That was the part I had a hard time empathizing with. Like, I don't understand the whole idea of "free passes," a la the "You can sleep with [famous actor/actress] if you get the chance and I won't hold it against you." The "going to Faerie" pass seemed to be a spec-fic version of that. If you really have something that's that important to you, then you should pursue that instead of making promises-with-exceptions and pretending that's what you want.
I love the idea of getting to go to Faerie, myself. Or to Mars. Or any of a number of other things. But I wouldn't leave my wife for them; that's why I made a promise to her, because I like her better than those things. Heck, let's talk about something that really IS important to me: if I were offered the chance to become a successful writer - name recognition, self-sufficiency on writing profits alone, the works - at the cost of losing Angela, I would shrug and turn it down. Writing is completely a part of who I am and what I do, and I'd continue to write no matter what, but Angela is worth more than that to me. Heck, even if turning down the deal meant I'd never be able to write a decent story again, I'd still stick with Angela. That's what promises *mean* to me. It doesn't make sense, from my perspective, to make a promise if you know already the conditions under which you'd break it.
Not to say I'm some kind of superior being who wouldn't ever break a promise no matter the situation. I'm sure somewhere in my psychological profile are innumerable weaknesses that someone could use to make me love Big Brother or whatever. But I don't know where they are, and they're not choices I would consciously make. That's what's weird to me: the idea of pre-forswearing yourself, of promising with caveats.
I suspect a big part of my not grokking that concept would be because I'm not polyamorous in the slightest. I nest. I settle down like lead BBs in alcohol. Some people can juggle these kind of multifaceted hierarchical loyalties, but it just confuses me. Ferrett writes a lot about his lifestyle, and he seems to enjoy it, so more power to him, but honestly, most of his relationship blog posts are almost gibberish to me. It's like people who enjoy the flavor of carrots: bafflement without malice; go in peace, yon dashing strangers.
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Thus, this story was interesting, and I could see that it was heartfelt, but I couldn't feel it myself. Malcolm didn't seem to have a lot in common with Julianne, and he didn't seem to take any pride in himself. The story posited that it was his refusal to give up his bond to Julianne that was his weakness, but to me, the more likely culprit was his dissatisfaction with who he was, his inability to claim his own identity instead of fading into the background - on purpose! - and then grousing that no one was paying attention to him.
If he had become the omnipresent spear-carrier and embraced that identity because it suited him, that would be one thing, but he seemed instead to slip into it as a balm of oblivion, as a way to forget himself and his troubles. Even at the end, he can't even identify himself to Julianne. (Now, I can support his decision in that specific instance because it was clearly something that would have just upset her and disrupted her happiness at that point. It would have been rude not to lie about who he was, but the lie is still symptomatic of the broader problem of Malcolm not liking who he is and constantly hiding behind a mask. And honestly, if Julianne's happiness in Faerie was so fragile that a mere remembrance of who she used to be could destroy her, then it strikes me that she wasn't actually happy, either. Basically, this is the story of two fundamentally unhappy people who find methods to conceal their unhappiness without addressing the underlying causes of their psychological problems.)