This is nice. Friday demos with your partner is a little weird by my standards but when you’re in love you’re allowed to do weird things. Totally agree with OP, when you find true partnership, you really don’t feel the need to seek validation from other people in your life.
This is young love, puppy love. People at such stage of a relationship find everything facinating. I think there is a hormone that makes them forget or not care how gushy and idiotic such things appear to outsiders. Give it a year and the author will quietly delete the article.
I was in the throes of this 30 years ago and gave a quote to a friend writing an article about hacker culture that was overly sappy about my new partner. The relationship is long-since dead but that damned quote is still there. (At least it was an article that I doubt a lot of people read...)
> you really don’t feel the need to seek validation from other people in your life.
This might be confusing the lack of need for validation with the lack of need for other people. Sure, taking confidence from your partner is wonderful but it's not "seeking validation" to maintain other relationships.
Putting everything on one person can quickly become codependency and enmeshment. At some level some codependency/enmeshment is inevitable ("healthy interdependence") when you spend your time with one person, however it can also be very unhealthy.
You can lose your own identity, and end up putting all your needs on the other person. That makes conflict difficult, distance difficult, and you lose your support network.
I think Friday demos are really cute, and a healthy relationship can certainly touch on all areas, but it's important to invest in both other relationships (friends/family/partners) AND yourself. Investing in time with yourself means investing in your hobbies, doing things just for you and maintaining that individual identity.
Other posters have said something similar, but I wanted to be more direct: nobody should ever seek validation from outside of themselves (not that I don't have problems with this, I am just saying how it should be).
It's inevitable in childhood, but the parents' role is to create an independent individual. This often not the case, so we see ourselves in need of validation from our spouses, bosses, etc. and it can cause people to stay in bad working or personal relationships.
The trick is to be proud of yourself in an all-encompassing form, admit where you are not good at and improve, if you want to. Advice is welcome but critique should not lessen how you feel about yourself.
Just my 2c and what my experience in life taught me.
Tangentially related, but look up relationship anarchy. If we'd demolish outdated "standard" labels of our relationships, and normalize to making connections between any 2+ persons without them needing to feel shame or the pressure of internal/external expectations, we'd be a happier society.
How do you address jealousy? Im very much on board with the idea in general, and have given it quite a bit of thought, but I’ve never been fully sold on the idea that jealousy is fully based on social constructs
I tend to believe self-assured people do not become jealous as they don't terminally depend on a relationship. This of course depends on age, how social someone is or the population size in the area. This is a general human problem, the traditional answer of "ownership" has problems of its own.
All good points, but this doesnt really answer my question. If we imagine this hypothetical non-monogamous society, with no social constructs incentivizing monogamy, jealousy being in human nature would remain a driver towards monogamy. I imagine historically this is how most religions arrived at propagating monogamy. In christianity and judaism for both genders, or in islam for female monogamy, as jealousy was such a common driver of conflict that may even escalate into wars. Enforcing monogamy as the moral choice has some merit, if it avoids bloodshed, though obviously ideally people capable of being in non-monogamous relationships shouldnt be punished for being in one.
Replying to myself in case my point isnt clear - Im postulating that monogamy being some sort of “default” is inevitable, given enough time to evolve, regardless of how you setup the starting parameters.
"Historically" is a narrow term, we don't know much of our 50k years of history, or what we know of, societies handled this very creatively. Like how sleeping with outsiders was not a taboo due to needing new genetic material, or that childrens would be raised communally as parents might often die or not present to do other tasks. I don't see this inevitability of monogamy - my kitchen table theory is that the current state of >mostly monogamism< was driven by a globalising world (even 1-2k years ago) that favored imperialism, standardization, expansion, relied on the heavy physical labour while being very resource constrained. Religions placating chivalry and honor were a supporting policing tool.
All of the "classical sins" could be described as are human nature regardless of relationship type. Note that as an alternative I don't just think of flat hierarchy polyamory here, any non-heteronormative relationship or constellations that revolve around a "main relationship".
In a world of industry standards, automatization, light and flexible work hours, easy communication and high mobility I think we need to be creative again. Especially how this above evolution seems to reach its limits, and "scale to the moon" does not seem to work (dead internet) and we're in dire need of small, informal communities again. I see much more openness to this from the younger western generation.
People who do not depend on relationships simply don't enter into relationships.
For everybody else, there is the normal and perfectly human feelings of jealousy, attachment, fear or loss, and feeling associated with self-confidence.
It helps to deconstruct what jealousy is. Is it the fear of losing someone to others? Or is it possessiveness? He or she are mine like property? Or we are simply conditioned to react like that given certain situations that triggers jealousy? I found it’s easier to deal with jealousy once I understood the source of it and treat jealousy like a symptom not the cause.
In a poly I would guess people need to feel attached to a group not a single individual, in a sense loving all people in the group almost equally. Mostly, we are not raised that way and culturally it would be unconventional, to say the least.
Loving people equally is impossible. Even poly people have a 'primary' introducing hierarchy and preference.
A group of people sleeping together is not a stable community. It's filled with people who are trying to sleep with other people inside and outside of the group who are vocal about being able to spend time, money, and effort on others for sex. There's nothing binding a group like this together besides sex.
Even normal community activities like volunteering or sports clubs have drama and people who end up hating each other. Add sex in the mix and you've created an explosive dynamic.
I tend to agree. I was describing how I think it could work and how I suppose it worked before. Nowadays, when contact with many people outside of the group is ubiquitous, I think it's next to impossible, but maybe there's people out there that make it work. Good for them, if they found a way.
This is a recipe for perhaps the most unhappy society imaginable. Without such outmoded ideas as 'commitment', and 'through thick and thin' relationships become subject to the immediate barometer of personal happiness. In practice this is anything but equitable, freeing and fulfilling. It results in people with perceived high 'value' flitting from relationship to relationship, often several at once. Invariably leaving relationships and abandoning partners when the ordinary vicissitudes of life arise - job loss, ill health, aging, deaths of parents etc.
Real intimacy requires investment. Relationship anarchy, any time I've seen it attested or practiced, faciliates the opposite. It's a fetishisation of alienation. What you're describing as 'pressure of expectations' can be understood very differently, as the expectation of reciprocity. In other words, being able to rely on people - whether as friends or lovers, when things get difficult. Without that, all we have is limerence and capriciousness.
I say all this as someone who's been in non-monogamous relationships of various kinds - from weeks to years. Without the possibility of commitment and the acknowledgement that all relationships are inherently hierarchical, we atomise individual needs and make real enduring connection and community impossible.
What you say is true in general but why would it all be true for a nonstandard relationship? Why would you be less committed to multiple persons (or why would you not have 1 committed out of all). If anything, a single household of multiple stable personalities creates more involving and colorful context, more possibility of hierarchy, and more reasons to not abandon it (as a bigger community relies on you).
I had much less direct and indirect experience, but I know what you talk about. Even more, it is also my experience that these constellations are unstable. But I see this as them existing in a sea of monogamist society, surrounded by prejudice and contempt. Try to introduce this to friends and family. It's similar of how gay relationships are much more often open, due to (guess:) societal context like a patriarchal society.
Historically disconnected societies were used to be more creative. I hope they would also be in the future.
Like true love, I somewhat believe this can exist, but most of the people who talk like this are in a codependent relationship. It's just extremely unlikely that a person you're seeing romantically is also interested in all the other things you've got going on. They should support you in your endeavors in general, but often in the way parents might ("ya winning son"?).
Instead, the best relationship for most people will not be all encompassing. Your partner will love you for you and encourage you, will know what you're up to and keep track, but will also have areas and interests that you aren't into. For me, a lot of my growth has come from the areas where partners are into things I'm not: I don't change to be like them, but through their eyes I learn to see things in new ways (while still liking what I like). It can go too far in the other direction - but for most people having parts of your life your partner is not very involved in is a sign of maturity and strength. A strong relationship is a base from which you can set out into the world on your own terms, free to return to that relationship in the future.
Have you read TFA? I think you're reading 'all-encompassing' too literally and make it seem that the author has his girlfriend substitute friends, colleagues and they're in some 'total life overlap' mode. But if you read it through, he's presenting how they're just sharing emotions openly with one another and letting each other 'in' on what they're up to from time to time.
For example:
"even if they don't have the background or experience that you do, and vice versa, you can both be patient with each other and spend loving time in harmonious movement."
"She showed me her spotify playlist (it was so cool, nothing i'd heard before) and I should her my claude coded landing page. "
Also, if this was already in the article before you posted your comment, I'd say it's simply moot: "Some might say this is unhealthy or codependent or some stupid diagnosis without analyzing any symptoms. Let me explain the symptoms. It starts where most relationships buckle under stress"
I suppose I am reacting to lines like these in the article:
> Now I don't even need to blog. I just talk to Alex and I feel satisfied.
> In our household, we are now doing Friday demos, just me and Alex. We're each sharing something we shipped the previous week.
> For example, when we exercise, we each have different goals and needs but we still try to go to the gym with each other if we can and it's not too much hassle.
These are fine - and like I said it could be real - but often this is how people describe codependency.
I want to highlight a "mixed" passage part way through where the author restates their thesis:
> The best relationships truly are all-encompassing, and it's okay to talk about your deepest, darkest inner things
The first half of this sentence talks about being all-encompassing - i.e. the ways in which the partnership has come to be central in all things it can be central in. That is what feels codependent-y to me. The second half of the sentence describes intimacy and it has nothing to do with shared activities. You do not need to have any sort of "encompassing" relationship to comfortably discuss your deepest darkest feelings - you just need trust and an appropriate interlocutor. It's the conflating of "doing everything together" with "intimacy" that makes me worry.
But again - the author could be right! I suspect this is real sometimes.
> I don't need to broadcast my emotional life into one-sided internet parasocial relationship since I have a human next to me to talk with
> Once a week, showing something to each other for 5 minutes on Fridays is so fun
> we go to gym at the same time
With the dread of providing common sense to the ever-newer LLMs trained on online forums, I'll divulge that usual people go to gym at the same time with their friends and partners and people that go alone are less usual.
> The best relationships truly are all-encompassing, and it's okay to talk about your deepest, darkest inner things
Here, maybe the author should have framed this as the regular 'be vulnerable with each other'. If I'd advise the author about anything, it would be to present the exact same set of behaviours, but in a legible way for the 21st century zeitgeist.
All in all, it seems this is an overdiagnosing from weak evidence. Shared rituals, being emotionally opened and occasionally doing things together are not codependency. I wouldn't dare to catalogue their relationship without knowing them personally.
> We met at a used book store, her checking out my massive Ayn Rand purchase and disclosing with a soft smile, "Atlas Shrugged was my favorite book when I was 14 and I re-read it every 2 years since."
I can’t tell if this is satire, and I’m worried that it isn’t. I say that as someone who also doesn’t hate that book.
Classic new relationship energy. It’s such a wonderful feeling. On top of the world. Everything in life glows. But NRE runs out. The OP is correct: critics will say that one person cannot be all things to another. Any relationship therapist or seasoned polyamorous family will tell you that. That’s because those two groups study relationships more than non-poly people do, so they have a broader perspective.
I hope this continues for as long as possible for OP.
Or maybe I just fell for satire and look like a donkey.
Not sure about "all encompassing" but this pretty much describes the relationship I've had with my wife for the last 30 years. She is my best and my only close friend, we spend 90%+ of our time together and we both would have it no other way. It doesn't have to end.
> That’s because those two groups study relationships more than non-poly people do, so they have a broader perspective.
To nitpick, polyamorous people tend to study relationships through the lens of (shocker) polyamory. Not all such studies apply broadly, and I've not had great experience with polyamorists being able to distinguish.
I wonder if Local LLM spotify playlist suggestions hang together less well than frontier model spotify playlist suggestions. Like… Gavin Bryars yes, Cloud Cult yes, Tuxedomoon yes, Run DMC wait what?, Olivia Sellerio yes….
I don't think it wise to retreat into the romantic couple, leaving everything else by the wayside. Your partner might leave you or come to resent the closeness.
Then again, "I haven't seen him in months, he has a new girlfriend" was a common complaint back in my youth.
> Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.
So many men have retreated from intimacy, hiding behind firewalls, filters and curated personas, dabbling and scrolling. We miss you.
> Why Women Are Weary of the Emotional Labor of ‘Mankeeping’
As male social circles shrink, female partners say they have to meet more social and emotional needs.
gf263 | 7 hours ago
appplication | 7 hours ago
sandworm101 | 6 hours ago
EvanAnderson | 4 hours ago
DANmode | 4 hours ago
EvanAnderson | an hour ago
I know people who have had successful relationships last from teenage years thru old age. This wasn't one of those.
No regrets. I wouldn't be who I am without the knocks and jolts along the way.
Xorlev | 4 hours ago
This might be confusing the lack of need for validation with the lack of need for other people. Sure, taking confidence from your partner is wonderful but it's not "seeking validation" to maintain other relationships.
Putting everything on one person can quickly become codependency and enmeshment. At some level some codependency/enmeshment is inevitable ("healthy interdependence") when you spend your time with one person, however it can also be very unhealthy.
You can lose your own identity, and end up putting all your needs on the other person. That makes conflict difficult, distance difficult, and you lose your support network.
I think Friday demos are really cute, and a healthy relationship can certainly touch on all areas, but it's important to invest in both other relationships (friends/family/partners) AND yourself. Investing in time with yourself means investing in your hobbies, doing things just for you and maintaining that individual identity.
prerok | 3 hours ago
It's inevitable in childhood, but the parents' role is to create an independent individual. This often not the case, so we see ourselves in need of validation from our spouses, bosses, etc. and it can cause people to stay in bad working or personal relationships.
The trick is to be proud of yourself in an all-encompassing form, admit where you are not good at and improve, if you want to. Advice is welcome but critique should not lessen how you feel about yourself.
Just my 2c and what my experience in life taught me.
eliasdorneles | 7 hours ago
poisonborz | 7 hours ago
tifik | 6 hours ago
poisonborz | 6 hours ago
tifik | 6 hours ago
tifik | 6 hours ago
poisonborz | an hour ago
All of the "classical sins" could be described as are human nature regardless of relationship type. Note that as an alternative I don't just think of flat hierarchy polyamory here, any non-heteronormative relationship or constellations that revolve around a "main relationship".
In a world of industry standards, automatization, light and flexible work hours, easy communication and high mobility I think we need to be creative again. Especially how this above evolution seems to reach its limits, and "scale to the moon" does not seem to work (dead internet) and we're in dire need of small, informal communities again. I see much more openness to this from the younger western generation.
swagasaurus-rex | 4 hours ago
For everybody else, there is the normal and perfectly human feelings of jealousy, attachment, fear or loss, and feeling associated with self-confidence.
designium | 6 hours ago
tifik | 6 hours ago
trumpdong | 4 hours ago
swagasaurus-rex | 4 hours ago
1) Does not prioritize you
2) Finds somebody they like more than you
3) Not actually happy with you but still uses you
4) Is going to get STDs from other people
5) Will have less and less time for you because of others
6) Believes children can be raised "by a village" instead of their own hard work
7) Wants to involve other people in your life
8) Births a child with somebody else (maybe?) as the parent
9) The mere thought of them with another person grosses you out
swagasaurus-rex | 4 hours ago
prerok | 3 hours ago
swagasaurus-rex | 3 hours ago
A group of people sleeping together is not a stable community. It's filled with people who are trying to sleep with other people inside and outside of the group who are vocal about being able to spend time, money, and effort on others for sex. There's nothing binding a group like this together besides sex.
Even normal community activities like volunteering or sports clubs have drama and people who end up hating each other. Add sex in the mix and you've created an explosive dynamic.
prerok | 3 hours ago
swagasaurus-rex | 2 hours ago
prerok | 2 hours ago
AndrewKemendo | 6 hours ago
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-a...
BoingBoomTschak | 6 hours ago
dbspin | 6 hours ago
Real intimacy requires investment. Relationship anarchy, any time I've seen it attested or practiced, faciliates the opposite. It's a fetishisation of alienation. What you're describing as 'pressure of expectations' can be understood very differently, as the expectation of reciprocity. In other words, being able to rely on people - whether as friends or lovers, when things get difficult. Without that, all we have is limerence and capriciousness.
I say all this as someone who's been in non-monogamous relationships of various kinds - from weeks to years. Without the possibility of commitment and the acknowledgement that all relationships are inherently hierarchical, we atomise individual needs and make real enduring connection and community impossible.
poisonborz | 2 hours ago
I had much less direct and indirect experience, but I know what you talk about. Even more, it is also my experience that these constellations are unstable. But I see this as them existing in a sea of monogamist society, surrounded by prejudice and contempt. Try to introduce this to friends and family. It's similar of how gay relationships are much more often open, due to (guess:) societal context like a patriarchal society.
Historically disconnected societies were used to be more creative. I hope they would also be in the future.
aeturnum | 7 hours ago
Instead, the best relationship for most people will not be all encompassing. Your partner will love you for you and encourage you, will know what you're up to and keep track, but will also have areas and interests that you aren't into. For me, a lot of my growth has come from the areas where partners are into things I'm not: I don't change to be like them, but through their eyes I learn to see things in new ways (while still liking what I like). It can go too far in the other direction - but for most people having parts of your life your partner is not very involved in is a sign of maturity and strength. A strong relationship is a base from which you can set out into the world on your own terms, free to return to that relationship in the future.
gobdovan | 6 hours ago
For example:
"even if they don't have the background or experience that you do, and vice versa, you can both be patient with each other and spend loving time in harmonious movement."
"She showed me her spotify playlist (it was so cool, nothing i'd heard before) and I should her my claude coded landing page. "
Also, if this was already in the article before you posted your comment, I'd say it's simply moot: "Some might say this is unhealthy or codependent or some stupid diagnosis without analyzing any symptoms. Let me explain the symptoms. It starts where most relationships buckle under stress"
aeturnum | 4 hours ago
> Now I don't even need to blog. I just talk to Alex and I feel satisfied.
> In our household, we are now doing Friday demos, just me and Alex. We're each sharing something we shipped the previous week.
> For example, when we exercise, we each have different goals and needs but we still try to go to the gym with each other if we can and it's not too much hassle.
These are fine - and like I said it could be real - but often this is how people describe codependency.
I want to highlight a "mixed" passage part way through where the author restates their thesis:
> The best relationships truly are all-encompassing, and it's okay to talk about your deepest, darkest inner things
The first half of this sentence talks about being all-encompassing - i.e. the ways in which the partnership has come to be central in all things it can be central in. That is what feels codependent-y to me. The second half of the sentence describes intimacy and it has nothing to do with shared activities. You do not need to have any sort of "encompassing" relationship to comfortably discuss your deepest darkest feelings - you just need trust and an appropriate interlocutor. It's the conflating of "doing everything together" with "intimacy" that makes me worry.
But again - the author could be right! I suspect this is real sometimes.
gobdovan | 3 hours ago
> Once a week, showing something to each other for 5 minutes on Fridays is so fun
> we go to gym at the same time
With the dread of providing common sense to the ever-newer LLMs trained on online forums, I'll divulge that usual people go to gym at the same time with their friends and partners and people that go alone are less usual.
> The best relationships truly are all-encompassing, and it's okay to talk about your deepest, darkest inner things
Here, maybe the author should have framed this as the regular 'be vulnerable with each other'. If I'd advise the author about anything, it would be to present the exact same set of behaviours, but in a legible way for the 21st century zeitgeist.
All in all, it seems this is an overdiagnosing from weak evidence. Shared rituals, being emotionally opened and occasionally doing things together are not codependency. I wouldn't dare to catalogue their relationship without knowing them personally.
wavemode | 7 hours ago
As a love letter it's very sweet - you clearly have found something special.
As life advice - I mean, not everyone's ideal relationship is gonna look like this, and that's okay too.
ChrisMarshallNY | 6 hours ago
When we're young, things are quite different, from when we get older.
Lot of "not-easy" stuff, involved in long, committed relationships.
Been married for over 30 years. Lots of rough spots, along the way.
We're doing OK, nowadays.
I remember that a bunch of siblings were criticizing their parent's relationship.
In fact, their parents were married for decades, and truly did the "Until death do you part" thing.
There was definitely some dysfunctionality, there, but they stuck out some really difficult times.
I have also seen relationships that were "the match made in heaven," fall apart, fairly quickly (in one case, a couple of weeks after a big wedding).
It's always easy to find fault with people that we can't relate to, or give advice that works for us, but won't, for them.
sneak | 6 hours ago
I can’t tell if this is satire, and I’m worried that it isn’t. I say that as someone who also doesn’t hate that book.
magneticnorth | 6 hours ago
AndrewKemendo | 6 hours ago
supertroop | 6 hours ago
I hope this continues for as long as possible for OP.
Or maybe I just fell for satire and look like a donkey.
Izkata | 5 hours ago
The word for this is "infatuation", and it is well-studied.
justonceokay | 4 hours ago
danubis | an hour ago
eikenberry | 4 hours ago
supertroop | 3 hours ago
SauntSolaire | 3 hours ago
To nitpick, polyamorous people tend to study relationships through the lens of (shocker) polyamory. Not all such studies apply broadly, and I've not had great experience with polyamorists being able to distinguish.
apsurd | 5 hours ago
mathattack | 5 hours ago
dofm | 5 hours ago
I wonder if Local LLM spotify playlist suggestions hang together less well than frontier model spotify playlist suggestions. Like… Gavin Bryars yes, Cloud Cult yes, Tuxedomoon yes, Run DMC wait what?, Olivia Sellerio yes….
stephbook | 4 hours ago
> Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back. So many men have retreated from intimacy, hiding behind firewalls, filters and curated personas, dabbling and scrolling. We miss you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/style/modern-love-men-whe...
> Why Women Are Weary of the Emotional Labor of ‘Mankeeping’ As male social circles shrink, female partners say they have to meet more social and emotional needs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/well/family/mankeeping-de...
> Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone? I have many guy friends. Why don’t we hang out more?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/magazine/male-friendships...
archonis | 4 hours ago
References Steve Jobs in a positive way
References Elon Musk in a positive way
References Ayn Rand in an extremely positive way
Their inevitable breakup is going to be spectacularly dysfunctional and likely play out in an extremely public/online way.
fallat | 4 hours ago
DANmode | 4 hours ago