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[reenka]

I can love both fair and brown;
He whom abundance melts, and he whom want betrays;
He who loves loneness best, and he who masks and plays;
He whom the country form'd, and whom the town;
He who believes, and he who tries;
He who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And he who is dry cork, and never cries.
I can love him, and him, and you, and you;
I can love any, so he be not true.

- John Donne

(I uh... have no excuse for that, except that I came across it in a fic and loved it... and kinda identified with it, so there. Though, um, it's 'her' in the original, ahahahah. Also, the actual -poem- doesn't suit me so well as the snippet; I can't empathize with infidelity as well as I can with loving/enjoying all sorts of people, just... um... platonically, ahahaha.)

Actually, I'm pretty interested in 'infidelity' as a subject in fiction, though it has to be handled a certain way for me to enjoy it. Normally, as in the case of Brian Kinney & Val Toreth (from ms_manna's 'The Administration' series), I go for the type that strays emotionlessly but never strays emotionally... if I can focus on the fact that the character never falls for any of his 'casual fucks', I can forgive it, if not enjoy or empathize with it. When a character 'fucks up' emotionally, for me there's a lot of distancing that immediately goes on with that character, which is why (in QaF), Justin's infidelity made me a lot more uncomfortable & unhappy, and only the knowledge that it was never as important as Brian made it 'okay' in the end to wish them to get back together.

I mean, obviously, as Donne says, it's not men's nature to be 'true'-- no more than it is women's. It's more that I think it's possible & desirable to go against nature in some things, or rather -for- some things, because inexplicably, it is -also- in our nature to desire fidelity from our lovers, generally, and that isn't going away anymore than infidelity. I think it's also human nature to strive to please our lovers, to become truer to our emotions than to our baser instincts, or at least to somehow reconcile these two urges and be true to both, not having to choose the biological urge to fuck over the emotional urge not to hurt one's partner or not to touch someone who won't satisfy one emotionally.

That's why I've always had no patience with infidelity in romance fics, partly-- I guess I'm so confident & certain of my feeling on the issue that no fic, no matter how brilliant, will make me really ignore it. If there is infidelity, even if it's justified & later worked out, it will have the effect of lessening my personal attachment to the characters' relationship-- meaning, the characters may end up okay, but my own emotional investment as a -reader- will be compromised significantly. I won't -care- as much as a defense against dissolving into anger and recrimination which would just stop me from reading at all. Literally the one and only loophole is the 'casual fuck' clause where it just has no meaning; meaning = emotional weight and emotional weight = distancing, to me in this case.

Neither am I interested being 'played' with, as a reader-- having fake or almost-infidelity, drawn-out triangles, that sort of thing. I know it's everywhere, and I -tolerate- it up to a point, but I've never enjoyed the game. Possibly because it's an issue I never faced myself? Not that I've never quite strayed or been tempted, and not even that my partner never strayed-- it's just that feeling that it was unimportant. If it was -important-, it would mean the relationship was over. And while I understand polyamory in concept, and emotionally go so far as to love a number of people-- even sexual love, of sorts-- in practice, it doesn't work in my head just because I suppose I'm a possessive person. Or maybe merely a romantic :>

Comments

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hee! Well, happily I agree ♥ And! I do wonder if you'd like 'The Administration' series-- it's really well written and it's gone a cyberpunk-scifi-ish story, and not -too- much S&M (what might turn you off). The main characters are fascinating.

I love how it took some coaxing/build-up to get you up to saying the context of the comment :> Yeaaah, I totally care about good stories, mostly, as well, it's just that most triangles in -romances- are so melodramatic and just there to draw out the tension and if you know the cliches you could figure it out from the beginning, so it's just got this tendency to come across as a tedious waste of time to me. I very rarely am seriously in suspense, or if I am, I think one or both of the romantic interests are highly unsuitable, whether or not I like the couple. It adds tension & drama, which I always go for, but I just find it -cheap- and overdone tension & drama. It's not so much who ends up with whom as not making things more difficult than they'd really be, or something. A lot of triangles just work to drawn things out and create conflict where there is none, 'cause nothing else is handy, and I think that's writerly 'cheating'.

Like, I guess I look at it as a writer-- in which case I rarely find the triangles 'logical', and I -do- demand the infidelity be logical, which is the other reason I 'forgave' Justin. It wasn't really a huge problem because it made sense for him at the time; it was time, it worked, etc. Even so, it was a nasty shock to me. It's a complicated issue, I guess... I just think the story itself working in general depended on me caring about Brian and Justin's relationship, the uniqueness and worthiness of it, so that the struggles and angst 'worked' & made sense emotionally and story-wise. If I was more 'meh' about it, I don't know if Brian's feelings would've been as obvious to me, but I think a lot of that's just how I read people? I empathize, I guess.

I really don't like -fluffy- romance, anyway. I just don't like melodrama either, and often enough that's what infidelity does-- create melodrama where once was drama alone :>

[blacksatinrose.livejournal.com]

hahaha, well it's not that it took coaxing, i'm just in a manic swing today so my brain's like all scattered and i'm not as um, focused as usual.

Okay so I think most romantic triangles are badly executed - like one of the people (usually, funnily enough, the one the character starts the story with) is CLEARLY badly suited or an asshole or whatever. What I do like is when all characters are well-developed and interesting and different people can legitimately have different preferences. This is one of the reasons I love S1 of QAF, for example - because the main love triangle there is believable in that (whether you dislike Michael, or Justin, or whoever) each of the contenders has a strong relationship to Brian and he cares about both of them, and they have different draws. So, basically I like love triangles when they're well done just like I like ANYTHING when it's well done.

So, same with infidelity - is it used as a cheap plot device, or is it a genuine, well-thought out storyline that reveals things about the initial relationship and the characters involved? Does it arise logically, and resolve similarly regardless of who the cheating person eventually goes with?

THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS THAT MAKE THE DIFFERENCE! w00t.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I totally agree-- I mean, your reasons are, of course, completely reasonable. I should've said that the thing about Toreth & Brian's chronic infidelity that's 'okay' for me is that in principle and not in specific execution, that's the one sort of infidelity that doesn't -need- logical execution & I can just accept as a given. Otherwise I -would- need it to be sold to me, and it rarely is; at least, I feel like infidelity & triangles are more often cheesy than not. V. often the cheating is just an plot-device, a classical 'problem' to disrupt someone's happy relationship, like of -course- this would happen (no real explanation except some drummed up misunderstanding or lack of attention paid to the cheating partner or some revenge-fuck-type jealousy out of nowhere) and -that's- what pisses me off. It's just that I think people usually don't end up handling it well, and the 'chronic infidelity' is really a characterization issue rather than a plot issue like most other types of infidelity would be, so perhaps that's what changes it for me.

Like you, the truth is, I like things to be well-executed more than anything; I just... um... am also a fluffy romantic as well? I dunno how to explain it :))