A couple of months ago, my father gently suggested to me that I am "too open" in my blogs about polyamory. He was concerned that I was sharing details without permission, and to some degree that I was sharing details at all.
His first concern is unfounded. If a blog involves Eva in any substantive way, she reads it (or I read it to her) before it goes live. In eleven years of blogging, she has yet to outright nix something, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she has suggested that I reframe a sentence. I've been married to her longer than I have been blogging. I know her, and our, boundaries.
And when others have made, or will make, an appearance in these blogs, the same principle applies. Any details I share here have been vetted and okayed.
There really haven't been that many details. I certainly haven't written anything, nor will I write anything of a prurient nature. Which is one of the points I want to make here.
It niggled at me, what my father said to me. Was I too open in some way? I started paying closer attention to my readership numbers, and I noticed something interesting. My "poly"-themed blog entries always attract more attention than my other posts...but they are also the least commented upon. Any polyamory-themed articles, comics or the like that I share on Facebook are likewise never remarked upon (whereas most of everything else I share gets "likes" and comments, sometimes in abundance.
At first I wasn't sure what to make of this. People are obviously interested...but are they uncomfortable?
What prompted this post was someone asking for advice in r/polyamory, the polyamory subreddit (group) on Reddit. He had told his parents he and his wife were poly six months previous; as is often the case, one parent took it well and one didn't. Now he, his wife and her boyfriend were hoping to visit his parents, overnight and they absolutely forbade his wife to bring up, let alone bring, her boyfriend. The mother did not want any reminders whatsoever of nonmonogamy. All three of them felt judged and attack.
You'll probably be happy to know the group consensus was that they should get a hotel room: asking his parents to accept an unrelated stranger who embodies the very thing that bothers them so much, is "a bridge too far". I agree, for what it's worth. At the same time, reading this and other 'coming out' stories where the entrusted person is acutely uncomfortable with "all that bedroom stuff"...it made me recall our own coming out, and some of the reactions we after explaining "multiple committed relationships with the knowledge and consent of all involved". "Oh, so you're swingers, then", said one relative, and...um...no. Really not. I honestly don't think I could be a swinger: it strikes me as objectification. If everyone consents to being objectified, who am I to say boo about it? But it's not for me.
A couple of other people reacted as if I had just spilled the details of some wild orgy: discomfort and thinly-veiled distaste. I had done no such thing. My sex life with or without Eva, and her sex life with or without me, is none of anybody's business. But our other relationships are important.
That's one of the things I want to stress. that IT'S NOT ABOUT SEX. I'll keep saying it over and over again until people process it. Sex may indeed be a byproduct of polyamory, the same way it's a byproduct of a romantic monogamous relationship...but the relationship OUTSIDE the bedroom is central. Those parents weren't denying a sexual plaything when they said "not under my roof!" They were denying an entire relationship. Two of them, really, since the husband was close friends with his metamour.
Yesterday, Eva and I went grocery shopping. Such a mundane thing, and yet every time we go it's an echo of our first date. We enjoy shopping together. After that, I went to bed and she went and did some housework at her boyfriend's place. Again, mundane; again, nevertheless invested with love. Those two things were the highlights of her day. You'll note the lack of screaming orgasms, whips and chains and silk handkerchiefs. Not that I'd tell you if any of that was there, but in this case I can tell you it wasn't.
So one of the reasons I'm open about polyamory is because I want to dispel the misconceptions that we're hanging from the chandeliers. We love, just like you do. We just love more than one person at a time.
Some people were concerned about "keeping score", and the fact I haven't found a partner to "balance" Eva's. Admittedly, I was concerned with that too, at first. My efforts at finding a serious partner were halfhearted at best, though: I think everybody would agree I had a whole lot of self-work to get through before I could even think of going forward with that.
I have a fairly large number of girl friends (note the space between those two words). I'm reasonably certain each one knows about the space between those two words. Some of them I love very much, but for one reason or another (usually but not always the fact that they are in committed monogamous relationships), the space is and will be preserved.
It's yet another parallel that polyamory has with being gay. Gay people often fantasize about 'turning' their straight friends...and if they're smart, fantasizing is where it begins and ends. Gay or poly (or gay and poly!), you have to "date within your species." Any other course involves broken hearts and possibly other broken parts of the body.
Another reason I am open about "this poly thing" is related to the first one I gave. Poly is normal. It doesn't seem normal to people not living it, but there is nothing objectionable about it. It's not cheating, it's not hurting anyone, and done properly it's incredibly enriching. I want people to see this life being lived, in all its quotidian boringness, because I want people to recognize polyamory as a viable option. Not necessarily for themselves--you will NEVER see me saying "hey, you should be poly!" outside my imagination--but in general.
A third reason is because polyamory is important to me. It resonates so very deeply with me on an emotional level...but it also seems very logical to me. There's no reason, outside of social conditioning, why we place artificial and arbitrary limits on how and whom we love. Why is it that only things can be "too good not to share"? Why can't people be that way?
I'm not sure if the reason I field so few comments on this is because people are uncomfortable, or if they just don't know what to say. Maybe they think they'll say something wrong, and offend me. Hey, say it wrong. Then at least we have something to edit.
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