Poly Analogues - Reserving Nicknames

[joreth]

I discovered something today. I was making a newbie poly mistake with my monogamous bio-family.

Most of what I learned about polyamory, I actually learned from my monogamous family. For instance, I've written before about how being adopted was a poly analogue - that being adopted taught me the importance of intentional family. My adopted parents did

Comments

[seinneann_ceoil]

I think for many people, they consider specialness to have to have a quality of uniqueness to it. For some people if something they have isn't unique, it isn't as special for them. Hence wanting representative terms to be unique as well. I also think people are concerned that if they share representative symbols or names, it is not speaking to the uniqueness of what they are naming or representing. I'm not sure if it's the same thing as having one's specialness conferred upon them by the name.

Dunno where I stand on the subject, but then again, it's never come up for me as an issue.

[joreth]

While it is probably true that people are considering specialness to have a quality of uniqueness, the problem with that is that there really is nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes. There is no truly unique things. Everyone in the Western world, and many non-western countries, wears rings, for example. "Honey" is one of the most common American terms of endearment. And in my poly analogue example, there are several legitimate, socially-acceptable, and even acceptable-by-those-in-question situations for me to call more than one person "mom

[seinneann_ceoil]

I think many people are looking at unique within their own sphere of experience. It's not necessarily the symbol that people are hinging their specialness on. I think for many people, they want their specialness explicitly acknowledged by their partner or by people around them. For many people, the a unique name or symbol is that explicit acknowledgement.

I definitely agree it's useful to look inside rather than outside for that sense of specialness, but I also think that relying on a symbol to feel special is more than that and not the complete picture of what's going on for someone. I think that's just one way people are looking for something a bit more fundamental- acknowledgement.

[joreth]

If they're just using the symbol as acknowledgement of their own specialness by their partner, then they're not doing what I'm talking about & I addressed that already.