Societal norms

I only want to have one romantic partner, but I would prefer it if that partner had other partners so they could get their social/sexual needs met without bothering me about them!

There are plenty of communities that don't practice monogamy. Look for poly/ENM people.

I say sth like that:

Mistake is just a change in an opposite direction, you're testing possibilities, and drawing conclusions, it is a lot better than stagnancy, which is going to be the doom of mankind, 

Question, try and never regret.

Questioning societal norms, is a good thing. It promotes change and reflection. One of the many strengths of our autistic experience!

 I continually ask why too, I need to know the purpose for everything. I am a very deep thinker.

I suffer from 'Questioneverythingitis'. It is most annoying, but it's the way I'm built

Most people accept things as they are. If societal norms, climate change, the degradation of the natural world etc. do not impact them directly in a negative way, then they do not question them. 

This very expansive comment leads me to think about my annoyance at humanity for always assuming we are above nature. How we are in some way different because we have conscious thought

I actually feel that we are flawed because of that. Like how we can't seem to do anything without it being of negative consequence to the natural world .why then do NTs assume the expectations held in human society are optimal asnrhey are then?

Thats meant more as a romantic gesture, than an actual transferral of ownership. That's how I read it anyway

It is mostly to do with biology. Big brains, fat, long gestation and cryptic ovulation. With chimpanzees, like our small-brained early ancestors, the ability to find food is much the same between the sexes and the mother finds almost all the food for herself and her offspring - some food sharing takes place but it is of minor extent, males do not usually feed infants. Female chimpanzees are obvious - hugely swollen pink pudenda -  when they are ovulating and fertile. Copulation is relatively promiscuous (females only reject close male relatives) and male chimpanzees compete for fertilization largely through semen quality and quantity. It is a bit of a 'chicken and egg' situation, but when our ancestors brains grew, they needed more fat in their food - the brain is very lipid-rich. As a result, a diet rich in animal fat (from animal fatty meat, body fat, marrow and brain) was necessary, mostly obtained by hunting. With a long gestation period and long infant dependency following birth, early female humans could not supply all their own and their offspring's food requirements. Obviously, a heavily pregnant, nursing, or encumbered with small offspring, human female could not hunt. Therefore, humans became reliant of pair-bonded couples, where the male hunted and the female raised children and gathered plant-based food nearer the home-site. This gave rise to problems, the male needed to be reasonably certain that the offspring he was supporting with food were his and the female needed to retain the support of her male. Part of the answer was cryptic ovulation, unlike chimpanzee females it is not at all obvious when a human or, presumably, early human female is fertile. This means that more frequent copulation is selected for, which, alongside greater degrees of pleasure for both sexes in copulation, results in strengthened pair-bonding.

Very many bird species form similar pair-bonds for similar reasons, a single bird cannot incubate eggs, or defend hatchlings, and gather food at the same time.

As in some birds, there is some evolutionary pressure to cheat - the male has more offspring and the female produces offspring with more varied genetics. 

I know of one tribe in Congo who are not monogamous. The women raise a child with one man and romantic relations with another. There was a TV programme about them a few years ago.

My friend is right. She said people come along in your life at different times and for different reasons. For some people that may be the same person throughout their life. For others it's different ones.  For some people they don't want or need that. Life isn't static and our relationships reflect that. 

I wonder how much of a role religion and capitalism play in all of this.

From what I have gathered from different fields, on an evolutionary basis we are by nature mostly monogamous if you follow primatologists the morphological difference between males and females reflect the fact that males have to fight among each other to be able to have more offsprings with different females studies using our closest relatives (gorillas, chimps, bonobos etc..). Obviously this has nothing to do with "romantic" relationships. Romanticism is a cultural mouvement whose origin comes from some religious mouvement based on being able to refrain oneself, original romantics preserved the illusion by never make the realionship a reality. As for marriage it seems to come from the need to establish which kids are considered from the father as until recently with DNA tests it was impossible to know. The current mix of all these aspects is confusing! As for love I strongly recommend: The art of loving by Erich Fromm. From brotherly love (friendship) going through motherly and fatherly love and romantic love as some form of delusion indeed, a point he shared with Karen Horney a social psychologist who extensively wrote on the overweight we give to romantic relationship in western societies.

That’s a healthy ideal, but look at the unconscious language in just about every pop culture thing: songs, film, television. ‘You belong to me’ or ‘I’m yours’ are ubiquitous. The latter perhaps a little less problematic, as it implies more self-agency, less ‘ownership’

Very well put. Sorry if that sounded overly defensive before. I’m so tired of feeling like nobody will ever entirely understand me, and it doesn’t take much to make me feel additionally ‘weird’. But Having put that to one side you make a very good point. 

*view

I don't feel ownership plays any part of a romantic relationship. That isn't something that fits. Our relationship only works through support and giving each other the space to be ourselves.

Sorry you couldn't fire that article, I pay £2 a month and tbh it is definitely worth it

I see your point and note that I'm no linguist. I'm also still adapting to use of language in relation to ASC so bare with me.

I think the 'we all' part is there because to me that is the assumption that is made, that 'we' equals a blanketed norm that doesn't identify the individual or diverse subset of neurotypes that exist in society and is as such what I am calling out?

Being influenced verses what we need. But I guess I'm saying that these baseline predispositions that stand as some sort of unwritten framework for 'how citizens should engage' is a dogmatic set of principles that I'm not comfortable with.

There is expectation put on us from birth, and I realise I never agreed to be part of any if it. Projections that began with my parents and are maintained by their ideals projected upon me i realise. Now a father myself, I'm questioning why I've always felt suppressed by them and how to undo the implications of those restrictions?

because of delusion that you can ''own'' another being, your partner

as long as it's monogomous people stay delusional about it

and so they continue to feed their greed

I want to be alone. I tried it once, the relationship, though it was more like a must pushed on me by my family, I relented because I didn't know how it tastes, it took me 11 years of adulthood to find someone willing, though I'm no longer sure it she had the same motivation. Now I don't look for someone anymore and I say no thank you to an idea of being with someone

btw you need to be a subscriber to view that article

I find the ‘we all…’ in that quite triggering, though I know that wasn’t your intention. The presumption of a relationship or several in everyone’s life simply as a given seems a very NT thing to me, but it seems to be almost as prevalent in a community like this. Which is upsetting when one just hopes not to feel like an outsider even among outsiders. The ultra orthodox as a mandatory or presumed inevitable thing is so relentlessly driven  into us by the media etc. that I appreciate it’s an unconscious thing on your part and not a wilful act of exclusion