Exploring Polyamory, One mistake at a time

THIS JUST IN!!!

OK Cupid has been my go-to dating site for close to five years and now I can see why.  They actually pay attention to what their users’ wants and interests are.  Seeing this almost made me cry tears of happiness because one of the hardships I have found with poly dating is the time it takes explaining what poly is and how it works.  Now I will be able to connect with people who are familiar with it already.  This is going to cut out so much work.  Thank you, OKC!!!

What “relationship milestones” do you care about?

Friends, put on your flak jackets. It’s time to drop some honesty on yet another uncomfortable topic: love.

We use the word “love” to mean a lot of things. Throughout this post I’ll be referring to the romantic kind of love, the kind that usually involves sexual attraction, AKA “falling in love”.

Love: The Shocking Truth  

The truth about love is: it happens. A lot. It happens at appropriate times (like, when you’re in a long-term relationship with someone great), and also inappropriate ones (like, when you meet somebody at a party and have a weirdly awesome conversation and then make out in a bathroom). Love is just not all that concerned with appropriateness. 

  We have a mythology surrounding romantic love that says it’s a special, rare feeling, reserved for just a few people in your whole life. It says that love takes time to develop, and that the feelings you experience at the outset of a relationship are not love, but something else (“infatuation”, “a crush”, or my favorite, “twitterpation“ (see Bambi)). It also says that love is generally constant and reliable, and that falling in love is A MAJOR LIFE EVENT, about which SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! 

  In summation, the plot of every romantic comedy: if you fall in love with somebody, you better go out and get ‘em - even if they’re already married and they don’t really like you and you’re their stepsister and you’re leaving for a six-year residency in Mongolia in the morning - because you’ll probably love them forever and you might not ever love anyone else. 

We are so enamored with this idea that we tend to round some feelings up to love (when you first met the person you later married), and others down to not-love (your weekend fling with a Spanish dancer). The thing is, those experiences feel remarkably similar from the inside.

That Old Feeling

Love is a feeling. It’s hot and fluttery and tingly. I get it in my guts and chest and face. The feeling is accompanied by a series of enthusiastic thoughts, such as “This person is the greatest person ever”, “I wonder how I can make this person feel good”, and/or “I want to climb onto this person and put my face close to their face and smoosh my body onto their body.”

  I have felt this way, to varying degrees, towards probably a hundred different people. Actually, that’s a lie; it is way more. When I was a teenager, I felt it towards approximately three people per day. Lately, the torrent has slowed to once every month or three (I am a bit of a love-fiend, I know. I don’t think such frequency is average.) And I’m married! 

  And speaking of being married, yes, I do experience this feeling towards my husband. It feels different now than it felt when we first met: softer, warmer, with more comfort and less urgency. But the love I have for my husband is surrounded by a bunch of other feelings and thoughts that are much rarer than love, in my experience. These include: a deep mutual understanding of and appreciation for each other’s personalities, values, and quirks (e.g.: he finds my love-fiendishness endearing); years of shared experience; a lot of conversations about the kind of future we’re aiming for; and plenty of similar tastes and preferences (e.g. New Orleans, humor, dogs, dark chocolate, Ray Charles, The Daily Show, preferred frequency of house cleaning/travel/sex). 

  But underneath all that is the same feeling: love.

  Instead of trying to deny it, or ignore it, or call it something different in each different situation, I want to call it like I feel it: I’m in love. I’m in love with my husband, several of my friends, most of the musicians who move me (including some who are dead, such as Chet Baker, who would sympathize), and a handful of people I hardly know but have had good conversations/dances/make out sessions with. I fall in love all the time. 

  And really, it’s no big deal. It’s actually kind of fun, once you get used to it.

  I love you. NBD.

The kids today are having a casual sex revolution. “Hookup culture” is akin to “free love”, but with more condoms and fewer hallucinogens. And I’m for it! In case you haven’t heard, I like casual sex. It’s my observation that as casual sex becomes more acceptable behavior (for men and women), it lessens the shame and anxiety associated with the sex that people are having anyway (and have been having since the dawn of time, and are going to keep having). I’m thrilled that young people are beginning to feel they have the option of exploring sex, safely and consensually, outside of the boundaries of long-term commitment. 

  But why not have the option of exploring love, too, with or without a side of commitment? If we can agree that our bodies are not inherently dangerous, can’t we do the same for our hearts?

  I suggest we take a page from the casual sex book here. Let’s lift some of the weighty grandiosity off the shoulders of love, and allow it to be what it is: a sweet, ephemeral, exciting feeling to experience and share.

Imagine if you could say to a casual partner, “I love you. It’s no big deal. It doesn’t mean you’re The One, or even one of the ones. It doesn’t mean you have to love me back. It doesn’t mean we have to date, or marry, or even cuddle. It doesn’t mean we have to part ways dramatically in a flurry of tears and broken dishes. It doesn’t mean I’ll love you until I die, or that I’ll still love you next year, or tomorrow.”

  Then later, perhaps over brunch, you could tackle the question of whether there’s anything to do about it. All of the aforementioned - dating, marriage, cuddling, etc - are options, and there are an infinite number of other options (Skee ball, sailing around the world, double suicide). These are all things you can now choose or not choose, as two conscious adult human beings. The important distinction is that none of them is implied just by saying the word “love”.

  The Point 

There are advantages to separating the wacky, butterflies-in-the-gut, unpredictable feeling of “love” from the ideally rational, cool-headed decisions and agreements of “commitment”. For one: love is just not a good enough reason to commit to somebody (trust me, I’ve tried). You need a few other ingredients: mutuality, compatibility, and availability, for starters.

  The big advantage for the lover is that falling in love will feel less scary, life-threatening, and crazy-making. As long as love is theoretically reserved for people whom you want to date and possibly marry, falling in love will be confusing and dramatic. If we interpret this particular set of feelings and thoughts as an epic, life-changing event, we’ll have no choice but to get really, really attached to our beloved. We’ll throw a lot of expectations at them (“Love me back! Love me only! Love me forever!”), and feel hurt and resentful if the feeling is not mutual. We’ll imprint upon them like baby ducks, and resolve to stick with them through thick and thin, through hell or high water, through abuse and neglect and lies and bickering and frustration and mutually-assured destruction, whether or not it brings us (or anyone else) any kind of joy. 

  The big advantage for the beloved is that being loved will feel less like an attack, and more like a gift. The little-discussed fact is that it’s super uncomfortable to be loved when the feeling is not mutual (see my song Please). So uncomfortable, in fact, that many of us would rather act like callous, cold-hearted assholes than be in the same room as the person who loves us. We panic, we get distant, we deny any interest or care for the other person, we stop returning their texts. But that’s not an aversion to love, or to the lover; it’s the attachment and expectation being hurled in our direction with such intensity. If love was casual, we could take it as a high compliment, say “thanks!”, and feel some warm fuzzies. We might also begin to feel some compassion for our lover (who, after all, has a stomach full of butterflies and can’t eat or sleep very well), which might allow us to make better and kinder decisions about how to respond.

  If love was casual, perhaps it wouldn’t collide into our sense of identity or our plans for the future at such high velocity. It wouldn’t feel so personal. If it’s not mutual, so what? If it doesn’t turn into a relationship, so what? I have feelings and desires all the time that go unsatisfied. Sometimes (okay, a lot of times), late at night, I want Chef’s Perfect Chocolate ice cream, but Creole Creamery closes at 10pm. Do I panic? Do I call Creole Creamery and leave a series of desperate messages? Do I curl into a ball and lament that without Chef’s Perfect Chocolate, I am a broken person who is not worthy of ice cream? No. I deal. I feel my feelings, whine a little if I need to, and go without. Like a grown-ass woman.

  And here’s my favorite part: if love is casual - not something rare and dramatic and potentially painful, but something common and easy and mutually enjoyable - we all get to feel more love, and share more love. 

  Sounds lovely, right?

  ****

17. How do you experience love?

16. How do you feel about compersion?

Just for any kids at home who are unaware…

Compersion - A feeling of joy when a loved one invests in and takes pleasure from another romantic or sexual relationship. 

Compersion is a beautiful idea. As my wife hasn’t had any other partners I can’t comment on it from a first hand perspective. But the concept is lovely. I feel a lot of happiness for others, when I see people in love and/or looking happy it usually gives me the warm fuzzies, and I hope if Squee ever dates another I feel compersion over jealousy. Likewise I hope if I start dating, Squee feels compersion, I think she’s already feeling it with me and my squishie - whom I need to give a nickname to…

15. How do you feel about jealousy?

I feel like jealousy is natural, but the goal is controlling it. My relationship before my wife was not a healthy one and my self esteem was so low that my former partner could walk over me and I kept coming back for more.

In short; she was not faithful multiple times and it hurt me. Yet I kept going back to her because I thought no-one else would love me.

This insecurity relating to it my first few years with Squee even though I knew it was irrational. When we first tried something outside of monogamy, I was worried about jealousy becoming overwhelming. Instead I felt passion and lust, partly from what was being directed at her. 

This destroyed my ideas of jealousy. 

Crayon has gone to various kink events with and without me, although initially without. And when I knew she was going I would feel a twinge of envy, not jealousy. I wanted to go, and experience these things and spank that bottom and tie her up etc. 

The key difference here is that I wasn’t worried that someone was going to take something I have (i.e, My relationship with Crayon) but envious that they got the opportunity to have fun with her. 

I think this is a relic from when this was the 14-day challenge, as I’m taking the extended 28 days I’m going to defer this answer until the end of questioning and so will swap it with Number 28 - So…

28. What do you think is important for a successful non-monogamous relationship?

It sounds super clichéd but communication. Had I not communicated my desire to be poly I would have continued to repress that side of me, and lie by omission to my wife. Opening up was hard, for both of us. But the end result was a stronger relationship and an important reminder. It’s not fair to try and protect the ones you love from who you are. On either of you. Trying to repress how I felt was a toxic element and trying to protect Squee from that was really one sided and condescending.

She can handle who I am, and if she can’t then she shouldn’t be bound to me by false information.

It’s not easy, but the lesson I’ve learnt is that if you feel like you can’t tell your partner something, you need to. These conversations are the hardest, but the only way to enact a change is through action. And sometimes you need a bit of turbulence to make you appreciate the smooth ride.

Hello! Honestly, what, about the message of my experience of poly. Well I don’t have much yet. But if you’re in a relationship with someone you love and you feel like you might be poly, you owe it to both of you to be honest. Squee noted that I have been much more connected since I came out. I didn’t realise how much trying to repress my feelings was repressing more of me. Everything has felt easier since I stopped dragging the baggage around with me. Honesty and open communication are so important.

Take 2:

Being open and vulnerable about what you desire with your partner can be a risk. They can say ‘no’ and leave you to decide between that which you crave and the relationship you’ve built, or they could view you in a new light which means they don’t want to be there, or they could see that this is too important for you not to pursue but that they can’t be a part of it. Or they can decide to through caution to the wind and try to help you fulfil your dreams.

I’m really enjoying KimchiCuddles - A super cute comic and have enjoyed it since before I started to identify as poly. I also love QuestionableContent though it’s not strictly a non-monogamy site Jeff handles his characters across a broad spectrum and I think it’s easy to feel represented there.

As for other blogs and such I’m still finding them, I struggle following non-tumblr blogs as I haven’t found a RSS reader I like since google reader was stopped (I’m sure there’s one out there).

Any and all suggestions are welcome, for RSS readers and blogs alike!

The above still stands, although I’ve also added to my podcast pulls ‘Poly in the Cities’ and ‘Poly Weekly’. I’m also enjoying Poly pop on YouTube.

Those who say Polyamory is ‘fucked up’ This is AWESOME!

Original Answer

I’ve not had anything directed at me. I’ve heard non-directed comments about how if you loved someone truly then you’d love only them and the stupid usual shit. Squee mentioned to a girl she worked with and was treated as if she was a leper and that bothers me. Especially given the specifics of that person’s interpretation of monogamy.

If people say things I’m comfortable to fight my corner.