Where I'll Be

For those who are interested...

Tonight I'll be in a counselling session from half-six onwards. Good Thoughts would be appreciated. Tomorrow evening, my housemate Shona has kindly offered to cook dinner for the two of us, plus a couple of her friends. Friday shall be the Games Night at James's, where I might possibly play a little Magic for the first time in months. After that, your guess is as good as mine...

*hugs* where applicable
Dan

Polyamory and Pitfalls

It isn't easy being polyamorous. When I was last in a poly group, there were countless little jealousies, fiddly little problems and just plain old timing issues to add to the basic difficulties of being in a relationship in the first place. But good and solid communication can get you through most problems. (See other brackets below)

When I've discussed these things with friends who didn't know what poly was, or understood the idea but not my commitment to it, three questions kept coming up. "Isn't it difficult knowing your partner's sleeping with someone else?", "Are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into?" and "Do you have threesomes?". To which my answers tended to be; "Sometimes, but I know they're with someone they care about", "I think so, although I know it's going to hurt when it ends" and "Not yet". But I felt that my choices were being respected - and, up to a point, accepted - precisely because the questions were being asked. Mind you, I have no doubt I was being judged by my friends, and I may well have been perceived as wrong-headed, optimistic, blindly in love and naive. That's between them and the universe, and isn't really any of my business. It might get me a little down, but it doesn't make me angry.

What does make me angry and upset is when people go off half-cocked. When they don't ask questions first, but assume that things which are poison to any relationship, like selfishness, superiority, dishonesty and a lack of genuine commitment, go hand in hand with the poly lifestyle. When, in short, assumptions are made - with the best will in the world - which either hurt me, or people I care about. A drawback of polyamory is that pain tends to spread further out before the healing can start. (And yes, guilty as charged, m'lud, and I'm serving my time.) Pain is not a competition - there aren't medals handed out for the person who manages to suffer the most in the shortest period of time. Pain is real, and should always be respected and reduced.

Every action has a reaction. This was mine.
Dan