You’re also changing the subject from dating relationships to the relationship you have with your wife. You say, “My relationship with my wife is the most important human relationship I have.” Well, that makes your description of how you would approach these issues make sense. However, all of the discussion up to this point has been about DATING relationships, and pretty early-on dating relationships at that.

I read Carolyn Hax frequently, and I know she would agree that if you’re in a relationship where your partner has no problem with most of your friends of the opposite sex but raises a problem with THIS ONE FRIEND, then you should listen. But a partner who has a problem with all friendships with members of the opposite sex (or a whole category like “co-workers”) is insecure and controlling and trouble.

The people who are raising these questions are trying to DECIDE whether the person they’re dating should become the most important relationship they have or not. And before you really know a person, it’s really dangerous to make them the most important relationship you have, to the extent that you will cut off other (non-sexual) relationships to please them.

In a relationship, I don’t think you (generic-you, not you, Rob) have the right to ask your partner to limit themselves purely to feed your need for control. Which is what insecurity really is.

If you can’t talk and reach some sort of agreement, a relationship would devolve into a silent morass with each side attempting to be “mind-readers.” That rarely works.

I believe there is an intermediate range between “trust blindly” (which, in with HIV and HPV (we’re both HPV negative) could be lethal) and “leave.”

Strangely, in my own relationship, we trust each other implicitly on this topic because we are willing to negotiate. Were Nancy to ask me to stop being friends with someone, I would do so willingly if it were still necessary after a frank discussion with Nancy. She would do the same for me. And so we don’t need to.

I am friends with most of my ex-girlfriends — close enough that we will, on occasion, still say “I love you” to each other. (And sometimes, their husbands and I will say “I love you” to each other, too, though usually when I’m getting sent off to the 9/11 morgue or they just had someone die or something).

If Nancy became concerned about my relationship with one of these friends — or even a male or lesbian friend, we would talk about it. If her questions could not be answered to her satisfaction, we would find limits that would make her comfortable. My relationship with my wife is the most important human relationship I have, and thus would take precedence. She would do the same for me.

In practice, the only limitation in friendships (one we arrived at while dating) is that in any relationship other than a professional one (she worked on a secret nuclear project and then switched to being a therapist and I was a paramedic and peer counselor), anything I discuss with any friend must be something I can and do discuss with her. This has its uses: there are times when it’s difficult to discuss something with Nancy butt I can discuss it with a friend — which forces me to discuss it with Nancy.

The only time we’ve ever needed to negotiate a relationship was my relationship with a church. She felt the relationship was hurting me (something I could not admit to myself) and asked me to pull back somewhat. I didn’t want to, but I did. And you see, that’s the advantage — she saw something I didn’t and was able to help me.

Like I said, we are fallible. One may see something the other doesn’t. We;ve got each other’s six. And we’re Stargate SG-1 fans…

We find that trying to guess what each other would have us do is where we get into trouble in our relationship. So anything is open for discussion and negotiation — excepting our commitment to each other.

If your partner has a “bad track record” then you should either 1) trust that they have learned and grown from their experiences, making them more aware of their own fallibility and more inclined to act accordingly or 2) determine whether this fallibility is something you’re willing to live with and love them for who they are.

You can’t replace insight and wisdom with rules imposed by a romantic partner.

We are fallible, and must make moral decisions that take our fallibility into account — the 7th of Kohlberg’s 6 stages of moral reasoning.

Or, in a more Biblical reference frame, we are free, but using that freedom isn’t always wise.

Where does this propensity for mistakes come into the moral calculus? If a person has a bad track record, does the partner have the right to ask for more restrained behavior, or is that something that can only be offered, not asked for?

I have some difficulty imagining it being totally non-negotiable. What do you think?