- lounged around the apartment today. it was deadly hot outside so i didn't tan by the pool and i still couldn't go to the gym. my next personal training appointment was moved from 9 to 10:30 tomorrow morning. can't wait to go!
- almost 400 pages into my new book and still have a ways to go. it can be quite verbose at times and excessive in detail and meaningless description but it doesn't really feel like it drags. it's interesting still, but just makes for a long book.
- watched the next food network star and was happy about who they sent home (don't want to ruin it if some readers haven't watched yet). then i watched this crazy show on TLC called "strange sex." it was about these weird and unusual sex stories from couples or individuals. four different stores: polyamory, birth orgasms, sex addiction, and coital incontinence. WEIRD stories. slightly disturbing. and sex addiction isn't a real addiction, by the way.
not much in a blogging mood tonight but one subject i had already wanted to talk about, cheating, ties in relatively well with the subject of polyamory, something i just learned about tonight! it is called "the learning channel" after all... polyamory is supposedly the sentiment that you want to be emotionally and physically intimate with more than one person and everyone in the arrangement agrees and wants that same thing. perhaps you can sense my...sarcastic bite about this topic. i feel like it's just a massive cop out. um, hello, have you ever heard of a more precise definition of "have my cake and eat it too?!" didn't think so. yes, i should be open to new experiences and different kinds of love and relationships and all that jazz. but this just seems excessive. maybe i'm traditional (not a word i would use to describe myself typically) but i feel like relationships should exist between two people. but maybe i just haven't progressed to the idea of sharing love with more than one person yet. thankfully. i just think it's an excuse to experiment and change things up but still experience commitment and stability. that isn't fair! sure, maybe it works for some people (obviously) but it doesn't seem like that would be healthy to me. isn't intimacy suppose to be...intimate? meaning that emotional/physical/mental/spiritual bonds shared between two people aren't shared also with a third, fourth, fifth person at the same time? it just seems like cheating to me. and the woman on the show was so manipulative and self-righteous and egotistical and selfish. it just really, really turned me off from the idea of polyamory being healthy and successful in real life. kind of like communism...it would work on paper or in the perfect world...but yeah, no, it doesn't work. and going back to my original idea of cheating, researchers have found that most affairs in marriages/relationships start in a similar way--by sharing things with a person other than your significant other. okay, obviously i don't mean telling your friends about your bad day at work or your relationship problem du jour. but when one starts to share more with someone other than who one shares one's bed with, it can create problems. being emotionally or mentally intimate with someone other than your boy/girlfriend is where most of infidelities start. it's like building a whole new relationship really, so it makes sense that physical infidelity would follow. basic gist: cheating often starts out with a seemingly innocent friendship or working relationship that turns personal rather than staying on the side of impersonal. and polyamory seems to do just that--be intimate with more than one person. how can the bonds remain steadfast when more than one person is in the relationship? and it just seems really unequal. most of the time, it will be one women and more than one man, or one man and more than one woman. in most settings, it doesn't seem like the two or more people of the same sex will be sharing the emotional etc. intimacy so it just becomes an unequal and unfair relationship. i'm not on board yet, but who says i have to be?
bucket list item: sell my baked goods in some sort of store. not my own store necessarily, but someone's coffee shop or bakery or something.
Dear Monogamist,
ReplyDeleteI was directed to this blog by a friend who had read it and felt you needed some clarification on these issues. I am polyamorous and found your blog highly problematic. It is clear that you know very little about the subject of polyamory yet feel entitled to comment on it broadly. Though normally I would allow such ignorant remarks to go unchallenged, I’m feeling magnanimous tonight so I thought I’d provide you with a tidbit of my own wisdom—call it a personal Learning Channel experience.
What’s so upsetting about your blog post is that you seem aware of the very qualities that polyamorous individuals value about their relationship style yet you are insistent on denigrating them, with no clear rationale. Yes, polyamory is a case of ‘having one’s cake and eating it too.’ Yet that expression evolved to describe an ideal situation, which individuals who practice polyamory feel they have attained. They are, indeed, capable of enjoying intimacy with one partner without removing the possibility of intimacy with another, or many others. The fact that you don’t feel capable of this level of emotional complexity and therefore are limited in your relationship possibilities to monogamy is neither an inherently positive element of your character, nor an excuse to deride the abilities of others to maintain such a situation. Yes, you should be open to other experiences, Miss Traditional, and part of that is to acknowledge that the simple fact that you cannot engage in a given act does not take away from the possibility that it is a healthy and honest and legitimate choice for others.
Your definitions of relationships and intimary are limited, at best, and prejudiced, at worst (after all—we’re all prejudiced, right?). First, your suggestion that relationship refers only to romantic relationships has obscured your ability to explore the issue of intimacy within human interactions fully. At the root of many polyamorists’ thinking, the important component of human interaction that is being valued here is intimacy. We simply don’t see it as something that must be experienced monogamously, and I would go so far as to suggest that most people, even those who engage in monogamous romantic relations, don’t see it that way either. After all, don’t many people share intimacy with your close friends? In what way does having a romantic relationship with someone trump the intimacy experienced in close friendships, by default? After all, romantic relationships, particularly in college, come and go, whereas friendships are comparatively stable over time. Furthermore, the idea that one should be dependent on a single other individual for emotional support is both impractical and unhealthy: that person may not always be emotionally capable of supporting you, or simply may not be present. In addition, if that person should leave your life, you are left with no emotional support, rather than a set of alternative options for intimacy.
Perhaps you feel that it is the physical intimacy which ultimately should be monogamously maintained. Again, I feel that you have passed judgment on others’ behavior simply because you don’t want to take part in that activity. Is sex somehow the ultimate intimacy? Those college students leaving parties with people whose names they barely know probably wouldn’t agree. Nor would those couples who are waiting for marriage to have sex, but who feel quite intimate with one another. Finally, I challenge you to imagine your current relationship without physical contact. Would it magically become less intimate? Would the emotional security you feel with your significant other diminish in some way? I’m betting the answers to these questions are negative, and I would argue that a good relationship probably has intimacy that is not dependent on sex.
ReplyDeleteYou haven’t experienced polyamory and it sounds like you don’t have any interest in doing so. I have experienced it, seen that it can be healthy and successful. While this is obviously your blog, and you may write whatever your heart pleases, you might consider simply raising questions next time, rather than expressing such strong opinions on an issue which you learned about in a five minute segment of a television show.
Sincerely,
A Proud Polyamorist