open definition - boyfriend/girlfriend

[juldea]

What's the definition of boyfriend/girlfriend?

I'd like quantity in response to this, even at expense of quality. If you can take the time to drop a comment, even if it's just one word, I'd appreciate it a lot. You don't even have to continue reading if you have a response right now and no time to continue - just drop me what you have and go do what you need to do.

To clarify: Most people, as far as I know, don't associate dating with being in love. Those states are independent from each other; they just happen to overlap in the right circumstances. Therefore, 'love' isn't part of the definition of dating.

If I take out that emotional tie completely, I get two (or more) people who enjoy each other's company, have some similar interests, care about each other's well-being and happiness... and engage in some kind of physical activity that society generally reserves for such relationships (whether it's just kissing or goes on to much more depends on the individual).

But... that's the definition of 'friends with benefits' (using the real-life definition (not the LJ definition) of friend). Friends enjoy each other's company, have some similar interests, and care about each other's well-being and happiness. And benefits are the physical activities that are generally reserved for boy/girlfriend-and-up relationships.

So what's the midpoint? What state stands between a 'friend with benefits' and, uh, a 'loved person'? What am I missing as part of the definition that, in your mind, makes the relationships different?

I imagine (because I've already thought of it, and one other person has already suggested it) that many people are going to say, "Exclusivity." But, well, in the polyamorous society that is Cambridge/Somerville and most of the groups I hang out with now, that's not an acceptible answer. Dating one person doesn't mean you can't date/'benefit from' another, to many people. Therefore it isn't a part of the definition - at least not if the definition is universal. Which I guess leads me to:

Special bonus question: Is this definition universal, or does each individual have to define it for him/herself?

Comments

[siderea]

What state stands between a 'friend with benefits' and, uh, a 'loved person'?

Wow. I've been working on this question ever since I got involved with tn3270. My conclusion is that the answer is "a vast nameless no-mans-land"!

Furthermore, I've come to the conclusion that "boyfriend"/"girlfriend" have vastly more to do with how the couple relates to the outside world than to each other. That is, by referring to one's partner as a boy/girl-friend to others, one is asserting to others how one would like those others to relate to each of you. You're announcing that this person is to be treated as your "social mate" (my term).

In our culture (for perhaps a rather local definition of "our") there are all sorts of differences in how people interact with mated and non-mated people, and with the mates of mated people. Calling someone your boy/girl-friend is telling people "move me into the 'mated' class for conduct purposes, and move this other into the class of 'my mate'."

(Not, mind you, that there's any consensus on what those differences in conduct should be. But people do behave as if they had a consensus that there should be a consensus. :) There isn't, but, hey.)

(I will also point out before going further that, for some reason, my observation shows that 'socially mated' rules are much stricter than the social rules for actually married or engaged people. So take all the examples as pertaining to "boyfriend/girlfriend" relationships, but not married or engaged people!)

Some of those differences of conduct have to do with the potential sexual availability of people. Some feel it is inappropriate to flirt or hit on a socially mated person. They're 'taken', and, furthermore, if they felt it OK to be flirted with or hit on (so the presumption goes) they would not have revealed they have a social mate. This tends to be a mono-centric view of things, but it's still wide spread.

There's a bunch of more subtle things, too, that have nothing to do with sex.

For instan ce, you will start getting joint invitations, and the invitations you get that look like personal invitations are actually (often, but not always) joint invitations. People will stop inviting you to things for which they might like you personally to atte nd, if they don't have room/inclination to invite your boy/girl-friend.

That is, if a friend thinks "Gee, it would be nice to have a chat with X again," they might go on to think, "But X is seeing Y, and I'm not interested in having a chat with a stran ger (Y), so never mind." I have been party to dinner-party plans where "Hey, we have one seat left, let's invite... never mind, they have a boyfriend and we don't have room for two."

Personally, all this makes my teeth grind. I do not like it when othe r people expect me to treat them differently because of whom they fuck. I can't be bothered to track other people's sexual partners. If you haven't "made it permanent", it's a hell of an imposition on me to expect me to keep track of whom you're boffing. Worse, I loathe it when other people treat me differently because of whether or not they perceive me as fucking someone.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

First off: I'm glad you commented, and in fact I was hoping you would. You seem like someone who would have good, interesting things to say, and look - you did! :)

I agree with you on that last part. My boyfriend and I are separate people, and I find it completely plausible that some of his friends don't like me and some of my friends don't like him - or, in smaller amounts, prefer one's company to the other. In this case, I'd hope that if only one of us were to get an invitation to some kind of event, it would be explicitly stated that the invitation is to the couple or not. If not, I'm not going to assume that both of us are invited.

Secondly, though, I guess I should've been more clear in my question: I really am looking for how the interaction is defined for the couple, not necessarily how it defines them in society. I guess 'vast nameless no-man's land' is one way of defining it, if you're just as clueless as I am...

Part 1

[siderea]

Secondly, though, I guess I should've been more clear in my question: I really am looking for how the interaction is defined for the couple, not necessarily how it defines them in society. I guess 'vast nameless no-man's land' is one way of defining it, if you're just as clueless as I am...

Basically. :) Let me give it another shot, and we'll see how we do.

You asked:

What's the definition of boyfriend/girlfriend?

If I take out that emotional tie completely, I get two (or more) people who enjoy each other's company, have some similar interests, care about each other's well-being and happiness... and engage in some kind of physical activity that society generally reserves for such relationships (whether it's just kissing or goes on to much more depends on the individual).

But... that's the definition of 'friends with benefits' (using the real-life definition (not the LJ definition) of friend). Friends enjoy each other's company, have some similar interests, and care about each other's well-being and happiness. And benefits are the physical activities that are generally reserved for boy/girlfriend-and-up relationships.

I think you missed some things in your breakdown of what bf/gf is. (I'm not so much talking about what I do/have done in my relationships but what I see people applying those terms to around me. I'm thinking anthropologically.)

I think that the difference between friend+ and bf/gf is that bf/gf has

* those social aspects I just described, the force of which in shaping the relationship between those two people is not to be underestimated, and

* presumed rules and expectations. As strange as this may sound, to my mind, the characteristic hallmark of a bf/gf relationship is not which particular expectations or rules the members presume accrue to bf/gf status, but that there are any such presumed rules at all.

Here's a random example. When people ask their bf/gfs to do favors for them, they often see those favors as due support, not as favors. For instance, I don't think I've ever seen someone say "I could ask my bf/gf to do that, but I don't want to ask another favor of them because I've asked for so many favors already this month." Contrariwise, people say that about their friends all the time. But that sort of "accounting" of favors, is considered polite in friendships and impolite in bf/gf relationships. It stems from a presumption that a bf/gf-ship is a proto-marriage, where the point is to be life partners; anything which looks like a reluctance to lean on the other looks un-marriage-like.

Really, the entire advice column industry thrives on the topic of "what are reasonable conduct expectations to have of one's bf/gf".

[continued]

Re: Part 1

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever seen someone say "I could ask my bf/gf to do that, but I don't want to ask another favor of them because I've asked for so many favors already this month."

I have. kestrell has some strong Issues about Independence. It took a long time for me to get her to accept favors at all, and she still occasionally exhibits reluctance in asking for them (with sentences similar to your hypothetical). On the other hand, I saw this as inappropriate behavior, and worked hard to change it, which tends to support your thesis.

Re: Part 1

[juldea.livejournal.com]

So it's been two weeks since I posted this and these comments have been sitting in my inbox waiting for me to spend the time thinking about them and replying. I hope you don't mind me resurrecting the thread :)

I do see how my original dismissal of your 'social forces' post was hasty. You're right in that the members of such a relationship will think of themselves differently given how others treat them. Even if you dislike the social trend of grouping people as couples, it is so prevalent that it affects how you as a couple act in social situations. If nothing else, it adds to the bf/gf definition, "...is the person who will assumedly accompany me to social events." Heh.

Re: expectations. You said:

the characteristic hallmark of a bf/gf relationship is not which particular expectations or rules the members presume accrue to bf/gf status, but that there are any such presumed rules at all.

However, doesn't the unstated rule between friends that there are no such expectations fall under this category as well? Compare it to:

the characteristic hallmark of a friendship is not which particular expectations or rules the members presume accrue to friend status, but that there are any such presumed rules at all.

Part 2

[siderea]

Other assumptions which seem common in bf/gf relationships:

* We will hold our social lives in common;
* We will be each other's default social life;
* We won't show the slighest sexual interest in other people;
* We will be available at any time to one another;
* We will have relaxed rules of politeness between us;
* We will divide labor along gender lines;
* Our relationship's primary function is to share problems and mutually support one another;
* The relationship is a proto-marriage; the definition of success in a relationship is if it ends in marriage

Probably there's lots of others. Those just leap to mind.

There's nothing wrong or right about these, they're just common and rarely expressed. When someone refers to a bf/gf relationship, they probably have some unarticulated set of these or things like these in the back of their mind.

So, any relationship where both sides go in with the understanding "We're not presuming we're boyfriend-girlfriend. We're not bringing in any 'because that's how bf/gfs are' assumptions. We're going to explore the the potential relationships between us, and find the way of relating and the mutually agreed upon rules that work for us." winds up in that Vast Nameless No-Man's Land.

I think when people are talking about friends+, they mean "NO PRESUMPTIONS!" from the above list. The presumptions that they do have are the presumptions of friendship, not the presumptions of bf/gf-ship. My friends presume that they can ask me favors (and they can), but they don't presume that I will grant the favor. Even if they feel sure I'll say "yes" it's always couched as a polite question, a request, and they a reasonably prepared for me to say "no". They don't presume that they're necessarily the most highly priorized person (or project) in my life; they don't presume our relationship has the agenda of being a trial run for a more serious commitment.

Does that help?

Re: Part 2

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Heh, I probably should've refreshed my memory of this comment before replying to the first one, since you clarify one of the points I posed... too late now. ;)

So, it clarifies that a bf/gf relationship isn't just characterized by having expectations of each other, it's having expectations that are part of a particular set. Check! :)