After taking a week or so to move past my poly temper tantrum, I’ve reached a positive conclusion. The primary reason I am poly is because I like to love. I love very, very easily, and once I love someone to a certain point, I rarely stop, even through the heartbreak, even with no communication for years. Eventually, inevitably, the people I love pop back into my life, and I find that I still love them, and it makes me smile. It’s this that makes polyamory happy for me, because I have no one in my life telling me it is not okay to love people easily and forever. I don’t have to feel guilty when I still love someone I’m no longer “with” (or never was “with” in some cases). Multiple loves.

I had a moment a couple of days ago where a person that I love, (who probably does not love me back [but maybe he does], and who I’m definitely not dating) popped up on Facebook. It made me smile. I have had some difficult emotions around him, and it made me really happy to find that I had reached a place where I was (I can’t think of a good word here – settled, stable, secure, even…) enough to just simply be happy to see him. It doesn’t have to be sad or angry or upsetting – you can love someone even if you aren’t dating them or sleeping with them or even around them all that much. It was kind of neat to sit there for a second and think fondly, and move on.

Yes, I stumble because I tend to fall for people extremely quickly. I find people that I really click for (for, not with. I don’t want to assume that they click back, but maybe they do), and it doesn’t happen all that often. So when it does, I latch, cling, and fall. Most of the time, it doesn’t go anywhere. I think this is mostly b/c I fall for people who are difficult for whatever reason. I don’t control that, so I don’t really know how to choose better. So, when it doesn’t work out, I really can’t understand, because I felt so strongly about it all. How can it NOT WORK OUT? It is devastating, usually for about a week. Then it’s just kind of sad for another week or two. Then eventually, I resign myself to this residual feeling, which eventually clears out, fades some, focuses, and becomes love.

This sounds creepy to read. It sounds like I completely lose my mind, obsessing, and that I’m one new person away from becoming a crazy stalker. It isn’t like that. I don’t do things like show up where people are just to see them, or send a million emails. I don’t peer in people’s windows. I mostly just think about the person a lot. I think about most people I care about, a lot.

I hesitated about typing this stuff up, but I felt like I needed to bring my thoughts around again after the last poly post. I hope people don’t assume I’m going to instantly fall in love with them, and avoid being around me. It’s actually pretty rare that I like someone that much.

I will add that I had another experience recently that reminded me of why I enjoy being polyamorous. I was hugging a friend and we were talking closely about something that had nothing to do with anything cuddly or sweet at all. And we really just fit together, the way we were standing together. I felt this crazy sweet, sexual, charged connection with him for those few moments, and it was awesome. It actually left me a little breathless. I walked away from that moment, thankful that I didn’t have to feel guilty about sharing it with someone who was not my husband. In the past, prior to my choosing to be poly, that moment would have possibly marked the beginning of the end of my monogamous relationship. I would have thought that if I was able to feel that with someone else, it must mean that my current relationship is fizzling. It doesn’t have to mean that now.

I still think polyamory sucks, and that it is tough, and quite possibly not worth it. However, I also think I can’t really be anything but poly. I think a lot of my issues with it lately have more to do with things going on inside my own head, heart, and family, and less with all the crap involved with being poly. I am changing my own approach for a while.

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.