Read the latest updates on the Own Hands Story Search tool for finding fiction. We're narrowing down the categories we'll focus on for our first proof-of-concept search.

In other news, if anyone wants to be a first reader/reviewer for my non-fiction book on relationship cutoff, please PM me for a free ebook/PDF.

[EDIT: Skinintheway observes below that I likely misread the statement I'm responding to. I think she's right, and I'm going to keep the original post/thread below to show the whole thought progression.]

As I gear up to release Being Cut, my book on relationship cutoff, I want to discuss some interesting statements people shared with me, which did not end up in the book. I'll keep it all anonymous.

My interlocuter said,

I like thinking about the world where cutoff does not exist. In that it would have to be either no deep connections with others or every time we make a deep connection with another it is a lifetime commitment. Commitment is such a rare and honored thing in our culture. Would it mean less if there were no choice to cut off?

The first type of society (no deep connections) reminds me of Brave New World. Indeed, cutoff (ex. I'm going to ignore you, not return calls) is probably fairly rare there. And when it happens, it probably packs little punch. (And if it does pack a punch, one can always escape into through gram of soma.)

On the whole, though, I think this reasoning displays a fallacy of cutoff culture: all or nothing, lifetime deep commitment or 0 contact. I don’t advocate for a world without cutoff, but in such a world, there would be many ways to break or lessen deep commitments: divorce, breaking up with a partner, explicitly breaking off a friendship, ceasing to share personal information, emancipation from parents, moving away (literally or in terms of time/energy allocation), etc. I suppose not having the social option of cutoff implies some required commitment--ex. an expectation of gritting one's teeth and saying "hi" at a party--but I don't think that's the kind of "rare and honored" commitment the speaker means here.

Happy Downfall of Sauron Day! In the LOTR-verse in my head, this is anniversary 44 if I do my math aright.

In universe I actually inhabit, I’m in the home stretch of completing my book on relationship cutoff, Being Cut. In honor of ramping up for publication, I’m going to use this DS Day post to address a question that comes up repeatedly in this book, the question of friendship. Warning for references to relationship cutoff. Also spoilers for LOTR.

We have a strong cultural belief that friend cutoff isn’t a big deal, because friendship isn’t a big deal. I can’t count the times I’ve heard variations of “What’s the big deal? Most friendships end,” “Friendship isn’t a commitment,” “Friendship isn’t a serious relationship,” “Friendship is just based on whether it’s working for each person.”

Some friendships are like that, yes. We often use the word to mean “person I share a hobby with” or “amicable coworker I don’t really talk to outside of work” or “kid I played with twenty years ago.” But my book focuses on serious relationships, and capital “F” Friendship is serious.

Whenever I hear friendship dismissed in this way, the first place my mind goes is The Lord of the Rings. That book understands Friendship. For example (note: I’m vacation without my LOTR so I’m going to para-quote from memory), as Merry remarks to Frodo, “You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin to the bitter end, but you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone and go off without a word. We’re your friends...” Two of them are his cousins, too, but they are with him because they’re his friends. When Frodo calls Sam, “friend of friends,” he’s talking about going off to die together.

Or consider when Frodo tells Faramir and crew that Boromir was his friend. Now, he’s with people who are not necessarily his allies and is having to be strategic in what he says, but there’s strategic and then there’s lying, and that is not a lie, even though his last experience of Boromir is being physically attacked by him. Our pop-psychology today would probably call that a toxic relationship and dismiss Boromir as a “garbage person” who deserves nothing but dismissal and avoidance. And Frodo is avoiding him, yes, but within a very particular context that Frodo, as Ringbearer, understands perfectly well. Boromir was still his friend, and had he lived, I do not doubt they would have fairly quickly mended their fences. That doesn’t mean that no scar would remain, but there’s a difference between a scarred relationship and a destroyed one. Their friendship was not and would not have been destroyed. That is what true friendship is.

I don’t say that no serious friendship should ever end, just as I’d never say that no couple should ever get divorced. I don’t mean cutoff is never the best answer. I do mean that real friendship matters, like marriage matters. It is committed and loyal and willing to endure some hard times. It is at least as selfless as it is selfish; it does not stop at a facile assessment of “what’s working,” and, as a concept, it deserves much better than our current society gives it.

Happy DS Day! May your friends stick to you through thick and thin.

I need a hook for a chapter in my book on relationship cutoffs, and I'd like to use a story where ceasing contact (at least temporarily) with an ex after a romantic breakup was helpful for healing. All contributions will be anonymous, using aliases.

If you have such a story you'd like to share, please PM me here on Dreamwidth. Thanks!

Keeping up Appearances is a c. 1990 British comedy series about small-town society lady, Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced "Bouquet"), a vain, egotistical busybody who fancies herself the pillar of the community but is really the most dreaded person in town. The series explores her misadventures as she terrorizes her community while inevitably having her plans thwarted by some embarrassing intrusion by her working-class family members. I have come to deeply love this show because in its light, zany, sometimes tooth-gritting way, it exemplifies what a connected, supportive community looks like. It teaches that while people may be far from perfect, we need to be there for one another all the same.*

The show is oriented around Hyacinth and her three sisters, each with an appropriate flower name. There's Violet, who married a rich man, but who is not happy with him. (The running joke that her husband is a crossdresser may be the aspect of the show that's aged the worst.) Ostensibly the most fortunate sister but the least connected to the community, she's usually only present through phone calls. Then, there's Daisy, who married working class bum, Onslow, and lives in a shabby house, along with Rose, an aging debutante whose life is procession of ill-fated romances, and their Daddy, a frail fellow about ninety who has no lines, but whose dementia does not stop him from getting about town and into trouble, especially with the ladies. The core group is rounded out with Hyacinth's long-suffering and easy-going husband, Richard, and her terrified neighbors, Elizabeth and Emmett, and the young vicar, who does his best to run away when he spots her.

Hyacinth is an awful person to be around, and our current popular culture would probably say cut her off. (Yes, I am writing a book on cutoffs.) She's a toxic narcissist, social media would observe, and to tolerate her would be toxic codependency. If this were real life, they'd say, the family should shun her, Richard divorce her, and nobody give her any truck. And, yes, that would be one way to shut her up. It would also be deeply destructive and tragic, fracturing core, loving relationships. Her community has chosen a different approach, and by no means a perfect one: they have chosen to tolerate her. They have chosen, more or less, to accept her as a reality of the community's life.( Read more... )