Surprising Ethics
The most interesting ideas from ethics and political theory. Where every episode contains a surprise.
Surprising Ethics is an accessible philosophy podcast exploring the striking ways in which philosophers are trying to upend received wisdom about politics and how to live ethically. In the battle between the status quo and surprising alternatives, which will win out?
By Dr William Gildea, McGill University and Centre for Research in Ethics. Artwork by Ana Otelea.
Surprising Ethics
The philosophy of breakups: are breakups good? w. Dr Justin Clardy and Idil Çakmur
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Are breakups actually *good*? Do they unlock striving, freedom, and authenticity? Or is anchoring and commitment the ideal path? Is the trend towards non-committal, undefined 'situationships' bad or good, and why? And how should we break up? Should partners have a “clean break”, or do they actually have special duties to each other even after a breakup? And can the act of breaking up with someone ever be morally problematic?
Tune in as your host Will chats to two philosophers of love and breakups, Dr Justin Clardy and Idil Çakmur. Together we revisit some of our most fundamental assumptions about whether and how to part ways.
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Are breakups actually a good thing? Are situationships actually a good thing? Can the act of breaking up with someone be morally wrong, or do we just perceive wrongs where there are none? And when people break up, should they have a clean break, or do they actually have special moral obligations to each other long after the breakup. The idea of the podcast is to look at a surprising idea drawn from the pages of philosophy books and philosophy articles and to explore it in an accessible and entertaining manner. So as we enter the second year of the podcast, let me say thank you so much for coming on this journey with me as we use philosophy to try and make sense of the world and of course our ethical and political place in it. Thank you to the Centre for Research in Ethics and the Leverhume Trust for supporting this podcast. Today, breakups is our topic, in particular whether they're bad and how X's should relate to each other. As always, we begin with the status quo on our topic, the kind of common, normal societal view before looking at a surprising alternative drawn from contemporary or historical philosophers. So the status quo seems to be that breakups are bad, very bad. And part of the reason they're bad is that once they happen, they fundamentally change the way two people should and normally do relate to each other. They turn partners who had all sorts of rich moral and other bonds into strangers as far as ethics is concerned. And given how rupturing breakups are in this moral sense and in a mental sense and in many other senses, we ought normally to avoid them, fear them, and mourn them. So we can see the status quo as saying two things. Number one, the breakups are awful view. They're just really bad, right? And commitment is better. Number two, the clean break view. When when there's a breakup, partners should sever the relationship and move on firmly and cleanly, and those special obligations cease. And here are some clips to illustrate these two different common views.
SPEAKER_03Why do breakups hurt so much? There's a reason why they call it heartbreak.
SPEAKER_00We'll start with the breakups as awful view and with Gemma Speg from the Psychology of Your Twenties podcast.
SPEAKER_03Because that deep feeling in your chest, in your lungs, in your limbs is real literal physical pain. Scientists and psychologists, you will hear them make comparisons between a breakup and literal drug withdrawal. It is like your brain is detoxing from a substance, and that substance is this other person.
SPEAKER_00And now moving on to the view of the speaker and online guru, Adam Roa.
SPEAKER_01Breakups are really interesting because they're the only thing that I found similar to death, where it simultaneously collapses your past, your present, and your future. So when you have a breakup or there's a death, everything you thought your future was is just dissolved. Your present has dissolved. Suddenly you look back on the entire relationship through the lens of it's leading to it, a breakup. And all your actions take on different nature. And death is the same thing.
SPEAKER_00So now to demonstrate the clean break view, the idea that we should just cut the relationship off and move on with our lives rapidly. Uh, let's look again at the psychology of your 20s.
SPEAKER_03In this first wave, you will do and you have permission to do stupid things. It's a given, you're gonna get bangs, you're going to try desperately to be friends with your ex. You're gonna keep going back looking for closure, you're gonna get too drunk, you're gonna cry in embarrassing places. Going no contact just gives you the time to concentrate on what you think about the situation and to also just kind of work through the pain. Going cold turkey on a relationship speeds the process up a lot.
SPEAKER_00And finally, here's the view of the popular online therapist from an outfit called Affinity Therapy.
SPEAKER_04You're in a relationship that's just been ended by the other person and they ask to be friends. I would highly recommend that you don't do this. Whatever was problematic before in the relationship will only get worse. It will be heightened because they no longer have any actual obligations to you.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that that describes a kind of normal set of views about breakups, and both of those views are going to be challenged today. And I'm very lucky to be joined by two philosophers of relationships whose work I came across recently because they're both speakers at a conference on the philosophy of breakups that took place this summer in California, at the University of Southern California, and in particular its conceptual foundations of conflict project. So thank you to USC and to Mark Schroeder, the organiser of the conference, for helping to make this episode happen and for letting us continue these conversations that were grounded in and spurred on by the conference on this podcast. So I'm joined today by both Justin and Idil. Dr. Justin Clardi is an assistant professor of philosophy at Santa Clara University and worked on the intersection of love and race and the ethics of non-monogamy and the unjust political consequences for non-monogamous people, among other topics in philosophy. Justin's first book is Why It's OK to be non-monogamous. And Idil Chakmuer is a doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked on relationships, concepts, agency, and Iris Murdoch. And our conversation covers many topics. So in part one, where we focus primarily on Justin's work, we discussed the duties exes have to each other, bad behaviour in relationships, and how the institution of monogamy affects our views of how we should break up. In part two, where we turn primarily to Idyll's work, we look at why breakups might be a positively good thing, why our values might commit us to valuing breakups, and we discuss the modern trend towards situationships, non-committal, vague, open-ended relationships, and whether it's good that more people are dating in this way or not, and why. And in part three, we discuss whether breakups can be morally wrong. So here are Justin and Idil. Justin, let's let's dive into your paper on kind of post-breakup life first, and then we're gonna get to Idil's, I think, quite explosive view later on whether breakups are actually good. Uh, but Idil do time chime in like whenever. So I think the first question I have for you, Justin, is very simple. Could you just like, in a way, list the duties that you think exes can have towards each other?
SPEAKER_02So without sort of running the risk of itemizing different duties, because I don't think I could provide an exhaustive list, I think I can say something generally about what I think exes might owe to one another, which is a kind of consideration, the type of consideration I believe due to exes. Um, and and and I do not mean to sort of situate exes as a uniform category, as like all exes are owed these things, because I don't think that. But in the cases of uh uh relationships that do have uh more amicable afterlives, uh we we owe a kind of partial consideration, a special consideration that doesn't extend uh universally to all moral agents. So for example, um I might have a duty to consider um how a former partner might feel if I were to pursue a new relationship with their best friend or their sister or brother, so to speak. And this type of consideration is not one that I think I generally owe to strangers, right? It's a responsibility that emerges um sort of on the back of or out of or in the wake of the value that our intimate relationship um has or had uh established, whether that be historical or still continuing in the present, right? And so I think that is um, you know, one of the main points is that there are these special considerations as opposed to general considerations that we owe um to uh former relata, so to speak. And I'll I'll throughout this episode be using the term relata uh to make reference to partners, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, so on and so forth, because um the word relata doesn't carry as much social baggage with it, right? Uh folks who might be coming to this cast and be a bit familiar with my work know that I write a lot on non-monogamy and polyamory, where we can't make these default assumptions about the amount of partners or relationships that one might have. And I feel like the term relata does a really good way, um, or it does a really good job of capturing someone with whom one has a relationship to without overcommitting oneself to what the nature of that relationship might involve.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you also talk about, you know, like duties that concern confidential confidentiality, like you have a lot of information, sensitive information about your about your ex. Um, and you talk about uh duties not to kind of monopolize shared friendships or kind of weaponize shared friendships. And so there's like this kind of cluster of different duties that we have to those with whom we have been in a romantic relationship. I think maybe the next question is is why do we have these duties? Someone might think, look, I have a reasonable self-interest in having a clean break, in not kind of taking on more uh emotional kind of labor when I've already been harmed by this breakup, and I want to just kind of move on and not have to keep considering my ex and keep thinking, if I attend this event, will they be harmed in this way because they feel they feel like I'm dominating the space too much? So, so what what's the kind of ground for this for these special duties? Um good.
SPEAKER_02So I think uh for me, uh the ground of these duties um kind of show up in a couple of different ways. Um, the first being relational standing. Uh sometimes um when we end a romantic relationship, the person with whom that relationship was with um still occupies a particular kind of social standing uh in relation to us, having shared uh in many cases robust histories of intimacy with one another. Um, as you mentioned, sort of sensitive information, which I think the entire um phenomenon of revenge porn, I think tramples on this obligation. It's not just that one is leaking um revenge porn or illicit videos or pictures of an ex and and and violating some general duty, although there may be a general duty that is violated there. But I think that these kinds of things are made all the worse when we consider the kinds of special duties that I think outlive the relationships that we have. Um another ground is sort of ongoing social entanglement. Again, drawing here on polyamory and non-monogamy. Uh, in groups or relationships of more than two people, sometimes two people might break up while another person may still be relating to what people call a hinge partner. And if that's the case, I think that this ongoing social entanglement uh persists in ways that call us to, again, um consider in special ways the kinds of obligations that have outlived or duties that have outlived uh the relationship. Um, and it it's interesting, Will, that you mentioned that somebody might want to have a clean break and not sort of be bound by sort of additional emotional labor. Uh I mean, I I generally don't think that people want to be strapped with uh an overwhelming amount of emotional labor while in the relationship, right? I think we have particular responsibilities to care for ourselves and not offload these things uh on our partners. But that's also the interesting thing about duties, right? I mean, we don't always want to have to satisfy them, right? I mean, perhaps the perspective that folks want a clean break and want to resist having to consider their former relata in um in in special ways is more evidence for the fact that they're in that they might in fact be special duties there.
SPEAKER_05I also wanted to if I can jump in. Can I jump in? Okay. Um I think a clean break, when you think about it, I mean it sounds nice, but why should we even think that was the way we could relate to each other in the first place? Because what it means to become a part of someone's life is to become a part of their person. So when you're stripping the relationship from them, you're stripping something that is them as well, a part of them. So of course you don't get to do it in a clean way. And I think there are exceptions, but the exceptions are cases of like abuse or something went really wrong, or someone cheated, some some extreme case. But in all the other cases, to me, it seems, of course it's unclean. Which relationship we have to each other is clean, even like a teacher-student relationship or me and the cashier somewhere, those relationships are not clean either.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and Adil, I think you're you're you're right to point something out here, which is the uh the general assumptions that we make about breaking up, right? That they are always bad or wrongful or harmful or and things like this. And this is just not always the case, which is why I try to resist treating uh the category of X's as this uniform singular moral category. I think that they can look a lot of different ways, and you're right to sort of bracket uh cases where perhaps a clean break is called for, but that by no means uh can be expanded to the entire class of exes. So ideal, yeah, that was really, really an astute observation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And I think two examples, like I think it's now so normalized to just block your exes from social media once you're done with the relationship, or like go to your past host and delete the post that you had with your exes. And it's so normal that we would do it even if it was a good breakup. And that just means you're trying to erase like years of your life, all those memories, and that just doesn't seem like the right way to engage. And you're right, not all exes are the same.
SPEAKER_00Not not the right way to engage in a similar way where I don't know if your friend perhaps someone died. You just it's not the desirable thing to do to go on in life without any grief, that it's actually a positive, in some way, morally positive or whatever. It's it's truer in some sense to to experience that those negative emotions and to push them away. Is that kind of what you have in mind?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, imagine if we deleted all of our friends' photos with us on social media after they died. That seems just like the wrongest thing we could do. If an acquaintance or a friend stops being a friend, we don't remove them retrospectively from the things we had before. We look at it in a kind of uh bittersweet way. We're like, oh, all these memories we had together, and we reminisce about those. But in the case of exes, we often think that if you do that with your exes, you should hide that fact because it would be so wrong to confess that you know there are these bittersweet memories with your exes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and perhaps you'll probably get into this maybe a little bit later, Adil. And this is sort of the transformative potential that breakups can have for the self, right? I mean, what favors do we do uh to ourselves by pretending that a relationship never existed or doesn't exist? I think bringing ourselves to confront the fact that they did um promotes self and individual growth in rather unique ways, right? And um perhaps we ought to be leaning more into that, right?
SPEAKER_00I I think one thing that people might press at this point is is this idea that in breakups there's often this real or perceived sense that I've been wronged, right? Like that my partners wronged me and they've harmed me in ways that were unjustified, and it's for that reason that I want to get rid of them, move on, cut them out of my social media and block them and so on. And so, Justin, one question I had for you is like, how does how does bad behaviour in all its different forms relate to the duty, the special duties that we normally have on your view to our exes after a breakup? Like, if someone behaves badly in a certain way, does that kind of waive or cancel their right to special consideration to perhaps ongoing emotional support or certain duties not to have their social environment uh tarnished by the breakup? I think that's a response people would have is like my ex is terrible, they're not gonna get this special consideration.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, that that's right. I mean, I think that, you know, we do have to exercise a bit of context sensitivity here. Because to be clear, I don't think that all romantic relationships even generate the kinds of special duties from the outset to begin with. If there's like a persistent pattern of bad behavior, so on and so forth. It could be that even within the relationship, uh, the person with whom the relationship is with doesn't generate these kinds of special duties that I'm claiming outlive the relationship. They don't just uh emerge on the basis of participation in a certain form of relationship. So, oh, because we were in a romantic relationship, we now just are flooded with all of these um pre-prescripted duties that are owed to this whom whomever occupies the slot of Relata, so on and so forth. So I think in these cases, um, bad behavior may fail to generate the the kinds of duties uh to begin with. Um, and I think you're right to press and to continue to press on this line around, you know, bad behavior. But again, I just want to emphasize here sometimes breakups happen because we outgrow. And this could be the case whether we're talking about breakups with family members or breakups with romantic relata or breaking up with friends. Sometimes we just outgrow the relationships or the activities that constitute those relationships, right? Um, and in these cases, what we're not thinking about is someone having behaved badly, but we are still thinking about a relationship whose mode shifts into a new domain. And I think a part of what I'm wanting to do, which is why I'm happy to receive these sorts of questions, is to continue to call attention to the fact that a breakup in its name does not automatically imply that something related to bad behavior must have happened. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Of course, in breakups, there's so many emotions flying around that often wrongs can be perceived and maybe not really there, or pain can be attributed to someone when actually it's it's maybe attributable to like the ongoing struggle of being a human or a sentient being trying to pursue various projects and and desires and so on. Hi there. Sorry, just a quick interlude to say if you could follow this podcast on your platform, that would be amazing. It's such a help so that more people can find this podcast. And of course, it would mean you wouldn't miss out on more surprising episodes.
SPEAKER_02Also, yeah, if I may, I think yeah, I think that this is related to the point uh again that that might be talked about later. If we learn to sort of untether or unbind breaking up with bad or wrongful behavior, our perspective around what breakups are and how they function in our lives fundamentally changes. And and what that means is how we approach even initiating relationships also changes because no longer are we operating under the assumption that if this relationship does not last forever, it was a failure, right? Or that something has gone wrong, right?
SPEAKER_05That's that's exactly what I yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to say. Because I think often when we wanna block the X or something, and you ask me what they did wrong, just the fact that they broke up with me could count as enough of a reason to perceive what has been done to me as a wrong. Is breaking up with you a way of wronging you? I don't think so. I think we we think of relationship commitments as promises to be together forever, or sometimes promises to be together as long as things don't get extremely shitty. So let's say that in a case where um the relationship isn't bad, it's not like we're Fighting all the time, or there is still enough good in it that I think we should keep fighting for the relationship, and the other person doesn't think that anymore, and they end the relationship. I can still perceive that as a wrong because the deal was we were gonna either stay together forever, or um we would end it together, mutually, upon mutual agreement, when things got really bad. But I think this is entirely because we conceive of breakups as um these necessary evils as as something that happens when things go wrong in our lives and not as a part, a normal part of life and what it means to be in relationships with each other. I think if if we kind of routinize breakups, if we see them as part of what it means to live a good life, then we will perceive things as as slights less often. So we won't think that when someone breaks up with us, they're wronging us, we'll just think, oh, this is this is what it means to commit and try things out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and this, I think, detachment um from the idea or ideology that uh relationships are meant to last forever, um, can't be unwed without uh or they can't just simply be unwed socially. Like there are many political institutions in the backdrop, like legal monogamous marriage, that function to reinforce beliefs about relationships of particular kinds needing to last forever. Here I'm thinking about vows, right? Again, till death do us part, sickness and in health, so on and so forth. Um, and if we're treating as a default expectation that every loving relationship aspires toward marriage and the adoption of a particular set of vows, then these assumptions about time and temporality or constancy can go unchecked. So, yeah, I think we have to be vigilant about and and be vigilant and um just increasingly aware of the ways that uh monogamy uh as a form of social ordering uh infiltrates into our day-to-day thinking about how we are relating to one another.
SPEAKER_00Justin, maybe just a final question on your paper specifically. Um you you argue that it's uh it's because we live in a monogamous society, a society that treats monogamy as the kind of normal, the morally better or only way to do things, uh, that we're drawn to the clean break view. Uh the view that once a breakup happens, that's it. No more special duties, no more special concern, like move on with the life. So can you walk us through how we get from a monogamous society to the clean break view?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, so good. There's an open question, right, in critical non-monogamy studies as to what is monogamy. Is it one partner over a single lifetime, or is it one partner at a time? I think that the dominant view in our contemporary society is that monogamy means one at a time, which is where that discretion or that discrete entity of the relationship comes from. And the idea here uh in is under those kinds of monogamous ideologies, once one relationship ends, it clears the runway for a new one to begin, so to speak, right? Um and I think not only does it clear the runway for new ones to begin, those new relationships often are accompanied by the expectation that whomever I'm relating to now cannot have a relationship, an intimate relationship of any sort with their ex because it shows up as a threat to the quality or the vitality of the intimate relationship that I can have at present. Um I think under different frameworks like non-monogamous frameworks, additional relationships are transformed from being viewed as threats to things that can enhance um a well-lived life, right? And enhance our flourishing. Um and because of that, I think what comes with it is a realization that relationships and our relational lives are a bit messier than we lead on, um, and that there likely is no such thing as a clean break. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, great.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful, thank you so much. And and so now to kind of segue partially but not wholly, from relational afterlives and our duties to exes to breakups themselves and whether they are bad things. Uh Idyl, you want us to sort of step back and challenge some real fundamentals here, and you want to ask like whether relationships are actually bad at all. Uh and I think you have quite a surprising view on this topic. So could you describe that view for us?
SPEAKER_05Yes, I'll I'll try to. I feel like the view has so many parts. I don't quite know how to summarize it sometimes, but what I'll say is I think I actually think breakups can be good. Breakups can be good, they can be a part of what it means to live a good life. And in fact, not only do I think this, I think all of us should think this because of other values we hold. So one way of putting this point is to say, what do we think is good about a commitment? Why is it good to build these friendships or these romantic relationships? Is it just so we can hold hands and sit in a room and like not do anything together? Or is it because we think that what these relationships add to our lives is partly that they change us? They make us different people, hopefully better people, they show us new things out in the world, they expand our worlds. So if I go into a relationship for years and at the end I'm the exact same person who likes exactly the same books and watches the same movies and does the same like daily routine, to me, that feels like um it doesn't feel wrong necessarily, but it feels like there was something missing there. I think a lot of us, uh a lot of us ascribe a lot of value to growing, to becoming better people, to striving. And if relationships are supposed to be part of how we satisfy that value, then we hope that over the course of a relationship we become different people. And if we hope that we're gonna become different people, part of what we have to open the door for is maybe we don't want that commitment anymore. Because partly what I thought had put us in that what had put us in that commitment was uh we thought this was the way we wanted to live our lives. And if we discover that they're actually different ways and now we want to pursue something different, then we have to leave the door open for each other. Um, and I think that would be a much more natural way of thinking about breakups in the place of them than the case where things go wrong.
SPEAKER_00So I I think people would definitely be on board with the idea that breakups uh can be good. My sense is that you want to push us further. And are you describing maybe some sort of like systemic bias against breakups? Are you kind of saying that like almost all of us, or all of us, even if we're in good quality relationships that are, you know, fairly healthy or rewarding, that we are in general biased against breakups, or that we are think of the thinking of them under the wrong header as like regrettable things, terrible things, fearful things, and that we should think of them in a much more balanced way. Is that kind of view you're you're pressing towards?
SPEAKER_05So I I like this distinction. So we could say that breakups are good because they get get rid of something bad, namely a bad relationship, or we could think of them as a positive good, where what I mean by positive good is you're not doing away with something bad, but you're getting something that's actually good, something positive. So, in this, in the view that I'm trying to advocate for, breakups are good because they open the world to you, open more of the world to you, because they oh like they open you up to new values, to new projects, because also they're the sign that you've changed, you've grown. So breakups are good in this kind of thicker sense, uh, because a life without breakups is probably a life that is a little bit stagnant. I don't want to sound too heartless. So I think there's a world where you know you you fall in love with your high school sweetheart and you live a beautiful life together, and I don't want to say you did something wrong because you didn't end that relationship. That's not what I mean. I'm taking breakups to be um a much more broad thing that's not only about romantic relationships, but any kind of project uh or commitment you take on that is life and identity defining. So, you know, me doing a philosophy PhD, it's something I'm committed to. It's something that is as intimately tied to my self-understanding as a romantic relationship. The place that I live in, living in Philadelphia, as opposed to, you know, living in Istanbul where I used to live, that's a kind of commitment. So what I want to say is when I choose to leave Turkey and move to the US, that's as much a breakup as when I choose to uh move from one romantic partner to another. And when I say breakups are good and we should make space for them in our lives, I'm not saying you should break up with every single commitment you have. I think that kind of non-committal, um like kind of the digital nomad type is not what I'm advocating for. But I'm saying you probably should have some breakups in life because they're the sign that you're actually pursuing things, pursuing growth, pursuing change in ways that are valuable. So it doesn't have to be that you break up with your high school sweetheart, but if you're married to your high school sweetheart and you're doing the career that you thought you would do at five, like at the age of five, and you're living in the same place and you're doing all these things, and there's no avenue you've left open for yourself to discover something new. Yeah, that might be a problem.
SPEAKER_02If if I may, can I piggyback off for that going? Yeah. So to your high school sweetheart example, maybe I am with the same person or people, but we've broken up in the sense that who you were as my high school sweetheart, you were no longer. We are both or all of us are acknowledging that. And through a continued commitment, I guess, to one another, even in the present, we can still come to view this relationship as having undergone a breakup in the sense that we're opening ourselves up to experiencing something new, discovering more about ourselves and our partners, so on and so forth. Um, so yeah, I was interested in whether or not your view is consistent with um breakups within a relationship that needn't signal an end to a relationship.
SPEAKER_05I I really like that idea. You know, if I decide with my partner to move to a different country, that's a kind of breakup that we're taking on together. Um, and it's a way of us trying to make sure that both of us are growing. And I guess um when we think of breakups as um these things that we should avoid, what we're effectively doing is we're forcing people to try to keep their lives very small and try to remain the same person. I think women often end up doing this a lot because they're more heavily burdened with this uh with sustaining commitments than men are because they're also blamed more when things go wrong and when they actually break up with someone. And what we see in those cases is a lot of people who are stuck in relationships that are not necessarily bad, but kind of mediocre. Relationships that they're not happy in, that they're not satisfied with, but they feel like they don't have the right to break up with it because things are just fine. And in those cases, I think it's a great harm to that person's life. I think it's really stopping them from living a good life. The fact that they can't pursue a breakup because there isn't anything bad. So I guess part of the view is trying to set the bar really high for what makes a relationship uh good to pursue, to continue.
SPEAKER_00Hi, just a really brief message to say if you think this podcast should reach more people, then hitting follow would be so useful. So if you can, thank you so much. So I I just want to like sticking with romantic breakups for a second, I think in your paper you suggest that unless we're fairly ready to break up with a romantic partner, we can't continually strive in our lives and we can't actually self-author our lives. And I just wanted to issue like one challenge to that, which is like almost the opposite view. Um, not completely the opposite, but one kind of plausible view is that yes, of course, we should self-author um our lives in choosing a partner very carefully and freely. But once we've done that, striving and self-authorship actually tend to depend on commitment, on having a kind of safe place to return to between the times when we're exploring the world. So obviously, if the relationship is a safe one, if the relationship is a good home, then the idea is that we can go off and explore the world and be more free because we have this anchoring, because we have this safe person to return to. And that you know, that we ultimately have to narrow down our options and and use our freedom to decide on one person or more than one person. And that does mean carding off options, but it also means that we're anchored in a way that we can explore more freely like other aspects of life. What what do you think about that kind of view?
SPEAKER_05Okay, so I I definitely think there's something to the anchoring view. And also just from a very purely like practical point of view, we can't plan anything if every day I'm asking myself, am I gonna continue this relationship and my partner knows that in those cases, it wouldn't even be able, like we wouldn't be able to actually do the things that are part of that relationship. So if I'm asking myself every day if I'm gonna break up with this person, then we can't even have kids or buy a home or do all the like all the things that we typically think are part of what it means to commit to someone and build a life together. So that's definitely not what I want to suggest. But I think what you're picking up on is I want to say that breaking up is a skill. And as any skill that I think is really important to live a good life, it's something we have to practice kind of constantly. Um, and I don't mean by it we should always initiate breakups so that we can be really masterful at breaking up with someone. That's not what I mean. Um, but what I mean is I think part of the skill of breaking up is being able to imagine other ways your life could go. It's a kind of freedom to imagine other ways. And if you don't have that freedom, if you've really restrained yourself and you're not picturing any other way or any other relationship or any other thing that might make you happy, you're committed to your relationship, but not in I'm choosing you. You're just committed because you haven't raised the question. So I think it's okay to have this imaginative freedom to allow yourself to look outside and see what what the other things are that you might want. But you might discover once you do this imaginative activity that actually you still prefer that anchor.
SPEAKER_00Again, it sucks with the norms of monogamy because um even doing that in an outward, like outward way is normally seen as like cheating, right? So, like being on a dating app to more clearly imagine what your life might be like in a different relationship, that's seen as kind of uh a red line, isn't it? So I'm not I'm not I'm not endorsing that. I'm just saying like it's a very different view, but also it's one that clashes with with any monogamous norms because uh because even to consider that in an outward way is is seen as cheating. Well, of course, but that there's something to your view, right, that actually the the commitment is much more valuable if you're doing it in a more mindful or aware way of like I'm committing this person, despite the fact that I'm aware of all these other very like interesting options.
SPEAKER_05So I think that's exactly right. And there's something that philosophers of love always worry about that we should be clear on, and it's the trading up objection. So, you know, what is trading up? It's when I'm looking around to find someone more handsome and more clever and I don't know, taller or whatever than my partner. And if I only find that person who possesses the qualities I like in my partner, but to a greater extent, then I'm gonna trade up. I'm gonna abandon my partner and go to this new person. That's a way of pursuing a breakup, but I I want to say it's the wrong way. And part of the reason it's the wrong way is because when you trade up, you're not actually trying to grow as a person. You're exactly the same person who's like trying to find one level above what you have right now, and it's a kind of um it's a way of uh engaging in relationships that is fundamentally objectifying of your partner, their worries there. But also, I think when we think about again what is good in a relationship and what is good in a commitment as being this kind of growth, then if you could specify what the things are that you're looking for, it's not with a view to growth, it's a kind of greediness, it's a kind of uh consumerism almost that you're bringing to your romantic life. And that's not something I wanna um I wanna defend definitely. So I'm not saying go on hinge and find the hotter person.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, maybe a final question on on your paper before we move to like a more general discussion with all three of us, um is you you say that the skill of breaking up is kind of especially important now, right? Because the world's changing so fast and we want to be like alive to different options that emerge and different life paths. But there's this kind of chorus of complaints um amongst people these days about endless situationships, right? Relationships that are never formalized, never committed to and kept vague and kind of options endlessly kept open. So I just wanted to ask you about this because people often think that in the world of apps and endless options and like connectivity and shrinking of time and space, like commitment is falling away in favour of this search for the kind of perfect, easy magical partner or the kind of perfect lifestyle that they um afford. And so I wonder what you think about that kind of complaint about modern dating culture. Like, is it actually a good thing, in your view, that there's this trend towards more situationships where people can kind of not commit from the word go or not be pressured into giving vows early on and are more open to like change and more open to flow and and future avenues opening up that they want to be able to take without being blamed and chastised. Or do you think there's something to this that that people are are too commitment phobic or want to keep their options open endlessly?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, good. I mean, I definitely think that we have something something is wrong with our dating culture. So I'm not I I don't uh think that the current mode of situationship upon situationship is like the right way. So the question is, what is the thing that is wrong? And I think we're missing uh what is good about relationships. What what is good about trying to put someone or it can be multiple people in this privileged position in your life for an extended period of time? I think what's good about that is you actually hope to be changed, you hope to learn something. In a situationship, you don't learn anything. You're not actually open to that that other person, you're not vulnerable, you're not intimate. There's a lot of things, uh a lot of things in relationships take time to develop. So if we think of the goods of a relationship as you know, greater self understanding and this connection and intimacy and whatever. Want to say it is all of these things take time and they take some level of commitment to flourish in the first place. So if you're not if you're never committed, then you never get to those things. So you can go from one situation ship to another, and you can effectively not add anything to each other's lives other than these kind of momentary um romantic attractions and fun. And I mean fun is important too, but that's not the core of what I think we value about relationships, um, and letting people shape us. Part of the reason I say it's more important now than ever to have this skill of breaking up is because I think again, taking breakups in this potentially broader way, when we're very stuck in our picture of what our life should look like, then we're not appropriately responding to what is going on around us. So if I thought my life should just be what I thought it would be 10 years ago, where I thought, you know, academia sounds like a good path, and let me just pursue it. And I'm just putting putting these blinders on about the crisis happening around us in higher ed and elsewhere, because I had this image of myself as a professor or something, and that's that's the thing I'm really committed to. Then it's not just that I'm not having living a good life or a fun life or a happy life. It's that in a way I'm morally failing as well. Because part of what it means to be a good person is to be responsive to the demands uh on your attention, on your energies, the things that you can maybe have a play a part in trying to fix.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it reminds you of this expression never give up that you see a lot, and it's like, really? Like, that seems mental. Like if the if the evidence mounts and mounts and mounts that you should give up, then why not just give up, right? Like if I try and become a professional tennis player, and then I realize that I'm just not very coordinated in my wrists, and I just see I just see the evidence mounting that I'm just a mediocre player and I'll never be able to have that. But never give up. Like, I'm just gonna keep going. And it is, it's it seems like mental, like you know, you've got one life and and changing tact can be important. And then now just like to open the conversation up fully, fully, fully, and just um with some other questions. I wanted to ask you both whether you think there's such a thing as a morally impermissible breakup. I'm thinking of these as breakups that are authoritative, right, that the other party should accept, but that are still morally wrong. Um, a bit like how someone votes for a really morally problematic party and they have a right to do that, it should be accepted, but it's still morally wrong. Um, so like imagine somebody breaks up, like whenever the honeymoon period is over, whenever the going gets a little bit more tough, and they just go, you know what, I don't want to expend any effort on this relationship to keep it going. I just want to move on to the next kind of shiny person because um that's more exciting for me and easier for me. So if this person hasn't kind of made it clear that this is their style of relationships, can that kind of is that an example of a morally impermissible breakup?
SPEAKER_05So I guess I would want to say it's not morally impermissible because we're not on the hook for staying with this person in the constraints of the relationship we previously had, let's say. So it might be morally impermissible to completely abandon them and not talk to them ever again. But I think like holding on to whatever label we had so far is not an obligation I have. I can end the relationship whenever I want in the name it has. Um but I could say I think some breakups might actually be bad for you, bad for your life, or signs of bad character in these cases. So it's not that you've done something wrong to the other by breaking up, but that you've effec effectively harmed yourself by always chasing after the new shiny thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think to follow up on that point, I I I hesitate to say that there are morally impermissible breakups as well, because I think that the alternative has me considering whether or not we have a positive obligation to participate in relationships at all uh of particular kinds, right? And I don't know that we're obligated to.
SPEAKER_00So, yeah, just to end, is there anything you wanted to add either of you about what we've been discussing?
SPEAKER_05I feel like one of us should say something.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no, no, no, no, no, we've got a lot of material. Yeah, got a lot of material.
SPEAKER_02I don't really have anything of substance but to just say where people can find me. Um you folks, if you're interested in in in following my work, um I have a podcast called The Pages Pod. Um, I also has have a substack and am findable across just about all social media at the handle your fave philosopher. That is U-R-F-A-V-F-I-L-O-S-O-P-H-E-R. Um, and I'm looking forward to uh engaging with listeners of this episode or w whether it be about this episode or or love or anything else that you might find in my work. So I really appreciate the opportunity to have been invited to engage today. I thought the conversation was um really generative and enlightening uh for me and a much needed extension of the thinking that happened at the conference at USC that you mentioned earlier in the episode. And so just thank you, uh is all I have here.
SPEAKER_00Great, thank you so much. And yeah, I'm definitely gonna listen to the podcast. I'm definitely gonna add it to my list.
SPEAKER_05Um, thank you so much both for continuing the conversation. This was really fun. You can't find me anywhere, but you know, I have a website.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, dear listener, for joining us and for staying to the end. And we're back on the 1st of next month for more. And until then, why not look at past episodes on non-monogamy and on sex, dating, and relationships, or on different topics like the ethics of raising kids vegan. So do check those out and do come back for more surprising ethics.
