By the way: I'd be interested in what words you eventually choose to describe various levels of connection. About a year and a half ago, bunnypip and I -- along with some others -- had a discussion about the linguistics and ended up working with "community", "tribe", and "family".
Community is the least closely knit of the three. The collected BiCon crowd counts as a "community". Connected in many ways, but spread out.
Family is on the other end of the spectrum. cheshcat and Resourceress and sunastria and gyades and I were a poly family for many years, ending when Resourceress and I broke up our eight year relationship in December 2007. gyades and I own a house together in Chicago. Resourceress helped me drive a truck (pulling a car) 2500 miles from New York to Arizona. More recently, bunnypip and cheshcat and I have been functioning as a family unit. When cheshcat couldn't return to the States for Christmas, she stayed with bunnypip. When bunnypip needed childcare for the previous two Wednesday mornings, I drove to the Warren to provide. We have shared auto insurance and are likely to have shared bank accounts soon. In short, family is the most interwoven relationships... and they are the people you know you can count on and the bonds are strong all around.
"Tribe" is a level in between the two. We discussed this in late 2008, when bunnypip and parallelgirl and thehalibutkid and felbrigg and cheshcat and I were functioning thusly... with the door wide open for darkfloweruk to join us whenever she wanted. We did things like arrange a group cleanup of the Leveret Warren. We weren't all tightly connected to everyone else in the tribe... but there was a good sense of closeness and comradery.
Does that make sense?
Of course, you can pick whatever language suit you best. One of the things that I mentioned in our "Relationship Styles & Structures" workshop[*] is that we are moving beyond societal norms and, as such, we are in a linguistic frontier. Everyone is thinking what suits them best and picking their own nomenclature; what works well for one may even inadvertently offend another. So I share what we thought about to give you something to mull over... but, ultimately, you need to choose what works best for you.
[*] Which you did not attend as you needed to be in miss_amaranth's workshop at the time.
no subject
Community is the least closely knit of the three. The collected BiCon crowd counts as a "community". Connected in many ways, but spread out.
Family is on the other end of the spectrum.
"Tribe" is a level in between the two. We discussed this in late 2008, when
Does that make sense?
Of course, you can pick whatever language suit you best. One of the things that I mentioned in our "Relationship Styles & Structures" workshop[*] is that we are moving beyond societal norms and, as such, we are in a linguistic frontier. Everyone is thinking what suits them best and picking their own nomenclature; what works well for one may even inadvertently offend another. So I share what we thought about to give you something to mull over... but, ultimately, you need to choose what works best for you.
[*] Which you did not attend as you needed to be in