“Cross-Currents” (South Bay Polys #251 - Nov. 2016)

Feeling pulled in different poly-directions just now.

I think of all the people who want to settle down in a little nest of two people only.  I appreciate that feeling, but I can’t quite shut myself off that way.  Why am I so different?

Yet the feeling is supreme in so many people—though often not without conflict!  I watched a film last night about Stephen Hawking (“The Theory of Everything”) and the relationship between him and his wife was very touching.  At the same time, they were both drawn to other people.  The movie is about their own relationship—but in a postscript to the film, we learn that they eventually parted.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading a novel by Charles Bukowski (Women) describing the alter-ego character and his impulsive couplings with multiple women. I am asking myself what he is getting out of these sexual exploits.  I had previously read Andrew Holleran’s Violet-Quill novel Dancer From the Dance, chronicling the lives of gay men in New York and Fire Island in the late 1970s.  There is much mindless coupling there, mixed with longings for love and lasting relationships.  I could call all these things “promiscuous”—but should I?

Now, after having sung a Queen song this morning at Sunday Assembly (a secular congregation), I am reading about Freddy Mercury and his death from AIDS in 1991 at age forty-five.  Mercury was an extrovert on stage—but rather and quiet and withdrawn in real life.

So I’m thinking about all these things.  And asking (again) what it means to be “sex positive.”  And thinking how, for me personally, casual sex with strangers is unappealing—even if I could succeed in enjoying it.

“Dare I Mention…?” (South Bay Poly #250 - Oct. 2016)

Some of you have been avoiding any contact with our national electoral process this year, and I can understand that:  I myself was pretty worn out with the election campaign by February or April.  Still, as a polyamorous person, I find this particular election campaign much more interesting (albeit also more depressing) than usual.  Trump and Clinton have given us much more to think about than your more “normal” candidates.

I just watched the second presidential debate.  Trump tries to back away from his “Grab-the-Whatever” remarks of 2006.  He brings up Bill Clinton’s affairs and related legal issues.

Someone online says she always assumed that Bill and Hillary were swingers.  I never did.  I just suspected they had an open marriage.  I have listened to decades of people mentioning his “infidelities.”  Another person online insists it is not our business what goes on in the Clinton bedroom—a debatable point.

In any case, there is more awareness now that not all people are monogamous—and some awareness that there can be such a thing as “responsible non-monogamy.”  The awareness is not great, and many people would denounce the entire idea; but we are making progress.

Meanwhile, back at You-Know-Who.  I mentioned my own ambiguity about the Trump tape.  I fear the return of genuine censorship.  But for some people, it isn’t the words he used, it’s the way he talked about women.  Unpermitted touching is never allowed.

“Interdependent As Desired” (South Bay Poly #249 - Sept. 2016)

People talk about being “open and honest.”  The point is not to conceal anything that someone you’re involved with would want to know. 

However, not everyone wants to know everything about your other involvements. Sometimes they just don’t care, or just aren’t interested.

This is not the same as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  The point isn’t how much you want to tell or not; the question is how much they want to know.

Nevertheless, there is an issue, I think, of privacy.  Just because you are involved with someone, that doesn’t mean you have to share everything with them.  A person still has a right to some privacy.

Some people will disagree.  “Open and honest,” they will say, means you conceal nothing.

I’m not sure.  What I do know is that balancing these considerations may not be easy.

But relationships never are; and this is even truer for polyrelationships.