Questions poly people get asked

[ciphergoth]

Questions Trish asked in preparation for a workshop about polyamory.

• Don't you get jealous?

  Actually, no. I'm not 100% convinced that there's such a thing as jealousy; a whole lot of other emotions (insecurity, time envy etc) get called that.

• How do you find the time?

  This one needs a longer answer, but the jist is this: not all relationships are very time consuming. Promising your partner that you won't sleep with anyone else would be a weird way to solve time constraints if that was the only reason it was done. Healthy relationships usually involve scheduling time for partners to pursue their own activities, whether that's other relationships or Jiu Jitsu or whatever.

  Having said all that, I'll concede that the way I live, scheduling time is a bastard.

• Don't you want to settle down?

  Absolutely not. As far as I'm concerned, that's another word for spiritual death.

  However, I do want stable, reliable things in my life, which is why I have a steady job, mortgage, lasting relationships and so on.

• I'd be up for that, let me know what sort of girls (or boys) you fancy and I'll sort something out for us!

  You are not even in the queue, baby.

• It's not what God wants.

  *shrug* I'm an atheist; go tell someone who cares.

• What about children?

  I don't want children, but I'd give lizw and ergotia as examples here.

• I'd hate it if my boyfriend/girlfriend was unfaithful to me.

  I'd hate it if one of my partners broke an important agreement in our relationship too.

• You're being greedy.

  If wanting the best life for myself I can have is greed, then I'm guilty. But as lizw says, greed is the opposite of sharing, and you can hardly say I'm not doing that.

• I'm annoyed (with you - implied) now because my life seems really boring compared to yours.

  You know how I sometimes give devastatingly rude advice? If I was going to do that, I'd say...

  It's not too late to change it. Resolve to have a more interesting life right now. You don't have to become poly, but you do have to chuck out your vague notion of "settling down" in favour of specific goals of what forms of stability you need in your life, and what sort of interest you think it should contain.

  Note that of course I'm not giving that advice to all monogamous people, but to people who complain their lives are boring.

• So, you sleep around then?

  Yes, and it's a lot of fun, but I also have several long-term partners.

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I'm not 100% convinced that there's such a thing as jealousy; a whole lot of other emotions (insecurity, time envy etc) get called that.

I think jealousy is an emotion that follows as one of a number of possible responses to the others you mention. wcg showed me a dictionary definition where one of the meanings was along the lines of "being zealously protective of something valuable", and pointed out that in that sense, it can actually be a perfectly appropriate response to certain situations.

[winterthing.livejournal.com]

Don't you get jealous?
Actually, no. I'm not 100% convinced that there's such a thing as jealousy; a whole lot of other emotions (insecurity, time envy etc) get called that.

I would define jealousy as a form of being protective - I tend to view jealousy as the emotion you feel when you are trying to protect what you perceive as yours.

I do get jealous of things which I see as 'mine'. I do get protective. I don't see that, though, as necessarily being anything to do with sex. Sexual jealousy is one form of jealousy, and is based off a form of social conditioning which equates sex with a certain type of commitment.

The other night I was talking to a friend of mine and I mentioned a drunken incident involving my young man, a female friend, a bathroom and various sexual incidents.

I was asked why I seemed OK with it - why I didn't get jealous.

I actually hadn't thought about it before. I'm not polyamorous, really. I always think of myself as pretty jealous as well. But I hadn't minded at all.

The explanation I gave was that I am a very jealous person. I'm jealous of anything that threatens the things and people that are important to me. I get jealous sometimes of my dad's girlfriends - they mean that I can't just drop down and see him because he is likely to be out and about somewhere else in the country. I get jealous of my boyfriend's work when it means that he doesn't have time to see me. I would be jealous of him seeing anyone else if it meant that he cared less for me than he had done before, or if we lost what is good and decent in our relationship.

I don't see why I am going to get jealous over something which he enjoys, which makes him happy, and doesn't threaten my role in his life. I like the deal we have where we are always there for eachother, where we do talk and we are close. Sexual exclusivity does not cause that. Not being sexually exclusive can't touch that unless he and I choose to let it.

Jealousy is about being scared. It is about being scared of loosing something. I think the reason that polyamoury works so well for the people who can do this is that it takes that fear away from a lot of relationships.

It takes the fear of betrayal away - you are not having someone break a promise to you, or lie to you (which I do get utterly psychotic about - I hate being lied to). It takes away the fear of loosing someone through sex - from what I can tell people get jealous when their partners sleep with other people coz in a society in which we are told that you have to choose one person sex with another person immediately carries with it an unspoken assumption that the person who is sleeping with two people will choose one of them. Your partner sleeps with someone else - and most people see that as a step towards loosing them. Polyamoury, in theory I think, stops that because you can choose to be with two people.

I do believe in jealousy. I think it does exist. It just doesn't have to be inevitable. And I think too many people don't think through what jealousy actually means.

OK - that was a ramble - sorry for filling up your LJ with that. It was just something I've been trying to put into words for a while.

Did it make any sense at all?

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

by the way, I don't know if you read Alixandrea's journal, but there's an interesting discussion about poly going on there too.

[ruis.livejournal.com]

What do you see as the difference between being settled down and having stable things in your life. I consider myself to have settled down years ago and as far as I'm aware have shown no sign of spiritual death.