polyamory

[winterbadger]

I should also register my amusement that Loving More continues to feature as a side item on Studio 60. I'm watching the latest ep right now, and someone made a joke about LM being "the sex people", in response to which the character who brought them into the story proceeds to rattle of a five-second "No, really, they are people who believe in..." speech, in the tone of someone who feels a bit defensive and doesn't quite believe what he's saying, but feels as if he *ought* to.

I'm still not inclined to re-introduce that into my life, but I can't help but remember the way Aaron Sorkin wrote MLS into many of his Sports Night scripts, with one of the star characters mocking it until he got an almighty smackdown from the rest of the cast. (And there was always an official MLS ball in the main characters' office...)

Maybe poly really has become an accepted subculture. :-)

Comments

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

I'm still not inclined to re-introduce that into my life,

It's a little amusing that you say this, yet C and I are still (in spirit, at least) poly. She's told me that you often fretted that SHE would suddenly decide not to be poly anymore. :)

[winterbadger]

Yep. Life deals us these reversals of expectation from time to time. You just have to laugh! After all, reversal of expectation is what Freud says most humour is based on. :-)

At least in my case, it's for a mixture of reasons. In part, my experience of poly was that when I had one or more partners and things were going well, it was wonderful, though emotionally exhausting. When it was not going well, or was going badly, it was miserable *and* emotionally exhausting. And the latter tended to outweigh the former. And my impression is that when I had two partners who were not also mutual partners, I was not a very good partner to one or the other of them. So, at least in my experience, it seems like a better idea to stick to mono relationships: I may not get the absolute highs, but those seem to be (for me) extremely rare and overbalanced by situations in which some or all the people involved (myself included) were unhappy.

The other part of it is purely practical. When I was dating poly people, or people open to poly, I found few people who seemed like compatible partners (a few, but very few, and no one with whom a relationship ever worked out). And my experience is that most people who aren't already poly are not likely to want to date someone who is. Neither of the people I've been seriously involved with since Chris and I got divorced would have dated me if I had been poly. So closing off one type of option (number of partners) seems to open up much larger options (range of possible partners) for me.

I know you guys are still poly in spirit, but I do notice that you've neither of you dated very seriously in the ?4?5 years you've been together; I don't get the impression Chris has even looked around (not that she would have any reason to, with such a nice partner already and such a busy life!), and I know you've been on a few dates but not found anyone you seemed to want to add to your family.

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

I know you guys are still poly in spirit, but I do notice that you've neither of you dated very seriously in the ?4?5 years you've been together; I don't get the impression Chris has even looked around (not that she would have any reason to, with such a nice partner already and such a busy life!), and I know you've been on a few dates but not found anyone you seemed to want to add to your family.

True. Mostly we just like keeping our options open!

[winterbadger]

:-)