• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Please explain this to me. the dumbest question in the world. why is a label necessary?

Status
Not open for further replies.

EveHarrington

MyPTSD Pro
Why do people require a relationship label?

Everything can be great. Love spending time together. Love the physical affection. Talk for hours and hours. Blah blah blah.

Everything. Is. GREAT!

So why is it necessary to label it as boyfriend/girlfriend, “in a relationship”, a couple, partners, etc?

Yes, I realize I have my own craziness surrounding the labeling. It feels like I’m trapped, weights in my shoulders, chains around my ankles, wanting to run away across no less than 5 state boundaries, CONTROLLED.

But, that’s not what this thread is about.

I want to know why people require a relationship to be labeled? Why can’t I be me and you be you and we do what we want and we have lots of fun together and...

Why do people need a label?

I really need to figure this out.
 
Mutual understanding & agreed upon expectations.

Like... why do jobs need labels? Why can’t I just show up and get paid? Oh wait. This is a volunteer position? I don’t get paid? I wasn’t hired? The f*ck? I want to be here. I expect to be here and get paid. For doing XYZ. At times 123. The hell do you mean not only am I not hired, not being paid, but you want ABC at 456? Why can’t I just do what I want, when I want it, how I want it, getting what I want out of it? Oh. Because this is a (professional) relationship. You get a say, too. And you’re saying no. Well... can we negotiate??? Let’s come to an understanding of why my role & what your role is, and what we can each expect of the other.

Saaaaaaame durn thing with (healthy) platonic, & romantic relationships.
 
Yes, I was in a relationship with someone who didn't want to apply a label. And it left me feeling tenuous. Like, we could talk with each other and set up expectations and such, but I guess without there being a label attached I wasn't certain what direction we were moving or how all the pieces fit together.

The other thing is agreeing to a label (whether it's a convention one or one you together) is implying a commitment to that label. Why do people get married or adopt children? We, as humans, tend to need language and ceremony. If I call someone my best friend, I'm telling that friend something about how I value them.
 
I completely understand your point, I highly dislike labels. I think that it helps people to make sense of situations. It helps differentiate certain connections. I think that you should try to find words that you are comfortable with and that don't put as much pressure on you.
If you don't want to describe it with words, that is also okay. As long as you are on the same page with the other person and that there's an open conversation.
 
Sometimes labels make my skin crawl and other times I need them. I never feel completely comfortable with gender or sexual orientation labels because it’s so fluid for me. I just...am. Unfortunately (or sometimes fortunately) it’s hard a lot of times for people around you to feel secure with labels, be it for relationship, for identity, or the like.

Usually when I didn’t want them, I didn’t actually want to be in a relationship with that person (looking back). I didn’t want to be marked to this person, not really, or if I didn’t care what the label was (back when fetlife was still around if it is and my failed poly relationship lol) I didn’t really care to be with the person that much.

When I did, I wanted to know what I meant to the person, so it was clear where I fell in their own social “hierarchy” which is a bad word and probably a *little* toxic but I still see the world that way. I wanted others to know what we were to each other. A lot of it was insecurity. I wanted everyone to know where we stood so I could clearly identify threats (this was mainly years ago when I was being cheated on all the time lol, but more recently I wanted it bc someone I liked wasn’t clear what he thought about me and it made me insecure).

And then there are the very special people, of whom I only know one, where there was no label necessary. We both knew how we felt and there was no hiding it (but I messed that up too or we both did multiple times hahaha). Anyone could see it clearly, and there was no denying it. There wasn’t even a label for it I could think of.

That’s just my experience with it, I know everyone is different in their reasonings and core beliefs.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top