I think drama in this context is just the tendency for people who spend a great deal of time together to discover each other’s flaws and become annoyed by them, and to then blow the resulting conflicts out of proportion to the original complaint or disagreement.
It’s generally exacerbated by one or both partners being unskilled at resolving conflicts; minor problems escalate because of, e.g., passive-aggressiveness, anger, avoidance, or ultimatum-setting.
[Drama] is just the tendency for people who spend a great deal of time together to discover each other’s flaws and become annoyed by them, and to then blow the resulting conflicts out of proportion
That does not explain why “drama” is more likely in a sexual relationship than among people sharing the same office or among roommates.
Sex is good at creating “drama” because it opens emotional connections: the beliefs and behaviors of one’s lover become terribly signficant to one. Women (or more precisely, women still in their child-bearing years) are particularly apt to have strong emotional reactions to changes in the relationship and the behavior, beliefs and moods of their lover.
A lover is likely to do something irrational or desperate in response to a change or perceived change in the relationship with a loved one for the same reason that a person is likely to do something irrational or desperate when faced with any other life change that has great emotional significance, like the prospect of losing one’s housing, winning the lottery or getting charged with a serious crime.
BTW, this tendency for the woman in a heterosexual relationship to attach strong emotional signficance to the relationship and the man is by far my favorite part of sex and sexual relationships: it means that she will be eager to learn all there is to know about me, and it means that she will feel hurt whenever I hurt and feel happy whenever something good happens to me. Adding to one’s social environment another person who really cares deeply about one is a very rare and valuable thing, and sex (at least for a straight man) is by far the most reliable way for an adult—well, at least a straight male adult—to achieve that.
Some men are prone to this, too, and now that the pattern has been pointed out, I recognize it both as something that I’m prone to and something that I value in people who I’m close to. In fact, this may be one of the main factors that determines whether a relationship feels romantic or not, regardless of sex.
Interesting since you have described yourself in these pages as “moderately-to-strongly asexual” and since the only men with whom the adults in my experience have very strong emotional connections with are kinfolk and the men they have had sex with. Well, actually, my first girlfriend cared a heck of a lot about a gay man she used to work with, but that is the only exception that comes to mind right now among my pretty limited social networks past and present. Actually one more: one of the women in my current circle has a very strong connection with a gay man—but the man has very high relative social status (practicing physician worth millions) and takes her on pleasure trips all around the world—and at her age, travel to exotic or fashionable destinations is a bigger pleasure than sex or anything else. Some of the women I know and have known have very caring friendships with other women, which I why I used the word “men” rather than “adult” in my first sentence.
In my experience, just my engaging a woman in a serious sincere ongoing discussion (during dates) about whether she should have sex with me has been enough cause the emotional bonding process (in which what happens to me causes her to feel happiness or pain) to progress much further than it ever has with all but one or so of my platonic friends.
So, Adelene, given what you have disclosed about yourself on these pages in the past, I am curious to what degree sex or serious sincere ongoing discussions about sex are necessary for you to start really caring about someone you are not related to.
Having sex seems to be moderately negatively correlated, for me, but that seems to be more of an artifact of my confusion regarding sexual relationships before I figured out that I’m asexual than anything having to do with the act itself.
Talking about the fact that I’m asexual is weakly positively correlated, but not observably causative: If I don’t feel comfortable enough around someone to be able to talk to them about that aspect of myself, it’s nearly guaranteed that I won’t bond with them (possible exception: if someone was very prudish, but we otherwise got along well, I would probably refrain from talking about the subject but would not count that against them if they weren’t aggressively judgmental about others’ sex lives) but the fact that I do feel comfortable telling them about that does not imply that we’re likely to bond. Someone’s reaction to finding out that I’m asexual can have a large effect on my subsequent relationship with them, but that carries similar weight to the effect of their reaction to learning other important facts about my personal identity, such as that I’m autistic—and the wrong kind of interest can be just as damaging as a negative reaction.
The other party in a relationship being willing to talk about their sex life is not necessary, but may be weakly useful; I don’t have very much evidence to draw from there. Of my two current very-close relationships, I know next to nothing about the sex life of the person I’m closer to, and a minor to moderate amount about the other person’s sex life, which does have an observably stronger effect than having a similar amount of information about, say, a person’s hobbies, but seems to be about on par with knowing about another aspect of someone’s identity.
I think drama in this context is just the tendency for people who spend a great deal of time together to discover each other’s flaws and become annoyed by them, and to then blow the resulting conflicts out of proportion to the original complaint or disagreement.
It’s generally exacerbated by one or both partners being unskilled at resolving conflicts; minor problems escalate because of, e.g., passive-aggressiveness, anger, avoidance, or ultimatum-setting.
That does not explain why “drama” is more likely in a sexual relationship than among people sharing the same office or among roommates.
Sex is good at creating “drama” because it opens emotional connections: the beliefs and behaviors of one’s lover become terribly signficant to one. Women (or more precisely, women still in their child-bearing years) are particularly apt to have strong emotional reactions to changes in the relationship and the behavior, beliefs and moods of their lover.
A lover is likely to do something irrational or desperate in response to a change or perceived change in the relationship with a loved one for the same reason that a person is likely to do something irrational or desperate when faced with any other life change that has great emotional significance, like the prospect of losing one’s housing, winning the lottery or getting charged with a serious crime.
BTW, this tendency for the woman in a heterosexual relationship to attach strong emotional signficance to the relationship and the man is by far my favorite part of sex and sexual relationships: it means that she will be eager to learn all there is to know about me, and it means that she will feel hurt whenever I hurt and feel happy whenever something good happens to me. Adding to one’s social environment another person who really cares deeply about one is a very rare and valuable thing, and sex (at least for a straight man) is by far the most reliable way for an adult—well, at least a straight male adult—to achieve that.
Some men are prone to this, too, and now that the pattern has been pointed out, I recognize it both as something that I’m prone to and something that I value in people who I’m close to. In fact, this may be one of the main factors that determines whether a relationship feels romantic or not, regardless of sex.
Interesting since you have described yourself in these pages as “moderately-to-strongly asexual” and since the only men with whom the adults in my experience have very strong emotional connections with are kinfolk and the men they have had sex with. Well, actually, my first girlfriend cared a heck of a lot about a gay man she used to work with, but that is the only exception that comes to mind right now among my pretty limited social networks past and present. Actually one more: one of the women in my current circle has a very strong connection with a gay man—but the man has very high relative social status (practicing physician worth millions) and takes her on pleasure trips all around the world—and at her age, travel to exotic or fashionable destinations is a bigger pleasure than sex or anything else. Some of the women I know and have known have very caring friendships with other women, which I why I used the word “men” rather than “adult” in my first sentence.
In my experience, just my engaging a woman in a serious sincere ongoing discussion (during dates) about whether she should have sex with me has been enough cause the emotional bonding process (in which what happens to me causes her to feel happiness or pain) to progress much further than it ever has with all but one or so of my platonic friends.
So, Adelene, given what you have disclosed about yourself on these pages in the past, I am curious to what degree sex or serious sincere ongoing discussions about sex are necessary for you to start really caring about someone you are not related to.
Having sex seems to be moderately negatively correlated, for me, but that seems to be more of an artifact of my confusion regarding sexual relationships before I figured out that I’m asexual than anything having to do with the act itself.
Talking about the fact that I’m asexual is weakly positively correlated, but not observably causative: If I don’t feel comfortable enough around someone to be able to talk to them about that aspect of myself, it’s nearly guaranteed that I won’t bond with them (possible exception: if someone was very prudish, but we otherwise got along well, I would probably refrain from talking about the subject but would not count that against them if they weren’t aggressively judgmental about others’ sex lives) but the fact that I do feel comfortable telling them about that does not imply that we’re likely to bond. Someone’s reaction to finding out that I’m asexual can have a large effect on my subsequent relationship with them, but that carries similar weight to the effect of their reaction to learning other important facts about my personal identity, such as that I’m autistic—and the wrong kind of interest can be just as damaging as a negative reaction.
The other party in a relationship being willing to talk about their sex life is not necessary, but may be weakly useful; I don’t have very much evidence to draw from there. Of my two current very-close relationships, I know next to nothing about the sex life of the person I’m closer to, and a minor to moderate amount about the other person’s sex life, which does have an observably stronger effect than having a similar amount of information about, say, a person’s hobbies, but seems to be about on par with knowing about another aspect of someone’s identity.