Re: Cohousing vs intentional community
From: Rob Sandelin (robsanmicrosoft.com)
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 95 17:24 CST
 Rebecca Dawn Kaplan made several points about poly relationships.  
What struck me was her use of the term intentional community in the 
context of describing cohousing.  IMHO one way in which cohousing is 
often very different than other forms of intentional community is 
cohousing forms around building physical structures, capital 
improvements if you will, and this dominants the agendas of most groups.

Cohousing has been very successful in building housing units, up from 
bare ground in 3-4 years.  Cohousing IMHO has not been as successful in 
working the human dynamics beyond the construction process.  Now this 
may sound really odd, especially coming from me, but what I seem to be 
continually finding is a certain kind of shallowness to the 
relationships people are willing to commit to.  Sure I'll watch your 
kid and help you do a small chore. But don't ask me to help pay your 
mortgage or provide you with long term health support if you get aids.  
You're my neighbor, not my brother and this aint no commune.

Sure, there is some great cooperation going on which is light years 
ahead of the standard neighborhood isolation.  But few groups have any 
sense of common mission beyond vague notions of living together.  Why 
are we here? Because it's better than there.  Many other intentional 
communities are very mission focused and extremely committed to  that mission.

Since there is no real predefined notion of how people will relate to 
each other, and thats much too time consuming to deal with in face of 
all this development stuff,  in most groups I know about, even the most 
basic of interpersonal issues splashes across a wide spectrum of 
feelings and opinions with no community action taken, because their is 
no central mission to relate at that level.  In many intentional 
communities, the expectations for things like participation, 
interpersonal relationships, communication, etc. are very much part of 
the whole package, and if it doesn't work for you, you don't join or 
you leave.  In cohousing we are saying, hey you can be private if you 
want.  And what goes along with that are things like: hey, you can be 
pissed off if you want,  you can be unhappy, destructive or unhelpful 
if you want to.

In my admittedly limited experience, one of the common denominators of 
long lasting intentional communities, is that they have put in place 
ways to call people on their behaviors and feelings- good, bad and 
ugly.  When someone does something destructive to a relationship, the 
whole community points it out and clarifies it and deals with it.  From 
what I know, which is based on 6 cohousing communities including my 
own, cohousing groups don't do this much, largely because that's not 
what people signed up for.  Most people do not want to look at their 
own negative behaviors, or really have to deal with anyone else's.  In 
many intentional communities I have visited, that is a requirement to 
live there and that, IMHO, makes  a huge difference in how people 
relate and what levels or relationships they would consider even talking about.

So, that such a notion as poly partnering is not  talked about, or 
dealt with much in cohousing,  is no real surprise.  This aint no 
commune and sex is really scary to honestly talk about and its so much 
more comfortable just to not.

Rob Sandelin
Making sweeping generalizations again
based on his own limited experience and  perception.

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