Polyamory

my life is so weird sometimes

or ironic tooth loss

i dunno, it's been a weird couple of weeks

if anyone's ever fancied bumpin munchkins with me, dial 360-MIX-ALOT and kick them nasty thoughts

Poly, to me, always smacked a bit of one person getting all the cake, as it were, and everyone else just more or less putting up with the "arrangement" so they can at least keep the person they're shagging... but perhaps it is just a mindset I dont understand.

Which is why I find it all rather brain-breaking. I think the 2 girls are involved together somehow too... but I'm not sure... and one of the girls before this was a pretty normal well adjusted long-term relationships type, so god knows. Maybe hes like the hypno-toad in Futurama, and none will resist his demands. Or something.

It is an excuse for one person to have their cake and eat it too. It is the refuge of the emotionally selfish who doesn't mind hurting everyone around them except themselves.

Or, on the other hand, if you're that bored with a relationship that you want to start screwing around - sorry - bringing other people into it, then that relationship wasn't built on anything particularly strong in the first place.

DUD DUD DUD DUD DUD DUD DUD!!!

Not that I speak from experience either.

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.

Logistics of kids full stop

Again idk why poly gets bad rap there

Even if one has no interest in engaging oneself with poly-relationship stuff, this sort of line of discussion has been useful for me in conducting emotional labour for my various friends who are dealing with extra-marital affairs, cheating, open relationships, as well as poly-stuff

Tbf more than two people helping to raise kids can potentially be very helpful -- in laws and aunts and cousins and friends and the like. I'm just more skeptical of the ability of people to commit to each other and go parenting in that sort of complex, multidirectional way. The main thing I believe in is that kids are better off when there is at least one or two primary parents who are always going to be there. I guess if you have that nailed down, maybe the drifting in and out of others would be less problematic. But idk. The whole anti-self-denial streak I see in a lot of writing about poly worries me when it comes to parenting because parenting requires a lot of self denial.

it gets a bad rap because the most vocal and visible poly people are fuckin’ insufferable

the most vocal and visible poly people are fuckin’ insufferable

like cultists

this badiouian-maoist critique of polyamory

amazing!

revolutionaryphilosophycommittee.wordpress.com is no longer available.
The authors have deleted this site.

rip

i wayback machine'd it, you should too?

https://web.archive.org/web/20141015103013/http://revolutionaryphilosophycommittee.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/a-communist-critique-of-polyamory/

thanking u!

Those who engage in polyamory speak about loving multiple people, yet they never once ask the question, ‘what is love?’

badiou don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more

this badiouian-maoist critique of polyamory

amazing!

― budo jeru

at least we don't have to content with a baeddelian critique of polyamory (lol as if such i could even imagine a self-identified baeddel who wasn't poly)

whoa i'm kinda surprised by how anti-poly ilx seems to be!

tbf i pretty much was until a few years ago too.

i've been chatting with gay friends about poly and their experiences with it for a few years now. and recently agreed with my partner that we basically consider ourselves to be poly. this after being wary of the label but then realizing it makes a lot of sense for where i'm at. anyone else? obviously i'm going to invite you to our next orgy. just kidding, i'm probably more guarded and selective than ever. and honestly i barely have time for one side hook-up. one important realization i had was you can be poly and still only be romantically / physically involved with one person! or none at all. it's just about being open to a whole spectrum of kinds of relationships that can exist independent of one another or connected in ways that they "want" to be. and that each situation is unique. one common thread i've encountered lately with friends is the weird feeling of being nested with person x and going through dating woes at the same time. kind of a trip but experiencing them both at the same time gives each more space and perspective than they would otherwise have ime.

anywho for the first time i've been interested in finding other people who are on the same page with this stuff and not so much coming from the transposing-patriarchal-monogomy-onto-their-queer-relationships default. but this place is super repressed. so for now it's not a huge priority or anything.

"this place" meaning where i live, not ilx

I'm fairly live and let live with poly. It wouldn't work for me, but my best friend did it for 20 years with success.

The only time I've ever seen it go bad is when someone is coerced into it while in a previously non-poly relationship. I.e., a monogamous relationship where one party inflexibly decides they want an open relationship and suggest to the other party that this is the only way they'll remain in their life.

But that's more a trait of abuse than anything inherently to polyamory.

Ironically, the reason it wouldn't work for me isn't my devotion to being with one person, but my inability to spread love across multiple people. I barely have the energy to date a single person, and if I had multiple, some would feel left out in the cold as I would probably retreat into myself to where they were forgotten.

But there may have been a time in my 30s where it could have worked. I just didn't try.

yeah, the time thing. so me and my partner started by "opening things up" in gay parlance. we had been monogomous for years before that. and we started talking about how we had "the itch." it took a lot of trial and error to figure out what felt ok and what felt weird and threatening. "playing together" was one of the first things that felt ok. so we were on apps and all that. we ended up meeting this amazing guy. we both fell in love with him. i will say that it's probably the hardest and deepest i've ever fallen in love with anyone in my life. i was crazy in love. it also took a lot of time and energy. to the point where a lot of other things in my life were neglected. BUT it never felt like "oh, i don't have the time for this" because love makes time haha. the weird thing about it though, was that he was super threatened by open relationships - so we were in a closed triad! which was weird. and ended up really pushing my partner and i even further into the territory of "poly makes sense for us." so once we broke up with him - an amicable but hard break-up, because he had to follow a career path on the other side of the country, and an unending long-distance relationship proved to be impossible for us - we found ourselves in a very poly-friendly place and had a lot of sex with other people. now, for me, the appeal of that is starting to wear off. it was fun and all but other priorities are more motivating now, particularly project get-the-hell-out-of-utah which might take a few years. i would make time for a relationship if i felt that jittery "omg i have feelings for you" kind of thing. but tbh i'm starting to realize that's actually pretty rare and not something i'm likely to just stumble on.

this sounds selfish but I feel like I barely have time for monogamy

With the steep decline in dinner parties and apartment parties, it's going being around poly people who are just more up for going out and doing things and building community.

it's been my experience that .. well, because i had the desire to explore outside of my primary relationship, that being able to explore has made me pay a lot more attention to the blind spots and "taking for granted" stuff in my primary. things that were obligations or "things i have to make time for" with my main squeeze / nesting partner turned into rewarding things i get to do with my primary partner because of the uniqueness of our relationship. we're closer than ever, and also more aware of the value each other has than ever.

(yikes, typo, meant to say: "With the steep decline in dinner parties and apartment parties, it's good being around poly people who are just more up for going out and doing things and building community.)

That's the upside in Portland. Downside (or at least has taken getting used to): so many people here lived their first few decades in evangelical/Mormon/cult backgrounds that the righteousness and "we're surrounded" practices from that past carry over to the poly community.

by "we're surrounded" do you mean, like, "we're advanced and true everyone else is basic and lost" or something like that?

i'll admit to thinking that poly is an evolutionary step. all the things that people point to as things that "make sense" about poly and "are unhealthy" about monogomy seem to be objectively true to me. there's a lot of pressure in monogamy and relationships get cooked under pressure. let a bit of the pressure off and a relationship can breathe. that's the way i see it.

aside from the heartache of long distance, the other main point of difficulty with the "third" i mentioned above was that he was very frightened of open relationships, even the idea of it applying to us would send him into a spiral. i tried to gently coax him along over a period of months but learned the hard lesson that you either just have to embrace where a person is at with the question or take responsibility for your own values and detach. i think someone attached to monogamy vs someone open to polyamory is probably a fundamental difference in values, one of those things that you gotta be on the same page about if you're in a relationship together. in the case of my partner and i, we sort of moved together from one to the other - with one of us a little bit ahead, then the other catching up and moving a little bit ahead, etc.

i have heard stories of overzealous poly types with playbooks and homework etc. one of my friends recently fell in love with a third who lives in another city, and he would tell me that 3 would kind of tell him the rules of poly engagement, when he wasn't ready for all of them and just wanted to do what felt the most comfortable (in this case a don't-ask-don't-tell agreement with his husband/ltr). and then i've heard of people using poly as cover for a fucked up agenda, or possessive, rigid-monogamy ego trippers (mainly men) trying to "trap" poly women.

where i am right now, i think - what i want to avoid is reeling in a "situationship" with someone who doesn't know what they want.

one thing i'm most proud of lately is supporting my partner in reestablishing both friendship and sexual connection with his ex from 8 years ago. i used to feel pretty threatened by that, but now there's hardly any of that feeling left. a pang every now and then that i process. we're all going to meet up and get coffee soon - depending on how i feel it might even turn into a sexual thing. that is how i first met my partner - hooking up with those two when they were still together! so in a funny way it would be like old times haha. just gotta take it easy and make sure that i genuinely like the guy - don't want to overstep and then withdraw. this reestablished connection is useful for me too, because he's a car mechanic and gives good deals to family. i was joking with some of my other gay friends that you know you've got a good thing going when you're just passing around venmo amounts to each other all the time lol.

i've definitely become someone who thinks sex is "just sex". the more i have it the more it just becomes its own thing that has a very glancing relationship to intimacy. or, like, it's intimate in the way that a conversation is intimate. i.e. there's a huge spectrum. it can be many different things, touch on many different levels of intimacy, but it doesn't mean much outside of itself. i laugh when i see people say "my boo cheated on me" or whatever and they're all righteously angry about it, like some huge boundary is crossed and they're gonna immediately throw that person away. and yes, lying and keeping a secret like that that is a sign of the larger problem of lack of trust. but not the "cheating" itself you know? unless you're talking about sti exposure, then yes the clandestine sex is a violation too. but the way people talk about their monogomous other having emotional or physical intimacy with someone else as if it's this horrible act .. that seems so weird to me now. like, that right there is a relationship based on mutually supported fragility.

but at the same time.. i very much value stability and dependability. i want the comforts of a long-term partner. the promise of someone to come home to. growing old together, farting together, etc. long-term partnership animates me in a special way. if people find that it genuinely doesn't put too much pressure on them to just be monogomous then hell yeah, i get it. a little bit of extra safety maybe. we were monogomous after dating for two months for literally 5 years and i thought that was just how it was gonna be. i found that i tended to underestimate the degree to which the "rules" of monogamy created a feeling of stagnation. but that period of time devoted to establishing real trust, i think that was crucial.

this sounds selfish but I feel like I barely have time for monogamy

This is where I am, mentally anyway. (Emotionally, I have zero interest in finding someone new. My wife is awesome, and all I need.) I've never understood how anyone makes time to cheat on their spouse, or have more than one relationship going at a time. (Note that I am not saying being in a poly situation is equivalent to "cheating" on anyone!) I'm busy! Plus, I work from home! I couldn't meet someone else if I wanted to!

Not long ago my wife joked about finding someone new and I pointed out that since she doesn't drink, her options were to join a church or go to a gun range, and she said "Never mind."

by "we're surrounded" do you mean, like, "we're advanced and true everyone else is basic and lost" or something like that?

Yeah, a bit of that and also just "we've thought these things through and others haven't." And yeah, seeing others as "basic and lost" in comparison. This isn't everyone -- I just notice this from people who have grown up around that kind of belief and have transferred it here.

Personally, I'm just very happy not to have: a) the threatened/jealous feelings I had in monogamous relationships; b) the resentment I'd feel in a monogamous relationship if I felt like I sacrificed potential fun and the other person hadn't (suspicion/resentment); and c) the feeling that something is wrong in the relationship if it no longer has New Relationship Energy or has 'lesbian bed death.' I'd rather be with someone who can experience NRE elsewhere (platonic or not) than someone who gives it up entirely for an inward-looking and potentially co-dependent relationship.

I am pretty convinced I am someone who could enter such relationships, but I am happy to sacrifice this tendency for the sake of the person I am with. I have found myself developing individual parallel feelings with more than one person, I think my mind is passively hunting for them, and I have thought somewhat deeply if it's something that I could ever turn off, if it's something pathological (like a lack of affection / desire for recognition, or worse), or just who I am and part of how I relate to others (in my case, the other sex). Those feelings were never confusing to me, they were never about comparing or trading one person for the other, the feelings were individually strong and faithful, and they had nothing to do with opportunity. The first time it got me into a world of trouble, and I have applied discipline to keep it in check and private. I get along with women much more than men, but it's not like any female friendship will turn into amorous feelings - I always know where I am. I think it's in the direction of polyamory because, just like you map, I cannot separate or even understand jealousy apart from respect and trust. I also connect this with other personal traits: lack of inhibition, lack of filter, tendency to create "tiny gardens" in my mind (to summon Jamila Woods), empathy, flexibility, etc. I also rationalize it as "evolutionary", at least in the sense that I would feel at ease in a society operating under different standards, which will probably exist in the future and probably has in the past, and since it's not really the case, it's just something that has to stay dormant. I have never talked about it, pursued, or taken concrete steps to actually live like this, because as you say, it would require a lot of space and freedom to invest properly into two people at the same time - because just like you describe, even though I probably have this non-exclusive amorous gene, I also absolutely need the kind of commitment and long-term relationship that I have right now, so that there is no regret about being in a monogamous relationship, with a person I think should have been out of my league. I consider it a compromise made for civilization purposes (and, probably, capitalism).

i’m starting to approach this in my own way. my last relationship was non monogamous for most of it, and even though i’m “single” at the moment i’ve been practicing a great deal of relationship anarchy, where i’m just kind of treating all my relationships as relationships and not establishing a hierarchy where romantic ones get the most of my attention and effort. and most of my really close friendships might as well be romantic tbh. i’ve grown to sort of hate and distrust the couple form, the exclusive parceling out of affection it produces, eventually creating a situation where it’s just two people relying on each other for everything. i’m enjoying getting a little bit of everything from everyone i love. and it doesn’t seem to require all that much more effort than a singular relationship

i’m in love with my ex, i’m also in love with a few of my best friends, and also have big crushes on a few new friends. i feel like my feelings are being taken care of and i’m taking care of others’ feelings. and idk, it rules

i have heard stories of overzealous poly types with playbooks and homework etc.

gotta say this isn’t and will never be for me. my roommate has a relationship like this right now. i refer to it as “sex larping”

even without that i gotta say from the vantage point of somebody who just hit their 50s, this all sounds like a lotta cognitive overhead

plus, like, developing intimacy is WORK.. i feel like.. i did my time, i did it, not going back

i kinda don’t believe that developing intimacy is work. i feel like we are encouraged to pick one person to develop it with forever and yes that’s work

maybe not work per se but it takes time, can be two steps forward, one step back.. it’s a whole thing. it’s got rewards for sure tho

I dunno, I have a job, I have a wife and the life that is completely satisfying, and takes up all my time anyway.

But, a life changing event along the lines of Winning the Lottery and Becoming Promiscuous? seemed attractive, then..

I think the Stylistics pondered this in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFI0JHDK49M

It's not attractive to me, anyway.

damn, I was hoping for some goofy posts and map started the thread back up with wholesome introspection

I think the poly ecosystem has definitely branched out in the last decade to the point where I, a single hetero guy now of advancing age, have to kind of evaluate the dating landscape differently. There are people willing to date out there, and some of them have partners and that's ok?

I feel like there's an underlying mood in the room where when someone starts a conversation with "I was talking to my girlfriend's husband" where half the people are nodding understandingly and taking notes, and the other half are inwardly groaning. Maybe a combination of the two. tbh heteronormative dating has kind of always been like that, it's just icing on the cake when it comes to wondering what kinds of drama people will surface

I'd rather be with someone who can experience NRE elsewhere (platonic or not) than someone who gives it up entirely for an inward-looking and potentially co-dependent relationship.

yeah, absolutely! the first time i really experienced NRE in the context of my long-term partnership it was honestly kind of disorienting. like, i had this spring in my step but all of this latent conditioning telling me it was wrong or something. i had this impulse i had to check to be like "is everything cool?" with my partner. when we could finally both tell each other 'fuck it's awesome that you're experiencing nre, for you and for me because it means you're in a good mood more often and also you're doing your fucking dishes!', all of the "this is wrong" feelings just sort of left the building.

i refer to it as “sex larping”

lol

I am pretty convinced I am someone who could enter such relationships, but I am happy to sacrifice this tendency for the sake of the person I am with.

just curious naledi, do you think it's completely off the table in your current ltr?

one of the big challenges when we had our "third" was simply trying to talk about it. when the topic was eventually somewhat less off-limits, i would introduce scenarios and ask him how he would feel about it. no agenda, just bringing up hypotheticals. "what if you didn't want or couldn't have sex any more and i wanted it / could have it?" is an example. cracking the door open. eventually he said that he could be into all of us playing with another person. we didn't get a chance to keep the conversation going because the long distance ended the relationship. but i feel somewhat confident that the topic is going to blossom into a more flexible or at least curious outlook on it as the years go by, for him. partly because it's just part of the scenery now if you're gay, in your 20s, in a city, in an artistic milieu. we send each other messages every month so i'm somewhat confident i'll be able to watch him grow :).

i'll be honest in that i read your first sentence above, naledi, and the rest of your paragraph too, and i hear "this possibility is actually pretty important to me but i'm preemptively throwing it out the window because i don't want to disrupt my current relationship." i would counter that there is at least a way to talk about it, to honor what i hear as your needs somewhat, to gently test the waters by finding a way to bring up the topic. i think one thing that's important to emphasize if you're talking to an ltr about this is that there is a huge spectrum of possibilities when it comes to "poly" or "open" situations. and you can actually run through in your own mind what it is that would actually be the most fulfilling to you .. or what it is that you are really craving and needing. in my experience a truly loving partner is going to be receptive to that. even if it turns out that their needs run counter to that. but there are always possibilities and opportunities to find middle ground.

ok, i don't think i've mentioned it here but here's my takes on/experience with poly

my background is that i'm a queer/trans woman living in portland, oregon. It's Complicated and, i mean, this is true of basically any trans relationship, particularly these days. the joke used to be "of course everyone's poly, it takes five people to afford a house". that joke's actually obsolete, nobody has a fuckin' job around here. i'm holding out for a stable job with decent pay and tolerable working conditions... i mean, good fucking luck with that, haha.

what i've found is that relationships can provide a level of social stability that platonic friendships can't. i've been in a relationship for the past couple months and it's helped me out a lot in terms of me having a sense of self-worth. the complicated thing is that we barely get to see each other and don't even talk a lot online. my girlfriend is in a pretty bad situation right now. she needs to get out of it, and she's not in a position to get out of that situation, and i can't really do anything to get her out of that situation either. it's not about sex, though the sex is pretty great. it's about ordinary life, about spending time with each other doing ordinary shit. life these days can be so, so isolating.

and, i mean, i like who i like. for me, poly isn't about being indiscriminate. it's more that most people aren't good prospects for me, when it comes to romantic relationships. particularly because our lives our so complicated and none of us have access to, like, get fundamental basic needs met. poly for me is a compromise, it's making do. i used to hate the song "love the one you're with". these days i get where stills was coming from. except i'd say "ones" instead of "one".

the big problem for me with poly is that a lot of people _do_ look to be loved by others as a substitute for their own poor sense of self-worth. this is _particularly_ true of trans women earlier in transition. i was like that early on, for sure. it wasn't good. now i'm a lot more mindful about who i allow myself to get involved with. if my choice is between being touch-starved and in a codependent relationship, well, i guess i choose touch-starved. and the people i trust, they're also gunshy like me. so there are people i'm "involved" with who i don't really see much, because they're going through a rough time, because they need to take space for themselves.

and as much as i care about other people, what i've learned is that i have to love myself, to value myself, to care for myself, because nobody else is going to do that _for_ me. that includes recognizing that i _do_ have needs, and so do other people. the truth is that i'm not sexually compatible with most people. honestly i'm not even sure what "sex" is. i don't think about things in that way. there are things i like to do, things that are intimate, things i wouldn't do with a lot of people. there are some people i like and trust enough to be intimate. not necessarily people i romantically love, but people i trust, people i'm attracted to in a certain way.

i'm particularly cautious of polycule creep. there is, you know, the Greater Pacific Northwest Polycule, and it complicates things a lot. i'm with someone and they're also with someone who i don't get along with, who I had a bad breakup with, something like that, yeah, it makes socializing awkward. what i've learned over time is that a lot of trans women just, like, have trouble having platonic friends. i've increasingly come to value that i do have a lot of platonic friends, just the sheer number of people who i'm _not_ sleeping with for various reasons. because so much of this _need_, this physical need, does mean that social relationships do get centered around physical intimacy a lot. there's also the ambiguity of being sapphic. one of the things us women do, we validate each other's bodies a lot. i went to brunch with a friend this morning and i said i thought she had an amazing body, and i made it very clear that i meant that platonically. that was me responding to her saying that she finds her body disgusting. i'm not saying that to try and change how she feels about her own body... i just feel like it's important for us to be validated. there are plenty of people who don't want to sleep with me who are pretty consistent in saying how hot i am. some of them are people who i would like to sleep with. some people tell me how hot my body is and i don't _know_ if they want to sleep with me or not. it's confusing. sapphic affection can be very confusing.

so it's easy to have a polycule, you have order, you have structure, and often it gets all centered around one person. in cults it's the leader, in polycules it's "the top". it's a small group, these group dynamics, they get complicated. i was re-watching the king crimson movie the other day, marveling at how the members and former band members behaved, and at some point it hit me - king crimson is (was I guess) a polycule. a platonic polycule, for sure. fripp referring to a king crimson concert as a "hot date" is metaphorical (i'm not even sure if the pun is intentional). it's not a _queer_ thing necessarily. watching ian mcdonald tearfully apologize to fripp for leaving the band in 1969, though... that's something more than just rock band shit.

-

the thing about these compromises i'm talking about... there's always compromises. i made compromises in my monogamous, allegedly "heterosexual" marriage. and most of the compromise was around sex. we weren't sexually compatible, ever, and because i had so much sexual shame, she had so much sexual shame, i just lived with that. i figured sexual fulfillment wasn't something that was possible for me. then i come out and puberty hits and i have kind of a rumspringa thing going on... there are all sorts of things i've never tried, i've never thought of, and at this point me and my now-ex have a decade of whatever the fuck we had. i don't know what it was. it was bad.

she did accuse me of trying to pressure her into being ok with poly, that i wanted license to cheat. and i didn't, in fact. i loved her, and i didn't want to lose her. there were things i had to learn about myself, and i just couldn't learn them with her. it wasn't _enough_ for her to say "whatever, you do what you want". we agreed to monogamy, and i wasn't going to unilaterally change that. she was right to insist that, no, i needed to be monogamous. i just reached a point where i couldn't, and when that happened, i left. that wasn't coercion. that wasn't a threat. people change, and we just weren't compatible anymore. not her fault. not my fault. shit just sucks sometimes.

she didn't see it that way, and i'm very sad about that, and i just... i didn't really have any control over her, over her feelings, over her behaviors. part of me still feels stupid for leaving her. we had a good relationship, in a lot of ways, and i feel like a selfish asshole for breaking up with her just because the sex was terrible.

well, i don't know how it is for other people, but for me, sex isn't just sex. there were other problems, and the lousy sex, that was a signifier of those problems. i thought i was this awful, unloveable person, and that if someone said they loved me, they could do anything they wanted. so for me, polyamory is in some ways taking a step back. giving up on something i had that was good in a lot of ways, because i had to grow in ways that i couldn't grow within that relationship. in some ways, i'd like to have a relationship where i had the kind of closeness i had with my ex... but i'm not ever going to accept the kind of fucked up shit i accepted, do the kind of fucked up shit i did in that relationship.

anyway that's my scattered thoughts.

and as much as i care about other people, what i've learned is that i have to love myself, to value myself, to care for myself, because nobody else is going to do that _for_ me. that includes recognizing that i _do_ have needs, and so do other people. the truth is that i'm not sexually compatible with most people. honestly i'm not even sure what "sex" is.

this rings true for me in that doing all of the things i have to do to love myself takes a lot of time and energy. in all honesty i'm a complicated, high-maintenance person with wild and deep emotional currents that need tending to. so i've just naturally had to put all of these things in place that my life is now built around in order for me to show myself the correct amount of love. one of those things is an exercise regime comprised of three big practices, one of which is lifting weights, which requires me to go to a gym regularly. not everyone who goes to a gym does so for the sole purpose of doing exercise, although of course that's a high priority for nearly everyone who goes. but for a not-insigifnicant number of people, even if they wouldn't admit it when pressed, part of why they go is to see and be seen. or in the case of my very gay gym, to eye and to cruise and to be eyed and to be cruised. i've created this whole expressive physical existence sole population myself with my gym routine. it feels like a dance i do to become the person i want to become, if that makes sense. i get a fair amount of attention if i'm being honest. but i'm busy loving myself. and if i pay attention to who is around me, i see people looking for attention but i don't see anyone "worth" loving! i'm sure that sounds misanthropic. i don't actually harbor hate towards anyone or feel like anyone is inferior, and i try my best to be open to people as they are, the good in people. i'm just far along a path that no one else is on. i've spent years being faithful to my own weirdo drum, and it's taken me far, and when i look around at other dudes at the gym... let's just say that learning more and more about strength training and fitness and constantly doing my version of it has kind of ruined muscles for me. i see muscle bros doing horrible looking checked out lifts and it's like the grossest thing ever. whereas... there was a compact, very fit older latino guy doing this beautiful mobility routine in front of me one day and i just had to say something...

i relate to the idea that "i'm not sexually compatible with most people." what i'm looking for, sex and romance for me, i know it when i see it. and most of the people i see in the wild .. which, these days, is like 95% when i'm at the gym .. don't show signs of being remotely in that kind of place. but in the meantime, i'm going to work as hard as i can to make myself the person i want to be and the person i want to love.

<3 to all

I am poly at heart and politically, but also an addict in general, so monogamy works better for me personally. I stand by my earlier long post here.

this rings true for me in that doing all of the things i have to do to love myself takes a lot of time and energy. in all honesty i'm a complicated, high-maintenance person with wild and deep emotional currents that need tending to.

― she freaks, she speaks (map)

oh that is _so_ relatable. so is the rest of it. i mean that is absolutely queer culture. i'm not a gym rat, but sometimes i'll say to a woman i know, or a woman i know will say to me, "hey, wanna go thrifting?" so we'll go out together and try on cute clothes. one of the more painful things about living in portland is that i am constantly surrounded by _incredibly attractive people_, particularly, but not always, women, and it is just not as simple for me as "hi, i'm into you, you're into me, let's make out". with me it's always "god, she's hot, i wonder if we're kink compatible". which is a real drag, let me tell you. i tried dating people in the local kink scene for a while and, uh, there are systemic problems. particularly when so much of queer socializing is around casual sex, is around meat markets, is around substance use. i've noticed that the people i gravitate towards consist of a particular subset of queer people - _sober_ queer people. so yeah, the lack of "third spaces" sucks. for a long time i've been doing support, i run a support group, and i kind of hated it, because i've always known that it's a bad idea to fuck people who are in a support group you lead. but people do come to that support group just because they're lonely and they need to get out and meet other people. it's taken me this long to be able to differentiate between "support group" and "friends". i feel like an idiot saying that, in retrospect it seems obvious, but there's no point in my judging myself.

the truth is that a _lot_ of us are complicated, high-maintenance people with wild and deep emotional currents that need tending to. there's a book out there called "love without emergency" which is about doing poly as someone who has those sort of behaviors... i don't rely too much on it, and i've still done, and continue doing, a lot of work on myself. valuing myself means seeing myself as attractive, treating myself as an attractive person, and yeah of course people will be into me. there are so many people were i think "i would, if...". if they stopped drinking so much. if they weren't in the relationship they were in. if they didn't have those transmed tendencies.

it's not misanthropic at all to not be into people. part of valuing myself means that i _can_ reject people. i hate doing it, partly because i'm so rejection-sensitive myself. it takes so much for me to express the merest amount of attraction to someone. so i don't ever want to say "no" to someone, even if i'm not into them. it's not a matter of other people not being "good enough", they're just not good fits for me! dating, for me, dating is almost as hard as looking for work. regarding muscles being "ruined", i kinda feel the same way about makeup. i know the things we do to make ourselves more attractive, and what i'm always interested in is the person beneath the makeup.

by the way i'm not sure "lesbian bed death" is a thing. for me, the great thing about lesbian sex is that it's about quality, not quantity. there's no such thing as lying back and thinking of england. a lot of straight sex, from what i can tell, is one person initiating and the other person kind of rolling their eyes and saying "oh, ok, we can do the thing." with lesbian sex, there is no "thing". everyone involved has to be into it, otherwise it's not fun. it's kinda like a cross between sex and improv theater. on paper that sounds awful, but it's actually really great ime.

the other thing i have found myself doing, re your last sentence, is that i love myself even though i _don't_ want to love myself. maybe that sounds weird, but, i mean... complicated, high-maintenance person. since i am my chief caregiver, i do very often get tired of my own bullshit and think to myself "come on, kate, do you have to be like this?" but at the end of the day i do love kate because kate is awesome and she is worth loving and she will always be there for me, no matter what, and that last part is just not something i can say about anyone else. i love myself as i am, without expectation, but often at the same time i'm kind of irritated and pissed off about it. i've found that loving myself works even if i'm cranky about it, though. :)

it's kinda like a cross between sex and improv theater.

this made me laugh.

i hear you about loving yourself even when you don't want to. understanding and accepting the "why are you like this?" stuff and feeling all the shame underneath that. of course it's worth doing and one of the keys to loving yourself unconditionally.

To respond to map: I really think of it as a possibility rather than a need or anything I'd want to work towards. My significant other knows that I am "open-minded" in general - maybe not quite how much. It could definitely be a topic of conversation that could come up - that it helps me unpack and understand my own "history", and the way those intimate conversations go a little bit beyond what is normally shared in a conventional couple, is already valuable in itself. I am not sure how I would navigate this without seeming to want to plant an idea that she would perceive as dangerous to the trust and stability that hold us together - even as a theoretical idea / fantasy. Even to me, it appears dangerous, unnecessary, impractical, unlikely... and hard to give guarantees even if you were to enter such an arrangement with sincerity and conviction. The fear of an hidden agenda might be too great in a late 30s, married, heterosexual, with-kid relationship. Also it would be unbalanced and I wouldn't want the arrangement to be done for me, since that's 100% not what she would want. It cannot work as an egoistical experience. But all this speculation is almost besides the point - what counts here I think is that there is room in monogamy to express desires, speak with a free mind, not fear the other's judgment, and anticipate the big questions. I like being ready for anything.

Sometimes I don't need a like button but a button that signifies 'oh, that's me, I never really thought about it like that, isn't it nice to be seen and to bring a new part of oneself properly into the light. It's quite a warm feeling. A bit like crying without the tears.'

I experienced it three times today on this site. Cheers ilx. As you were.

Three different times in one day is definitely poly.

>3

uhhh i guess as of today i'm officially solo poly. had an ambiguous gay hang with a really cool and hot trans person i've had a crush on for a few years and they took me home and fucked me good. continue to be absolutely in love with my ex but i'm like... really glowing after last night. and i'm going on another date with someone else today. i thought this shit would exhaust me or drive me crazy when i finally did it, but it feels very... natural?