Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Breeching interpersonal Boundaries

[Howard Landman (howard]

Rob Sandelin wrote:
> The privacy aspect of cohousing, in my opinion, attracts people who really
> don't want to do relationship work, even when relationships are pretty
> damaged. So this is an example where a personal boundary is unhealthy for
> the community.

This statement might make sense if one takes communes as normative.  But
compared to society-as-a-whole, it seems nonsensical to me.  We give up
a lot of privacy and autonomy to live in cohousing compared to living in
the suburbs.  We spend lots of time talking about visions for community
and coping with the positive and negative feelings of others.  It is
much, much more intensely interpersonal than most of the outside world.
Whether we "want" this or not, it comes with the territory, and we
learn how to cope.  People who value privacy and anonymity highly are
probably not ideal candidates for cohousing.

        Howard A. Landman
        River Rock Cohousing
        "It isn't the heat, it's the humanity." - anon.
_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l