Livre d'Or

Having said that, I don't think what I said in my last paragraph, about individual decisions having the potential to destablise entire chosen groups, is actually significantly more true of chosen-groups than others. The possibility that individual choices (especially around sexuality and other key hot buttons) might destablise a family is obviously a major concern for a lot of people.

And again, what comes up in the advice colums such as Captain Awkward suggests that friend groups employ similar strategies of conflict resolution to families: placing pressure upon two feuding parties to make peace (good in small doses, bad in coercive doses); maybe maintaining relationships with each of those parties separately; excluding or sanctioning people who cause friction (for good or ill - for instance, a group might exclude or sanction a woman rather than the man who's creeping on her).

I think people who have children have a focus for their chosen-family network: rather than trying to frame a nebulous sense of 'are we all there for us or all there for each other individually?', in such a situation one can look at a motley collection of friends and relatives and say these are the people I'm inviting into my childrens' lives. I think, for instance, that my mother's friendship with J, who was the mother of her childhood best friend and co-incidentally moved to live near us when I was in my late teens, was initially mediated by children: J's granddaugther is mum's goddaughter, and J became a sort of second-string grandmother to my brother for a while. I think that helped move their relationship from an odd sense of 'this person used to drive me aroudn when i was knee high to a grasshopper' to a more adult level of friendship and chosen-kinship.

Some of the clearest advice given in The Ethical Slut about building chosen communities is directed at parents: about chosing carefully who, of your adult friends, you invite into your childrens' lives; and how to do that in respectful and functional ways. There's also some advice in the 'solo slut' chapter about how one might integrate into existing family (read: nuclear) units as an outside partner.

That's something I'm... thinking about, cautiously, at the moment. You might actually know my english man-creature? You certainly know his son's mother (ghoti) and her husband. Anyway. I was telling my mother recently that I plan on going to Canada to spend Christmas with kayloulee, or, if that falls through, with friends of mine in Belgium. Mum wanted to know why I wasn't going to spend Christmas with said english man-creature. One reason is that I don't want to glom onto him at the expense of maintaining other cross-global suppport networks which I value and which I'd need if we broke up. Another is that while his son is old enough to make his own jugements about me, the younger ones don't know me and don't have a long memory span at this point. I'd rather they know me at one remove for a while before I turn up slotted into important family rituals. I *think* I like them, and K&C, well and could easily establish some kind of extended-family relationship there, but it oughtn't to be a done deal just because I happen to be dating one member of this family blob.