Fuck polyamory. I’ve heard all the catch-phrases, and have even said most, if not all of them myself. It’s a more enlightened way of approaching relationships. It expands your capacity to love, which is an awesome thing. The sense of community you get from it is amazing. The work you have to do in order to be poly, including becoming better at communication, understanding your own feelings, handling emotions, etc. are all things you probably would never have considered addressing yourself were it not for polyamory.
Yeah fuck all that. What’s the gain? You go through all the work, all the struggle of getting over the feelings of complete hatred you have every single time your partner hooks up with someone new, and you figure out all the “facets” of your own jealousy and insecurity. For what? Because of the rumored joys of being able to have that lovely feeling of obsession and unbridled lust that one gets at the beginning of a new relationship? People certainly don’t go through all that work just because they want to better themselves and move society toward more open and loving relationships.
No, people actually become polyamorous because they like to fuck. They like to fall in love. They like to lust after the hot thing that just walked by, (hopefully) without their partner having a fucking conniption fit in public. That feeling people get when they fancy someone knew. THAT is why people are fucking polyamorous, not because it is somehow “enlightened.”
I’m not sure that it is worth it though. That feeling is a bag of bullshit in my opinion. Find someone you dig, then get butterflies over them. Go about whatever it is you do in your relationship strategy. Some people ask for phone numbers, other e-stalk. Whatever. You eventually decide to let the person know. Or you don’t. And then you obsess and think and watch for them and hope they update their fucking Facebook status, so you will have some glimpse into whatever it is they do with their lives. You ponder how you might fit there. Then time passes and nothing comes of it, and you cycle through the standard emotions: lust, hope, fear, sadness, anger, abandonment, maybe a touch of depression, baseline. Back to square one, while your fucking partner is off fucking three new people and getting attention all over the place.
And maybe every once in a while, poly people find someone knew to actually “date.” And maybe it will even last for a while. Maybe they will fall in love, or hot lust, or something. Eventually though, it disintegrates. And they do it all over again with someone new. Polyamory means you get to go through this ridiculous, awful cycle over and over and over again, your entire fucking life. Rather than ending up in a marriage where, at your 50th wedding anniversary you may not like your spouse much, but at least you know the fucker is going to be around from day to day, you instead get to deal with the constant rejection, pain, heartache and bother of dead end relationship after dead end relationship. Do you actually REMEMBER high school? Do you remember how fucking awful it felt to be one of the only ones without a date at the time? Do you remember wondering what’s wrong with you, and why no one wanted YOU? Well consider that as an adult, with your beer gut, your childbirth scars, your stretchmarks, your never-going-to-be-in-shape-again adult body, your kids, your ever-present job and your bald spot. Now guess how easy it is to get a date, and how much it fucking messes with your head when no one is in to you. You thought it sucked when you actually looked half-decent in your younger years.
Rather than dealing with that shit once and for all, and finally just settling instead poly people elect to do it over and over. Why would we do this intentionally? Why would we set ourselves up to deal with the awkwardness of dating, when we could easily just leave that life behind?
Oh and don’t forget, you’re supposed to CELEBRATE the fact that your partner, if you even have one, is off fucking the ever loving shit out of someone, while you haven’t even seen the genitals of anyone new in two fucking years. Remember that it is unacceptable in polyamory to be jealous of this. That isn’t enlightened at all!
Yeah polyamory is great. I suppose the argument is that the enlightened mindset, as well as the supposed vast level of personal fulfillment poly people get from all their “many loves” (no matter how short-lived, apparently) somehow trumps all the complete bullshit that goes along with it. I’m not really sure how THAT math makes much sense, given how much the fucking cycle of infatuation and letdown SUCKS, but there you go.
I don’t understand how a general philosophy about relationship structure is suppose to support anyone’s ego nor how it brings about magical knowledge and understanding.
If these are the expected outcomes then you are already setting up for failure.
What SHOULD one go into polyamory expecting? What is the goal? What’s the point?
The point, for me, anyway, is to have the freedom to pursue relationships as it feels most natural to me. It’s not really a choice for me – it’s single or polyamorous. I was never happy as a monogamous person and monogamy certainly doesn’t guaranty a life long relationship. The work is more than worth it, for me, because a) I get that and b) it’s worthwhile work, anyway.
Dude. Sorry to hear it’s sucking for you (and not in a good way). Or for the anonymous person on whose behalf you’re posting, if it’s not yourself. Whatever.
I completely agree that it’s generally about some combination of the NRE (all-natural braindrugs ftw!) and the sex (relative importance of these depends on the individual), and that 98% of the people saying they’re doing it because it’s enlightened are either miscommunicating or not thinking very critically about what they’re saying in the first place. And if people are telling you that how you’re feeling isn’t as enlightened as it “should” be then I highly recommend telling them to go fuck themselves with some rusty co-lab debris. But aside from that I happen to think that NRE and sex are both pretty damn nifty (and the cuddles, too. big fan there), and for me at least when the letdowns happen they aren’t really so bad compared with the good times.
I wonder if perhaps the short relationships part could be near the center of the issue. If you (or whoever this is about) are investing levels of emotion appropriate to long-term relationships in what end up being short-term ones but with all the breakup yuck of the long-term energy that you put into it, I could easily see the benefit not being worth the cost. Maybe you (or whoever this is about) might benefit from either learning to put less up-front energy into an iffy relationship, or else focus on finding people more likely to stick around to pay back the yucks with yays.
Oh, and lemme know if you need some help with the no new genitals in two years thing. I have some ideas.
Ben, everything you just said made me grin
It is definitely that I tend to put long term relationship-ness into something that should really not get more energy than a short relationship. I have my theories on why I do this, and why it is so devastating for me. Those theories are include things about motherhood, having a youngish child, my changing body, getting older, and the fact that I didn’t used to ever have a problem getting attention (for way longer than I wanted, usually). And maybe also the fact that the only longish-term “serious” poly relationship outside my “primary” one ended up ending badly and causing years of residual blah for me.
I really just need to chill and not have expectations. That’s the bottom line.
Expectations are good. Hell, it’s probably not possible to get rid of them entirely anyway. It’s just a matter of keeping them realistic.
Do you really think motherhood, child, and growing up have such an impact on the expectations you have of relationships? Because those sound sort of roundabout, and I think a lot of people say those sorts of things as excuses, but I don’t know if that’s true for you or not. The past trouble, that I can easily see having a huge impact.