Wait, didn't you tell us you were "naturally monogamous" and wouldn't have any fun at all with multiple boyfriends? Or was that someone else?
Well, I did say that and I do think it is true in a way but something has to give. I experienced mild anxiety when I was dating multiple men (even though I wasn't having sex with any of them)but I've been thinking about it and I think a lot of it was either option paralysis or subconscious primitive fear that somebody was going to get angry at me for doing something "bad". Also, I do think it is true that I can only be "in love" with one man at a time so generally my sex drive chemicals link up with my "in love" chemicals and cause me to be sexually monogamous. However, that isn't always the case. I have been strongly sexually attracted to men with whom I haven't felt "in love" (my rich young Republican f*ck-buddy who looked like Cary Grant comes to mind) and I have felt "in love" with men to whom I never would have been sexually attracted otherwise (my overweight, sloppy, vague/nerdy 50-something year old Physics professor in college comes to mind.)
Anyways, sexual attraction can be fleeting as can feelings of being "in love". Of course, as we all know or have learned, there are ways to revive or keep these feelings active or at least cycling in a LTR. Now, if we define "love" as a verb that means to treat somebody in a loving manner, it is clear that we can all be loving or reasonably expect to be treated in a loving manner consistently in a relationship even though we can't expect to always feel "in love" or demand that our partners feel that way towards us. Here's the twist. Generally, people define "commitment" as "long-term monogamy". People who choose to engage in a polyamorous lifestyle simply break-up the concepts of "long-term" and "monogamy". Commitment is defined as something like "the desire to grow old in somebody's company" and "monogamy" is discarded. So, for instance, in theory, you could lovingly co-parent and reside with one partner for 30 years, have warm and affectionate sex with another partner for 5 years and have a hot, torrid affair with a third partner while on vacation in Italy.
Of course, the potential problem with such arrangements is the natural human tendency towards jealousy or possessiveness in relationships. So, one would have to practice feeling compersion rather than jealousy. It seems to me that differentiation and compersion are actually related concepts. However, I do wonder if it is possible to experience passion and compersion simultaneously. Of course, passion means "suffering" so if you want to be happy you are probably better off with compersion.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
And I think the reverse can probably be said regarding us males...the more we drink, our f*ckable percentage tends to drop
LOL- That is so true. If a guy stares at you and says "Ooh ah bootiful" even if he is very cute and you enjoy that type of validation, you just have to remind yourself of the unlikelihood of successful male performance under such circumstances and the high likelihood of having to perform high-level vomit-cleaning cow chores on short acquaintance.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
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.
The thing with polyamorous arrangements is that they rarely work.
Well, it depends on how you define "work". Plus, can anybody on this BB say that committed monogamous relationships generally "work" or that simply deciding to Tom-or-Tomasina-cat around "works"? Human beings of both sexes have difficulties with sexual relationships because we are torn between the desire to act like swans and mate for life and the desire to act like bonobos and f*ck anyone attractive in sight. Obviously, as reflected in the double standard, in our culture women are generally expected to be the partner who pushes for swan-type relationships. IMO, this is why more women are LD in LTR's. OTOH, although I consider myself to be post-feminist, I reject the Rriot grrl type sexual philosophy of "do him before he does you" because it is a philosophy that does not recognize that men also desire to pair-bond. No man is pure wolf/monkey anymore than any woman is pure cow/bunny. Therefore, if I consider the word "slut" with its usual negative connotations, I would define a "slut" as being a woman who does not recognize or care for the "puppy dog" in her male partners. I have never been a "slut" because I am pretty much incapable of not caring for the "puppy dog" in my male partners (probably for the same reason that I am pretty much incapable of letting a baby cry in a crib) and that is one of the reasons why I have never cheated on a man.
Clearly, societies which tend towards polygamy generally suppress the rights and sexuality of women and thereby allow men to have multiple mates while women remain monogamous. A completely non-sexist society would recognize the two different mating tendencies in both sexes and not act to repress or be punitive. I believe that it is possible to have a long-term monogamous relationship in which both partners recognize, respect and empathize with these tendencies in each other but the kind of differentiation/compersion necessary to make that relationship work would be the same that would make any polyamorous relationship work and the person in a polyamorous relationship would actually have more sex.
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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??
I am trying to figure out how to please myself and part of pleasing myself is following some sort of code of ethics. Letting other people try to please you while not concerning yourself with pleasing them is not very ethical in my book.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Just out of curiosity, let's say you get into a new R where the sex is incredible, and you also start to really fall in love with this person. But the other person just doesn't feel as many "in love" feelings as you. Is this a R worth staying in? You seem to be the "one up" in lots of your current post-separation R. The one in control. Maybe you like that aspect of it and are looking to poly-R's to keep the feelings at bay? Are you scared to fall in love with someone? And if you did, would you / could you stay poly with that person?
What I mean by "work" is that all persons in the "R" are generally pleased, feel cared for, feel that they have adequate time, sex etc... with the other(s). This is where these R's fail - someone always ends up "odd person out". Most people don't cope with that well.
I'm not talking about pleasing yourself to the exclusion of pleasing others. By pleasing yourself I'm just referencing acting in a way that is authentic for you. I'm just talking about letting go of the anxiety associated with pleasing others. IMO - if you are dating more than one person then odds are good that someone is happy with you and themselves even if someone else is not. In this kind of arrangement it is easier to say, "Gee, I'm sorry you feel that way, take some time and when or if you feel better give me a ring."
LFL asks a worthy question. What about love - is it too scary for you right now?
LFL asks a worthy question. What about love - is it too scary for you right now?
I'm actually kind of amazed that you guys asked that question. I suppose it depends on how you draw the line between feeling "infatuated" or feeling "in love". Obviously, I am someone who becomes infatuated very easily (probably due to my shortage of dopamine receptors- sigh). I have been infatuated with every man I've been sexual with since my separation and a few more besides (remember Captain Wentworth? -lol). I've actually been avoiding doing things like going to a yuppie biker bar for a ONS because I don't want to purposefully make myself be sexual in a "hard" lioness/monkey mode. I've been trying to care for my bunny by only having sex with men who open doors and pet me etc. but I would hardly say that I've been "one up" in my relationships. It's more that I've been pretty good-humored, differentiated and philosophical about being dumped, disappeared on, lied to or cheated on. This is largely because I recognize that if I am unwilling to dump, disappear or cheat on a man either he has to take on that job or we will be together forever for better or quite possibly worse. I want to be sexual with men and I want to be affectionate with men but I have no desire to control their behavior and I don't want my behavior controlled. It's kind of like I want to be sexually self-employed. I hate being bossed around and stuck in a boring office from 9-5 but I don't like being the boss either. Maybe, polyamory is the relationship equivalent of moving from a gold-watch/pension work for the corporation society to a always-learning-new-skills-maintain-your-own-retirement-account contract worker society.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
What I mean by "work" is that all persons in the "R" are generally pleased, feel cared for, feel that they have adequate time, sex etc... with the other(s). This is where these R's fail - someone always ends up "odd person out". Most people don't cope with that well.
Well, obviously every person on this BB feels like they are the one not being adequately cared for in their committed monogamous relationship and it's quite hard to feel cared for if you don't make any sort of commitment to be intimate or spend time in a relationship at all and just keep things completely casual. Burgbud suggested that I might want a MWC relationship and I think it might be more likely that I want a CWM relationship. I hate the dishonesty inherent in the sort of disavowals of intimacy that occur with break-ups due to inability to maintain monogamy or shared living arrangements. I absolutely do not want to be in a monogamous sexual relationship or even live in the same household with my 2bx again but I absolutely will not feel like a whole honest person if I don't at some point honor what was good about our relationship at least to the extent that I can, for instance, give him a warm hug when we become co-grandparents someday.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
What I mean by "work" is that all persons in the "R" are generally pleased, feel cared for, feel that they have adequate time, sex etc... with the other(s). This is where these R's fail - someone always ends up "odd person out". Most people don't cope with that well.
I can see what you mean here. Mrs. Eddie once reported that it's easy for her to resist temptation when she reflects that it's a challenge keeping up with me... trying to keep up with two men would be utterly exhausting for her.
Originally Posted By: MJontheMend
Therefore, if I consider the word "slut" with its usual negative connotations, I would define a "slut" as being a woman who does not recognize or care for the "puppy dog" in her male partners. I have never been a "slut" because I am pretty much incapable of not caring for the "puppy dog" in my male partners (probably for the same reason that I am pretty much incapable of letting a baby cry in a crib) and that is one of the reasons why I have never cheated on a man.
That's the best description of the "slut" stereotype I've seen yet. It's puzzling and fascinating and kind of disturbing that a lot of women seem to get hard and cold and mean just from having a lot of sex with a lot of people, although I recognize that the cause-and-effect relationship could work the other way. I guess Maureen Johnson isn't too common in real life...
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
