(Untitled)

[miriamjoyce]

This week's Looking Up: The great(er) marriage debate, and how my family fits in.

Slightly nerve-wracking to come out that explicitly in the paper, but it seemed relevant, and I was getting tired of avoiding it.

Comments

[jwitchbaby]

Hooray! Congratulations.

[scry_dragonfly]

Great column, either way, outing aside and outing considered. Perhaps we should give up on the word "marriage" and start having financial interdependence ceremonies?

[miriamjoyce]

Thanks!

"Perhaps we should give up on the word "marriage" and start having financial interdependence ceremonies?"

Grin. The funny thing is, I kinda like marraige as a personal/religious commitment, and think it does go a little beyond money. But I'd be all for renaming civil unions or domestic partnerships that way.

marriage is about making kids

[thatpoetrykid]

People once lived is small tribes that may not have even seen or interacted with any other small tribes. No one understood the concepts of genetics or gene pools but they surely must have seen the results of inbreeding. To keep relatives from breeding a system had to be developed to know who your parents were, who their parents where, who your potential partner's parents and grand parents were. Marriage and the rules against infidelity had to go a long way to resolving that problem. Perhaps not 100%, but surely enough to keep the human animal alive and thriving. Today people meet more potential partners in a week than they likely met in a lifetime then. The chances of accidentally breeding with a close relative is very very slim, making marriage a tool that has certainly outlived its original use.

I'm afraid the source of all of this is my own conjecture, but that doesn't mean it isn't true or at least truthy.

[the_fire_cat]

That took a hell of a lot of courage. I don't understand--will never understand--how the three of you make it work, but I am amazed and humbled and awed by it all at once. It's hard enough to keep a "traditional" marriage together (you know, guy in a kilt, barefoot chick in a white dress), with the support of the entire community and society at large. I can't imagine the courage it takes you and Rx2 to face the world every morning.

But the more I think about it, I think you get it from the same place AJ and I get it--from each other. And isn't that what marriage really is?

Hope Nadia likes her new old toy. Maybe you canteach an old dog new tricks.

Sara (aka Aunt Mouse)

[miriamjoyce]

We are super lucky to have supportive family and friends. With that we really are much like other married folk, though still with some unique challenges and benefits. When we do see some discrimination it tends to take us by surprise.

Without the support, it would be so much harder. When RH and I first started exploring polyamory in college, not having anyone to talk to about it was a serious hindrance. Isolation stresses a family.

[bhakti]

So now that it's been a while... any response from the readership? Did people notice?

[bhakti]

Nope. There was a very nice letter to the editor from someone I know, and I've had plenty of positive feedback from friends.

But apparently there has been not a peep outside of that. Amusingly, it's nearly always the things that don't seem controversial that stir the letter writers. (And yet, I still seem to expect the controversial things to do so.)

Does that mean the readership noticed? Hard to say. It's a little hard to gauge that based on letters sometimes. I could have kicked off a whole bunch of interesting conversations around the region and yet have no indication of that. Or people who weren't already on board could have glazed over and stopped reading. It's the nature of the beast.

[miriamjoyce]

uh, that was me. not logged in. oops.