current reflections on polyamory
I've been thinking lately about what it is that drives me to polyamory, given that the impulse seems so bizarre to so many people. I am falling more deeply in love with the man in my life every day, and yet instead of that making me feel like I want to shut others out of my heart and focus only on him, I feel the opposite: as though I want to share the love!
I've been pretty emotionally closed down for the past couple of years, in a relationship that was such in name only, with no genuine depth of feeling behind it. And because there was so little love in my heart, I had little to give others (except of course the critters, although perhaps I gave them more than their fair share in order to compensate). But now that love has once again filled my heart, I feel like I want to fully experience it and not just with one person. I have mainly been reaching out for new friendship connections, but I am open to whatever journey might heart wants to take me on.
I mistakenly let it slip to my mother than aforementioned man in my life has the rather stereotypical thing of minding less if I date another woman than if I date another man, although he's open to either. I hadn't meant to mention the whole "seeing more than one person at a time" thing, but I had been explaining to her how I had gone from lesbian to bisexual and the point just seemed to fit in the context of the conversation. So then I had no choice but to launch into my condensed version of why there is nothing inherently better about monogamy, to which my mother replied, "It's called commitment."
I didn't have my wits about me at the time or I would've replied that there is no necessary correlation between monogamy and commitment. I couldn't be more committed to the man in my life (sorry, I just can't say "boyfriend"); I'm not sure what greater commitment would look like. Living together, getting married, putting each other on our life insurance plans... that's not necessarily about commitment, and certainly not about the promise of one heart to love and cherish the other. Some people genuinely want those things, of course, but they are also ways of satisfying social expectations regarding the direction a relationship must move in to count as "serious."
I can't say that it will never happen, but at the moment he and are not heading towards fulfilling any of these social criteria for "seriousness," and yet our connection is deeper than any I have yet experienced. It could very well be that I needed to be in a relationship that was not on the conventional path in order to experience this degree of connection. The irony is that I think the same is probably true of my mother, since she so highly values her independence and alone time, but she's stuck in the mindset that real relationships follow only one script.
So what does this have to do with polyamory? I am learning to feel again, to get in touch with my heart, and I certainly don't want to squelch it by limiting myself to only one person. Not that I plan to go on a different date every night. That wouldn't suit me at all. But I'm open to experiencing different kinds of connections and just seeing where they lead, instead of needing to categorize each new person in my life in terms "dating potential" or "friends only" (unless, of course, there is genuinely no chemistry). And I certainly don't feel the need to deprive my heart of experiencing love from others just because I am so deeply connected with one person. Because one connection is possible, more are also possible. I don't expect this to make sense, except to others on their own polyamorous journeys.
I'm not a big fan of the idea of the idea that I might've been "born this way," but loving more than one person at a time (and being attracted to people not plumbing) just seems completely normal to me. Whatever "normal" means.
I've been pretty emotionally closed down for the past couple of years, in a relationship that was such in name only, with no genuine depth of feeling behind it. And because there was so little love in my heart, I had little to give others (except of course the critters, although perhaps I gave them more than their fair share in order to compensate). But now that love has once again filled my heart, I feel like I want to fully experience it and not just with one person. I have mainly been reaching out for new friendship connections, but I am open to whatever journey might heart wants to take me on.
I mistakenly let it slip to my mother than aforementioned man in my life has the rather stereotypical thing of minding less if I date another woman than if I date another man, although he's open to either. I hadn't meant to mention the whole "seeing more than one person at a time" thing, but I had been explaining to her how I had gone from lesbian to bisexual and the point just seemed to fit in the context of the conversation. So then I had no choice but to launch into my condensed version of why there is nothing inherently better about monogamy, to which my mother replied, "It's called commitment."
I didn't have my wits about me at the time or I would've replied that there is no necessary correlation between monogamy and commitment. I couldn't be more committed to the man in my life (sorry, I just can't say "boyfriend"); I'm not sure what greater commitment would look like. Living together, getting married, putting each other on our life insurance plans... that's not necessarily about commitment, and certainly not about the promise of one heart to love and cherish the other. Some people genuinely want those things, of course, but they are also ways of satisfying social expectations regarding the direction a relationship must move in to count as "serious."
I can't say that it will never happen, but at the moment he and are not heading towards fulfilling any of these social criteria for "seriousness," and yet our connection is deeper than any I have yet experienced. It could very well be that I needed to be in a relationship that was not on the conventional path in order to experience this degree of connection. The irony is that I think the same is probably true of my mother, since she so highly values her independence and alone time, but she's stuck in the mindset that real relationships follow only one script.
So what does this have to do with polyamory? I am learning to feel again, to get in touch with my heart, and I certainly don't want to squelch it by limiting myself to only one person. Not that I plan to go on a different date every night. That wouldn't suit me at all. But I'm open to experiencing different kinds of connections and just seeing where they lead, instead of needing to categorize each new person in my life in terms "dating potential" or "friends only" (unless, of course, there is genuinely no chemistry). And I certainly don't feel the need to deprive my heart of experiencing love from others just because I am so deeply connected with one person. Because one connection is possible, more are also possible. I don't expect this to make sense, except to others on their own polyamorous journeys.
I'm not a big fan of the idea of the idea that I might've been "born this way," but loving more than one person at a time (and being attracted to people not plumbing) just seems completely normal to me. Whatever "normal" means.