Polywhat?

My mom thinks I'm never gonna get married if I keep this up. I think it might be the only way I ever get married.

It's not a super new idea. It's not particularly popular right now, but there're people who dig it. I found some. Some people talk about it to an annoying extent, like me. An ex-boyfriend of mine, who is NOT interested, claims it is "a religion. A false one." He rolls his eyes sometimes. Some people practice it more quietly, and only their loves know what's up.

Wikipedia sez: "Polyamory (from Greek πολυ [poly, meaning many or several] and Latin amor [literally “love”]) is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved."

There're some mythbusting sites about it and some long descriptions of it, and, not being interested in rewriting the wheel, I'm'a gonna give you some links if you care:

Polyamory? What, like, Two Girlfriends?

alt.polyamory Frequently Asked Questions

There's more. You can google it.

Mostly what I'm interested in doing is having my own selfish forum for my own private experiences with the thing.

So this is something that I've been thinking and talking about since high school. I had a boyfriend then who was wonderful enough to agree with me that if we found the right person, we could add them somehow to our relationship and we could have a beautiful sustainable love triangle. I have no idea how this notion popped into our heads. I know we were all about it even before we read Stranger In a Strange Land. But our interest was irrelevant, because that fabled right person never really came along, and we were pretty happy with just each other anyway, at least for the three years of high school/college that our relationship lasted. We broke up, I was sad, life went on. I had a wild year o' love in which I got to satisfy my desire to sleep with lots of people (always safely, sanely, and with great respect. Thanks for teaching me how to politely say no, and how to communicate openly about sex, Mom!)

And then I fell in love again! With somebody seriously awesome. Who thought the notion of polyamory was the stupidest, most ridiculous, inane and blatantly wrong idea he'd ever heard of. But that was fine--I was in love, polyamory was just an idea, not anything I'd ever really done, I didn't have any good arguments for it, and I was in love. So that happened for five years, and was mostly wonderful. I *did* notice that my inability to commit seemed related to the notion that not sleeping with anyone ever again sounded like a vaguely oppressive idea. But also, there were other things; it's a story for another long, self-indulgent post, but we broke up too.

And I was like "Dude! First of all, I've been in a relationship for five years; I'm gonna have some fun. And then maybe I'll finally get a chance to try this weirdo relationship style I've been wondering about for so long." So I started acquiring lovers, but pretty quickly noticed: casual sex wasn't quite so much fun anymore. It was kind of...boring, and not very good. I think this is called Growing Up. And instead of the Year of Love I had envisioned repeating, I *did* collect lovers...but I kept them. And I didn't consider myself With any of them, not With with a capital W, but some time passed and I realized that I was literally dating four people who I had been dating consistently for 8-15 months. I was carrying on these four light, long-term relationships (one of them was long-distance, two more had other significant partners, one was single like me) in parallel, and it was kind of great. They all knew about each other, and the whole thing was remarkably drama-free.

But there was a problem: I wasn't in love with any of them, and I didn't appear to be heading in that direction. And ultimately, that's what I wanted, like everyone, right? I wanted love, I wanted a partner (at LEAST one!); someone I might someday put down in the "emergency contact" field when I'm filling out paperwork for new jobs, someone who knows everything about me, whose toothbrush lives in my bathroom, who would look after my dog if I left town for a week. If I had a dog. Someone that I would skip the party for in order to bring soup to when they're sick. You know. I wanted that.

And the only person in my life I was falling for was a good friend who, once again, was TOTALLY not down with the whole poly thing. But love won out, I broke up with four people and asked him to be my boyfriend and he said yes, and I was happy until he dumped me two months later and then I was heartbroken for a little while. I picked up some of the old lovers again but it wasn't the same; dumping people and then taking them back is a little bit of a trust-killer, and I was sad about that too.

And then a fellow came along who we'll call Prince B. And he was cute and smart and funny and dorky like me, and when I told him I was seeing other people, and was he okay with that, on like our second date, he paused and thought and said that he wasn't sure yet but that he'd give it a try. And at first I thought he was too young and maybe not quite right but then I started missing him on days I wasn't seeing him and then one day he didn't want to hang out when I did and I almost cried, and then one day we said okay, we're With each other! And that was a good day. And then, you know, love. And magically! Still seeing other people! Still talking about poly like it could go away any day, and it still could, because as fascinating as all this is, love still wins out over freaky relationship-style. But so far?

It's kinda working out great.

It's been just 8 months and some change, so I'm not leaping to any conclusions. But already, in 8 months, I've learned some fascinating crazy shit about myself because of what turns up when you try and love lots of people. And I sorta want to write about it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the long, boring story of why this blog exists. I promise, later on, there will be some sex in it. If you're good.

Thanks for reading!