Hey Drublood, I read your entries at times on the anarchoblogs page, I am a fellow Austinite.

This whole year has been one long ordeal with commitmentless love, finally ending in heartbreak for me and another guy for her.

However, it's really strange, because I am also an anarchist at heart, and it's really a paradox for me to be so possessive, especially over another person...but I can't help wanting the girl to be all mine and forever...and when it finally ended in her rejecting me, I was heartbroken...though I was not mad or resentful.

Anyway...the point i'm trying to get at is that from my experience so far, 'free love' in the literal sense of the word (not free sex) IS going to be the future, but we have a long way of getting there. It will probably come before any true anarchy, and I kind of feel like in general females are going to embrace it before males, but I really have no justification for that except a feeling.

But it is going to take a world where human relationships are based on absolute honesty, because if there is no long term commitment, then all we have is the reality of our feelings here and now, and if we can't be honest to each other about that, then it is not going to work. We can't be scared of losing the other person in the future either. I got burned in the end because we were both frightened of the future, and that clouded our perception and communication of the reality that one of us had fallen out of love and we were just denying it.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that IMO, 'love anarchy' is going to have to take:

1) Total honesty of feelings between the parties. That means not saying "I love you" when you don't mean it. Because in love anarchy, you have no reason to lie. In fact, it requires saying "I'm sorry, but I don't love you." when that does happen.

2) No expectations of the future, and more than that, the parties cannot be scared of what will happen in the future (i.e. losing the other).

Crimethinc has a good article on this in the Anarchist Cookbook and also check out this situationist chapter (scroll down to "4. The Project of Communication):

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/213

Hi Adam,

Thanks for the comment. I really love (ar ar) having people respond to posts like this, because it helps me to organize my thoughts on the topic a bit better when I'm responding to the thoughts of someone else, rather than just allowing things to rattle around in my brain.

I wonder how much of this, also, is tied up in privilege. When you say that people can't have expectations of the future, it makes me sieze up inside. I think the reason for this, and for my difficulty in fully coming to terms with love anarchy, is that I am a parent, and the logistical challenge of being a single parent makes me want to SCREAM some days for a partner in parenting, if not love.

So, I guess the question, too, is how much does privilege play into our inability to love freely? Is there a way to make contractual arrangements with others independent of love, when it comes to things like parenting or...well, any other situation where there is a need of a higher order that is difficult to fill otherwise, and that is not as mutable as human emotion...without impinging on the freedom of the parties involved?

It is that question, primarily, that has me question the validity of love anarchy in our age or in the forseeable future. And it is that difficulty that makes me want to throw in the towel and cultivate more traditional love relationships in my life.

that's a very interesting point. i'm just a 21 year old student with no kids...but i can imagine that can complicate things a lot when talking about committment.

i know there are single parents who share parenting responsibilities with others without a romantic tie at all, i've heard of it being successful in some cases at least.

i don't know. sometimes i feel like i do indeed want a long term partner in my life. marriage was a product of neccessity, we just couldn't survive without a partner before, and usually women worked harder than the men, but both worked for each other i think in most cases.

i found out that my grandparents have had an open marriage for quite awhile, and they seem like the most traditional catholic couple as any other. they are great partners in life i think, i'm pretty sure they still love each other greatly, but my mother told me that both of them had seen other people when she was younger.

my mother stayed with my father for 20 years even after she found out (but never told him) he was cheating on her when i was just a toddler, and probably has been cheating the whole marriage. i think in that case though, it was definately unequal, because he would have left her immediately if she was seeing someone else.

i don't know, i would still love to have a lifetime companion myself, but my experiences so far have lead me to believe that probably is not as natural as the fairytales teach us.

i guess i won't know my own answers until i'm laying in my grave, but we'll see what happens.

i think in the end, it's just another personal choice of how to live. i don't know...