steppingout [Elin] A B O U T P O L Y The main thing I've learned about polyamory: it only works with people who are slightly larger-than-life. Polyamory between "normal," mostly-functional individuals is a swamp. It's also a sludge of power plays, personal aggrandizement, opportunities for childish behavior and competing bouts of false chivalry and false helplessness. In Wanna-Poly, people cede responsibility for their happiness to someone else: "as long as you're here and smiling, it's okay," or "I'm miserable because your dog/girlfriend/OSO/pet rock doesn't like me." It's the stuff you might recall from your teenage training-wheel relationships. Fortunately, many seek more from Poly than whitewashed promiscuity. Many, in fact, are complex individuals who cut themselves little slack, psyche-wise. Picking through their emotions, the mature types search for the most genuine construction they can muster in a complex, button-pushing situation. They're often older, they've frequently been through the marriage/children roller-coaster, and have more than a hint of what self-sacrifice looks like. True poly can be beautiful to behold -- even for those of us who rarely ask, "can I love more than one person at once?" If the love of your life suddenly informs you that zie's (she or he's) polyamorous, take a hard look at the integrity factor -- how much emotional and ethical integrity does zie possess? How much do you? Does personal cross-examination come as naturally to you as breathing? To survive, you're going to need a lot of this. More than God intended us poor animals to have, it seems. The LoveList is rife with real Poly people and their stories. For the civic-minded, the Poly list (a separate entity) tends to approach polyamory from a sociopolitical standpoint. The alt.polyamory home page is another excellent resource, which is why it's linked to practically everywhere. A B O U T M E I'm 27 & American. I design web sites. You might know me from occasional posts on the lovelist (from LoveMore), or somehow sensed me lurking on the poly list (less likely). Thanks to those lists and my tentative forays into polyamory, honesty is a leading issue these days. But computers still seem to run my life.
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