The philosophy of non-monogamy

Follow

2010-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hey all if you like this blog please follow it. It helps me feel less like I’m writing into the big empty nothing and more like I’m writing to tiny little squares. Also pass it along to your friends, family and anyone who doesn’t mind rambly thoughts on non-monogamy punctuated by pictures of cock.

Also please feel free to drop me a line at rphase@yahoo.com

Damien Says it Better

2010-05-15T10:00:00.001-07:00

I want to start a new segment on my blog called Damien Says it Better. Damien happens to be a personal real friend of mine who is one half of the cutest poly couple I know. This is what he had to say about one of my recent posts:

"It's definitely about gender stereotypes, and how we're supposed to feel about the basic poly 'love is not a limited commodity' thing.

Your partner's ('It's not all fun & games') perspective seems easier to understand because it doesn't, in and of itself, break normal narratives. Women are SUPPOSED to be jealous, so keeping an arrangement like that together would be constant work. Keeping an 'affair' going (and keeping both women happy) is hard work - though, as you mention, it's rewarded with hot girl-on-girl (or three-way) action!

YOUR perspective, however, DOES challenge common paradigms. Men are supposed to clumsily want LOTS of partners, and women are supposed to want to want ONE, and, if self-help books are to be believed, be constantly trying to trap them into marriage - even lesbians (the jokes about moving in after the first date, etc). Allowing your partner to see other women (potential rivals) sets off alarm bells in other people who feel protective of you. Are you being exploited? Because HE gets to live out his fantasy, while you get relegated to a fraction of what you must really want. And even if they believe YOU - what about this other woman? What happens when the spell breaks and SHE does back to wanting what all women want - monogamy? Won't things blow up then? Isn't this just a ticking emotional time bomb?

Anyway - I know that doesn't help, but I will say that I do understand the phenomenon and feel a little guilt around it, too. The mere fact that I am in an open relationship at ALL provokes some interesting, usually slightly jealous, reactions from any male peers I would disclose to, but I don't usually think to challenge it (and I'm not sure exactly how I would)... while at the same time I realize that MY partner, when explaining it from her perspective, probably gets the same protective skepticism as you hear. And I don't know what to do about that, but it makes me realize that I AM pretty damned lucky to have a partner willing to accept the lopsided PR effort on her part to be with me in our "nonstandard" relationship."

He is dead-on and more eloquent.

"In" Love

2010-05-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

“I can’t promise to be 'in' love with you forever because I can’t control my emotions.”

This goes back to a past post where I talked about emotions and how much control we have over them. I have been thinking about it for awhile and I’m going to say I have watched myself control my emotions. I have watched myself let go of things and people. I have watched myself open my heart and mind to people and situations. Now I don’t know if most people would call that “control” but it is a mental effort that I put in that changes the way I feel.

If we truly couldn’t control our emotions “keeping your heart open” wouldn’t change a thing. If we had no say in who, when or how we loved other people no marriage would be full of love and last. I think we are lying to ourselves. Partially because we will never have total control over our emotions and partially because it is SO FUCKING HARD to have ANY control over our emotions.

Why I think that this is important is because I don’t buy the “I just don’t like your new partner and there is nothing that is going to change that” line. Because I have done it. I have changed the way I felt about someone thru active effort. And I have watched other people do it. I have watched my partners put in huge amounts of effort to try to like someone.

It can be done.

The reason why it can be done is simple. On some level everyone is lovable. On some level the simple act of someone being human makes them worth loving - not just despite their faults but because of them.

A lot of people deeply annoy me. I’m not a very friendly or open-hearted person. It takes very little for me to dislike someone. So when I say it is hard to change my emotions, I am saying “hard” isn’t even close to the right word. But it’s getting easier. Everyday it’s getting easier.

One of Tom Robbins repeating questions is “How do you make love stay?” Which is asking how do you control love? How do you control an emotion? The answer is the same with how you control anything, thru effort, creativity, help and work.

I can’t promise you that I will stay “in" love with you forever. But I can promise I will try.

Pier

2010-05-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

“Well, there's always the nature boat, the art boat, the sex boat, the intoxication boat. They're bobbing at the end of nearly every pier, just waiting to ferry us across our personal doldrums, societal whirlpools, and institutional sewage lagoons. Why, the best of them can even cut the tides of mediocrity.”

~Tom Robbins

The World is on Fire

2010-05-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

“Who knows how to make love stay?

1. Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.

2. Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

~Tom Robbins

Subversive

2010-05-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more."

~Erica Jong in How to Save Your Own Life (1977).

Care Giving

2010-05-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

I think I have mentioned before that I’m not particularly good at certain kinds of care-giving. I get antsy like a five year old at grandmother's brunch when people around me are emotionally needy. I originally thought that was because I had a horrible time empathizing with other people’s emotions until one night I ended up sobbing in the street because two people I barely knew where having a bad break up. I now realize I tend to keep emotionally distant from my friends simply because I get so wrapped up in their emotions that it rips me apart inside.

The kind of care-giving I am good at is the kind where I distract you. I think one of my past relationships almost completely used sex as a distraction from a bad break up. I’m also good at playing video games with you or getting you drunk.

Now both of my partners are AMAZING at care-giving. They are super supportive, go long ways out of their way to love and listen. Both of them get phone calls in the middle of the night from people in distress. That really has never happened to me, or maybe once because someone needed their car jumped.

The thing I can give? I can give my partners time and space to support our friends. I can do dishes while my boyfriend holds a devastated friend. I can talk my girlfriend down after hours of unintentional counseling have left her feeling like relationships are hopeless. I can give them time. It might not look like much, but it is me loving and supporting my friends.

And when my friends are ready to go get drunk or take out some built-up aggression by killing zombies, I’ll be there.

Sex

2010-05-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

Nothing is more complicated than or as simple as sex. In an ideal world (or at least MY ideal world) sex would be treated like a good conversation. It is something you do with people you like. It often changes the way you think about the person you are doing it with. It is an act of bonding that one hopes is mutually gratifying.

Something I’m personally trying to work on is thinking of sex with a lower case “s”. I feel that a huge amount of importance that we put on sex is one of the reason people struggle so much with non-monogamy. I know it has been difficult for me to even start letting go of some of the built-in ideas I have about love and sex being the same thing. Not to mention I feel like I’m constantly being told that commitment is more about sex than it is about love.

I’m not saying sex isn’t important. I’m saying it is SO important that it’s time we take it off its pedestal and start really looking at it. I believe sex is good for your health and there are a bunch of silly studies that back me up. But I don’t think it’s just good for your health, it’s good for your relationships, your community, your happiness and… I’m a little embarrassed to say it… your soul.

I’m not there yet. Hell, I’m not even close. Sex still scares me at times. It overwhelms me at times. But I’m working on it. I want to be in a place where sex feels as safe and natural and powerful and loving and bonding, as life changing and simple as good conversation.

I know my partners are like me, they are more likely to fall in love over a good conversation than a good fuck, and yet I still get way more jealous of them having sex than connecting verbally. I don’t think the solution is to start getting more jealous of their debates over Deleuze and Guattari...

Assumptions

2010-05-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend recently came out to someone he has worked closely with for years. His co-worker's response? - “I kind of assumed.” When my partner told me about it, he expressed some feelings of shame around having two girlfriends. Because it simply looks like a wet dream for most men. He said he'd made it clear when sharing about it that he was open to other men entering our relationship.

We battle with pride like everyone else and it’s fun to watch my (mostly heterosexual, male) partner try to point out that having two girlfriends isn’t just a bunch of raunchy three-ways on a bed made of breasts (that’s what guys like to imagine right?)

A good friend of mine who is bisexual said he had the same “problem” when he came out at work as having a girlfriend and a wife. He colleagues wanted to give him a slap on the back and joke about holes. At least my bisexual friend had a good device to get out of the normative mind set, he would just bring up sucking cock.

This might seem like a silly problem to have but it’s a real one. The reason why it bugs my partner is because it’s taking something he works very hard at, something he struggles with, something that is very meaningful and important and reduces it to a sex joke. And not a very original sex joke at that.

While I have to fight people's assumptions that I am unhappy or that I secretly hate my girlfriend or have no self esteem, my boyfriend has to fight that assumptions that he is killer in the sack and that he is a bit of a scoundrel. Seems kind of unfair to me. But the part that gets me the most is when someone like my boyfriend or my friend sit down with someone and explain that having two smoking hot female partners is a lot of work, the person usually believes them. When I sit down with someone and explain that I really love my girlfriend and I’m not just getting jerked around and not standing up for myself, people don’t believe me.

Gender is a strange thing. I believe that those of us that are attempting non-monogamous relationships are deeply shifting the way we think about gender. The problem is we still live in a culture that is secretly waiting for our female doctors, lawyers, scientists and CEO’s to make it a sandwich.

Proud to be an American

2010-05-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

If you are completely unaware of popular culture like I am here is the original which I’m also absolutely in love with. My boyfriend still might have a chance of talking me into liking Lady GaGa

Also this is the cute red head with the oddly sexy hip gyrations in the video.

Communication

2010-05-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Figuring out what you want from a conversation is almost as important as the information that is being passed from you to someone else. When I’m stressed out there are basically three kinds of conversations that I want and if we get into the wrong kind nothing will piss me off faster. It’s a really good thing it took me five fucking years to figure this one out.

The types of interaction I want when it comes to stress are:

1) A sympathetic ear that can hear how hard this is for me right now and tells me so.

2) Helpful input to solve the problem that is stressing me out.

3) A kick in the pants to do something.

Okay and sometimes-

4) A distraction to get me out of my head (sex.)

This all seems so clear. Why does it cause so many fights? Well it’s simple, if I want a sympathetic ear and you start making helpful suggestions what I hear is: “You should be handling this better than you are. It’s not that hard just do what I tell you.” Why do I hear that? Because I’m crazy and I'm a normal human being. You try to distract me when what I want is helpful input? It feels like you don’t care or aren’t willing to help.

Now this sounds like I’ve made a delightful little minefield for my partners to navigate where they have a ¾ chance of upsetting me even more than I already am. So how do I help them? By trying to figure out what I want before I start talking about an issue. I also try very hard not to get upset if the conversation moves somewhere I’m not excited about and to remind my partner what I wanted out of the conversation.

This is harder than it sounds. For one thing, I have to know what I want. And for another I have to know that we are headed towards that conversation in the first place. Because knowing what you want and where you're going are two of the hardest things for us to figure out. I try to leave a lot of space for being in the middle of a distressing conversation and saying “Hey I know you are trying to help me but what I really need right now is for you to listen and tell me you understand how hard this is.”

Editor

2010-04-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

Sorry my editor/boyfriend is out of town for a few days and I’m not yet ready to show you how truly horribly dyslexic I am without his consistent vigilance.

Be back soon.

Bait

2010-04-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

So I’m sure I’m about 10 years behind on my pornography viewing. I just found this site: Baitbus. It is exactly like Bangbus, except with gay men. Unless you spend your time specifically seeking out pornography that is degrading to women, you might have missed Bangbus, which is porn based around the premise of talking everyday women into accepting a large amount of money to fuck some dude in the back of a van; the twist being that at the end of getting fucked they abandon the girl without payment. Bangbus is also extremely fake. It's cast with porn girls who are about as convincing as actors as Keanu Reeves (rim shot.)

Baitbus' shtick is convincing “straight” men to get into a van to receive head from a sexy woman while blindfolded, the woman is replaced by a man, the “straight” guy freaks out for all of 20 seconds and then agrees to fuck the gay guy just to get the woman off (whom neither of them ever touch), or for a pile of money.

I don’t know why I’m fascinated by these two sites in juxtaposition. One is degrading to women and is operating on the premise that there is a price at which any woman will prostitute herself (it’s not that high,) while Baitbus is basically saying that all men, no matter how straight they are, will have sex with another man for money or so that later they can have sex with a woman. What both of these sites are saying is: everyone is a slut. With them sitting side by side, some of my dislike of Bangbus (although I find it personally very hot) starts to fade. Because the statement “all women are whores” makes me upset, but the statement “we are all whores” sounds about right.

No

2010-04-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

“Will you write a basic run-down of what polyamory is and how to do it? I would love to hear it in your words!”

No.

No I won’t.

You can find basic 101 info anywhere you want. It’s all over the place. And it’s boring as fuck. The best of the best is this article by Cunning Minx over at Poly Weekly. Other than that pick up one of the many books about non-monogamy out there .

I write about things I’m interested in which is mostly the issues that I, my partners, my community and my friends are facing. Very little of which is covered in the whole “poly=many, amory=loves” spiel. I’m not writing this blog for people “trying poly” or people who don’t know what it is. I’m not even writing this blog for the people who read it. I’m writing it to help give myself perspective on what is going on inside of my head and a chance to feel valid spending hours a week looking for images on the internet.

There are a lot of cool people who have taken on the extremely boring task of outlining all the ways and how’s of non-monogamy and we should thank them by buying their books and giving them to our parents/friends/children/therapists when they don’t understand what we are doing. But for now the last thing the internet needs is another asshole going through the whole “love isn’t a starvation economy” line again.

I do however like it when people e-mail me with ideas for topics to write about. Coming up with new input every day is daunting/impossible, which is why you see a lot of quotes and distracting pornography on this blog. So please send along your ideas because even if I don't like them I can find a way to make a post about it.

School

2010-04-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

This article over at Poly in the News is about one man’s decision to come out in his Personal Statement to grad schools. Since I just went through the truly harrowing process myself (applying to grad schools, *not* coming out in my personal statements), I can sympathize with the fear he dealt with waiting for responses and wondering if coming out as pansexual, poly and active in the BDSM community was really the best choice when applying to law school.

I thought about coming out in my Personal Statement but to be completely honest I didn’t because I thought it would sound like I was trying to represent myself as some sort of minority. My field (theater) is known for embracing the outcasts of society and breaking down walls when it comes to hearing minority stories. Even when given the option in my applicationo to Brown to write an essay on why I was a “unique student,” I passed on bringing my relationship style into play.

When I sat down and thought about it, I couldn’t really put my finger on why I hadn’t outed myself. I’m out. I’m not worried that people will find out about me. But when it comes down to it, I don’t want to represent myself as a “polyamory playwright." And it just simply seemed too complicated to include that part of my life while trying to sum up my enter career to date; my influences, my goals, aspirations, blood-type, intentions, ability to send schools $100 for just looking at my play, my relationship with my parents and in one case, the first time I felt a guy's hard-on.

I think what this guy did was pretty fucking cool and I’m glad he found a school that wasn’t just excited about his academic performance, they were excited about him and what he wants to do with the education they offer. Check out a video of him talking about it at Brown University, he's pretty cute.

I will leave you with a chunk of my Personal Statement that I sent to Columbia:

“In high school I fell in love with an actor. I joined drama. I sat too closely to him in the dark backstage. My teenaged libido absorbed the excitement and energy of the plays and the atmosphere of the theater. Part of my love for theater is tied into my first sexual experiences. My first kiss was backstage, my first 'I love you' in the dressing room. But when he left, I was still in love with theater.

Why do I want to make theater? You can find my reasoning in the lust of the first time I felt an erection pressed into my leg. In the taste of sweat and freedom there in the wings, in the dark.”

Bet you thought I was lying about the erection thing. Nope, and that corny bullshit got me accepted.

Polly and Marie

2010-04-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

I think (I hope) this is a failed TV pilot about polyamory. It is described as "Sex and the City meets Will and Grace." You know how you can tell if a TV pilot is going to fail? It is always described as "successful tv show" meets "other successful tv show".

Encourage

2010-04-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

“Do you encourage people to become poly?”

I got this question in my inbox out of the blue and with no other information. I’m going to try to answer it because I find it interesting. Do I personally in my day to day life encourage people who are monogamous (or think they are monogamous) to become poly? I think the answer is : Not consciously.

I don’t try to talk people into opening up their relationships. But I think when people see highly functioning, happy, polyamorous relationships, it’s natural to start thinking about it. I have seen a handful of my friends try polyamory when they hadn’t thought to try it before. I don’t take credit or blame (some of the results were relationship killers) for people trying something out.

I do think that all of us that are out in the world being vocal about non-monogamy are making people think and it a way that is encouraging more movement towards polyamory.

I don’t try and push my friends/crushes/co-workers into being poly, which I think is important. It’s hard enough dealing with the fact that if I date someone I’m turning their default mode from monogamy to non-monogamy so we can be sexual. I certainly don’t want to start doing that in order to be my friend.

Pressuring people into your lifestyle is pretty awful even if you feel like it is the right choice for them. The best we can do is be supportive of people giving it a shot and work on our relationships so we can continue to be sexy, healthy, positive examples of how polyamory can look and work.

If you have any random questions, feel free to send them my way: rphase@yahoo.com

Progressive

2010-04-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

"Sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust. Not that I’m trying to load my argument, of course."
~Alan Moore

Everybody

2010-04-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
~Neil Gaiman

Horrible

2010-04-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

~Neil Gaiman

Admit It

2010-04-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Communicating well is one of the most complicated things we ever have to learn how to do. And most people never learn. One of issues that I’m trying to deal with right now is the really difficult place I go to when someone *tells me* how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking about.

Now they can do it nicely, all in non-violent language - “I’m thinking that that you are feeling this way” but it still doesn’t help. I get defensive. I want to disprove that they know what I’m feeling. One of the reasons why I want to disprove it is because no matter how right they are about my emotional state, there is no way they are 100% right. Because we all have such fucking complicated emotions. I’m often thinking or feeling two (if not ten) completely contradictory things. And so when one of my partners points out that they believe I am feeling one thing or another because of their observation of my actions, they are always somewhat right and somewhat wrong. So I can always deny. Which isn’t helpful.

What I’m working on right now is admitting when someone comes close to what I’m thinking. Even when it’s said in anger. Even when it’s said aggressively. So if my girlfriend says “You just don’t trust me!” I can (try to) say “Yes, you are picking up on the fact that I am dealing with trust issues right now. And that is hard. But I do trust you.” Because just denying that I’m having that feeling isn’t honest. It’s also really confusing for my partners who are trying to understand why I’m acting the way that I am.

Even when what I’m feeling or thinking is negative and doesn’t fit into my own ideas of myself and my relationships, I need to admit it. When I’m feeling jealous (and I do), I’m not failing at poly. Feeling mistrustful is not the same thing as not trusting. Feeling hurt is okay even when you wish that whatever made you feel that way didn’t affect you. Admitting to your emotions can be hard, it can make you look week and pathetic. Nothing is stronger, harder and more daunting then admitting when you are vulnerable.

Cheating and Trust

2010-04-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

If you are in an open relationship, cheating is different. Instead of ending relationships, “cheating” is often framed as “pushing boundaries”. That is, if you come clean. In non-monogamous relationships we strive to build relationships that can withstand the honesty of loving and/or having sex with other people. Which means building relationships that are strong enough to withstand fucking up.

I have fucked up in my relationships. Minorly to majorly, and most places in-between. I have been honest about it at times and at other times (especially in the beginning of my relationship with my boyfriend) have hidden that I fucked up. My boyfriend can read me like a book and knew when something was up and when it came out (because it always did) it would be painful and awful and we would work thru it.

Often you will hear people in a poly relationship say: “I didn’t mind that they were fucking someone else - it’s the fact that they were hiding it from me.”

The reason why hiding your sex life with other people is awful is because it is stating (whether you mean it to or not) that you don’t trust your partner or your relationship. Which sounds backwards but if you think about it, it really isn’t.

If I don’t tell my partners about my sexual experiences with other people, the reason I’m not telling them is because I don’t trust that they will be okay and I don’t trust that my relationship with them will be okay because of my actions. I am also clearly stating I don’t want to deal with their emotions around the issue. Which, if you look at it, is no kind of relationship.

If I bypass my partners to get what I want in the moment and then hide it from them so I don’t have to deal with the emotional fallout, they have every right to be pissed because I am taking something away from them. Not some ridiculous concept of “purity”, we’ve all agreed that me having sex with other people doesn’t harm my partners, but I have taken away their right to their emotions. I have side-stepped them in my own distrust of the stability of our relationship. I have decided without them that they couldn’t deal with the situation. Or more selfishly I didn’t want to deal with them dealing with the situation.

Cock

2010-04-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

Um… yeah, there has been a lot of cock pictures lately. Sorry about that...or...you know...You're welcome.

Mail

2010-04-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

You know how couple of posts back I said that I don’t have enough perspective to offer you advice on your personal relationship? It’s still true. But this is a letter I got recently that fit very well into some thoughts I was having about how to open up a relationship.

“Alrighty. So here goes...

I've recently come out of a pretty rocky open-relationship and have found myself in love with someone else, which led me to realize I am not in love with the man whom I came out of that open-relationship with. Long story short, I found myself to feel very monogamous with this new person. Monogamous meaning, feeling no need to experience others because others would be "just sex," and I've already had plenty of that.

Ok, so I was pretty high off this newfound feeling! Then came along this attractive painter who began painting me nude (I'm an art model). If he was just attractive, whatever. But he's also a little flirtatious. And our sessions are quite intimate. And we discuss polyamory and open-relationships all the time. I've never kissed him, but I have sat and lied very close to him while reviewing the painting naked. Ugh. Can you feel my temptation already?

If I were to have sex with him, it would be just sex. But we'd also have a friendship. He's just that kinda guy -- always keeping friendships with those he's had sex with. And it would just be fun! I've had many one-night stands and weird sexual relationships with others, but never a fuck buddy. And this fuck buddy idea is becoming very enticing...

Meanwhile, I've already told my new love that I have no desire for anyone else, and I told him completely out of my own will -- He's completely loving and open-minded. But I know that just made him feel soooo good, and I don't want to disappoint him. He is more important than this enticing fuck buddy, and he does come first. I mean, I forgot to add that he and I wanna get married and totally want a family together... And like I said, we're very communicative with each other and very open-minded. Even being a promiscuous person, the idea of starting a family with him fills my heart with joy and excitement and total peace.

I guess I've already answered my own concerns...

Communicate with him, right? If he really is more important and open-minded, there's really no good reason for me to have a fuck buddy without his knowledge. Right? Timing of when I decide to take that step with our relationship is all it is, now.

Although I feel like I've already answered my stuff just through writing this, if you still do have any opinions/agreements/disagreements, I would still love to hear them all!”

You know what you’re doing. I just wanted to add that I think it is perfectly normal that people go thru phases (you know the whole NRE, the "honeymoon" or the "falling" part of falling in love) where your partner is the only thing you want. For anyone going thru one of those phases I recommend you don't make promises or declarations. When you’re going through this phase nothing seems important other than your partner. Your career takes a back seat, your friends are less interesting, the camping trip you've been planning for six months is all of a sudden just something that is getting in the way of you seeing your new love. It happens in monogamy and in poly. Keeping perspective is a tall order.

But it calms down. Which is a good thing. Because all the other parts of life that we love and where missing comes back. Like wanting other people, having crushes, our hobbies, our life goals. And when they come back it doesn't mean you love your partner less, it often means you have taken the step that you now deeply believe this person is a part of your world, a part of you. It's a time to be celebrated.

So you need to decide what kind of relationship you want with your new love. Because it isn’t too late to sit down and open it up. But I warn you that even if you do open your relationship you might have to pass on the painter. Deciding you want to open up because “that is what you want” is very different then deciding you want to open up because “that is WHO you want” It’s going to be harder for your boyfriend that there is a face and a penis that you are thinking about specifically.

If I were you I would come into the conversation without the goal of getting permission to sleep with the new guy. Go in with the goal of being honest and trying to build the relationship in a way that would allow you to act on something like this in the future.

Seattle

2010-04-17T17:00:00.001-07:00

I love things like this. Seeing a bunch of people get together to make art just for the moment. Just for the connection. Just for the fun. I’m going to miss Seattle.

That’s New

2010-04-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

So in Seattle there are enough people who are poly that we are facing a new kind of criticism. It’s not about the morality of sex. It’s not about our country's discomfort with gender, sex and sexuality. It’s about date-ability. From The Stranger’s column I, Anonymous:

“DO NOT DATE THE POLYAMOROUS
Polyamorous people are insane. They have this idea that having more than one partner means magic trust unicorns give you 48 hours in a day! You'll have twice as much energy, twice as much time and attention, and just plain do way more stuff in a day, because you've got LOTS of relationships! Nobody'll ever be ignored or shortchanged, because all these super-evolved folks are just twice as there as everyone else. Settle for half a lover—what the hell, a third, a fifth, and it'll be just as good as having your very own lover! It's magic, they'll tell you.

This is such idiotic bullshit. DO NOT DATE THE POLYAMOROUS. Ever wonder why they all will fuck any damn thing that will hold still long enough? It's because polyfuckery is a giant numbers game and whoever has the most partners wins. Got N partners and your primary has N + 1? You are pulling couch duty baby! Better go hit a club and bring something home unless you want to be a lonely pathetic sneered-at bitch. Just wanted to settle down? Too fuckin' bad, you have to keep up or when the music stops you're left alone.

Do not get sucked in. They may look cute—oh, there's no risk, of course I'll make plenty of time for you, I LOOOOVE you, you won't have to deal with my jealous, greedy other partners—but they are a bunch of evil, exploitative shopworn predators.
You have been warned. Polyamory is just what it looks like: your date goes home with someone else—or worse TO someone else—when you need them, you are high and dry, and if you're angry or sad about it you can go fuck yourself. That's not allowed.”

In Seattle you face the fact that there are a lot of burned sex partners out there with an irrationally placed anger at the whole of us. It’s a different kind of prejudice to deal with. I know how to talk about why I feel polyamory is moral, healthy and sane. But I don’t know how to navigate an argument about your personal experiences. And with all types of relationships, the more people are poly the more people who are going to be screwed over by poly people.
There are some interesting comments if you want to check them out here are some of my favorites:

“Almost every poly relationship I've personally seen has been one partner convincing the other that it's a good idea, and the other just being miserable with the situation in the long run.”

“I'm going to go out on a limb and say that some cultural norms, such as Monogamy, exist for a logical reason. Our ancestors weren't completely backward and uptight. They were just trying to avoid exactly what Anonymous describes.

I'm not saying everyone needs to be monogamous but it is certainly recommended by 9 out of 10 dentists”

“And yeah, I'll admit: "poly" does attract a certain large minority (at least) of people who seize on it as an all-purpose philosophical justification for never having to consider the feelings of others. You generally develop a sense for that particular strain of asshole after a little while, and they're pretty easy to avoid if you keep your eyes open.”

“I'm glad we question monogamy every time someone has a bad monogamous relationship.”

“My guess is the successful poly's keep their mouth shut about it, because the only poly's I've personally met insisted on telling me about it, and were selfish assholes.”

“I'm sorry you got burned, and I'm even more sorry that you can't tell the difference between being burned by whatever individual and having been burned by an entire community, most of whom you've never met. I've been happily polyamorous in two stable relationships for almost four years, which is much longer than many of my monogamous friends' track records. Better and less whiny-sensationalist advice would be: Know what you want; know what your partner(s) want(s); know what works for you. When did Slog and its commenters go back to the idea that all relationships work the same?

How about: DO NOT DATE THE MONOGAMOUS. THEY RUN THEIR WHOLE LIVES BY PETTY JEALOUSY. THEY'RE TOTALLY SELF-RIGHTEOUS CONFORMISTS, AND THEY'RE SUCH WHINY DRAMA QUEENS THEY'LL SHRIEK AND CRY IF YOU EVER LOOK AT ANYONE ELSE.”

“Only date polys if you have no illusions about having your emotional needs being met (they won't be) and you find stories about what they wore to Burning Man to be incredibly interesting."

“Your emotional needs won't be met unless you let people know what they are. This is true if you have one partner or two or three. I found that out the hard way and it was a valuable lesson. Oh, and don't even get me STARTED on what I wore at Burning Man! I was a TOTAL Sparkle Pony, we'll be here alllllll day! :)”

Catholic

2010-04-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty.
~John Waters

Provided

2010-04-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Sex between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful - provided you get between the right man and the right woman.
~Woody Allen

Intimacy

2010-04-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

My fear of intimacy manifests in a couple of obvious ways. The hardest for my relationships is that I have a lot of fear and pain associated with sex with the people who I feel closest to. I would rather go out and fuck a stranger than face having loving sex with my committed partners. Wow, that’s even hard to type out.

I use polyamory as a crutch for this. I don’t have to deal with not having sex with my boyfriend and girlfriend because they can have sex with each other and they are always free to find new sex partners. I don’t have to deal with the shame, fear and resentment that happens when your partner needs something from you that seems so simple to give and you can’t give it.

I also get to find new partners that I can have crazy amazing sex with, until they become too intimate. If I keep this up I will be someone who loves dozens of people and has sex with none of them. Healthy.

I’m writing about this as honestly as I can because I feel like part of my issue is my own deep shame when it comes to the idea of being “broken” (see I told you I hate that word.) I am an extremely sexual person and sex makes me really happy. Sex is a need in my life not a desire. And I’m all kinds of fucked up about it. Awesome.

My boyfriend and I were talking about having more sex within our triad. I started feeling worried that it would be awkward, that it would hurt, that I would hate it and I wouldn’t be able to speak up about it. Then I thought of having sex with my partners at a sex party in a room full of people and all of a sudden it was hot and exciting.

That is my fear of intimacy. When other people are watching, I can be outside of myself. I can watch, I can put on a show, my head is at least 60% occupied by what others are seeing. And all of a sudden I don’t have to deal with the connection of my body and my heart to my partners. And I can enjoy sex.

We all have issues. You don’t get to be an adult without your fair share of emotional scars. We all come into our relationships with our pain, and our pain keeps us separate from our partners. It makes us alone. Because no one can understand your fear but you.

Someday I will be able to have loving enjoyable intimate sex with my long-term committed partners. I have faith in that. But I also know that the only person who is going to make that day happen is me. Which is the single most joyous and terrifying thought I have ever had.

Commitment

2010-04-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

In RENT the musical 19 year old Mimi is a stripper who is HIV positive and is addicted to heroin. As she is falling in love with Roger (a whiny, unemployed, guitar playing, HIV positive, ex heroin addict) she says “Life is short babe, time is flying I’m looking for baggage that goes with mine” I bring this up not to point out that I completely pathetically didn’t need to look up that quote because since I was 14 I’ve had the all of RENT memorized, I bring it up because there are certain kinds of baggage that go with poly and kinds that don’t.

For instance if you have a deep seeded fear of abandonment stepping into polyamory or any kind of open relationship is going to be harder for you then for others. Fear of abandonment is a pretty common issue and it can make any kind of relationship hard.

But I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time talking about issues that make poly harder. Because we all have them, they are insecurities, fears and our cultural programming. The harder ones to spot are issues that make poly easier. Like fear of commitment and fear of intimacy.

Open relationships often work like a light house on issues, a beam of direct blinding light that leaves you have no place to hide. If you have issues and are non-monogamous you MUST deal with them to have a lasting relationship. It’s simply too hard to not work on them. But if, say, you have a fear of commitment you get to skate simple because being poly can look like less commitment.

Personally I think of non-monogamy as taking more commitment. But it’s easy to see that if you're afraid of getting tied down or losing options that ethical non-monogamy is a way to not have to deal with that issue. So when I read people saying that open relationships are just for people who can’t commit I get annoyed because on some level it’s true that it does make it easier for them.

I have a fear of intimacy and I have, for years now, used poly as a way to not have to deal with it. Polyamory makes it much easier not to have to face that issue which in a monogamous relationship would be massively crippling.

Because I can skate on not dealing with it and still have high functioning happy relationships, I have. And that’s kind of fucked up.

Unfortunately

2010-04-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately love is only like love. It isn’t like pie or sunsets or whatever strange metaphor people are now using to try and describe why it is that we love the way we love. Which makes love harder for us to quantify.

And that is what we want to do, quantify it, understand it, we want to understand ourselves, our motives, our lovers' motives. We want to KNOW what the fuck is going on in our own heads and hearts. The fact that we say “heads and hearts” denotes how much we struggle. We have to have a place where our emotions and attachments come from that isn’t the same place as our rational thoughts and ideas; because well, emotions aren’t rational.

We contradict ourselves. We want things we don’t want. We lust after people we don’t want to sleep with. We love people who treat us badly. Our feelings fuck us up. They lead us wrong, they bend us out of shape and they keep us from truly understanding ourselves.

But then there is love. And nothing makes us more selfish and selfless than love. And this thing we are doing? This polyamory thing?

Maybe the best way to live life is to burn thru it, fire on both sides until it’s gone. Maybe it’s to love as much and as deeply as we can. Maybe life is so we can hurt and feel and see just how crazy we all really are.

Protective

2010-04-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Something we tell ourselves when we are being protective of our partners is “I just don’t want them to get hurt”. On the surface this seems like a good thing. I care about you as a person so I want to do what I can to make your life as good as it can be. It seems noble, selfless even. But in most cases it isn’t.

Being protective is often just being controlling. Being protective often takes the shape of not trusting that your partner can handle the situation.

When my girlfriend (and yes she really does this) gets in the face of some guy grabbing my ass she is making assumptions. First being that I need help. Second being that in this moment I can’t verbally ask her for help so she should take action.

Now, my girlfriend knows me really well. She can read my body language from across the room and tell if I’m uncomfortable. She also knows that I can take care of myself in most situations, and when it comes to letting people know they are making me uncomfortable, I'm about as subtle as a falling piano. Yet she will step up to protect me.

This kind of protection is just inefficient. The harder part of protection come into play in non-monogamous relationships in the form of “I don’t think person x is good for you, they might hurt you and I just want to protect you”

It's really hard to watch people we care about getting hurt. So it seems to make sense that when one of your partners starts dating someone new that you would give them the twice-over to decide for yourself if this new person is “safe” or not. There are signs we look for, like having a bad relationship track record or a history of violence, but we also let our intuition guide us.

We have to find a way to let our partners make choices for themselves. With the understanding that they very well might get hurt. The new person they are dating could be the coolest person in the world; totally respectful of the relationship they are entering, and your partner still might get hurt.

“Protecting” your partner isn’t a good way to make relationship choices. I’m not saying don’t listen to your feelings. You should. And you should be able to express your feelings to both your partner and their new interest, but remember that you don’t necessarily have the best perspective and your instinct to protect might be coming from a desire to control.

Our partners are going to be hurt. It’s part of life. We feel comfortable walking into situations where we ourselves might be emotionally hurt, but the idea of our partner doing the same thing scares us. Trusting someone sometimes looks like not protecting them.

Failure

2010-04-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

"So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free."
— Tom Robbins

Flux

2010-04-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

"Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need."
— Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)

Don’t Care

2010-04-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

I live, work and play in one of the friendliest poly cities in the world. Seattle WA. I love Seattle. I have lived here since I was 18 and it feels like home. I’m pretty out. As in I don’t hide that I am poly. I don’t have a job that people worry about me being a sexual pervert, I don’t have a career that would be tainted by the idea that I enjoy sex with multiple people and I basically don’t care what people think of my relationships. All of that helps me be out.

When I meet new people I’m just honest. I mention my boyfriend if it comes up I mention my girlfriend if it comes up and if people are confused I assume that they will talk to me about it. But here’s the thing, no one has ever asked me questions about it. I don’t know if that is because they are being polite, or because they understand poly and don’t think about it or if I am super self-involved to assume that people I just met give a shit about the type of relationships I have.

The only time I care about what type of relationship someone is in, is if I want to fuck that person. I mean, yes, I care about the poly community and if I run into poly people I’m happy to know them and feel a little closer to them because of the type of relationship they have, but the truth is it’s not like I’m good friends with every poly person I meet and it’s not like I discount people who are monogamous. So really it boils down not caring unless I’m trying to figure out how likely it is for me to get into your pants. (that sounds a bit more slutty and calculated then I planned on, but oh well, fuck it.) So it makes sense that most people I interact with couldn’t give a shit how many people I love/live with/sleep with.

Being out is easy when you realize that most of the people in world just don’t care.

25 Things

2010-04-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

This is making my day today. It’s a blog where people anonymously post 25 things about their sexuality, and the results are funny, moving, disturbing, hot, fucked up and so beautifully human. Here are a few I loved but you should really check out the whole thing.

12. I am attracted to men. But I don't think I would ever sleep with one. The thought of sexual contact, especially anal, is kind of a turnoff, though I have no problem with homosexuality in others. I have queer friends. I have very specific taste in men. Rugged, masculine, sensitive, probably bearded. But I couldn't really define it without pointing someone out.

7. I don't like condoms, but there is also not a chance in hell I'm going on the pill. The only hormones I want going in are (maybe eventually) testosterone.

9. have a D&D character with a +6 to Perform (Seduction) and I *really* want in the DM's pants.

6) When I was ten I learned the word for rape. My mom told me if a man ever tried to rape me, to let him do it. She said, if I tried to fight it, he would kill me. Better to give him what he wanted and be quiet about it.

15) At 18, I felt inadequate as a lesbian because I had never been with a female bodied person. I was depressed. I was in college for the first time. The first time, I didn't really want to have sex with her, but I guess I didn't not want to. All of the times after that I knew I did NOT want to have sex with her, but she INSISTED until I stopped saying "no." I think this was rape? I don't know. I didn't want to have sex with her. I just got tired of resisting. She never let me touch her. She always had sex with *me*.

25) I like having sex. I like having the kind of sex that doesn't make me feel afraid. I like having sex with partners who respect me.

2. I love to give blowjobs while I’m on my knees.

10. My dad has made me feel like no matter what I do, I could never make a man be faithful to me.

25. I don't think love is real, it's just a chemical response to millions of years of biological programming encoded in our DNA. I still want to get married, have kids, and own land one day.

7. The only time I feel attractive is when I'm walking down the street pretending I'm a character from a TV show.

2. I made my Barbies have sex to Shania Twain music.

6. I lost my virginity in a dirty lake to a small cock. He was my boyfriend of two years (and we had only fingered each other up until that point). We were 15 and did not wear condoms, but he held me tight. I was disgusted.

2. I lost my virginity at age 18 while I was a senior in high school and my boyfriend was in his first year of college. It was not painful, but he told me I was bad at it and fell asleep while I cried in the bathroom for two hours.

15. One time, I let my ex boyfriend "titty fuck" me and when he was done, I noticed he had left a skidmark on my stomach. I never let him, or anyone else, do that again.

#13: I really like the smell of semen. Like... I think it's so great. The taste is okay, but not as good as the smell. I've never talked to anyone else who thinks this, though, so I feel kind of weird about it.

4.The first time I actually really masturbated (on purpose, knowing what I was doing) was in the 8th grade. I was reading Harry Potter fanfiction online. Being a straight girl, I was frightened that the "slash" Harry/Draco gay fanfiction turned me on so much.

18. My first kiss was on a bus in Ireland at thirteen. I was playing truth or dare with the kids in my program, and one was dared to kiss me. He made me cover my ears, but I could hear him protest that he didn't want to kiss a fat girl. Another boy called him a pussy and kissed me himself

10. I dislike giant silicone boobs. They intimidate me. They're like henchmen... they don't say anything. They just sit there, ominously. If they had arms, you can bet the mortgage they'd be crossed intimidatingly.

12. I've never had sex with a transperson. I'd like to try, but not in that creepy "The only reason I'm dating you is because you have boobs and a dick" kind of way.

Consensual Sex

2010-04-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

I do truly like Dan Savage even though (or maybe because) he is harsh. I wanted to post this advice he put up on The Stranger's slog because it brought back a very vivid memory of one of my past partners from college.

I'm a young straight feminist male, and I've been dating my feminist girlfriend monogamously for almost two years. Recently I've been coming to terms with the fact that I am turned on by rape fantasies. Of course I find the idea of actual rape repugnant—this is probably, of course, an important reason why fantasizing about it turns me on—but I thought I might like to simulate my fantasy in some way. I sent out some feelers with my girlfriend by initiating a conversation about kinks and asking about what type of kinks she would hypothetically be comfortable accommodating. I asked her to imagine that I fantasized about feeling up women on the subway and wanted her to simulate that fantasy with me. Her response was that she would try to "cure" me of my desire, help me figure out and work through the psychological gender-power issues behind it, and try to show me how enjoyable consensual sex is. My first thought was, "Well that's not a way to be GGG...", but then I reconsidered. Would indulging that fantasy only reinforce the patriarchal patterns of thought which I've tried to expunge from my brain? How much of a point does she have?

Feminist Rape Fantasist

Break up.

The fine print: I'm not telling you to dump your girlfriend because she won't let you feel her up on the subway, FRF. She's under no obligations to fulfill your rape or rape-lite fantasies. If they squick her out, they squick her out. But you're not going to have a happy and fulfilling sexual relationship with a woman—feminist or not, squicked out by simulated non-consensuality or not—whose first impulse when confronted with a run-of-the-mill, completely consensual role play scenario is to pathologize her partner, to declare him sick, and to insist that she can "cure" him of his desires, and to imply that he's not interested in consensual sex when consensual sex was precisely what he proposed. There's nothing wrong with you, FRF, nothing that needs curing or requires expunging. But your girlfriend regards you as a sexual threatening and/or ill and, thanks to her, you're starting to see yourself that way too. This relationship is already over.

Although the person who pulled a similar bullshit line on me was just a friend I was having sex with and not a romantic relationship, I took what he said to heart and I ended up feeling awful about my fantasies. Looking back I can see that my fear that other people would think the same thing kept me from sharing my desires with sexual partners for a good chunk of time.

Sometimes I think waiting until your older to have sex is a good thing, but mostly because I was so stupid when I was eighteen.

NRE and Obsession

2010-04-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

So what most poly-people mean when they say “New Relationship Energy” is the time before you see the flaws in your partner. The time when they can do no wrong and you both can’t stop thinking about each other or annoying most of the world by talking about each other constantly. Often in the non-poly world we call this “falling in love”.

I’m a great example of why NRE can be destructive to an existing relationship. I have a horrible time being present with people. Which is hard enough on my partners when I’m obsessed with things that they are also involved in like theater, Burning Man or writing. They both deal with my obsessions well when they are collaborating with me on them. While it might be annoying that I cannot shut the fuck up about a project I’m working on and I seem to space out when the conversation turns away from that one thing, it is hurtful when the thing that I can’t get my mind off of is some other person and their genitals.

When I’m falling for someone, I’m obsessive. I don’t say NRE because it sounds too cute and not nearly destructive enough. When I was falling in love with my male partner I fucked up my grades, stopped eating and literally stalked the man. When I was crushing out on another partner I missed important meetings and pushed my partners' boundaries in unpleasant ways.

I suck at this part. And like all things, part of the reason why I suck at it is because I WANT that feeling so much. Falling in love is better than Ecstasy and more reliable then drinking. It fixes everything. No matter how hard school is, how shitty my job is, how lost I feel about my life, falling in love fixes it.

But this is a real issue. This is a particularly hard thing I’m putting my relationships thru. So how do I fix it? I’m not sure. I’m working on being more present in my every day life. Both as a relaxation technique and some odd religious feelings that I haven’t put my finger on yet. I feel like actively being with my partners when I am with them is huge.

Being present with my friends, family, lovers, and partners is a lifetime goal and I’m working on it. For now, while I’m still struggling, I find that letting my partners in on what is going on with me is the best course of action. Along with having evenings without my cell phone, getting out of the house, etc. And writing long elaborate stories with every detail of what I want sexually, emotionally or romantically (okay mostly sexually). After I get some of it out it feels a lot less urgent.

For the Ladies

2010-04-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

More xkcd

Lust

2010-04-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

I didn’t really understand sex until I was 16. I didn’t know why you would want it or what would drive you to do it. I sometimes “liked” boys. But had never dated anyone and felt no real push for it.

Later I apologized to one of my close friends. I had, in my know-it-all 16 year old self, given her a lecture on having sex “too early” and probably had come off more judgmental then her own mother would have. “Don’t you know about STD’s? Or worse babies!” I didn’t understand the reason why you would put yourself at risk.

The first time I really felt turned on by a human being was in the cramped hallway that led from the backstage dressing rooms of my high school theater to the stage. The boy I had a thing for gave me a hug, I think someone was walking by so he moved me with his body and pressed me into the wall. I can quote the clichés, “My knees went week”, “my heart skipped a beat”, but really what happened was that for the first time in my life I felt lust for someone. I was stunned.

So that is why we have sex with each other.

Somewhere in my brain I must have thought that sex was a big deal. I just didn’t know how big a deal it was. I was a good kid. I didn’t drink or do drugs. I didn’t drive too fast, I got good grades and I spent most of my junior and senior years of high school having as much sex as I could talk my boyfriend into.

Lust fucks me up. I don’t understand it and it has an amazingly powerful effect on me. I used to think that the way I lust was immature. When I’m not actively dealing with it, lust seems selfish and small. Lust seems like a stupid reason to make my partners work so hard. It seems like something I should always be able to walk away from.

It seems that way.

It can’t be about simply getting off, right? I can get off on my own in no-time. I enjoy doing it. So is it about connection? Possibility?

Why is it that after sex I’ll cry or laugh but after masturbating I mostly fall asleep or just finish showering? What is the drive for sex? Why can it seem so hard to live without it? Touch? Care? Intimacy? I don’t feel like I lack those in my life.

I guess it makes me feel real.

Despair

2010-04-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

"Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation."
— Tom Robbins (Wild Ducks Flying Backward)

Those Who Love Us Best

2010-04-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

There's one sad truth in life I've found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

e-Mail

2010-04-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

I wanted to encourage anyone who reads this blog and has questions or thoughts about it to drop me an e-mail at : rphase@yahoo.com

I do try to get back to everyone that doesn’t outright call me a whorebag.

But I also wanted to add that I don’t really give advice. Questions about what you should do in your individual relationships are hard. I don’t really have the perspective to advise you. But if you do have relationship questions you should check out these places:

Polyamory.com forum
Poly weekly forum
Polyamory LiveJournal

I promise you that 70% of the responses will just tell you to communicate more/better/always. But the people in these places seem to have their shit enough together and have enough differing opinions that it is probably worth your while if you feel the need for an anonymous community to give you their perspective.

Shoes

2010-04-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

When I started dating one of my current partners, I decided that I needed to keep the relationship open because I found that I couldn’t play (bdsm-wise) with him the way I wanted to play. There were a lot of other reasons why we keep the relationship open but this was the one I can certainly point to. I deeply wanted to have bdsm, specifically submission and humiliation, to be a part of my sex life. But when he humiliated me I just felt really, really hurt. He was my security, and it made me too vulnerable. I needed to be able to sleep next to him without feeling afraid. So it made perfect sense that I should turn around and date/play with a string of tops who where also deeply into bdsm and filled that desire for me, without the hurt… but I didn’t.

Instead I dated a sweet-tempered loving man where our main sexual activity was having sex after watching horrible horror movies. I also started dating my wonderful girlfriend who was great at humiliating me by talking me into doing crazy hippie art projects, but our kinky sex life mostly consistee of us agreeing that as feminists it still feels strange to say I want to be controlled in the bedroom from time to time.

I had a role I thought I needed filled and what I found were people who didn’t fill that role at all. And they both make me really happy.

Four years after I was really sure that to be happy I needed hardcore bdsm in my life on a pretty regular basis I still don’t have it. Yet I’m really happy.

I think if I had gone out and really sought out a top, I wouldn’t have had relationships that worked as well. Because I would have been looking for someone to fill some need, not looking for a whole person to invite into my life and family. If I only had room in my life from someone who filled that role then I would have missed out on amazing things.

I know out there somewhere there is someone who would feel happy to fill those particular shoes. The ones I have labeled “bdsm top, who really isn’t into hurting me so much as humiliating me, who likes public sex, who my boyfriend enjoys hanging out with, who my girlfriend respects and who is also a feminist”. But I’m not in a hurry to find him or her.

I’ll just keep my heart open and see what happens.

Broken

2010-04-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Words are pretty fucking powerful, which is why some of the ways they are used when it comes to relationships bother me so deeply. “Broken” is a big one for me. A person cannot be broken. An arm can be broken, a lamp can be broken. I’m okay saying “I just feel broken today” I get upset when I hear people say “I’m just broken” we aren’t dolls. We don’t break. We get tired, sad, frustrated, and worn out. We give up, give in and break down.

But we do not break.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-04T00:15:00.000-07:00

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God ... Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us."

~1 John 4:7, 11-12~

Wanting

2010-04-03T10:00:00.002-07:00

As of late my attraction to people I’m not currently in a sexual relationship with has been pretty limited to monogamous married men. Watching myself around these men has shown me exactly how far I have come on my road to have ethical relationships. Which is: far enough that I’m basically proud of myself and super sexually frustrated.

Is there some point where I will stop wanting people that I can’t have ethical relationships with? I don’t know.

I do know that in growing up I have somehow stopped wanting to have sex with people who don’t like me. For a while in college I found myself deeply attracted to people who couldn’t care less about me. Since I mostly wanted them for sex it worked out okay. But I can still remember the time when I realized that I was avoiding people who might develop real feelings for me and sleeping with guys whose respect for me came solely from my ability to beat them at Mortal Combat.

Is this hope? Someday will I be able to develop a layer that protects me from wanting to fuck my married friends? Or the ones that it would be ridiculous to date? Or the ones that my partners don’t like? Are these things we can learn?

And if I could learn to only be attracted to the right person at the right time would that make me happy? Or would that just make me monogamous?

Real

2010-04-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

I’m about to take a big step. I am about to move in with both my partners and start doing the real work to make us a balanced triad, of sorts. I thought I would let you guys in on some of the thoughts running through my mind while I did this.

The first is: How are we not balanced now?

To start off simply: my boyfriend and I have unprotected sex. He and our girlfriend do not.

My boyfriend and I can have sex whenever we the mood strikes us. Our girlfriend lives in New York and when she visits I still ask that they make time for “dates” to have sex.

My boyfriend and I have sex in our house. I ask that when my boyfriend and girlfriend have sex in our house that it is with a lot of consideration for me (like I don’t have to deal with cleaning up and that they are done when I get back to the house.)

Both because we live together and because we have been together longer, I often know about things going on in my boyfriend's life before my girlfriend does, to the point that I sometimes feel hurt when he tells her something before he tells me.

I sleep with my boyfriend every night. When our girlfriend comes to town we all sleep together (But I can’t do that every night at least not in anything smaller than a king-sized bed.)

The second is: Do I really want to change this?

Yes. I really do. It’s scary and intimidating I still have this suspicion in the back of my mind that I am losing something by doing this. I want to face that fear and prove it wrong.

The third is: How?

Well, by pushing myself. I’m lucky to have these two amazing partners who have dealt with me, to some extent, controlling their sex lives for years. They understand that I’m working hard and they give me space to do that work. They also understand that this transition is going to be tough on me and they support me.

I don't think it is possible to do this without partners as amazing as mine.

If I can stay in a vocal place, if I can explain my feelings instead of just acting on them, then I have faith that we can figure this out together.

Care Bear

2010-04-01T10:00:00.001-07:00

Care comes in all shapes and sizes.

.

Outlaw

2010-04-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
~Tom Robbins

Marriage

2010-03-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

So my first poly boyfriend is getting married (again). He is one of the people that I will love forever. And he happens to be marrying one of the other people that I will love forever.

Tim (that’s a common name right?) got married for the 2nd time while I was dating him. At the time he lived in his house with his wife-to-be, his boyfriend and an ex girlfriend. I was 20 years old in my senior year of college and in the kind of love that makes you drive six hours just to make out with someone.

I don’t have a lot to say about marriage. I think it’s good. I personally don’t know if I will ever sign up. But I’m happy (so happy) to see two people I love celebrating their relationship. Now I can (and will) give them a bunch of shit for this being a third wedding for both of them, I still have a great place in my heart for celebrating love in community.

I think when you have a non-monogamous relationship it can even be more important to celebrate your relationship in community. We don’t do this much. But there is no reason not to. What we are doing is beautiful and hard and fuck yeah our family, friends, neighbors and lovers should celebrate now and then to our love. Our relationships.

Hell, we were drinking anyway, how hard is it to raise a glass?

Congratulations to two of my favorite people.

Individuality

2010-03-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

"Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route."
~ Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)

True Love

2010-03-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

I think the main problem is talking about “love” as a real thing. It’s a concept, an idea, an emotion, not something carved from stone. I do believe you can fall in love on sight. I believe you can love someone in a moment and then stop. You can love someone and not see a future with them; you can see a future with someone and not love them. Love isn’t a commitment, it isn’t a relationship.

I have fallen in love across the room, and while I couldn’t plan a future or make a commitment to that person because I didn’t know them I could truthfully look into their eyes and tell them that in this moment I loved them.

I hate that people hold back on saying “I love you” I have no idea how you can say “You feel in love but you’re not sure yet” love is a FEELING. If you feel in love you are. What other ways do we have to measure an emotion?

One of my partners and I said "I love you" on our 2nd date. And it was true. And while I love my partner differently now, I did love him in that moment and he loved me. Love is a lot more flexible than people think.

A relationship is a commitment. We commit to people we love. But saying “I love you” isn’t a promise, it is vocalizing a feeling, a feeling we should have towards more people more often.

I might be scared by my parents telling new people that they love them, but I never think it’s a bad thing. It can tap into my fears, my insecurities, my relationship issues, but it’s not bad.

Love is good. Always.

We can tap into the “I love you but I’m not 'in' love with you” line at a later date.

The Territory of Body

2010-03-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

I feel pretty territorial of my body and my partners' bodies. I even feel that way towards friends bodies and the bodies I don’t know but am attracted to. This manifests in protectiveness (when my drunk girlfriend is running in the streets topless,) jealousy (when someone I'm crushing on is touching or intimate with someone else,) fear (when I’m dressed slutty and someone I don’t know or don’t like is touching me,) and anger (when one of my partners is touching someone else's body in a sexual way.)

When people ask if they can touch me I almost always say yes. I don’t know if the asking is as common outside the Burning Man, sex party, CSPC culture that is so prevalent in Seattle, but when I hang out with friends, or friends of friends, dressed in a provocative manner, I am almost always asked about touch. “Can I touch your ass” is a big one because my idea of sexy these days is wearing chaps. The reason I almost always say yes is because I want to be less territorial of my body.

I deal with a large amount of fear when strangers touch me. I have a built-in idea that touch will lead to sex. And I often feel pretty violated when someone puts their hands on me. I used to deal with this by making a lot of space between me and the person touching me. Or if I liked the person, by being sexually aggressive towards them. Anything that allowed me to have power over the situation.

The idea that someone’s touch isn’t a violent shove of sexual attraction or repulsion is pretty new to me. I’m trying to think of my body in a different way. Body doesn’t have to be a private place, it can be a communal space. Being uncomfortable is not the same thing as having violence committed against you. And a sexual feeling is not the same as an invitation.

When I write it out, these seem like pretty easy concepts, but to me they are a constant struggle.

My partners have different ideas of body but I often project my feelings onto them. When I see my girlfriend being touched by someone I know she isn’t attracted to I think she must be dealing with the same feelings I deal with. When I see my boyfriend causally wrap his arm around a friend I think he must be feeling sexual energy towards that person.

I try to let go of projections knowing that both of my partners can handle themselves. They can get in and out of sexual situations with grace and ease that still seems unobtainable to me. Trusting them sometimes looks like trusting myself.

The Good Old Days

2010-03-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Expressing

2010-03-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

The stupidest I have ever sounded talking about polyamory was when I was sitting across from my mother, trying to explain why I was doing this. I’m pretty good with words and I have never really had a problem expressing myself verbally but this was one of the hardest conversations I have ever had. And all my bullshit lines about “love” and “trust” and “faith” sounded… well, like bullshit.

I came out to my mom a couple of months ago. I have been in non-monogamous relationships since I was about 19. Looking my mother in the eye and saying “I dated couples in college” felt so, so strange. Like I was saying I could breathe underwater.

Speaking to my mom reminded me of how foreign this concept is to most people, my mother included. For some reason I thought she might have heard of it. For some reason I thought she wouldn’t be surprised. But I was wrong. It’s easy for me to forget how new this is in people’s ears. How strange it might sound.

I can be pretty confrontational about why I choose this relationship style and I don’t really have to be. If someone is confused by my lifestyle that doesn’t mean they are disapproving. Just because they make inaccurate assumptions doesn’t mean their hearts are closed to the idea. I don’t need to be aggressive. I don’t need to assume I’m being insulted. I can be a little kinder.

This life we choose is strange. For some of us that is one of the reasons why we choose it in the first place. Being upset that people look at you when you are holding hands with both of your partners is like getting upset that people look at you if you walk around with your pet rabbit sitting on your head, what you are presenting to the world is non-normative, people are just trying to figure it out.

But don’t you get jealous?

2010-03-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

No one enjoys negative emotions. They suck. The feeling you get walking back to your car and seeing a ticket. Getting a low grade on a test. Getting passed up for a promotion. Someone rejecting you sexually. You feel angry at yourself, at the world. But you deal with it and move on.

No one says "don’t get a job, cause someday your feelings will get hurt". No one says "don’t go to school, it’s really hard and you might end up being angry at your teachers." We mostly accept the fact that we cannot walk thru life without getting our feelings hurt, but for some reason when it comes to relationships, people think that we should never have negative emotions or the relationship is unhealthy.

So my girlfriend was recently interviewing at Stanford for a PhD program (she got in because she is amazing) and one of the other students interviewing and her ended up sharing a car ride. My girlfriend outed herself. Her companions response was to look at my girlfriend with wide eyes and say “but don’t you get jealous?” to which my girlfriend replied “yes.”

The Law

2010-03-26T10:00:00.001-07:00

We live in a country that tells us legally when we are having strong emotions we are less responsible for our actions. If you plan a murder for weeks, that is a worse kind of murder than one committed in a fit of rage, shooting your lover in the head. Our government tells us we are not in control of our emotions. In fact, it tells us that we are not even ourselves when we are having strong emotions. You still go to jail for killing in a fit of rage but not for as long as if you thought it through.

This has led to hilarious (well funny for murder) court hearings where lawyers are trying to prove that their client wasn’t thinking and wasn’t in control and THEREFORE is safer for society.

Are we in control of our emotions? We are in control of what we do with them. People who kill in an emotional state still go to jail. I don’t punch people in the face even when I really want to. I don’t have sex with people just because I really REALLY want to in the moment. But controlling my actions doesn’t prevent me from feeling my emotions.

This idea came up recently when I was dealing with the somewhat annoying fact that I was falling in love with someone that I have little to no chance of ever having an ethical relationship with. I was wondering if I could have stopped the act of falling in love. But before I could get to what it would take to control my emotions I had to face the fact that in order to stop the feeling I probably would have had to want to stop feeling it.

I wanted to be falling in love. Just like a crazed lover wants to kill his partner’s new sex partner. Just like sometimes we go and do things that we know will make us feel like shit. Desire, strong, will-bending, mind-fucking desire.

The first step to controlling our emotions would be to truly want to control them. But we don’t. We want them to control us. We want them to push us to places logic wouldn’t take us. We want them to drive us farther then we would have gone alone.

We want something bigger than logic. Stronger than determination. More powerful than a speeding bullet. So we spend our lives trying to walk a line between controlling and being controlled. All and all it’s not a bad way to live.

Perfect

2010-03-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

I have a bad habit. When I start a new relationship, friendship, whatever, I’m competitive. I want to be perfect for this new person. I try to guess at what they want and give it to them in a way that feels like “that’s just the way I am.”

Because of this drive, I try to drop all my needs and guess at theirs. This is slightly embarrassing to admit. If I think they need a good listener, I try to out-listen the other people in their lives. If I think they want excitement, or perversion, or intellectual debate, I step right in. Now these are all sides of me. I’m really not a good enough actor to convince people I am something I’m not. I just try to hide all the parts of me that they would probably not like: my selfishness, my desire for attention, some of my fucked-up ideas about sex (unless that is why they are interested), my inability to really be present all the time, etc.

This all sounds pretty normal when it comes to dating. The strange thing about it is my intentions. I want to “win”. I want to be perfect. Now we all know there is no way to keep this up. I’ll have a bad day. I’ll guess wrong about what it is you want. At some point I’m going to want something from my new partner other than approval. But for awhile when it comes to someone new, I want to be a safe haven.

Your girlfriend gets mad at you when you don’t clean up the house, I just want to play video games with you and give you blow jobs all day.

You're going thru a hard emotional time with a friend, they aren’t listening to you, all I want to do is listen and make you dinner.

Your boyfriend is on your case for not making enough time for him. I don’t ever need you to call me. I don’t expect anything from you. I’m just here, loving you.

This seems unhealthy to me. But I love it. Nothing makes me feel better and smugger than feeling like for a small amount of time I have tricked someone into thinking that I could meet all of their needs. And it has to be a small amount of time because I can’t keep that shit up.

So I try to watch myself. But it’s hard. Because I am doing a good thing, I am giving a lover, a friend, a person, something they needed but am I doing it for the wrong reasons? Intentions are slippery things. Because in a way, these relationships are meeting both their needs and mine. I get to feel like a perfect partner and they get my full attention and loving support. Does it make it less real because I’m stepping into a role? A role that I know in the long run I will never be able to keep up? Am I doing a disservice to myself by not showing my friends the full picture of me? Am I doing a disservice to my relationships by not allowing my partner to love all of me, even my flaws?

For most relationships the role fades as time passes. But I find myself still longing to be that in someone’s life.

Hard Core

2010-03-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

So I’m trying to get back to blogging. It’s been awhile so I’m kind of rusty. But I have been writing and should be updating more regularly. I warn you, my ability to write funny, interesting, or insightful will be even lower then it once was. But don’t worry too much, cause for a week or two I’ll try to disguise that fact by using pictures of hardcore pornography.

Happy spring!

Goals

2010-03-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Holidays

2009-11-29T19:01:00.000-08:00

I haven’t updated in awhile. Just wanted to let you all know I’m in the middle of grad school applications so all my writing is geared towards self-involved bullshit… which I guess isn’t that different from here. I promise some day I will be back. Someday like February.

One of the main things I have been thinking about and will continue to think about is why are undefined relationships so scary? Why do I need to know if my partner is “dating” someone or “friends” with someone or is “just fucking” someone? I’ve done all of this work to try and be open to what my partners want just to be scared that they don’t know what they want?

I am rarely scared that I don’t know what I want. I’m okay living in the in-between places. But my partners? They better have a bullet-point list of what they want and from whom.

I can make space for my own indecision and I can make space for theirs. One of the reasons I’m doing this is so I don’t have to have a label on every relationship I have, but I find myself struggling when my partners can’t give me clear labels.

Loving someone is loving the whole person. I love a very few people in this world with all of myself, and my life goals are centered around trying to love them without asking them to change who they are or what they want.

Happy holidays,
See you in a few months

I'm In

2009-08-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

Sorry still no original thoughts from me, just sharing some other people’s thoughts about the Newsweek Article about polyamory

From matdvor:

“What we all think about this perversion doesn't matter diddly squat. Do any of you ever stop and realize that you don't get to make the rules based on what you like, how you feel, or what you've experienced? Did you ever stop and ask: What does God think about this lifestyle? Is this our Creator's design? That is all that really matters. And I'm not talking about the little idolatrous god in your mind that you like to invent to legitimatize your sin. I'm talking about the One True God who clearly revealed Himself to us in His Word, the Bible. He gets to make the rules, not any of us.”

In response from jefflikesyou:

I have a master's degree from a very conservative Christian seminary. I have read the New Testament in its original Greek and the Old Testament in its original Hebrew. And I am afraid I'm going to need to correct some of your theology matdvor. There is no mandate for monogamy in the Bible - Paul says it is better for the faithful not to marry at all so that they can devote themselves entirely to God - the ten commandments say not to commit adultery, but the essence of adultery is clearly something different than sexual promiscuity or multiple partners.

Take King David for example: he is referred to as a man after God's own heart, fully devoted to God - he is called a Son of God (the same title applied to Jesus himself during his ministry) - he leads God's armies into many great victories and is clearly favored by God as a great King and exemplar of the faith. Early in David's life he had two wives, Abigail and Ahinoam as noted in 1 Samuel 25:42,43. But if you read on to 2 Samuel 5:13 you find that "David took more concubines and wives in Jerusalem, and more sons and daughters were born to him." During all this time in David's life where he is clearly keeping multiple wives and concubines, God still favors him. (I wonder what David told all his kids about their multiple mommies and all his concubines...hmmm)

Later in his life David lusts after and cheats with Bathsheba (a married monogamous woman) and has her husband Uriah killed on the battlefield so that David can have Bathsheba for himself - this act displeased the Lord because of the deception and the murder - not because David slept with someone else. It is the blatant deception and breaking of a sacred vow that constitutes adultery - not simply having multiple partners. If there is no vow of monogamy as in the case of polyamourous people (and King David), then there is no adultery .

I think everyone should read the Bible. It's a fascinating, powerful, beautiful, complicated collection of books filled with wisdom and folly placed side by side. The problem is no one wants to read what's actually on the page - everyone comes with an agenda, a point to make, a prejudice, an axe to grind, or a dogma to reassure. And so the Bible is reduced to a weapon, or a book of quick-hitting quotes taken totally out of context. Is it any wonder misinformation abounds - often from the lips of those who claim most fervently to be the Bible's keepers?

Let God be bigger than you can understand, wiser than you can fathom, too strong to pin down, too infinite to reduce to a system. Then maybe you can learn to listen for the subtler symphony of truth, peace, joy, hope, and love that sings through the scriptures for those with ears to hear.

Sounds to me like polyamorous folk are trying to be peaceful, joyful, honest, and loving - I don't see how that conflicts with God's plan or the Bible at all.

-peace-

It rare that someone can make the Christian God sound attractive to me. It is uncommon for me to read about capital H, Him and feel proud of my cultural heritage; this is one of those times.

Monogamy

2009-08-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

French

2009-08-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

At first the idea of a used condom wrapper causing uncontrollable lust seems, at best silly and at worst kind of unhygienic. I forgive them for the shot implying a three way. I’m easy.

Someday I'm going to have to sit down and look at a culture where mistresses and lovers outside of marriage are understood, accepted, and not talked about.

Back to Blogging

2009-08-04T19:39:00.000-07:00

I try to keep my personal current relationship stuff off of my blog, purely and simply because I don’t have perspective on it yet and will undoubtedly write from a place of emotion, so I’ll try to keep this short.

My girlfriend moved across the country. We knew it was going to happen, but the emotional fallout (along with other things) has been hard. I got a temp job that sucked my soul out from my non-dress-code dressed body. I also had started to feel like I was repeating myself in the blog a little too much for even my own taste.

I had always planned on continuing the blog, but the reason I'm picking it up again at this moment is this article on AOL interviewing Jenny Block about polyamory Not the story itself but the comments. Here is a hint of some of the things that were being said:

“Let me restate my thought. This is just another attempt by the media (AOL) to destroy normal society and normal people's thoughts in order to establish their radical thinking agendas. Like I said, who cares? This lady is free to do as she pleases, just quit subjecting me to this trash.”

“I think Jenny Block is from another planet; or maybe, she belongs in the zoo. Wake up the Jenny's out there; this is the human race. We cannot try to live like animals. If it is a good thing to have open marriage, why is it that all organized culture in existence wrong Jenny's approach? Notice that I did not entwine the perfect doctrines and orderliness of our religious institutions. I am trying to be in the same level with Jenny; just to see if I could make sense to all this. Two wrongs do not make anything right. I hope married folks out, even single guys, don't follow Jenny's footsteps. Call this the twenty first century or whatever, the fact is that, civilized world like America, we only know of one man one woman. If you are lesbian or Gay, I don't have anything against you, but you must have one partner. The problem with Jenny was that she was a lesbian who got married to a guy for the wrong reasons”

“Seriously take this garbage off of here and quit posting crap like it. This is the second story like this in the past month, who care? A skank cheated on her husband and became a lesbian, or bisexual, whatever, who cares? It's more perpetuation of the gay lifestyle onto the mainstream. I don't care if you want to be gay but quit trying to push it on me, and quit pushing it on the children who get on AOL you sick pervs.”

“Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and opinions. My opinion is that her open marriage is one that demonstrates how people are more concerned with selfish carnal desires and what is best for them before they even think to consider what is best for the person they claim to love. It took a year for her husband to be ok with it, which means he didn't want to but was faced with a decision of either changing and being ok with it or losing his wife. Sounds like the wife is extremely selfish and unwilling to see her faults. The husband considered his wife before himself and chose to please her. He may be ok with it now, but like she thinks society has been brainwashed about marriage, she brainwashed him about an open marriage. Its not about religion or beliefs, its about selfishness”

So that has caused me to get back to making sure my voice is out there. Even if it is small, and selfish, and wrong in other people’s eyes, because the more voices the better.

Until I get lazy and bored again.

More coming soon.

Gay AT You

2009-07-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

Reason why I’m non-monogamous #327: Louis CK

Happy Pride Day

2009-06-28T12:34:00.001-07:00

Want

2009-06-28T10:00:00.001-07:00

I often see it said that people who are poly feel that it is impossible, or too much to ask, that one partner meet all one's needs. I agree with this, if we can change one word. I do believe it is impossible to have one person who fulfills all of your desires.

I have written before about the difference between “needs” and “desires” and how important I feel that it is to one's relationships to be clear on which is which. I think that as a community, polyamorous folks stay away from saying “desires” because it sounds less valid. "Desires" sounds selfish. It would confirm what some people think of us, that we are selfish and are asking for too much from our relationships, partners, and the world in general.

I have never felt the need to correct people who say such things , because they are true. At least for me. I am asking for too much. I was raised in a world that told me clearly how much it would be okay to ask for (a good job that I love, a loving husband, a sub-prime loan for the house… blab blah blah) but I’m not buying into it.

But I want more. Selfishly, I want more than what I have been told is my fair share. I want to share my life, my heart, my body, with more people than I should. I want to have the thrill of flings while having the safety of going home to my loves and family. I want to fuck strangers and have my partners listen and enjoy my stories. I want way too much.

I don’t need those things. I could live a happy life, with one partner, or even by myself. I could be a fulfilled person, a happy person, a contented person. I don’t need that selfish life, but I WANT it. I desire it, I can imagine it, and I am willing to work for it.

You don’t change the world by meeting your needs. And you don’t negotiate well in your relationship by misrepresenting needs as desires. So maybe it’s time we admit we are doing this because we want to.

It is impossible to expect one person to meet all of your desires.

Again

2009-06-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

I posted this early on in my blogging history (read six months ago) but I’m re-posting it because half the questions I have been asked recently are covered right here. This was written by Cunning Minx of Polyamory Weekly, and it is the best, most coherent Poly 101 information I have ever run across.

I share now with you:

10 Things to Be Prepared for When Negotiating Polyamory

1. Become a different person. Adopting a poly mindset and lifestyle in a monogamous world can be a transformative process. The level of communication, self-examination and brutal honesty with yourself and your partners required for healthy poly relationships is very high and tends to provide a challenge to even the most secure and open of people. As you explore and develop poly relationships, you will most likely discover things about yourself and your partners that will fundamentally change how you think and quite possibly who you are and how you view the world. As with any relationship in which long-term love is involved, you will change.

2. Welcome change and personal growth. If you crave stability and are most comfortable in a world with minimal change, you probably don’t want to be poly. In fact, you probably don’t want to be in a relationship at all, because exposing yourself to another person’s life will most assuredly change yours, no matter how stable you believe that person to be. Be prepared to find out more about yourself, your fears and your capacity to love than you ever wanted to know. Be prepared to drag your fears and insecurities out into the open, hear the same from your partners, and grow by learning how to accept and cope with your own fears as well as your partners’.

3. Remain friends with past partners and metamours. The non-monogamous community isn’t all that large at the moment, although we’re growing. Unlike with monogamy, it will be unlikely that you’ll be able to break up with someone and never see him or her again. Tribes and personal networks tend to be interwoven, and you will probably have to deal with interacting with people who have hurt you (or whom you have hurt) in social situations for years to come. Heck, one or more of your partners might still be dating that girl or guy you broke up with! You will have to learn how to negotiate an amicable breakup without making any of your friends and partners take sides. Be prepared to learn how to heal and take care of yourself while respecting your former partner and his/her current relationships.

4. Experience unflattering, powerful explosive emotions. Even if you think you’re not a jealous person, you will experience jealousy at the most unexpected of times and places. You’ll probably also feel insecure, petty, uptight, varying shades of “weird,” envious, angry, hurt, irritated and annoyed. Be prepared to describe honestly whatever you’re feeling as you’re feeling it. Be prepared to ask for help in processing what you’re feeling, and be open enough to trust that your partner will still love and support you, even when you’re experiencing unflattering emotions. At some point, you’ll probably discover that something you discussed rationally and thought you’d be totally OK with ends up freaking you out and sending you into a fit of unreasonable, unexpected emotion. This is normal. Be prepared by adding an asterisk to all relationship discussions: … and I reserve the right to freak out at any time. Don’t expect to be coddled and given in to for having emotions, but do create a space where they can be discussed safely.

5. Negotiate as a process, not a set in stone thing. When you first consider diving into polyamory, it’s a great idea to have discussions about how you’d feel if something or other happened. You’ll probably go through a lot of imagined scenarios and guess at how you’d feel and make a few (or a lot) of rules to govern you and your partners’ behavior in those cases. These discussions are a great jumping-off point, but be prepared for everything you discuss to change when dealing with real, live people. As they say in the military, “no plan of attack survives contact with the enemy.” People fall in love or lust unexpectedly, and suddenly, the rules will need to change in order for you or your partners to be happy. You might set a rule about not falling in love with partners only to discover six months later that you yourself are struggling to admit that your casual romance has become something deeper. Or you might have a caveat about partners moving in with you that needs to be rediscussed when your partner’s girlfriend becomes a closer part of your poly family. Fluid bonding agreements may need to change; child-rearing might be open to new discussion as well. Keep in mind that what is most important about your relationship negotiations is the process of discussing them, not the set-in-stone rules you end up coming up with. The rules will end up changing; be prepared to see their establishment as a fluid process of communication, not something to be set in stone and forgotten.

6. Have every assumption challenged. With a traditional relationship structure such as monogamy, it is common (and relatively harmless) for participants to make some basic assumptions about what concepts like “fidelity” and “monogamy” mean. Sometimes, those definitions aren’t discussed at all; they simply remain as tacit concepts floating at the back of the relationship unless and until something happens to challenge them, which might be never. If you’re venturing into polyamory or some branch of non-monogamy, however, be prepared to have every assumption about basic relationship concepts challenged. Think you know what “sex” is? Ask your partner; you might discover that your definitions of what constitutes “sex” or “sexual contact” are vastly different. How about “cheating”? “Fidelity”? “Love”? Being “OK” with something? How about what constitutes a “healthy” or “successful” relationship? When “only” and “forever” are no longer the markers of a relationship’s success, how will you define your relationships’ relative success?

7. Talk about everything. Be prepared to discuss and communicate about things you never thought you’d have to. Be prepared to have different discussions about the same issues as life and love change around you. You’ll have to be brave enough to bring up unflattering emotions and strong enough to be patient and loving when your partners do the same. Be prepared to create a safe space for your partners to tell you things that are difficult or unflattering to admit, and then find another space in which you can be brutally honest in return. Lack of conflict isn’t necessarily the sign of a healthy relationship, but lack of intimacy will cause its slow demise. Getting into the painful emotions in a safe space is a type of intimacy, and it can bring you closer to your partners than you ever thought possible.

8. Have a sounding-board. Polyamory is not a traditional relationship structure. You will not know how to deal with the issues that arise; my gods, how could you? I promise that you do not have all the skills and information that you need to have a successful poly relationship right now. So it’s of utmost importance that you have support. Talking to just your partner isn’t enough; you will need the voices of friends and people who have been through this before to give you insight so that you can make your own, informed decisions. Be prepared to reach out to the poly community, whether it be online or in real life, and create a sort of sounding-board of poly-friendlies that you can run your questions or issues by. Again, simply talking to the person you’re sleeping with isn’t enough. Monogamous types ask their girlfriends, buddies and best friends what they think; they kvetch and ask for advice over coffee. Even if you’re not out publicly as poly, be prepared to do the same. Find a community, listen and ask questions, and choose a few folks you trust as your advisory board. If you can, find a poly-friendly therapist, too.

9. Ask for reassurance when you need it. Be prepared for this to be a wonderful but tough journey of self-discovery. If you haven’t got the message yet, non-monogamy can be gut-wrenchingly tough to negotiate. There will be times when you feel weak or vulnerable; be prepared to ask for reassurance when you need it. Sometimes your partners will know and be able to tell when you need reassurance and offer it unasked, but sometimes you’ll need to be explicit. Just ask.

10. Be the bad guy. Relationships might be wonderful and healthy for six months, five years or 18 1/2 years. And then, after whatever period of time, there might come a time when all the communication in the world won’t make the participants happy or healthy. Be prepared to have the courage to acknowledge that things aren’t working and to be the bad guy and end the relationship. No one wants to be the bad guy; that’s why people do things such as act weird and distant so that the other person will get annoyed and break up with him/her. Please don’t do that. Being open, honest and vulnerable extends to ending the relationship as well. Do your partner(s) the honor of respecting what you had by respecting the end of your relationship as much as its duration.

Breaking Up

2009-06-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

I’m bad at break-ups, it’s kind of because I don’t believe in them. I mean, sure, yes it happens, it's a term people use to symbolize the “end” of relationship. But really, relationships don't end. As long as that person is on the planet, or in your heart, you have a relationship with them. It doesn’t matter if you never see them or never talk to them.

I’m not a big supporter of the never-seeing and never-talking “thing” anyway. Once I let someone into my heart and life, I want to see them. Even if they are dating someone I don’t like, or we don’t have sex any more. Once I love you… well, that’s it. I love you.

One of the reasons I became poly was because I never got over my first boyfriend. Really. And it took being in a open relationship before a partner could hear me say that. It’s not like I still lust after him, I just still love him. And the feelings I have for him I deeply believe make me a better person, I would hate to hide that from other people I love.

So when it comes to endings. I’m not so good. I try to think more about changing. When my first boyfriend and I “broke up” we didn’t really break anything. We started to change things and move so we could move forward in our relationship.

In open relationships, there is no longer the motivation to break up with a partner because they are not "the One" or because that partner does not fulfill a specific need, since one isn't limited to the possibilities provided by just a single person. So we may find ourselves in situations of difficulty with a partner where the monogamous perspective would have us cut our losses and move on to find another. But we're not monogamous, so now what?

We shift things, move them around, try other ways to look at the relationship. Sometimes it may look like a break-up and sometimes it looks like something else all together.

As we all work on redefining relationships, it’s worth it to look at what we define as endings and why.

The Gays

2009-06-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Stonewalling

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Mark Sanford

Random Poly (now with comments)

2009-06-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

My partner pointed out that just posting excerpted quotes of what other people think about non-monogamy isn’t as interesting as my opinions of the quotes. While I always share my thoughts with him, he seemed to think that I should stop being lazy and add my thoughts to the blog. So we’ll try this for awhile… until I get lazy again.

From WEJANGANE SIMBAH

“I don’t want to lock up someone — anyone. I don’t think I can justify doing so in the name of love. And I don’t like to be locked up, either.

Does this mean I’m against monogamous relationship? No. If two individuals are happy together, that is wonderful — let’s celebrate! It’s when such condition is enforced, either by manipulation or by social brain washing, that I have a with. (A common way of social brain washing is the promotion of soulmate.)

Can you let your partner be who he or she is? Can you let them express themselves freely? Can you honestly say what is on your mind?"

The whole article is about honesty and how it relates to freedom. You can’t be free unless you’re honest. Which eventually gets around to true honesty with your partner. The author assumes (as I do) that everyone is attracted to at least more than one person. She also assumes (as I don’t) that in monogamous relationships you can’t be honest with your partner about attraction to other people without risking the break up of the relationship. Interesting reading.

From
InsideCatholic.com

“The real moral crisis is this: that we, among all human beings who have ever lived, face the end of morality as such. Abortion and infanticide have existed before. So have homosexuality and pedophilia. Exclusive, lifelong heterosexual monogamy was, largely, a Christian mandate, and therefore variations on the definition of marriage are not difficult to come by historically. If these ills were all that plagued us, we would only be facing an especially ugly relapse into the darkness of paganism. But underneath these ills lies a darkness against which even the darkness of paganism is light — the rejection of human nature itself, and hence the rejection of all morality.”

This blog is not only crazy, it’s hard to read. The metaphors get really long and stop relating to anything. The author also makes the very normal but very annoying mistake of using the term “morals” like it is an absolute thing, not each individual’s idea of right and wrong. At least in this blog there is a very visible screw lose. It'd be very hard to read these things if they seem to be coming out of a sane person.

Also a comment on this piece:

“It is sad that the homosexual 'pride' movement has hijacked the rainbow to symbolize their revolt against nature, and ultimately God. Also the triangle has been used to symbolize the Trinity, and I think they also use that too.
How easy it is to see this is a satan inspired revolt when one considers the obvious obsessive targeting beautiful Divinely inspired symbols.”

I agree Santa is behind all of this… oh wait, Satan? Are you kidding me? This is clearly the work of Santa.

Community

2009-06-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

Everyday we get closer to each other. Music, the internet, video, in the end it’s just contact, something that lets us reach out. Today we get to be a global community. Some days that looks like discussing international trade policies, some days it looks like this:

Learning

2009-06-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

The Worst

2009-06-25T10:00:00.001-07:00

I mean really... If you can find a worse article on open relationships, send it to me. I’ll give you $10. (not really)

From The Pros and Cons of an Open Relationship by Co-ed magazine

From the Cons

“1) Your significant other is f**king someone else
This falls under the category of obvious, and something that can’t be emphasized enough. Someone else is hollowing out your girl, or on the flipside, your boy is balls-deep in a different box. I don’t think there’s really too much more to add here. I personally couldn’t stand the idea, but from what I’ve been told, when both partners are hooking up with different people it’s a lot easier. The trouble for my friend started when she wasn’t getting any from outside sources and her bf was getting a lot.”

From the Pros

“3) Maybe you find something better
This isn’t something Sandy told me about, this is my own opinion. As I said before Sandy and her bf broke up after they started the open relationship, and in the end Sandy’s ex ended up with one of the girls he met during the experience. He found someone he wanted to be with more. I don’t think either started out looking for someone else, but in the end it happened for one of them. If you’re starting an open relationship because you’re unhappy with what you’ve got (even if it’s just a small thing) odds are you’re looking for something, or someone different."

This leads me to something I have real issue with. People who open up their relationship because it is over and want to find someone new but don’t want to ever deal with being alone. I have known a couple of these folks, suffice to say they rarely admit they are doing this. A lot of them don’t even consciously know they are making these choices. But it annoys me to no end.

It annoys me not because it makes a bad name for non-monogamy (lots of things do that), not because it hurts people (lots of things do that) but because people who cannot deal with being alone and will not admit it are frightening to me.

If you know that is an issue and you are working on it, I’m impressed. I think it is amazing. But on a basic level I feel that if you can’t be alone and happy with yourself, you can’t have a healthy relationship with another person.

And anything that encourages behavior that allows you never to examine yourself? I thought that examining yourself was a part of all of this; not being poly, not being open, but being human.

Seattle

2009-06-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

Seattle is a great town to be poly. It's a great town to be kinky; it's a great town to be a burner. If only it were a slightly better town to make art in, I would be set.

Anyway, check out this article from The Stranger, Seattle's weekly alternative newspaper. It's about being queer, kinky, and poly.

This part got to me:

"I have been at this long enough that the history of my love life has gotten super complicated—my friends' love lives, too. For a couple years, I lived in a house full of queers. Some of us were poly, and if we hadn't already kissed or fucked, it only took one other person to connect us. One night, sitting at a cluttered kitchen table in that moldy house with a carbon-monoxide leak and buzzing fluorescent lights, we decided to create a visual representation of the horrible mess of love and hate and broken hearts and lust that we had gotten ourselves into. There was a whole system of names and lines and dots: attraction, straight line; repulsion, ellipses; exes, Xs... then we replaced this system with descriptors on the strands connecting names: close, enemies, kinda friends, used to be close, exes, grrr (don't get along but not quite enemies), used to live together, live together, dating, dating-ish, kissed, fucked, spooned. You should have seen this thing. It looked like a web spun by a demented spider."

It reminds me of one time when I was hanging out with the female-half of the couple who were my first openly poly relationship. We sat in a cheap diner while she chain-smoked (before the smoking ban) and drew a complex diagram on the paper tablecloth illustrating the network of connections between herself, her soon-to-be husband (and soon-after-that ex-husband) and a great number of people in our inter-linked social circles. Every once in awhile I deeply wish I could see it again. It was beautiful, complicated, and so full of drama and broken hearts that you could almost smell it over the cigarette smoke.

Today my chart is simpler, happier, and smoke free (looking skeptically towards New York...) I hope.

Propaganda

2009-06-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

Propaganda has changed a lot in the past 50 years. But apparently sexual fetishes and sexual desires have stayed the same. This morning I watched on YouTube a short film from 1965, oh the good old days, when men were men and women were underpaid, marginalized girls.

Here in the US, we now live in a time where porn is pretty much accepted in the mainstream. And while you're not supposed to look at it at work, you aren’t considered a degenerate for having your favorite files saved on your computer somewhere.

In contrast with ye olden days, when one might have to be satisfied with images that vaguely allude to subjects such as "lesbianism" or "bestiality" or "sodomy", one can simply enter those very words into a Google image search and in moments you'll be inundated with your perversions in all their explicit glory.

I wonder if they saw this coming. I wonder if our society is really changing due to the ease of viewing not just porn, but almost anything in the world. In less than one minute, I can view a sunset in Beirut, a blue whale, or 20 guys ejaculating on a woman. All of this viewing power, I wonder if it has changed me. Or you, or all of us.

One thing is for sure, I probably shouldn’t be as sexually attracted as I am to the narrator of the following video...

Scream

2009-06-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

Words

2009-06-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

In George Orwell’s 1984 one of the most terrifying things that has come to pass in the future/now/past is Newspeak. Newspeak is a much abbreviated language that has taken out most descriptive words and all rebellious ones. The idea being that Big Brother could prevent thoughtcrimes by literally making them "impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on.”

Words have power. Not just in their ability to describe, but in the fundamental need to exchange ideas from person to person. If there is no word for freedom, no way to express the longing in someone’s heart to another, then there is no rebellion.

Thankfully we don’t live in 1984. We have free range of all the words we can find, but we don’t use them.

This is why I get annoyed when someone describes their feelings about a relationship as “having some jealousy.” Sure, yes, I hear you… and? You have the ability to look inside yourself and understand what you're feeling, but sometimes having a word that feels safe and honest gets in the way of what you are really feeling.

And a lot of people are okay with that. The closer you get to sharing what you are feeling, the more vulnerable you are to whoever you are telling. The more vulnerable and more honest you are, the more someone can hurt you. So, it’s scary to tell someone what you feel.

“I having some jealousy” is just the start. It’s a jumping off point. “I'm having some jealousy around you and your other partner. I feel like you make time for him but not for me, and that scares me because I’m worried that our relationship isn’t exciting to you, or that you're taking it for granted, and because of that you will leave me and I don’t want that...”

Until we get the Vulcan mind-meld down, the only tool we have to explain, to communicate, to reach out and to understand each other is language. I’m sure there are some great interpretive dancers out there who might disagree, but until I learn to do the splits and stop getting an itchy rash when I paint myself green, I all have is words.

They can feel like so little, but they are what we have. Use them, before they are gone.

Happy Solstice

2009-06-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

Make the longest day count, and the shortest night last.

Ask

2009-06-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Our society thinks it’s romantic to never have to ask for anything, it also feels like you should never want for anything when it comes to partnership. This leads to many situations where one person wants another person(s) to do something for them, but can’t ask for it because somehow that would make it less meaningful.

I want my partner to make some special time to hang out, just the two of us, or I want our girlfriend to set aside time for me that doesn’t include him. I want something that someone is perfectly capable of giving, but I for some reason need them to offer it without my asking because that makes it more special. We are taught not to ask.

Our romantic culture is totally based on surprise. Just look at marriage proposals. Getting asked to the prom. What is special in a relationship romance? Movies would have us believe it’s surprise examples:

And even when someone asks for something directly, it still has to be a surprise:

These are men (and it’s always men) who get rewarded for surprising their love with the “right thing” and yes I like some of these movie and I love some of these movies and they make me cry because I’m a big girl, but the reason why these movies work is because they are cinematic. You want the audience to doubt that love is going to happen and then *pop* it does. Drama, romance, and a movie.

But that isn’t life. Life is about asking for what you want. If I want a giant romantic gesture then I need to ask for it.

This isn’t about taking surprise out of your life, it’s not about taking romance out of the world it’s about learning to communicate. I don’t think my partners can read my mind, so I will do my best not to be hurt when they don’t. I know my partners can listen to me. They can understand what I am saying. When I speak they listen, hear, and understand which is the most romantic thing in the world.

Random Poly

2009-06-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Ulcer

“First of all, I think open relationships are weird. I don’t mean wrong, I mean weird. I’ve only met a couple of couples that had open relationships and they were really weird people. So that’s strike one. If whatever you’re into can’t be done without being a socially unpalatable human being then you deserve the scorn of the masses.”

Gregory Forman

“This culture made a mistake when it decided to allow spouses veto power over the other spouse’s sexual pleasure. Typically, this allows wives to demand and dictate the terms of what is very important to most men (and sometimes allows husbands to demand and dictate the terms of what is very important to many women). While we expect spouses to remain monogamous, and punish the cheating spouse when that spouse does not remain monogamous, we fail to punish spouses who lose interest in sex but demand celibacy from their spouse. This is because our fall back position when monogamy is not working in a marriage is celibacy, not sex outside of marriage. However, few folks would get married if they expected marriage would mean no sex, infrequent sex, or unenthusiastic sex. It is the height of hypocrisy to act shocked when such spouses cheat. Perhaps if we were more shocked by the spouse who loses interest in sex but demands monogamy, our culture would better reflect human nature and lead to more human happiness.”

The Frisky

“We were no more than two minutes into our first drink when he dropped a bomb. “I’m Polyamorous,” he said.

After he explained the concept of polyamory to me—people who are involved in multiple relationships simultaneously—he told me about his sexual involvement with a lesbian couple that were committed to each other, but saw him on the side. He was committed to both of them, but to one more than the other. Huh?”

Blackgirlinmaine’s Weblog

“Then there is the issue of kids, how does one explain multiple parents? No, I am serious. Even here where I live parents with 2 moms and 2 dads well that’s normal at least in my world, but 2 dads 1 mom or 3 moms and 1 dad…I don’t get it and part of my writing this is not to bash anyone but to honestly say if you have this sort of situationm please tell me how it works because I have just presented all the reasons why I don’t get it.

I mean what woman hasn’t said she wished she had a wife? Got PMS and the ole man is horny, send your co-wife instead, that I get but what happens when I need some love and my co-wife got the love allotment? See, that would be problematic at least for me.

So excuse me if I was crass and offended you but the beauty of blogging is that I get to say what I want and even look for ways to expand my mind….happy Friday.”

Exclusiveness

2009-06-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

“I always thought that the whole premise behind marriage was exclusiveness, with certain things meant only for the spouse. Love and sex are the 2 primary things that come to mind. If you're not willing to certain exclusive marital privileges for your spouse, then why are you bothering to get married in the first place?”

This was a comment made on this vaguely boring article about open marriages.

The whole premise behind marriage is exclusiveness? The whole premise is keeping other people away from something you have to give, like love or sex? And exclusive love... LOVE? If you are married you can’t love your friends? Love your children, love your family?

Yes, yes but those are different kinds of love so they don’t count. I dare you to try and love two people in the same way. You can’t. Love is like any other connection it is individual and unique for the person you are connecting with.

But really the thing that bothers me about this is - I don’t want to be a part of any institutions that are about exclusivity. I don’t join golf clubs.

Marriage is about commitment, it’s about celebrating a relationship, it’s about bringing people together. Families, friends, and yes sometimes lovers. It’s about sharing your love with the community. Marriage, as I choose to see it, is about opening your relationship. It’s about inviting people into your life and your love.

Love isn’t about keeping people out; it’s about letting people in. Marriage is a celebration of love.

Long Shot

2009-06-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

As found on Craigslist San Francisco:

I've been raised to think a relationship between 1 man and 1 woman was what's right or 'normal', but that's never felt quite right, or quite natural. And with the divorce rate what it is, doesn't seem to work for a lot of people. So after meeting/talking with a few women who have opened my eyes to a different way, I've decided to stop fighting nature and look for what I think is right for me. And that's a serious relationship with 2 or 3 bi, or 'situationally bi' women. (by 'situationally bi', I mean a girl who wouldn't want a relationship with another woman, but is sexually attracted to them sometimes) A relationship where we're monogamous between the 3 or 4 of us, all care for and support each other, and are all one happy 'family'. :) (by the way, I'm not a hippie, not a religious freak, pretty 'normal', if there is such a thing. lol)

So let's see, what kind of women am I attracted to? Younger than myself, preferably. Even quite a bit younger would be ok since I'm young at heart and a big kid at times, and find I get along well with people of all ages. They'd have to be in decent shape (or thin) since I'm not physically attracted to heavier women. Other than that, I'm pretty open. I'm attracted to many different looks and personalities, as well as cultures. They would definitely need to be intelligent, funny, fun, caring, dependable, sexy, honest, not smoke or do drugs, and be disease-free.

As far as myself, I'm basically your regular white guy. lol Ok, not so regular in a number of ways. I have a great and interesting career (which is something I'd wanted to do since I was a kid), I'm intelligent, funny, honest, sexy, charming, playful, witty, goofy, considerate, caring, sweet, and like to laugh. I live and work in SF, I'm not married, and have no kids. I don't smoke, do drugs, am not religious at all, and am disease-free. I'm very much into pop-culture (movies, tv, music, internet, games, technology, etc), so women that have interests in those areas, or are themselves a little geeky/creative in certain ways, would be great. :)

At times, I've been told I resemble Anthony Edwards, Bruce Willis, and Andre Agassi, so if you like the look of those guys, you may find me attractive, as well. I'm 5'11", in decent shape, shave my hair very short, have a goatee, bluish eyes, a big smile, and a nice butt. ;)

It's hard enough finding 1 person that you match well with, so I know I have my work cut out for me. But I also know there are women out there that want the same thing I do. So if any of this sounds interesting to you, drop me a line and let's at least talk about it...

If you write, please put "Poly relationship" in your subject line so I know you're not spam. Thanks!

I had no idea it was that easy. Just put up an ad and you'll be on your way to having 2 or 3 in-shape (or thin), intelligent, funny, fun, caring, dependable, sexy, honest, smoke and drug-free, disease-free girls. Hell, I would be all over this but I have an STD, I like drugs and, oh yeah... I want to date men sometimes.

I could always tweak my resume… Maybe if we weren’t in a recession I would have a shot.

Sexual Health?

2009-06-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone alive today seems to have grown up with sexual scars, it doesn’t matter if you managed to make it to adulthood without being sexually molested, we all have to deal with the pain of living here and now in a world and culture that is still so fucked up about sex.

I had a friend back in high school who freaked out when, during her first makeout session, her boyfriend stuck his hand down her pants and said “oh, it’s so wet.” It took her literally years before she could feel anything but deep shame when she became lubricated. And that is with no one doing anything wrong.

People deal with crippling fear of sexual rejection, sexual addiction is on the rise, and something ridiculous like 1 out 4 women are molested or raped in their lifetime. And the only real thing we can do for each other is try to heal ourselves.

The fucked up thing is; how do we know if we are healthy? Is wanting a lot of sex just a sign of high sex-drive or am I using it for personal validation and basing my self worth off of it? If I don’t want to have sex in my life, is that a powerful recognition of who I am? Or is it giving up trying and giving into my sexual fear?

Should I be working on accepting myself and the style of sex I like and want or should I be working on “healing” the issue?

Something I have said more than a few times in my life is “I want to want to have more sex.” Is that because I have this society-made image about how much sex you should be having in order to be healthy? Am I trying to hold myself up to some unreasonable image that I built out of what I have been told my whole life? Or is it something deep inside of me saying that my sexuality has been restricted because of pain that I haven’t dealt with yet?

By being non-monogamous we aren’t just challenging relationship structure, we are challenging societally held ideas about sex and sexuality which means we have to challenge our own ideas about sexual health. There are hundreds of ways to do that, but they all start with asking questions.

Score

2009-06-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

2nd or 3rd

2009-06-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

The following is a conversation that started when a guy on a forum I post on saw this picture as my profile picture:

Him: are you that insecure to post such pic of yourself on the internet? wow...attention whore to the n th degree.

Me: Is there some reason you feel you need to write someone you don't know and have no contact with and insult them?

Him: Yes, I do...how low are your self esteem that you need to post picture like that to get attention? My god are you that desperate?

Me: I love that picture of me. It happens to be an amazing reminder of one of the best moments of my life. I love it, I think I look great in it, as sexy and as wonderful as I felt in that moment. When I see it, it makes me smile and think about amazing times I've had and still more amazing times to come. I’ve put up much “worse” pictures of myself. It doesn’t bother me; I don’t understand why it’s worth your time to be bothered by it.

Him: That's just too funny. It's even funnier that your worst pictures are posted in inappropriate site on the net...of course it doesnt botter you...because you need to negative attention from men to feel worth a bit about yourself. It's rather sad

Me: Normally I don't get any attention from them, other than people saying "oh hey, are you going to Burning Man again this year?" Honestly, you are the first person from this site to comment on that picture at all.

Yes, I like attention Why would I jump up on a raised dance floor in jeans chaps in the first place? It was amazing, dancing in front a room of my friends and lovers and a bunch of strangers. You should try it sometime, you might be surprised.

The thing you haven't made clear to me is why it bothers you that someone you don't know and have no connection to puts up a picture you don't approve of? Why spend any time on it? Or me?

Him: Im concerned because women these day have no more self respect.

Our society has come down to baring flesh for attention...it is just purely sad that when people want attention they have no other bright ideas other than to dress and act like a wh*re.

Me: So you get to decide who has self-respect now? I’m really happy with my life, and how I represent myself. I really like myself, I'm proud of who I am and do my best to hold myself to my own standards. I guess it’s too bad for me that all along it has been you, richmonder80, who decides if I have self-respect. Damn, I guess I have been doing this wrong. Oh well, better luck next time for me. I guess this time around I’ll just have to enjoy myself and live with the beautiful life I’ve made for myself… but really, it’s what I deserve, so don’t feel too bad for me!

Him: rationalize all you want but it still comes down to a simple fact....

You need attention from men to make you feel worth something because deep down is your insecure self and the only way to do get attention is to flaunt your flesh. And you wonder why you cant seem to attract a decent man...hmmm

I dress slutty. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t do it to get sexual attention, but is that sad? I’m not sure. My own brain fights between 2nd and 3rd wave feminism all the time. Am I doing damage to women by buying into a society that judges women by their physical appearance or am I fighting for the kind of body freedom that we all should have? If I love my body and feel good and strong about it, should I feel free to show it off? Or just in that act, am I subconsciously buying into the ruling patriarchy?

Recently in my life I've had tons of opportunities to show my body off, to dress up and down in lots of ways. I almost always enjoy it. I went through years of my life feeling ashamed of the way I looked and feeling rejected for not having the type of body I wanted.

This guy is an ass. Don’t get me wrong. He is a sexually repressed child who probably still lives with his parents and spends his free time killing cute animals and wondering why he can’t find a girlfriend. But sexual image, body image, and the whole fucked up role of women in today’s society is worth thinking about.

I just don’t have any answers.

Self Esteem

2009-06-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone e-mailing me writing suggestions. I'll get my mind together (three glasses of wine) and get to work on them soon. Keep them coming.

Until then:

www.garfunkelandoates.com

True

2009-06-09T20:56:00.001-07:00

I don't have anything to write about... help?
rphase@yahoo.com

Fox

2009-06-09T11:08:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Fox & Friends' Lingerie Football Romp

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Thank God for Jon Stewart.

Random Poly

2009-06-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ghosts of Papers
“Some of my poly friends argue that being in a poly situation causes you to try to get over jealousy, and therefore your love for someone is actually stronger and less likely to break when situations with jealousy arise. I have my doubts about this, but they could be right, who knows. But it also seems like there is more room for jealousy and drama if you foster a situation where it can grow and fester like that. It seems maybe some people in poly relationships just get jaded...use people to meet their needs instead of getting truly close to someone and accepting all of their flaws.”

The stranger’s Questionland
“Don't get me wrong. I'm not against it (at least not in theory), I've participated in it, and I would happily do it again. But sometimes I get a sneaking suspicion that many people who claim to be "polyamorous" are really just immature douches who fear commitment or seek validation through sex, and are masquerading behind trendy nomenclature that makes them sound all evolved and morally superior.”

Turning over, tearing off
“Even still, I also believe that although the level of compromise varies from relationship to relationship, you can't go without it. I hear a lot of people, in order to justify a polygamous or open relationship, say that trust and intimacy are more important than how many people are in the relationship, which is certainly true. But are trust and intimacy nothing more than a glorified form of compromise? By choosing to trust someone, you limit your personal freedom in some way -- you are no longer able to make some decisions or perform some actions without breaking trust, if not the entire relationship. Surely this is compromise -- refusing to do certain things for the sake of another. And isn't intimacy nothing more than allowing someone else to enter your physical and emotional "comfort zone" or "safety space," and increasing your risk of getting hurt, a la Schopenhauer's "hedgehog's dilemma"?** That's another compromise -- sacrificing your comfort and safety for intimacy and a stronger, more fulfilling relationship. Compromise is necessary, but I don't think I have the right to dictate how much there ought to be in a relationship -- enough to allow trust and intimacy, of course, but not in excess? In this case, perhaps it is up to the people in a relationship to determine what is "excess."”

Times online
“In those heady, pre-internet days, when fetishes were buried deep, mainstream comic-books artists already provided a service of sorts to those who liked their sex lives spiced up with high heels and corsets. Wonder Woman not only had the requisite sexy shoes and bountiful bust, she also had a penchant for tying up her, usually male, adversaries in her magical lasso, rendering them powerless and unable to lie. She was created by the psychiatrist William Moulton Marston, who further defied convention by living happily in a polygamous and poly-amorous relationship with two women. How many young boys growing up in the 1940s and 1950s must have longed to have Wonder Woman fly into their bedrooms in her invisible plane, wrap her sexy rope around them and force them to admit what it was they really, really, wanted?”

I've got no right to win, I'm just caught up in all the battle.
“I also view polyamory/polygamy as something as a cop out. It's like getting all the benefits of monogamy without the commitment. I find it almost insulting. If I was having to share someone, it would be like I wasn't good enough to fully commit to, like I was lacking something they wanted or needed. If that is true, then it is best to just cut me loose so I can find someone whose needs I completely fulfill and vice-versa. To keep stringing me along is cruel in my eyes.”

Adventures in Gradland
“The motto of the adulterer, she argues, could be “f–k work,” because of course love affairs aren’t about work at all. This is where Kipnis is going to make a lot of people angry, and some might claim that she’s promoting a hedonistic, selfish society where we all bonk ourselves silly without any regard for the feelings of others. Again, I don’t think so. She’s not promoting adultery, she’s criticizing a system that compels so many people to see adultery as their only chance for excitement and passion. If the system weren’t so rigid–if we didn’t all feel compelled to exist in living arrangements that even under the best of circumstances can make us feel stifled and sexually apathetic–adultery would be a lot less frequent. “

Love-style

2009-06-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

I hate the term "love-style". First it is unbelievably hippie and new age-y to a level that I get embarrassed for people who use it. Secondly, I don’t know about you, but for me polyamory is a lifestyle. It affects all aspects of my life in one way or another. It affects my friends, my home, my activities. It affects my art, my body, my taste in drinks, it effects the way I look at the world and the way the world looks at me. It is my life.

Choose whatever words you like to describe what you're doing, but to me it is a "life-style".

Bad Poly Warning Signs

2009-06-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

I recently asked the community on FetLife what they think are warning signs for "bad poly".

Here are their responses:

MollyCrucible : "If your partner/potential partner doesn't want you to have the same rights that they have or wants you to be under more restrictions than they are under."

CoupleSix : "simple.. unfairness and/or immaturity"

SirEricMathan: "1. Lack of communication 2.Actions not matching what's been communicated 3.Double standards 4.Lack of taking accountability for one's action."

adorablesorciere: "Poor communication skills are a serious problem in poly. Improper or unclear communication can put an entire household in an uproar. Also bad: Married couples in which one partner is clearly more interested than the other."

EnigmaticErudite: "I don't know how to describe it. But it's that "shady" feeling you get when you feel like some one isn't telling you something. Definitely on the communication lines. But not poor communication. Rather like intentional omission."

Jacean: "If they don't listen to you in a general conversation, they won't listen to your needs/limits... and they won't be a good partner, let alone poly partner."

Trinidad: "A warning sign for me is when an ego flares up long before any discussions have even been had, such as expressing an egotistical desire to be #1 of the submissive pack. If that's the first thing out of a person's mouth, then it broods potential trouble that they may not be able to be one among many, but need to be #1."

becky_allison: "Lack of self control.. substance abuse problems.. how could someone who can't control their own lives hope to control yours much less be a part of it... "

Phoenix_afire: Oh, here's a biggie... Potential poly partners who are involved with monogamous people. Yes, there are some poly-friendly monogamous people in the world, but there are even more who are waiting for their partners to "come around" or "grow out of it. Never again, I swear."

I want to add that I completely agree with most of these and a bunch of were true about me when I started poly, but I also caused a ton of drama in my first poly relationship. I think even when looking to avoid difficult people keep in mind that everyone can learn and grow and everyones deserves a chance to try, even after a bunch of fuck ups. Maybe they shouldn’t try with me or with you, but it’s always good to leave space somewhere for those people.

Monogamy?

2009-06-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

An e-mail I received:

“What would you do if you partner wanted to be monogamous?”

I talked to my partner about this for awhile and we decided it was four different questions. All of which I will now answer for you.

What if a new partner wanted to be monogamous with someone else?
I would congratulate him or her on finding a relationship and relationship style that they are excited about committing to. I would say that I would really enjoy being friends and that I hope I could stay in their life and the life of their new, monogamous partner.

What if a new partner wanted to be monogamous to me?
As nicely as possible, I would explain that it isn’t possible. I have other relationships I’m committed to and I’m not willing to walk away from the sexual and romantic aspects of those relationships. I would work on finding a way to remain poly with the person if they wanted that but I would be very aware if the limitations on the relationship seemed to be hurting the person and I might eventually end the relationship if I thought it was going to keep causing pain for them.

What if my primary partner wanted to be monogamous with me?
I would do it. Polyamory feels like more than just a lifestyle choice to me, but I love my partner and if he felt like he needed or wanted that I would be willing to try. I would hope that we would be able to keep the idea of opening back up on the table, and I would insist that we be able to talk about it, but I would try. Life takes strange turns and I wouldn’t walk away from someone I love so deeply just because I’m not willing to try something.

What would I do if my primary partner wanted to be monogamous with someone else?
I would get really drunk and sleep with strangers, start a spectacular downward spiral that would end with me flying in our girlfriend (or, because he was seeing some new bitch, MY girlfriend) from New York and we would slowly plot the demise of this monogamous "new person."

I’m kidding… kind of.

If my partner really felt like that was his path, I would let him go. I love him, and while it might not sound like the fairy-tale, happily ever after bullshit we get spoon feed growing up, when you love someone, sometimes it means losing them. If he found someone who made him happier, who was a better fit, I would be in a great deal of pain, especially if they decide that our relationship had to end, but I would let him go. And he would do the same for me.

Life is full of beginnings and endings, being polyamorous or monogamous doesn’t change that.

150

2009-06-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

Thank you for reading this blog, if you like it please pass it along to friends. You can follow it on Live Journal here or follow me on blogspot by scrolling down a little bit a press the follow button. I like knowing people are reading it, otherwise this feels surprisingly like masturbating.

I guess what I’m saying is that it is a lot more satisfying to have people watch me masturbate… no I mean… just follow the blog.

The Best Thing

2009-06-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

I know in polyamory, ownership isn’t a cool idea but I’m going to ignore that for a moment and show you something my friend wrote. This is a comment he left in response to an article I posted about; you can see the full article here with the comment here.

“Instead of indulging all the thoughts provoked in my head about what’s WRONG with the reasoning in this article, I’ll try to focus on what’s RIGHT.

The Supreme Court is right. Religions should not be able to use relationship structures (whether monogamous or polyamorous) to oppress or subjugate women (or men).

Western Culture is right. Marriage should not be forced. People should get together for love or their own decisions, not out of a moral, cultural, or religious obligation.

History is right, proceeding generally forward towards education, equality and freedom and away from ignorance, repression, and tribalism.

Monogamists are right that there are many approaches to polyamory that don’t work, and that, all things equal, it is a structure inherently more complicated to navigate. Many attempt it and fail, much like many two-partner couple’s try and fail. We should allow relationships that are difficult as well as ones that ought to be easy. (For example, we allow people to marry handicapped people even though their relationship will likely be more logistically complicated) If polyamory inherently can’t work outside of “communes”, there should be no harm in recognizing its validity, as it will die out naturally in our modern society.

Modern polyamorists are right. How two, or three, or four, or ten Americans mutually choose to structure their relationships should not be treated differently by the government, as long as no one is harming anyone else (mentally, emotionally or physically).

Gays are right. People who want to commit to each other in order to provide more stable environments for children or each other should be able to have governmental structures available to help them provide this.

European cohabitating couples and American divorcees are right. Splitting up is a healthier situation for a child than living with two people who don’t want to be together (or at worst, abuse each other or the children). They might even be open to interpreting the same data you cite as meaning that 1/2 to 2/3rds of married couples are unhappy and would leave each other if they could. Over 75% of divorcees remarry within 3 years; presumably into situations more stable than the “unhappy” marriage.

Turley is right. We should be trying to make all relationship structures more stable, and the #1 way to do that is to decouple the government’s role in the marriage business. Civil unions for everyone seem like the best way to implement that.

Churches are right – they should still get the right to judge people however they want based on whatever factors they want, and choose to marry whomever they want based on the rules of their individual practice.

You are right. The stable rearing of children is absolutely the state we should strive toward, and having the happy, loving, stable parents supported by a community, church, and government is probably the best way to do this- though I don’t see how excluding people potential (gay) couples or happy “triads” from having the legal support to do this.

I am right. This issue isn’t really about the true merits of gay marriage or polyamory at all. I say this because the slippery slope slides the other direction, too. If we choose to, as a society, refuse to recognize otherwise viable partnerships between people because of their gender, sexual orientation, or relationship structure, wouldn’t it make more sense to also extend that refusal to people for whom it would make more sense, like convicts of domestic abuse, rapists, child abusers… or even those who wouldn’t necessarily prove more “stable” parents, like the chronically unemployed or drunk drivers? Polyamorous relationships without children are, as you imply, none of anyone else’s business, but even when they do involve children, wouldn’t it make sense that the amount of extra time spent in the “administration” of polyamory, there still wouldn’t be much more available time for child-rearing than, say, a single mother without a familial support system?

Children are right. Until they’re taught that having two mommies or daddies is “wrong”, they just want to be loved and supported, and the more we support the relationships that can provide that, the better we are as a society.”

This is from a man who not only can write this well but can keep white fabric white in the middle of a dust storm, I think he must be magic.

Competition

2009-06-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

I was at a sex party about a year ago, maybe more. It wasn’t my first and it certainly hasn’t been my last. Somewhere in the middle I started to feel really strange and bad. I puzzled over it. Everything seemed fine, my partner was being very respectful of the boundaries we had talked about beforehand and everyone seemed to be having a good time. I was hanging out with friends and my partner had brought a bunch of rope that he was tying people up with. I wandered into the kitchen and heard someone talking about how cute he was and then it struck me… I was feeling competitive with my own partner.

He had his new girlfriend, the attention of the room, a few boys lining up to be tied up and played with and other random people talking about how cute he was and I had a plastic cup with my name on it, and a slowly emptying kitchen.

It’s something that happens from time to time when I feel like he could be fucking anyone in the room and I feel like no one remembers my name. Clearly it’s a confidence issue, but it still sucks.

When I feel like things aren’t in balance I have to work harder to feel okay. When there are people right and left pursuing my partner, I end up dealing with some long dealt with fear. And it’s okay. The best thing I have found for it is to tell my partner, or my partner’s partner, or my friends, how I feel. It’s not really the flurry of reassurances that people want to fuck me that makes me feel better, it’s the relief in admitting my feelings.

This feeling along with many others, feels like something I shouldn’t feel. I feel ashamed of it so I try to hold it close and pretend it’s not there. In telling my loved ones I realize it’s not that big of a deal, that it’s something everyone feels from time to time and I’m doing just fine.

Drama

2009-06-03T12:14:00.000-07:00

Personal History

2009-06-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

One of the things that makes me angry as I spend endless hours digging through relationship forums, looking for anyone talking, thinking, or asking questions about multiple partner relationships, is people’s attitudes towards their partner's sexual histories.

It actually makes me groan out loud every time I read advice to some poor sap who feels intimidated by his girlfriends past sexual partners that reads along the lines of “well you shouldn’t have asked.”

This (Thank God) seems to be a mostly heteromonogamanormative issue. In the eyes of people who take joy in their partner's sexuality, or in just everything about them, it seems strange if not bad to exclude part of someone. How can you love the whole when you are ignoring part of them?

I am by no means perfect. I have cheated on people I love, and I have fucked people I shouldn’t have fucked. I have a past that is colorful, painful, interesting, funny, and loving. If I ever dated anyone who wouldn’t want to hear about that part of my history then I certainly wouldn’t be planning a future with them.

When I love someone, I try to love the whole. The past, the present, the future, the faults, the failures and the successes. I try to love the way they love other people. The way they share their bodies, minds, and souls. And I expect the same in return.