Many Of My Poly Skills Come From My Hetero Mono Family
*sigh* my sister...
So, my family is, like, totally "normal". They are what we are told we are "supposed" to be: my dad proposed to my mom at her senior prom, they got married right out of high school, are still married, had 2 kids and a series of dogs and raised us in the suburbs. My sister was "the jock", I was "the brain", my mom came from a lower class immigrant family and moved into middle class, even sent me to private school. All we lacked was a literal picket fence.
Even our dysfunctions were "normal": I dropped out of college to work in manual labor, my sister got pregnant in high school and became a single teen mom, but we both mostly stayed out of real trouble and we love our parents. So my sister is totally not part of any alt communities. But she really should be. She has like the most queer-platonic relationship I've ever seen. Her best friend is the girl who grew up next door to us and they do *everything* together.
After I moved out, when my oldest nibling was a toddler, my sister and our next door neighbor became really close friends, so the neighbor kinda stepped in as an additional parent when I left. She just adores my niblings and they adore her. She is unmarried and has applied for adoption. Even though she has a boyfriend, she is planning on being a single mother. Perhaps if her boyfriend becomes a husband, he'll also become the adopted kid's father, but she has been planning to adopt for quite some time and is doing everything under the assumption that she will be the sole parent.
Except for my sister. As soon as my neighbor announced that the adoption application was approved, my sister immediately teared up and shouted "WE'RE HAVING A BABY?!?!"
Once my neighbor gave the go-ahead for my sister to start telling people, she always said it as "*we* are having a baby", and the neighbor seems to be approving, not just tolerating, this perspective. My sister will be the secondary parent to her best friend's kids, whether she ever has a spouse or not.
And now, my sister is posting pictures from her honeymoon in Cancun. Guess who's there? My sister brought her best friend (and her bf) on her honeymoon.
No, she is definitely not poly or bi. We've had frank discussions of both, and, while my sister understands and accepts both concepts in other people, she says they're not for her. But she clearly has "alternative" family structures. Her bestie is also a co-parent and a life-partner, and apparently neither of their straight male romantic partners mind.
I keep saying how all of my alt-family philosophies and skills come from my Christian, hetero, monogamous upbringing. I also keep saying that very little about polyamory is specific to polyamory. My sister is proof of both. She's not poly at all, but she still applies very poly relationship skills and traits to her het-mono life.
Considering that we hated each other as children, have *nothing* in common except a few bands that we like, and are not related by genetics, I think this supports my assertions that there is little about poly that is poly-specific and the sheer diversity of mono families can produce some healthy relationship lessons so that you don't have to be poly to still have decent relationships.
If you just look at a snapshot of our respective lives, my sister actually looks more like the "alternative" one. I live alone and hardly ever see my partners, so if you only peek at a slice of my life, I would seem to be just a quiet, spinster aunt, while she's the one with tattoos, kids that are not much younger than herself, and what looks like a poly quad and multiple co-parents.
#SeeingPicsOfMySisterPartyingInMexicoApparentlySendsMeOnAPolyPhilosophyTangent #QueerestPolyestStraightMonoWomanEver #ILoveMyFamily #WellMostOfTheTime
This post was originally posted at https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/401794.html.
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