New York Times Modern Love: I love you, and you, and you, and...
Stephen Elliot did not care that we were all on vacation this weekend, and decides to print a piece on a polyamorous relationship that requires a bit of overtime thinking just to get through to the end. The plot is simple: Stephen loves Angelina, but she's involved with another man as well, and married to yet another. With children. Maybe the relationship itself is complicated, but the whole piece boils down to Mr. Elliot's need to share his feelings on the situation.
Is there a moral to the story? Of course not. The article isn't even ended properly, because there's zero resolution. It seems the Times has devolved to printing stuff worthy of blog posts. Perhaps next week we'll see someone talking about how they love their cat. Modern Love indeed.
What bugs me the most about this week's story is that, although I should probably be appreciative of new perspectives on love and relationships, this article completely wastes my time by trying to present this concept as if it were actually practicable. This type of relationship is completely unconventional, and Mr. Elliot's reaction is very demonstrative of why it's a far-from-ideal relationship setup (to the extent that people usually give up and don't even bother to try in these circumstances). Because it's so tricky, and perhaps futile, to share intimate relations with multiple people while evading feelings of jealousy and abandonment, polyamourous relations are avoided by the general public. For all practical purposes, they're non-existent in the general population (unless someone's trying to pull it off on the sneak). In the end, this piece is either a personal essay with no basis in reality, or a fiction without a real plot. Either way, I'd have rather played Sudoku than spent 10 minutes trying to slog through this piece.
And, as the icing on the cake, Mr. Elliot displays an obvious and worrisome emotional fragility that makes his viewpoint on the matter all but invalid. He's the archetypal "unreliable narrator" because of lines like this:
Ummmmm, yeah, every guy feels that way when they're (apparently) waiting for someone to find parking. One time, in Midtown, I needed Xanax while a friend tried to find a metered space big enough for an SUV on a Saturday afternoon.
His feelings are obviously deranged (but I mean that in the nicest possible way), so why should we trust his hope above our own doubts? He certainly failed to earn my trust as a reader. Although I admit to being deeply cynical and therefore unreliable myself, the one thing that has me thinking the most about this piece is just how many thoughtful readers did, in the end, trust Mr. Elliot to have rational expectations for this unconventional relationship.
Did I forget to mention that the rationale between Mr. Elliot's attempts to find understanding in others' feelings is primarily driven by his own needs for emotional support? That's never happened in this column before! *shock*
Is there a moral to the story? Of course not. The article isn't even ended properly, because there's zero resolution. It seems the Times has devolved to printing stuff worthy of blog posts. Perhaps next week we'll see someone talking about how they love their cat. Modern Love indeed.
What bugs me the most about this week's story is that, although I should probably be appreciative of new perspectives on love and relationships, this article completely wastes my time by trying to present this concept as if it were actually practicable. This type of relationship is completely unconventional, and Mr. Elliot's reaction is very demonstrative of why it's a far-from-ideal relationship setup (to the extent that people usually give up and don't even bother to try in these circumstances). Because it's so tricky, and perhaps futile, to share intimate relations with multiple people while evading feelings of jealousy and abandonment, polyamourous relations are avoided by the general public. For all practical purposes, they're non-existent in the general population (unless someone's trying to pull it off on the sneak). In the end, this piece is either a personal essay with no basis in reality, or a fiction without a real plot. Either way, I'd have rather played Sudoku than spent 10 minutes trying to slog through this piece.
And, as the icing on the cake, Mr. Elliot displays an obvious and worrisome emotional fragility that makes his viewpoint on the matter all but invalid. He's the archetypal "unreliable narrator" because of lines like this:
I was inches away from crying. I pushed my face into her collar, gripped her tightly.
Ummmmm, yeah, every guy feels that way when they're (apparently) waiting for someone to find parking. One time, in Midtown, I needed Xanax while a friend tried to find a metered space big enough for an SUV on a Saturday afternoon.
His feelings are obviously deranged (but I mean that in the nicest possible way), so why should we trust his hope above our own doubts? He certainly failed to earn my trust as a reader. Although I admit to being deeply cynical and therefore unreliable myself, the one thing that has me thinking the most about this piece is just how many thoughtful readers did, in the end, trust Mr. Elliot to have rational expectations for this unconventional relationship.
Did I forget to mention that the rationale between Mr. Elliot's attempts to find understanding in others' feelings is primarily driven by his own needs for emotional support? That's never happened in this column before! *shock*
posted by Brian Van at
12:40 PM
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