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From: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Living alone
Message-ID: <1871@reed.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 14:26:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: reed.1871
Posted: Wed Sep  4 14:26:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 10:00:46 EDT
References: <1296@hound.UUCP> <5290001@acf4.UUCP>
Reply-To: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 39
Summary: 

In article <253@whuts.UUCP> amc@whuts.UUCP (Andy Cohill) writes:

>Love is a fundamentally irrational *attachment* to another person.
>
>Commitment (to paraphrase someone else) (Elizabeth?) is a decision
>to do whatever it takes to stay together.
>
>And I think that it is possible, in a sad kind of way, to love
>someone without making a commitment.
>

	I don't think that doing whatever it takes to stay together is the
ultimate definition of commitment. I think that it's one kind of
commitment, but not the only kind. I love my friends and am committed to
them in that I would do anything that I could for them. But I don't
think it necessary to be around them for the rest of my life. Commitment
to an SO can be anything from what I described above to not dating other
people, to spending the rest of your lives together. The relationship
that I try to have with my SOs is that they are friends who I tend to
give special treatment to. (I'm more apt to buy them things, call them
up, take them to dinner, and then of course there's sex, but that's a
completely different subject altogether.) But I'm not very good at
monogomy, so I don't commit myself to dating just one person. I start
feeling restricted and it just doesn't work out well. Maybe someday, but
not now. But that doesn't mean that I don't know what commitment is, or
that I'm not committed to anyone.  To me, committing yourself to
someone doesn't mean that you have to be "only theirs" or whatever. It
means, for me, being their friend, being there when they need you, etc.
I would do lots of things for friends that I haven't seen for years, so
it's not a "only there when it's easy to be" type of thing either. I'm
not all that sure that it's really possible to love someone without
feeling some commitment to them. With me, one always seemed to naturally
follow the other. 

	cheers -

	elizabeth g. purtell

	(Lady Godiva)