Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: divorce in cohousing

[Moz (list]

Jenny Guy said:
> Hi Doug, I know what you mean about the surprising amount of the sentiment
> that people don't want to be told what to do, in cohousing.... not what I
> expected either.

I've been using consensus for a long time (oh dear, looks back, feels
old...) and this has been a recurring theme. Perhaps because I came
through anarchist groups, but I've seen "consensus means I never have
to compromise" too many times to count.

It's a really easy naive trap to fall into, especially for people used
to coercive decision-making (ie, everyone). The jump from "your vote
doesn't matter" or "because I said so" to "we decide together" is so
large for many people that they really don't have the mental tools to
think about how it will work, and it takes a few counter-examples to
really understand that consensus means everyone adjusting and
accommodating, all the time.

And it takes time for knowing this to percolate in to feeling it.


Taking what you wrote more at face value, few people want to get into
situations where someone tells them what to do. For many, home is
different from work exactly because at work they're told what to do
all the time.

One of the ugly myths in divorce is that it's between two people.

Moz