Thank you! Like all my best lines, it’s a misquotation.

It was Anne Edwards’s greatest delight that humans and VaRakhati of both species shared basic emotions, for though she was a woman of highly trained intelligence, she passed all experience through her heart.

It’s from one of my favourite books, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Jesuits and aliens in spaaaace!

YOUR LINKS ARE GOLD. Thank you! I don’t always agree with The Ferrett, but those two essays really spoke to me, especially the second one.

I suppose all physical pain is an indication of less-than-ideal circumstances, so jealousy might be the same way. But I don’t find it very useful to think of it as avoidable failure. I really really like The Ferrett’s idea of diagnosing jealousy as if it were any other pain symptom, without moral value in itself.

So I guess you are right to say that I am more practically minded than you. Though goodness knows I have my head in the clouds compared to most of my friends! Except you. :)

http://www.theferrett.com/ferrettworks/2014/03/why-compersion-should-not-be-the-base-value-of-polyamory/

https://fetlife.com/users/338073/posts/1968514

The distribution of things like jealousy is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It seems like there are tons of feelings and reactions that people have mistakenly assumed to be basic human drives but when you start doing detailed surveys, it turns out that there’s way more variation from the median than you would have expected.

I also suspect that am ideal relationship with multiple emotionally mature adults who are all excellent communicators and with complementary needs would be able to have jealousy-free poly relationships even if they weren’t part of the subgroup of people who seem to be lacking the concept of jealousy in their emotional lexicon. But like the spherical cow in a vacuum, those circumstances are massively idealised.