I think that, without thinking yet about whether or not restrictions on having additional relationships might be good for a person, there is some point at which the additional relationships themselves are not good for the person. There are only so many hours in the day, and a relationship can only be so valuable if you spend only a few minutes a day with someone. I think for many people it will not be as valuable to have a hundred people that you each spend one waking hour with a week as to have ten people that you each spend ten waking hours with a week. (Obviously, there are additional complexities when you spend some waking hours in groups with multiple people.)
Most likely, the best distribution actually involves a small number of people that you spend many hours with very regularly, and hundreds of people that you spend a few hours with a year.
If someone tries to maintain too many of these medium time relationships, rather than a few more intensive ones and a lot of less intensive ones, it might be for the best for that person to have some restrictions put on their relationship formation and promotion (just like we benefit from rules preventing us from multitasking on our phone while watching a movie, and students benefit from rules preventing them from signing up for too many classes in a term.)
I suspect that friendships and romantic relationships have different minimum amounts of time to spend with the person that make them substantially meaningful, and this will give rise to the asymmetry between romantic relationships and friendships.
But I don’t see any reason to be convinced (yet) that for most people, this kicks in at one romantic relationship but dozens of friends, the way that social expectations suggest.
Hi Kenny, thanks for the thoughts! It seems to me that we're largely in agreement. I agree, for instance, that when it comes to maintaining additional relationships that are good for a person, there's surely a limit somewhere. (E.g., I think it's safe to say that trying to be in a relationship with 10,000 people at a time would probably be too much!)
I find myself agreeing especially with your final point ("I don’t see any reason to be convinced (yet) that for most people, this kicks in at one romantic relationship but dozens of friends, the way that social expectations suggest").
Here's one point that I'm not sure how I feel about, and which I'm still mulling over some thoughts on: "I suspect that friendships and romantic relationships have different minimum amounts of time to spend with the person that make them substantially meaningful." Granted, if I only spend, say, two hours a week with someone, that might be low compared to romantic relationships in general but normal compared to friendships in general. However, if those two hours are spent having equal amounts of fun, giving/receiving equal amounts of emotional support, etc., then it seems to me that if the friendship in that case is substantially meaningful (which it could very well be), then the romantic relationship would be as well.
Perhaps part of what's motivating this intuition is my sense that romantic relationships just are a certain kind of friendship—say, a friendship that's emotionally close and has a sexual component, or something along those lines. (In a fuller treatment of this proposal, something would need to be said, of course, about whether romantic relationships among asexual people serve as a counterexample, but I'll leave that thread aside for now.)
"If someone tries to maintain too many of these medium time relationships, rather than a few more intensive ones and a lot of less intensive ones, it might be for the best for that person to have some restrictions put on their relationship formation and promotion"—Right, this also seems true to me. I'd add, though, that the if-clause is doing a lot of work there. That is, if someone *hasn't* shown any problem with trying to take on too many relationships at a time, then my position would be that she should just be given the benefit of the doubt and shouldn't be subject to any rules putting a determinate limit on how many relationships she can have. Such a person would still, of course, presumably be subject to a rule to the effect of "don't spread yourself too thinly to adequately maintain your existing relationships"—a rule which wouldn't involve any determinate numerical limits and which wouldn't make any distinction in principle between additional relationships, hobbies, travel, or any other use of one's time and resources. (I take it that this is already at least an implicit rule that pretty much everyone in a relationship understands themselves as being subject to.)
I think this is likely to be the crux with a lot of monogamy defenders: "Perhaps part of what's motivating this intuition is my sense that romantic relationships just are a certain kind of friendship—say, a friendship that's emotionally close and has a sexual component, or something along those lines." I don't see a reason to deny this, but I also haven't thought enough about it to see whether there might need to be more clauses, or something importantly different.
It might be worth looking at more kinds of cases that put pressure on this. "Boston marriages" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_marriage), "friends with benefits" (do people ever use this term for someone who they also live with?), long distance relationships, etc.
I think that, without thinking yet about whether or not restrictions on having additional relationships might be good for a person, there is some point at which the additional relationships themselves are not good for the person. There are only so many hours in the day, and a relationship can only be so valuable if you spend only a few minutes a day with someone. I think for many people it will not be as valuable to have a hundred people that you each spend one waking hour with a week as to have ten people that you each spend ten waking hours with a week. (Obviously, there are additional complexities when you spend some waking hours in groups with multiple people.)
Most likely, the best distribution actually involves a small number of people that you spend many hours with very regularly, and hundreds of people that you spend a few hours with a year.
If someone tries to maintain too many of these medium time relationships, rather than a few more intensive ones and a lot of less intensive ones, it might be for the best for that person to have some restrictions put on their relationship formation and promotion (just like we benefit from rules preventing us from multitasking on our phone while watching a movie, and students benefit from rules preventing them from signing up for too many classes in a term.)
I suspect that friendships and romantic relationships have different minimum amounts of time to spend with the person that make them substantially meaningful, and this will give rise to the asymmetry between romantic relationships and friendships.
But I don’t see any reason to be convinced (yet) that for most people, this kicks in at one romantic relationship but dozens of friends, the way that social expectations suggest.
Hi Kenny, thanks for the thoughts! It seems to me that we're largely in agreement. I agree, for instance, that when it comes to maintaining additional relationships that are good for a person, there's surely a limit somewhere. (E.g., I think it's safe to say that trying to be in a relationship with 10,000 people at a time would probably be too much!)
I find myself agreeing especially with your final point ("I don’t see any reason to be convinced (yet) that for most people, this kicks in at one romantic relationship but dozens of friends, the way that social expectations suggest").
Here's one point that I'm not sure how I feel about, and which I'm still mulling over some thoughts on: "I suspect that friendships and romantic relationships have different minimum amounts of time to spend with the person that make them substantially meaningful." Granted, if I only spend, say, two hours a week with someone, that might be low compared to romantic relationships in general but normal compared to friendships in general. However, if those two hours are spent having equal amounts of fun, giving/receiving equal amounts of emotional support, etc., then it seems to me that if the friendship in that case is substantially meaningful (which it could very well be), then the romantic relationship would be as well.
Perhaps part of what's motivating this intuition is my sense that romantic relationships just are a certain kind of friendship—say, a friendship that's emotionally close and has a sexual component, or something along those lines. (In a fuller treatment of this proposal, something would need to be said, of course, about whether romantic relationships among asexual people serve as a counterexample, but I'll leave that thread aside for now.)
"If someone tries to maintain too many of these medium time relationships, rather than a few more intensive ones and a lot of less intensive ones, it might be for the best for that person to have some restrictions put on their relationship formation and promotion"—Right, this also seems true to me. I'd add, though, that the if-clause is doing a lot of work there. That is, if someone *hasn't* shown any problem with trying to take on too many relationships at a time, then my position would be that she should just be given the benefit of the doubt and shouldn't be subject to any rules putting a determinate limit on how many relationships she can have. Such a person would still, of course, presumably be subject to a rule to the effect of "don't spread yourself too thinly to adequately maintain your existing relationships"—a rule which wouldn't involve any determinate numerical limits and which wouldn't make any distinction in principle between additional relationships, hobbies, travel, or any other use of one's time and resources. (I take it that this is already at least an implicit rule that pretty much everyone in a relationship understands themselves as being subject to.)
I think this is likely to be the crux with a lot of monogamy defenders: "Perhaps part of what's motivating this intuition is my sense that romantic relationships just are a certain kind of friendship—say, a friendship that's emotionally close and has a sexual component, or something along those lines." I don't see a reason to deny this, but I also haven't thought enough about it to see whether there might need to be more clauses, or something importantly different.
It might be worth looking at more kinds of cases that put pressure on this. "Boston marriages" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_marriage), "friends with benefits" (do people ever use this term for someone who they also live with?), long distance relationships, etc.