I guess in a relationship with an ambigamist you need to be careful not push the move from deciding to decided. The complexity of such an undefined relationship would be put under a lot of unwanted stress if one side wants defined what the ambigamist wants undefined. If pushed too hard I can see this seriously affecting the relationship. I guess that is what a lot of us have been trying to avoid.

The two articles on ingesting and digesting were also very good. Keep up the good work.

I'll continue to use your comments to trigger what I send next. It's great to hear you extrapolating to partnership issues from a pattern I described in the article with respect to business collaborations. That's what we call "solving for pattern not particular" and for me it's the best game in town.

I'll post an article or two about how deciding and decided play out in romantic partnerships. I touched on it in the red-light green light article but there's more to it. Deciding vs. decided is a very leveraged tool. With it becomes clear how a few simple patterns of behavior generate a intricate array of possible interactions between partners.

For example, take these three simple dimensions described in the above article:

deciding vs decided,
me vs. us, and
deciding vs. deciding how we decide.

Now mix and match them for a dizzying array of outcomes. Suppose one of you has decided something--say that tonight you'll both stay home. The other of you is still deciding if that's the best course of action. The decided partner thinks the decision is made already. The undecided wants to keep the decision open. The decided partner might say something like "Tonight let me decide." As I say in the article, that sounds like a ground-floor comment. We're done deciding. But it's actually up a level making a comment about how the decision should be made. For the undecided partner that sounds like an opening to talk about the decision-making process. "Well why? Why do you get to decide?" If the stay-home partner thinks the answer is obvious he or she might say "Why do you have to be stubborn about it?" Maybe that's a good question. Maybe it isn't. Maybe the stay at home partner is thinking "me" rather than "us" thoughts and accuses the other of doing something wrong "being stubborn," when actually its the other way around. You could weave from there and endless array of possibilties. Screenwriters do. We do in our relationships too.

But the upshot with respect to ambigamy is this. Ambigamists think there's some value in tracking these kinds of dynamics and don't come to simplistic rules that say that one or another of these moves is intrinsically correct as though there were a simple way to be in relationship. They recognize that all relationship is intricate and not just because the other person is bad.

Jeremy

But seriously, the decision to be naughty has levels implications. The Naughty Bride can decide to decide in a naughty way, or decide to make a naughty choice, a choice that's about naughty me not us, or about naughty us not me. The good news for a matrimonial humor site is, one of them is bound to be funny.

(Actually, really seriously, great article. You know, if you like that kind of thing.)