Polyamory

(sorry i didn't read your second post. hope you find relevant info hoos)

just to focus what i said a little better--i **do** have a few places in our relationship where i feel a twinge, and my interest is in getting /beyond/ that rather than ignoring it. i'm sort of looking for someone to tell me how to think through this stuff in order to become ok with it, because that's ultimately what i want even if i'm not 100% there yet right now.

I was in the same situation 5-6 years ago, hoos - I'm a pretty unjealous person to begin with, but once I thought of my gf's other bf as just another friend, I felt more comfortable. There were times when I would go out with friends and she would stay home; there were times when she would see her other bf and I would stay home. The only difference was the... activities. It sounds a little simplistic but it worked for me (though I ultimately had other issues with poly).

have you read The Ethical Slut? not for everybody but it might be helpful.

sounds like a license to smash imo

have you read The Ethical Slut? not for everybody but it might be helpful.

― sleeve, Monday, June 2, 2014 5:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i haven't, actually--been hearing about it for a while but haven't picked it up. good idea!

useta be ppl w aberrant ethical outlooks would form intentional communities w/likeminded practitioners in outlying areas rather than disseminating their experiments in living in the midst of the society of norms

advice dealing with the strange feeling i get when i stay home while they go for a prowl at pride

I can't assist you with the particulars, but the generalities may be good enough.

This is matter of feelings. The feelings give rise to thoughts, but the thoughts are only there to give the feelings a more definite form. The thoughts are neither true nor false, but simply exist as expressions of that feeling. They are bound to be ornate, involved, and ultimately misleading, while the feeling itself is extremely simple. Just dive straight at the feeling and feel it; the superficial thoughts will fade into irrelevancies and the essence of the situation will become clearer.

I hope that helps.

http://missemmamm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/amy.png

i'm sort of looking for someone to tell me how to think through this stuff in order to become ok with it, because that's ultimately what i want even if i'm not 100% there yet right now.

is there a particular reason why you want this?

because for me this partner is worth closing the gap.

That's why I was willing to try it with my then-gf too, a few years into our relationship. It was new territory for me, her, and the other guy, and we all tried to make it work. I don't regret the experience, but it had its pitfalls

Also I never read the Ethical Slut, but she had a copy and it was an illuminating book for her

I'll definitely grab TES at the library this week.

Are you seeing other people as well?

I'm not actively pursuing anybody--not enough time, honestly--but I'm open to it.

K. I think your best bet is to remain open to that possibility so things don't feel one sided.

Oh yeah--I learned my lesson on the importance of that when I spent years with a partner who saw other people while I didn't. Don't need to relearn how that leads to resentment.

Also just got some helpful suggestions elsewhere on the importance of getting to know other partners that are important to my partner--will have to follow through with that as well as checking out the book. Thx for the careful treading, yall.

rip ringtone bisexual crew ;_;

On a more serious note, my GF's other partner is a cishet dude who is monogamous to her and it seems to work out fine? They were together 5-6 years before she ever met me and she's had other partnerships and dalliances during that time. I can't exactly tell you what's in his mind tho.

rip ringtone bisexual crew ;_;

― uppers epilepsy sh@kedown (The Reverend), Monday, June 2, 2014 7:12 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*pours 1 out*

I just had to eventually recognize that I didn't have an ~abiding~ interest in men, woulda been disingenuous to talk like my infrequent blip on that radar was meaningful for my life.

how open is a hoos with his queer partner? are you guys discussing your discomfort? cause that strikes me as the only real way to work this through.

yeah we're open about this stuff, that's the name of the game, i just know i'm not the first person in the world to wonder about these questions, so i wanted some reading material to think through before i tried to name what i was feeling.

none of my biz, but based on past exp, i think crut's question is key. seems most important, if you're still sorting things out, to get at how you really feel. i.e., table for moment how you'd like or think you ought to feel, give yourself permission to not be cool w/ it, etc. work out from there.

Is there any distinction btw 'open relationship' type polyamory, where one/both parties 'go on the prowl' and one where there is a steady other/others involved?

having a partner "go on the prowl" just seems like a dick move on their part tbrrwu

Seems like a pretty "rawr" move to me, idk.

real-life open relationships don't involve either party 'going on the prowl' ime.

well, OKCupid works dandy too.

Just a turn of phrase.

Me and my gf both think the idea of the other fucking other people is really hot and that's the best way imo.

i can kind of see that Rev (tho i'm too jealous/insecure to ever actively seek that scenario out) but the thought of my partner just kissing someone else fills me with a deep sadness.

Kissing my partner and someone else at the same time was really fun ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sometimes I think my biggest problem in relationships is that I just really don't give a shit about the idea of them kissing or doing anything else with anybody else, but they *want* me to care (and/or don't want me to do things with other people). I've just always been wired this way or something, sometimes I feel like an alien, bystanders demanding that you should feel awful and bummed out about something that you don't actually.

a paragraph i found striking from ethical slut, which I'm barreling through now:

Unlearning Jealousy: To change the way you experience a feeling takes time, so expect a gradual process, learning as you go, by trial and error. And there will be trials, and you will make errors. Start by giving yourself permission to learn. Allow yourself to not know what you don't know, to be ignorant. You must allow yourself to make mistakes; you have no choice. So reassure yourself: there is no graceful way to unlearn jealousy. It's kind of like learning to skate-you have to fall down and make a fool of yourself a few times before you become as graceful as a swan. The challenge comes in learning to establish within yourself a strong foundation of internal security that is not dependent on sexual exclusivity or ownership of your partner. This difficult work is part of the larger question of how to grasp your personal power and learn to understand and love yourself without such a desperate need for another person to validate you. You become free to give and receive validation, not from need or obligation, but from love and caring.

take care of yourself, dude

^^^

i went through this once. long-term girlfriend in college wanted to open things up since we went to schools about an hour away from each other, and she was into the polyamory/sex adventure stuff. like, she got mad at me because i didn't want to make a retail porno with her when some indie porn production company visited her school and gave a presentation. i sorta dated her because i had this idea i was some groovy libertine sex rebel, but when actually faced with it i realized i wasn't as comfortable with it as i thought.

then in my 20s i went through one night stands, short term flings, etc. and same thing happened again. not as much of a cool, groovy sex dude as i thought. i've made peace with the fact that i'm a boring, white-bread, long-term, monogamous relationship person. i don't think there should be pressure to be anything you don't want or enjoy, whether it's polyamory or plain ole' monogamy. it's all up to what you want and enjoy since it's your life, bottom line.

TS: groovy libertine sex rebel vs. cool, groovy sex dude

;)

i've made peace with the fact that i'm a boring, white-bread, long-term, monogamous relationship person.

Yup, that's me too. And what is described above as "unlearning jealousy," which I have tried to do before (although I've never actually tried an open relationship) feels to me uncomfortably close to learning to bury your anger.

i read the ethical slut because i was infatuated with a poly-leaning woman (and had been before, to my chagrin). i was not very impressed. it seemed like there was something undertheorized about it. like, since the premise is the validation of some form of unconventional romantic or sexual arrangements, or not even unconventional but socially undefined, so that people interested in them essentially have no script to work from, what the book really has to appeal to is some indeterminate combination of a) self-actualization talk, b) contractualized liberal-individualist talk, c) touchy-feely communicative interpersonal relating talk, and d) moralizing directed at whatever it is (usually about you and your hangups) that stops you from making it work, although the bottom line is more or less always eventually 'welp some people are like this, some people are like that, maybe you are or aren't'. the basic orientation toward experimenting without ethical guiderails seems right (and it appeals to what are intuitively the right things to appeal to, more basic or more personal touchstones for what would be ethical or what would be fulfilling or what would work), but the mixture doesn't come off right somehow.

I see the monogamous relationship as a kind of civilizational compromise. I get the arguments against it, and I realize that there might be alternative arrangements that work for some people, but I don't think that you can get rid of the supposed drawbacks of monogamy without bringing a bunch of new problems on yourself, and I think most people prefer the problems of monogamy to the problems of polyamory.

i don't think it even needs to get that theoretical, the choice can just be based on personal preferences. i like monogamy because i prefer deep, time-invested relationships with people, and there's a lot of other shit i'd rather be doing than spreading my attention around among different people, which is emotionally exhausting for me. everyone has a different personality, brain, tastes, etc., and i think people should feel free to enjoy themselves however they want (ya know, within responsible limits).

I think I also just like the reliability of the monogamous relationship, like after a long day of work you know that the same person you love will be there waiting for you instead of wondering whether she'll be somewhere else or whether you're going somewhere else. It's also a lot harder for me to conceive of having kids outside monogamy, like little kids REALLY want to know that the same people are coming home every day. Although I guess there are people who make it work, and kids can adjust to things.

It also depends on how much sex means to you.

well, sex with other people that is

I think I also just like the reliability of the monogamous relationship, like after a long day of work you know that the same person you love will be there waiting for you instead of wondering whether she'll be somewhere else or whether you're going somewhere else.

Sure, but this seems like precisely the kind of thing that people inclined towards polyamory could work out with each other. Ground rules, comfort zones, this-but-not-that, these days but definitely not these days. Actually I think these can be really strengthening to the primary relationship because they reaffirm that the time you do spend together is by choice and desire, not out of habit, that this coming-home-to-each-other is a core value in the relationship that you aren't willing to trade off, etc. These things take different shapes of course - I don't believe all poly people have a 'primary' person but this is the version that clicks the most for me.

I do agree with j's take on The Ethical Slut - I haven't read it since 2000 or so (similar deal, was dating a poly person, somewhat more hippy-ish, less intellectually oriented, and carefree than me) and found it exciting but frustratingly glib and granola. But if it's clicking for a HOOS then the more the merrier! I actually think the core point can probably be usefully extracted from the title - you want to have multiple romantic relationships, okay, there are ethical and not-ethical ways to do that, just as there are ethical and non-ethical ways to be monogamous. The process of chipping away at your own biases/tendencies IS thorny, because it rides the edge between a conscious attempt to unspindle parts of your psyche from what amounts to a lifetime of this is what you want and this is the only way people can be happy together, and forcing yourself to do/think things that bottom-line, aren't really you. But to the extent that it's the former, hey, why not?

The 'primary partner' is also a phenomenon.