrayed as people with motivations and desires and dreams of their own, maybe everyone will start to believe it.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock where you have no internet access and, for some unknown reason, haven’t been reading Polyskeptic, you might have noticed a lot of discussion lately about the tension between being expressing sexual/romantic interest in people and creating a safe space for all to feel comfortable in places like conferences (and really anywhere).  That is quite the oversimplification and I encourage you to read the posts I linked to if you haven’t already.

I thought that perhaps I should weigh in, but I don’t really have a lot to say that hasn’t already been said.  I am in the “Directness is better and preferred” camp of social interaction.  I didn’t used to be…I used to spend a lot of time either not saying things or coming up with excuses so that I didn’t have to say no (and I’m not even talking about rejecting people’s sexual advances.  I’m talking about how I used to speak to my friends).  In the past few years I have made a real effort to be honest even when it is difficult (which is usually is).  In addition, I greatly admire people who are blunt and honest.  To me, dancing around subjects isn’t cute or desired.  In my experience, overly polite communication is unsatisfying and relatively ineffective.

But instead of writing an entire essay about this philosophy, I thought I would write about a recent example of A+ blunt, honest communication being the best way and why I think that this should be everyone’s goal in a perfect world.

I met Alex at a BBQ.  Yes, I met the Alex that now writes for Polyskeptic at a BBQ.  BBQ’s are awesome apparently because you meet awesome attractive people who also happen to be highly intelligent and equipped with mad writing skillz.  Perhaps that’s just this particular BBQ, but I’ll take it.

As is the custom these days, we became Facebook friends days after the BBQ and began “liking” each other’s status updates and posting witty comments on each other’s walls.  I pointed this out to Wes and he coined the phrase “Flirtbooking”.  After a few days of this, I was wondering whether it was, in fact, flirtbooking, and being interested I decided to just come right out and say something.  Long story short, we made a date for last weekend.

After the initial “Ooh! Shiny new person! How exciting” wore off, I started to fret.  It is no secret that I am close to a few self-proclaimed, unapologetic sluts.  I equate this, and many of their other attitudes, as very sex positive.  I have spent a large part of my life being terrified of sex for various reasons and so the confidence and comfort it takes to be this way is something I admire.  Of course, it’s really the confidence and comfort I admire over the actual sluttiness, but it all kind of goes together in my mind.

I suppose that I can say that I have been going through an awakening of sorts over the last few years.  I have become less negative in general, and part of that has been about gaining a positive, healthy point of view about sex.  I have been feeling so much better about it that I thought that it would be possible for me to emulate the things I admire so much.  And yet, there I was fretting about what I was supposed to do on this date if I was going to be all sex positive and stuff.  I kid you not when I say that I actually sat there wondering how best to serve the feminist movement, the poly movement, and the “let’s stop demonizing sex” movement with my actions on this date.  I was barely thinking about how I actually felt and what I wanted to do.

Finally, after many conversations with Wes and Shaun, I realized that I don’t have to be the revolution and the best way to serve any of it is to do what I want.  That’s basically what every revolution is about anyway: Changing society so that more people can be free to do as they please while respecting everyone’s autonomy and agency.  Or something.  The point was that I knew that I felt completely uncomfortable with the idea of hooking up with someone I barely knew, no matter how good at making cheese related puns via text message they were.

So we went out and it was a great time and we talked about a whole lot of things.  I told him about an incident last year that was very upsetting.  It was the closest experience I have ever had to an assault and I realized as I sat there fretting for days that I am still very affected by it.  There was nothing about Alex that was creepy.  Nothing he was saying or doing was indicating to me that I had anything to fear, but I assumed that I should fear and it was a great source of conflict for me.

I came home and was still conflicted and it was all because I was remembering what one asshole did a year ago.  The date with Alex went quite well and I was excited and happy about that, but I was also terrified of making another mistake as I had before in trusting too easily and assuming that no one who knows me and gets to be with me like that would ever hurt me.  And I realize that this is, quite unfortunately, something that many women deal with constantly.  I was lucky in that I had gone 30 years of my life without ever dealing with any kind of thing like that, and I am astounded at the effect that it had on me.

So this week rolls around and we start talking about when we’d like to go out again.  I’m going to put the text messages here (Alex has given me permission to write about all of this):

Alex: I’m free Friday.  Have the whole house to myself, in fact. I might even do some weeding/cleaning if someone’s coming over. J

Me: Hmm, I will let you know.  Have to see if I can have the car and such. J

What was really happening after I sent that message was that I was having a bit of a freak out.  Again, I was completely conflicted.  I knew that I was interested in Alex, and attracted to him…but I didn’t know if I wanted to be in a situation like that.  I talked to Wes about it and he calmed me down saying that if I don’t feel comfortable, then it’s probably premature to be alone with him in his house.  So after that I did the only thing I could: Be clear and honest.

Me:  So here’s the thing.  I definitely like you.  I am definitely attracted to you and all that good stuff.  But, I also think I should get to know you better before I’m in that sexy a situation.  Last night I went through a lot of difficulty remembering everything about the incident I told you about.  Sex requires a lot of vulnerability for me, and I need to trust you.  I don’t think that will take long.  I don’t really see a reason to be scared of you…but I’m scared in general.

He completely understood, saying that he likes showing off his house and that his couch is more comfortable than the dark park we were sitting in before but that going out would also be lovely.

The next day he wrote me a really impressive email explaining himself.  It was impressive for a few reasons.  First, he talked a lot about how he could understand how his proposed plan may have seemed creepy even if that wasn’t his intention.  He admitted that he trusts people pretty easily but that him trusting people will likely not result in some sort of grave consequence.  He explained that he is interested in me for more than one reason.  But he also didn’t say that was uninterested in sex.  He made it very clear that he is attracted to me and would be pleased with that eventuality.

That last part is important.  He could have easily said, “What?  NO! The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.” Or something that would be a less obvious lie like, “No, no, no, I was inviting you over just to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”  Because he was upfront and honest about everything, I know that the rest of the things said in the email weren’t bullshit.

Now, I could have responded to his text thusly: “Oh, well, it looks like I won’t be getting the car, so getting to your house will be difficult.  Why don’t we meet in the city?”

Perhaps he would have replied immediately that this plan sounded good.  But he also, more likely, could have replied that there were public transit options or that he could come get me or various other solutions.  By not saying my real concern, I have given him a fake stumbling block that is easy to overcome.  I, like many of the people I adore, are solution finders, so if you lie about the problem and the problem is something we can solve, the conversation gets very drawn out.  If I was committed to not hurting his feelings therefore refusing to say that going to his house at this juncture is scary to me, we would have gone back and forth until I would have been forced out of exasperation to tell him the truth OR “give in” and put myself in a situation I don’t really want to be in, be all weird about it, and possibly shame myself into doing something I am “supposed to do” because, well, I’m the one that agreed to come over. (Again, he gave me no indication that anything like that would be an issue, but I had left over fears).

In addition, because I chose to be honest with him, it started a really good conversation.  Both of us apparently had moments in our email exchange where we were afraid to hit send because we thought that sharing that much about the inner working of our minds might be a turn off, but we clicked send anyway and have gotten that much closer to really knowing something about each other.  As such, I am looking really forward to going out on Friday, and not just because we’re going to get to make fun of hipsters at Barcade.

I have chosen to share all this because I think it’s a good example of two people who ARE in fact interested in dating and that it all could have gone to hell if we didn’t choose to really speak to each other.  I know that it’s different than some random person coming up to you at a bar or at a conference, but I think it highlights why honesty and straightforwardness can be so very important and so rewarding.  Sometimes being very upfront, on both sides, can lead to changing the conversation to something both people can be happy and comfortable with, and that can lead to even better things.