You may have gathered by now that I like to use chatbots as thought partners. Here I’m using Anthropic’s Claude to explore an idea I’ve had about the role fantasy in romance and how, in the right circumstances, romantic fantasies can lead to substantial relationships. I start out by asking about polyamory, which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my main theme, but I wanted it to be in the context for subsequent discussion, something’s that important in working with chatbots.
What I’m exploring is the capacity for personal autonomy within a romantic relationship. What is the trade-off between (needy) dependency and autonomy?
As usual, my prompts are set in boldface type.
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Polyamory
First tell me about polyamory. When did it first become noticed as such, that is, when did the word itself become prominent. I’ve got the impression that, for the most part, we’ve got couples who view one another as their primary relationship, but then allow other relationships “on the side” as it were.
Polyamory as a term was coined relatively recently - in 1990 by Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, who combined the Greek "poly" (many) with the Latin "amor" (love). The word gained wider recognition through the 1990s and 2000s, particularly after the publication of books like "The Ethical Slut" (1997) and "Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits" (1997).
While the practice of consensual non-monogamy has existed throughout history in various forms, the specific term "polyamory" and the modern movement around it really emerged in the late 20th century, often connected to countercultural movements and communities exploring alternative relationship structures.
Your understanding captures one common model - hierarchical polyamory, where people have primary partners with secondary or tertiary relationships alongside. However, polyamory actually encompasses several different approaches:
Hierarchical polyamory is indeed what you described - primary relationships with other relationships that are considered secondary or given less priority in terms of time, commitment, or life decisions.
Non-hierarchical polyamory treats all relationships as equally important, without ranking them or giving one partner precedence over others.
Relationship anarchy goes further, rejecting traditional relationship categories entirely and allowing each connection to develop its own unique structure.
The core principle across all these approaches is ethical non-monogamy - having multiple romantic or sexual relationships with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. This distinguishes it from cheating or affairs, which involve deception.
The term became more mainstream through academic writing, online communities, and media coverage throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
Romantic fantasy
OK. Very interesting. Let’s set that aside at look at some other dynamics for relationships.
I have a speculation about “true romantic love.” You’ll recall that Dante saw Beatrice once, was smitten, and went on to write La Vita Nuova. But he never met her, never had a real relationship with her. My idea about romance is that two people engage in reciprocal relationships like that. They fall in love with one another, as Dante was smitten with Beatrice, but then they go on to have an actual relationship with one another. It’s like that line from a Dylan song, “I’ll let you in my dream if you let me in yours.” Ideally, then, as they interact with one another, the romantic fantasies are replaced with real relationships based on shared experience. Does this make sense?
Your speculation makes a lot of sense and captures something profound about how romantic love might ideally function. The Dante-Beatrice model you're describing - where two people are initially enchanted by idealized versions of each other, then gradually allow reality to replace fantasy - feels like a compelling framework for understanding healthy romantic development.
The Dylan line you quote is perfect for this: "I'll let you in my dream if you let me in yours." It suggests that early romance involves a kind of mutual fantasy-sharing, where each person projects their romantic ideals onto the other. But the key insight in your model is that this initial enchantment serves a crucial purpose - it creates the motivation and emotional energy for two people to invest in getting to know each other deeply.
What's particularly interesting about your framework is how it positions romantic idealization not as something to be avoided, but as a necessary starting point that should naturally evolve. The fantasy creates the conditions for intimacy, but then real intimacy gradually displaces the fantasy through shared experience, vulnerability, and seeing each other in mundane as well as magical moments.
This seems to address a common relationship problem: some couples get stuck in the fantasy phase and can't handle the reality of their partner's full humanity, while others become so focused on practical compatibility that they lose the sense of enchantment that initially drew them together.
Your model suggests that successful long-term love requires both the initial spark of romantic projection and the gradual, mutual work of replacing those projections with genuine knowledge and acceptance of who each person actually is. The relationship deepens not by abandoning the dream, but by slowly trading it for something more real and sustainable.
Star-equilibrium
Moving on.... In “Women in Love” DH Lawrence talked of the ideal relationship between a man and a woman as a “star-equilibrium.” He’s talking about a double-star, where two stars are in one another’s gravitational field, but neither forms a center. Rather, they both rotate around a common center. In such a relationship, each person has their own life, but enter into a shared relationship with one another. Am I right about this?
You're absolutely right about Lawrence's "star-equilibrium" concept, and your astronomical analogy captures it perfectly. In "Women in Love," Lawrence was indeed rejecting traditional relationship models where one partner becomes subordinate to or absorbed by the other, instead proposing this binary star system where both individuals maintain their distinct identities while being held together by mutual attraction.
The concept emerges most clearly in the relationship between Birkin and Ursula, where Birkin explicitly argues against the romantic notion of two people becoming "one flesh" or merging completely. Instead, he envisions what he calls "an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings" - each person remaining whole and separate, yet connected through what he describes as a kind of gravitational pull.
Lawrence was reacting against Victorian relationship ideals where women were expected to lose themselves in marriage, becoming satellites to their husbands. His star-equilibrium suggests something much more egalitarian: two complete individuals who choose to orbit around their shared connection rather than one person's needs or identity dominating the relationship.
What's particularly striking about this model is how it preserves individual autonomy while still allowing for deep intimacy. Each person has their own "gravitational field" - their own interests, friendships, work, inner life - but they're also bound together by something larger than either individual. Neither person has to sacrifice their essential self to maintain the relationship.
This anticipates many modern ideas about healthy relationships requiring both intimacy and independence, but Lawrence was articulating it in the early 20th century when such ideas were quite radical. The star-equilibrium remains one of the most compelling metaphors for balanced partnership I've encountered in literature.
Developmental course of a relationship
Here's something I’m wondering: A relationship based on a reciprocal romantic fantasy is not going to have star-equilibrium. The two parties are not individually “whole” people. Each needs the other to be whole. But perhaps, in time, reciprocal fantasy might evolve into star equilibrium.
That's a brilliant insight - you're identifying what might be a natural developmental sequence in romantic relationships. The reciprocal fantasy stage you described earlier would indeed represent a kind of psychological incompleteness, where each person needs the other to feel whole, to fulfill their romantic projections, to complete their sense of self.
In that early phase, the boundaries between self and other are blurred. Each person is partly living through their idealized image of their partner. There's a kind of mutual dependency - not just emotional, but almost existential. Each person's sense of wholeness depends on the other playing their part in the romantic fantasy.
But as you suggest, this could evolve toward Lawrence's star-equilibrium if both people do the psychological work of becoming more complete individuals. The process would involve gradually withdrawing those projections, learning to see the other person as they actually are rather than as a fulfillment of fantasy, and developing a more solid sense of self that doesn't require the other person to maintain it.
In star-equilibrium, the attraction becomes more about two whole people choosing each other rather than two incomplete people needing each other. The gravitational pull is between two distinct, self-contained entities rather than between two fragments seeking completion.
This developmental model makes psychological sense too - it suggests that healthy long-term love requires both the initial spark of romantic projection and the gradual maturation into individual wholeness. The challenge would be navigating that transition without losing the connection entirely - learning to love the real person as much as you once loved the fantasy, while becoming someone who can love from a place of completeness rather than need.
Relate this to polyamory
So, now relate all this back to the various kinds of relationship dynamics in polyamory. Feel free to speculate. None of this is “written in stone,” as it were. I’m just thinking about possibilities.
This is fascinating territory to explore! Let me speculate on how these dynamics might play out across different polyamorous structures:
Hierarchical Polyamory might create interesting tensions around these developmental stages. The primary relationship could be where the reciprocal fantasy stage gets the most investment - two people deeply projecting onto each other, using that relationship as their main source of completion. Secondary relationships might then serve different functions: either remaining in a lighter fantasy mode (less grounding reality, more idealization), or paradoxically achieving star-equilibrium more easily because there's less pressure and need for completion.
Alternatively, a primary relationship that has evolved into star-equilibrium might be what allows for healthy secondary relationships in the first place - two complete individuals who can engage with others from a place of wholeness rather than need.
Non-hierarchical polyamory might actually require more developed star-equilibrium across the board. If you're maintaining multiple deep relationships without hierarchy, you probably need to be a fairly complete person to avoid losing yourself or becoming overly dependent on any one partner for your sense of wholeness. The reciprocal fantasy stage might be harder to sustain when your romantic energy is distributed across multiple people.
Relationship anarchy could represent the ultimate star-equilibrium approach - each person so individuated that they can engage authentically with multiple others without predetermined structures or expectations.
But here's another angle: maybe polyamory actually makes the reciprocal fantasy stage more complex rather than eliminating it. Instead of projecting all your romantic ideals onto one person, you might distribute different aspects of your fantasy across multiple partners - one person fulfills your intellectual romantic ideal, another your adventurous side, etc. This could either prevent the natural evolution toward wholeness (by making it easier to avoid psychological integration) or accelerate it (by forcing you to confront the fact that no external person can complete you).
What do you think? Does any of this resonate with your intuitions about how these dynamics might interact?
Time
Oh, at first glance it all makes sense. I’m just trying to make sense of the diversity of human relationships without positing one as an ideal.
And there’s another factor to consider, time. Developing relationships takes time. Someone who is committed to a career, for example, isn’t going to have time to cultivate multiple relationships. They might well have the psychological capacity, but lack the time.
That's such a crucial point about time - it adds a whole practical dimension that cuts across all these psychological models. Someone might be perfectly capable of star-equilibrium and have the emotional bandwidth for multiple deep connections, but simply lack the hours in the day to cultivate them properly.
This might explain why certain relationship structures emerge organically from life circumstances rather than just psychological preferences. A surgeon working 80-hour weeks might gravitate toward hierarchical polyamory not because they're psychologically dependent, but because they only have time to nurture one relationship through the full fantasy-to-equilibrium development, while maintaining lighter connections elsewhere.
Or someone might choose monogamy not from jealousy or insecurity, but from a realistic assessment that doing the deep work of moving from reciprocal fantasy to star-equilibrium with one person is already a significant time commitment - especially when balanced against career, family, friendships, and personal growth.
The time factor also helps explain why some people might get "stuck" in the reciprocal fantasy stage. If you're juggling multiple relationships while managing a demanding career, you might not have the time for the kind of sustained, vulnerable interaction that allows fantasy to evolve into deeper knowing.
And perhaps some people are drawn to relationship anarchy precisely because it allows them to engage authentically within their actual time constraints, rather than trying to force relationships into structures that demand more time than they realistically have.
Your point about avoiding idealization is well-taken - maybe the "healthiest" relationship structure for any given person is simply the one that fits their psychological capacity, life circumstances, and available time, rather than some universal ideal.
This has been useful. How about a summary.
Summary
Here's a summary of our exploration:
Key Concepts Developed:
- Reciprocal romantic fantasy: Two people fall in love with idealized versions of each other (like mutual Dante-Beatrice dynamics), then ideally transition to real relationships based on shared experience
- Star-equilibrium: Lawrence's model of two complete individuals maintaining their wholeness while orbiting around a shared center - neither absorbed by the other
- Developmental progression: Reciprocal fantasy involves psychological incompleteness (needing the other to feel whole), but can evolve into star-equilibrium as people become more individuated
Polyamory Context:
- Term emerged in 1990, became prominent in 1990s-2000s
- Three main approaches: hierarchical (primary/secondary), non-hierarchical (all equal), relationship anarchy (no predetermined categories)
Speculative Connections:
- Hierarchical polyamory might concentrate the fantasy stage in primary relationships, with secondaries either staying lighter or achieving equilibrium more easily
- Non-hierarchical approaches might require more developed star-equilibrium across relationships
- Relationship anarchy could represent ultimate individuated engagement
Practical Reality:
- Time constraints are crucial - someone might have psychological capacity for multiple deep relationships but lack time to cultivate them
- Relationship structures may emerge more from life circumstances than purely psychological preferences
- No single relationship model is inherently superior - the "healthiest" structure fits a person's psychological capacity, circumstances, and available time
The overarching theme: understanding relationship diversity without positing any single structure as ideal.
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