I love your capacity to consider all the possibilities. That there actually is a word like compersion is cool. My computer doesn't even recognize it. The thing with polyamorous arrangements is that they rarely work. They especially don't work in close proximity. My aunt (who was a Harvard professor) and one of her ex-H's were married for more than a decade but practiced an "open" marital lifestyle. The reason it worked is because they didn't live in the same state as each other. In order to pursue their professions they lived where their careers dictated and had a commuter marriage. He had a woman that he saw regularly for many years (she was married). My Aunt had a variety of boyfriends and girlfriends. She was very liberal, hippie intellectual. Then they got older. Once they got ready to retire (in their 50's) they attempted to live together and it didn't work. Then they tried to do so and give up their other relationships. It didn't work because then they pursued them anyway on the sly. They divorced. They both remarried in monogamous arrangements. Weird huh?
For you to date more than one person is a good idea. I don't define dating more than one person as polyamorous. It is adding the commitment piece to one or more relationships that takes a situation from dating multiple people to polyamoury. It is anxiety provoking though. It produces anxiety because society doesn't know what to do with it but also, the anxiety comes from that need to please. It is difficult enough to please one person but more than one is impossible. The good part of this experiment would be if you learned to please yourself and leave the anxiety to please in those whom you date. KWIM??
MJ - I would love to pal around with you. I have had friends like you at times. You are the kind of woman that scares the crap out of other women's H's . The H's get afraid of the undue influence of a woman who is such an original thinker. Shakes them up. At the same time they have a niggling attraction that they don't know what to do with. It is good for them and good for the marriage. I don't have any pals right now. Just too dang busy. It is bad for me.
