poly question from bossym
Mar. 17th, 2008 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyWhat do you like about polyamory? Why is it a good choice for you?
This is a well-phrased question, for sure. My first instinct was to answer with the ways that monogamy doesn't work for me, but that's not really what you're asking.
- I like having friendships with people who are involved with the people that I am involved with.
- I like eating my cake and having it, too.
- I like there being more possible categories for people to fall into than "partner" and "friend." I feel like there is more diversity in the types of relationships that are available when you can have more than one.
- I like having a tribe, having an easy social group where you can count on people. I know poly isn't the only way of doing that, by any stretch, but it makes it fairly easy and natural for me.
- I love that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrpet's other partner enjoys going to company functions with him. It's so great to not have to do that.
- I love that if both he and get sick, there are other people to take care of us.
- I think that polyamory causes the involved parties to work harder at making sure their needs get met.
- I also think it inspires pretty intense amounts of communication, which I feel is good.
Polyamory is a good choice for me for a number of reasons. One is that I am always attracted to and interested in lots of people. When that came up during monogamy, I didn't cheat, but I always felt conflicted and guilty about my attractions. With polyamory, I can act on those attractions, or just feel them in their fullness, without threatening the stability of my partnership.
Also, I need a fair amount of attention, energy, pampering, and sex, compared to most people. In monogamy I felt somewhat codependent and also like I had to ask a lot of my partner. With polyamory, I can spread it around over more people. I also am more aware of my own responsibility for getting my needs met - when I was monogamous, I basically wanted the other person to do it for me.
I am an eclectic person, with a lot of interests and different things that I like to do - it would be hard to find just one person who liked all of that stuff, but with polyamory, I don't have to.
I also like the way that polyamory has a culture of openness and honesty about sex and the internal workings of relationships. Those are both important to me. I think that my learning to negotiate about them has helped me learn to negotiate other kinds of social and emotional transactions in my life, to make sure everyone's needs get met, including mine.
I'm sure that one could say that there are ways to have most of these things in a monogamous relationship. Say, that you don't act on your attractions, but it's okay for you to talk to your partner about them... you get other needs met through friendships, not relationships... you don't assume you have to share all your partner's interests. I also don't think that monogamy is bad or that everyone should be poly. Goddess knows, managing multiple relationships, especially in a culture that promotes monogamy as the only right way, is a lot of work; you should only do it if you really love it. But I do.
This is your last chance to ask me a question month question. Tomorrow I will be closing the "question box" and taking a break for a few days. Until then, go here.
This is a well-phrased question, for sure. My first instinct was to answer with the ways that monogamy doesn't work for me, but that's not really what you're asking.
- I like having friendships with people who are involved with the people that I am involved with.
- I like eating my cake and having it, too.
- I like there being more possible categories for people to fall into than "partner" and "friend." I feel like there is more diversity in the types of relationships that are available when you can have more than one.
- I like having a tribe, having an easy social group where you can count on people. I know poly isn't the only way of doing that, by any stretch, but it makes it fairly easy and natural for me.
- I love that
mrpet's other partner enjoys going to company functions with him. It's so great to not have to do that.- I love that if both he and get sick, there are other people to take care of us.
- I think that polyamory causes the involved parties to work harder at making sure their needs get met.
- I also think it inspires pretty intense amounts of communication, which I feel is good.
Polyamory is a good choice for me for a number of reasons. One is that I am always attracted to and interested in lots of people. When that came up during monogamy, I didn't cheat, but I always felt conflicted and guilty about my attractions. With polyamory, I can act on those attractions, or just feel them in their fullness, without threatening the stability of my partnership.
Also, I need a fair amount of attention, energy, pampering, and sex, compared to most people. In monogamy I felt somewhat codependent and also like I had to ask a lot of my partner. With polyamory, I can spread it around over more people. I also am more aware of my own responsibility for getting my needs met - when I was monogamous, I basically wanted the other person to do it for me.
I am an eclectic person, with a lot of interests and different things that I like to do - it would be hard to find just one person who liked all of that stuff, but with polyamory, I don't have to.
I also like the way that polyamory has a culture of openness and honesty about sex and the internal workings of relationships. Those are both important to me. I think that my learning to negotiate about them has helped me learn to negotiate other kinds of social and emotional transactions in my life, to make sure everyone's needs get met, including mine.
I'm sure that one could say that there are ways to have most of these things in a monogamous relationship. Say, that you don't act on your attractions, but it's okay for you to talk to your partner about them... you get other needs met through friendships, not relationships... you don't assume you have to share all your partner's interests. I also don't think that monogamy is bad or that everyone should be poly. Goddess knows, managing multiple relationships, especially in a culture that promotes monogamy as the only right way, is a lot of work; you should only do it if you really love it. But I do.
This is your last chance to ask me a question month question. Tomorrow I will be closing the "question box" and taking a break for a few days. Until then, go here.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 05:46 pm (UTC)What resonated personally with me were these statements:
One is that I am always attracted to and interested in lots of people.
and
I am an eclectic person, with a lot of interests and different things that I like to do - it would be hard to find just one person who liked all of that stuff, but with polyamory, I don't have to.
I struggle with both of these things. I have done a LOT of soul-searching and concluded that polyamory is probably not going to ever be a good choice for me. I don't enjoy managing multiple relationship, I don't enjoy having to split my time up, and I really, really don't enjoy having to share my partner. When I tried poly I was horribly unhappy with my life. But yet - the struggles still persist. I get strong attractions to other people every now and again, and I know I will never, EVER meet someone who shares all my hobbies. Ben isn't into the geology stuff so much, but if I broke up with him to date a geologist, what's the chances I am going to meet someone who's ALSO into the million other things that Ben and I like to talk about? I can't know those odds. But I know that there's no 100% match in monogamy.
I'm still trying to figure out where to go with these things, but I think that getting needs met outside of the relationship is probably a good thing. For example - last night I had dinner with my friend Rebecca. We talked grad school and life for a long, long time. Would I like to be able to kibbitz about grad school with Ben? Yeah - but grad school's a limited amount of time, and in the end, I want to be able to talk to him about other things too. I once saw an interview with two vulcanologists who said that the risk of having the same career as your spouse is that sometimes you only ever talk about work. Well, the risk of having a partner only mildly interested in your career is that sometime you don't get to talk about work much at all. Both have their merits, and only time (and more data!) will tell which is right for me.
(Gods, that was long. ooops.)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 10:23 pm (UTC)Wow. That sounds... really stressful. I mean, I think that anything that makes you horribly unhappy with your life is definitely contraindicated. But I don't know how one healthily happily copes with strong attractions to someone else in a monogamous context - that's one of the things I could never make work for me.
I think this is one of the few relationship arenas where there's not a lot of grey area. Like, if one of you is a night owl and the other is a morning person, you can try to bring your schedules in line. If one of you likes to go out and one likes to stay in, you can do a little of both. But. Kids, and sex with other people, seem to be the all-or-nothing relationship questions. You can't have part of a kid (except by getting a pet) and you can't be sort of nonmonogamous.
You have my sympathy. In some ways I'm really lucky to have made this work. It certainly wasn't easy when I first started doing it. But it's never made me unhappy with my life.