Polyamory

I'm not going to share my opinions on polyamory; people should feel free to do whatever works for them and their partners.

But I just wanted to call out this quote:

One good Califia quote is something like "don't blame the other woman for your divorce, blame the screaming and china-throwing you did when you found out about her."

As the total fucking next-level bullshit that it is. Because when a man has been having an affair, those are your two options: blame the other woman, blame yourself for your anger. The man in the equation has ~nothing to do with it~ and should of course just be excluded from all blame from anything ever! It's women who are responsible for the sexual behaviour of men! Always! Never the men themselves! I have no time for this logic.

It's in a piece where she's largely talking about lesbian relationships.

Gender is salient, when talking about the ways that male sexual behaviour is excused and justified. But in specific cases, whether it's a man or a woman doing the straying, to reduce it down to "one of two people are to blame: the jilted party or the other woman" HELLO THERE IS A THIRD PERSON IN THIS EQUATION WHO IS THE ONE WHO MADE THE CHOICE. Why not look at the person who made that choice? It's still flawed logic, and I still find it gross.

Anyway, I'm out. This is not something I can debate without getting emotional; it's not about polyamory, it's about infidelity which is not the same thing, and I don't want to waste my emotion on this.

Never mind. Every time I post on ILX lately, I wish I hadn't; this is no different.

As you were.

when the moons hit your eyes, like some big pizza pies, that's polyamore.

This thread needs a little bit of me!

http://www.rmi.org/Content/Images/Staff_ALovins.gif

http://www.rmi.org/Amory+B.+Lovins

come to think of it, poly-o amore is kind of like having the best part of the pizza, without the pizza

what a hacky signifier!

lol

i thought this was a terrific article

Most of the polyamory advice literature does not advocate for dense interdependent networks over a lifetime anyway. Their brand of polyamory is individual freedom rooted in personal responsibility and self-actualization, which fits much better into our current neoliberal opportunity structure. An interviewee from “The Ethical Slut” says it best:

“My open sexual lifestyle gives me personal freedom, independence and responsibility in a way that being an exclusive couple doesn’t. Because I’m responsible, every day, for my needs being met (or not), and for creating and maintaining the relationships in my life, I can take nothing for granted…and so this lifestyle gives me a very concrete feeling of individuality that I re-create every day.”

This is “expressive individualism” (à la Bellah’s “Habits of the Heart”) at its finest. The polyamory advice literature soaks in a sea of middle-class self-actualization, where seekers express their authentic selves through individualized decisions about relationships. Much like the human potential movement of the 1960s, the purpose of relationships in polyamory is to contribute to one’s individual self-growth and to allow others the individual freedom to do the same. This individualistic approach to relationships is also “convenient” in that it allows partners to be dispensable if we find better psychological or economic opportunities somewhere else. Polyamory expert Deborah Anapol describes this so called new paradigm as one where the purpose of relationships is to “further the psychological and spiritual development of the partners,” which she contrasts with the “old paradigm,” which she says “expects family members to replace individual desires with group agendas.”

As one polyamory advice website states succinctly, “polyamory encourages, allows, and almost demands that you be an individual first and foremost.”

...Seeing ourselves as part of a larger system (whether of three or 300 people) leads to taking social responsibility for the health of that system. Can we solve polyamory’s jealousy problem? Perhaps, perhaps not. But what we can do is stop pretending that we don’t know where jealousy comes from.

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/14/jealous_of_what_solving_polyamorys_jealousy_problem/

anecdotally I seem to be noticing a rise in polyamory among folx in my age group. good for them!

that looks interesting, but i'm sure it's not as hilarious as this badiouian-maoist critique of polyamory https://revolutionaryphilosophycommittee.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/a-communist-critique-of-polyamory/

hahah yeah i read that the other day it probably belongs itt

it does actually get at exactly what bothered me about badiou's argument, though what i took as shortfalls in his argument they're taking as virtues

I do like that article's critique of the individualist narrative of jealousy, which I often find very off-putting in writing about polyamory. I don't like the author's quid-aggy tone though, which makes polyamory sound like some kind of boutique relationship structure.

I'm also not sure what she means by "community" in modern terms, and I'm not sure I buy her identification of jealousy as a modern capitalist phenomenon. It's not like the term "cuckold" came about in the industrial revolution.

I don't like the author's quid-aggy tone though, which makes polyamory sound like some kind of boutique relationship structure.

not sure what quid-aggy is so this sentence kinda confuses me

I don't think she's saying jealousy itself is a modern capitalist phenomenon though, I think she's saying that the conventional polyamorous understanding of jealousy as an individual failure in a sea of individuals seeking self-actualization is--despite its claim to subversion--actually reinforcing a capitalist logic of individualism.

^^^

when what we ought to be forwarding, i think she's arguing, is an ethic of health of the structures of relationships we're in (& the individuals who make up those structures), no matter what they look like.

quiditties sand agonies xps

Seeing ourselves as part of a larger system (whether of three or 300 people) leads to taking social responsibility for the health of that system. Can we solve polyamory’s jealousy problem? Perhaps, perhaps not. But what we can do is stop pretending that we don’t know where jealousy comes from.

300? is there a village form where they all fuck each other? is that what that shyamalan movie was about?

it does actually get at exactly what bothered me about badiou's argument, though what i took as shortfalls in his argument they're taking as virtues

ha yeah, badiou is just about self-aware enough in his bourgeois maoism to avoid spelling out the silliest implications

Neoliberalism has certainly eroded our ability to rely on extended families and stable communities, which I think both makes traditional marriage more challenging and actually may be behind the growing interest in poly family structures (at least a few of my friends have said "I would be interested in raising kids with more than one other person"). I suppose inasmuch as that lack of community/extended family breeds insecurity and instability, it could also contribute to jealousy -- it's more scary to risk losing the person you're committed to when that's the ONLY person you know you can rely on.

Her point that fostering trust in every direction in the relationship helps to avoid jealousy makes sense. I did find myself wondering how much it was aided by the Japanese small plate cooking class she felt the need to mention, or rather, the material comfort implied thereby.

quiditties sand agonies xps

― killfile with that .exe, you goon (wins), Wednesday, August 5, 2015 8:30 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol sand agonies

in my vagina?

Coming out of my second, and most intense poly arrangement, which offered two basic life lessons:

1. Setting boundaries should be done quickly and resolutely; nobody should feel guilty about their feelings.

2. The pleasure of fucking somebody who's not your partner > the pain of knowing somebody is fucking your partner. Then, the reverse is true.

Our small talk consisted of Bourdieu, Navier-Stokes equations, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

i dunno seems like it would be hard keeping all the hyphens straight let alone figuring out whose night was whose

haha i hated the parts of the article where the rhapsodizing about the relationship happened, it made them sound so unappealingly pretentious

2. The pleasure of fucking somebody who's not your partner > the pain of knowing somebody is fucking your partner. Then, the reverse is true.

― got a long list of ilxors (fgti), Wednesday, August 5, 2015 11:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel the shit out of this

These fellows just love talking about themselves!

In the working space I'm using today, eventually two other people came in and at the coffee maker one of them asked the other how she came to be using this working space, after her short answer, his return answer was very long, a little bit about where he was from and where he had lived, then a large chunk about explaining what polyamory was.

I left and went back to my computer but forgot my headphones so could still hear him for some time. Eventually they walked past, and she said "well thank you for sharing", and he said "oh no problem I just love to share"

I don't have problems with polyamory as such (people should be able to find whatever forms of intimacy work for them, and poly oversharing is probably less harmful, because less institutionalized, than its heteronormative equivalents), but I will probably always find this funny: https://mobile.twitter.com/merrittkopas/status/680555624917299204

I dont have a problem with anything, other than war and people talking

Legit scourges, to be sure

http://nypost.com/2017/10/12/ive-been-polyamorous-for-almost-a-decade/

I feel like every article on polyamory relies on the same cliches. "50% of marriages end in divorce anyway" -- actually not true, one of those unsourced stats that has been repeated for generations now, and even less true when you account for education, age of marriage, age of divorce (not such a big deal if people divorce after their kids are out of the house).

Second the straw man idea that, in monogamy, "one person is supposed to meet all of your physical and emotional desires. I never got that message. I'm just a pessimist about the ability of "all" of ones needs and desires to be met anyway, and I think the ones met by monogamy outweigh the ones lost.

Anyway the author has neither kids nor a main partner so I don't really get the point. You date multiple people, cool story.

Ppl without kids and marriage exist yknow

For the rest yeah otm

Oh yeah of course. I just mean I have yet to see the article that's like "I'm 55 and we raised our 3 kids in a polyamorous multi-co-parent relationship and it worked out great". Maybe one day we will.

polyamory has def gotten more exposure/press/discussion for people too young to yet be 55 with 3 kids. though we're not so far from that point probably. "the ethical slut" came out in what, 97? I feel like even at that point though there were testimonials from older, more hippie-oriented "it takes a village" type thinkers.

to be fair, it is not surprising that ppl who were early adopters AND wanted kids AND had them AND chose to raise them in something other than a primarily dyadic deal AND it went well AND they want to write about it is a small subset. i imagine there's a much much larger universe of, say, ppl with a steady primary raising kids together, but they also have other relationships that are not parenting-oriented in any way.

as for the one-person-meeting-all-needs thing --- doesn't this mainly come up in response to objections from monogo types? like specifically in response to people expressing worry along the lines "my partner being interested in other ppl necessarily means there's something insufficient/wrong with me or our relationship." i don't think that's a strawman, I think it's something a ton of people really believe even at a pop-psych --- oh you noticed him checking out another woman, or sharing interests that you two don't share, this a sign of a problem ahhhh!!!

obv there is a wide range of healthier ways of understanding this and I think most mature monogo ppl are well seasoned in recognizing that it's natural someone might have other desires and it doesn't mean something is wrong. I think most poly ppl are at that same place and just additionally would say (speaking broadly) that to take that stance and then also additionally say "but it cannot and must not be acted upon," doesn't add up or work for them --- and maybe that it amounts to the strawman position, that in PRACTICE the single partner is being expected to meet all needs, or that it is desirable/acceptable that the needs of people you love should be suppressed and go unmet.

no judging here as I do know many monogo ppl who seem very happy and no doubt work through these moments in thoughtful, considerate ways through a lot of serious and emotionally honest conversations. to me it's just always seemed like being poly (with its own set of serious and emotionally honest conversations) was closer to ideal and clicked more naturally in my own specific brain. but I'm not an evangelist - it is not for everybody.

The thing that baffles me about polyamorous people is that they're actually able to find people to be polyamorous with. It's exceedingly rare for me to meet even one romantically interesting person; I could be as a polyamorous as you like in theory without ever exceeding monogamy in practice. But apparently there are lots of people out there finding multiple simultaneous partners, drawing only from the relatively shallow pool of other polyamorists.

The inescapable conclusion: polyamorists are the most irresistibly attractive people on earth.

On the other hand, the pool of available polyamorists doesn't deplete as quickly. They can be in one or more relationships and still be available.

Maybe they're just really good at sexing.

Maybe I'm insane but I think reactionary anti-monogamy is stupid

Monogamy is awesome, the benefits of descending through the aging process with your body and your partner's body ensconced in a protective bathysphere is marvellous.

I don't believe anybody who says "humans aren't inherently monogamous" because they're wrong, humans are and society is. The psychological construct of monogamy is imo an intrinsic necessity

All the best poly-relationships, that I've observed, are just hybrids and extensions of that experience imo

On the other hand, the pool of available polyamorists doesn't deplete as quickly. They can be in one or more relationships and still be available.
― jmm, Sunday, October 15, 2017 1:17 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good point! I hadn't thought of that.

honestly i don't get why anybody who hadn't had direct negative experience with it would be anti-polyamory.

i am too needy to be polyamorous but idgaf how other people live their lives, do whatever makes you happy

If you're in a city/region with a big kink network, it normally follows that there's a decent-ish pool of poly-friendly people. At least in my very limited experience anyhow…

I know a poly triad where all three are bringing kids from previous marriages. The logistics of that are beyond impressive to me. Two sets of stepchildren each, screw that.