Response to my post on polyamory the other day has been plentiful and rich. Here I am extracting some of your comments as they correct, clarify, and add to my post. Those I don’t quote here have been insightful as well, so check everyone’s comments under “Thoughts on Polyamory.”
In a comment, my friend Helen clarifies that in a polycule “there is no requirement for everyone… to form relationships with one another, but many see it as nice (and sometimes beneficial) if they do.” She goes on to identify various “flavors” of polyamory — different ways people in a polycule might relate to one another (or not).
She gently corrects my thinking that everyone in a polycule has to have a relationship with each other. To that point, Amanda doesn’t need to bring everyone into our polycule in a love relationship with one another (see below).
Thanks, Helen.
Friend Nora speaks of her situation having been married for twenty years, yet now both she and her husband are seeking, and finding, outside relationships. She makes an excellent point in saying that she loves her husband dearly AND she needs “new experiences and connections.” Both can be true.
This invokes the wordsmith in me. We tend to use “polyamory” and “monogamy” as opposites, antonyms. Yet “monogamy” is defined in the context of marriage — being married to one person. Its opposite is “polygamy” — being married to multiple people. “Polyamory” is something different, literally meaning “many loves” — in our usage referring to deep, intimate, sometimes sexual relationships with more than one person. Polyamory doesn’t technically refer to marriage. There should be a antonym to “polyamory” — perhaps “monoamory” — but there isn’t.
Word geekness aside, Nora says that she is happily married and monogamous, yet also that she and her husband have other relationships outside, which is polyamory.
For me that’s a useful understanding.
Amanda, speaking to me personally, weighed in on this post as well, indirectly confirming what Helen and Nora each said.
She clarifies that in her vision for us, she sees the two of us as central and primary (and, of course, domme/sub), with other outside relationships, submissive for me and “of interest” to her. Yet these others would not necessarily be relating to each other. Master McKenna is a good example of this, she says, as she would not presume to impose on him a relationship with another in our polycule. (This makes more practical sense than what I had thought, so I’m glad to be corrected by her and Helen.)
Amanda confirms that her polycule vision includes a “sister slave” in concept, as she is interested in the dom-and-sub dynamics of that with me. At the same time, she sees in me an ability to mentor other submissives, and a “sister slave” might be brought in for a kind of tutoring by me. If so, that may not be one submissive who stays permanently in our polycule, but a series of sister slaves that come and go. (She adds that if so, Master McKenna may also have interest in having the pair of us “sister slaves” together under his dominance.)
Further, Amanda clarified for me that someone she might seek for herself would not be a threat to me. In a way, she echoes Nora’s thoughts. In that, Amanda and I are a primary “monogamy,” a kind of marriage, with this other possible relationship of hers being more of a companionship of like-minded domme women. (In fact, there is someone in our current acquaintance who may become this very person. More to come…)
I guess the upshot of this from Amanda is that the polycule she seeks to create is more about people connecting to us than to each other. Which is more feasible than it sounded to me earlier.
(The other takeaway for me is that she is still talking about Master McKenna being a part of this long-term. That makes me happy.)
Perhaps as a fitting conclusion to this review, John observes that polyamory is becoming “more established in our culture” and that “society is going to have to learn to accept it.” I agree, and perhaps social media and the Internet have made the exploration and expression of this more open.
Still, I think that American culture is still very divided on all these issues of lifestyle, orientation, and sexuality, and there are strong forces pushing back open expression, desiring to return to traditional norms and closeted restraints.
I tend to think it will be a long time before alternative relationships and sexualities are widely accepted.
There’s something more to be said.
I grew up being taught there was only one life possible: marriage to one person in traditional, “god-ordained” sexuality. The models I had in my childhood and teens were not only my own parents but the marriages of others in a religious community. In all of it was the underlying belief that there was a vast, broad “normal” in the population, that most people pursued relationships in the “right” way, the “God-created” way. People who didn’t were aberrations, violations of God’s intentions, who’d made sinful choices.
In this, my upbringing was conservatively religious, but I know for many others it was not. And yet I think this perspective colors much of the society we live in. There is one, singular, expected, normative, maybe American, way to live — so it is thought.
I have come to believe that, in fact, most people don’t fit that container. That what is perceived to be the normative way is in fact not the mainstream but the marginal. People who “don’t fit” are actually the vast majority.
Of course, I’m talking about myself. I never fit the “god-ordained” model. I foundered for the longest time, never marrying and not knowing why. In fact, before being able to name it within myself, I sensed that I was different, what later I realized was my bisexuality and my submissive orientation.
And I guess I’m saying that in this world of D/s and the emerging polyamory of my life with Amanda, I’m finding myself. I know there are challenges to the life of polyamory, and I don’t mean to glorify it as some sort of nirvana. I’m just saying that for me, as one who was miscast and outcast in another culture, I finally fit.
One last thing.
I’ve observed in the traditional model within the religious culture that the absoluteness of traditional marriage also becomes a distancing from other relationships. The conservative culture so wishes to protect the sanctity of marriage that it isolates husband and wife from other meaningful connections, and certainly any sort of deeper relationships with people on the outside.
Within the world I grew up, there were unspoken rules about how a husband or wife could/should be present with others of the opposite gender. One famous example of this is the “Billy Graham Rule,” a self-imposed policy that a professional married man should not meet or lunch alone with a woman in the business world. This is considered a noble effort to guard against adultery. (It’s been roundly criticized for discriminating against women in the workplace.)
More to my point: this and other unwritten commandments embedded in the culture wind up stigmatizing relationships in general, making connections with others suspect and fearful. It distances a married couple from others. I well realize this is some, not all, but this was the reality of my parents and other couples like them.
Of course, this is far short of the kind of open polyamory we’ve been talking about. But it says something pertinent — that in pursuit of the “mono-middle,” we distance ourselves from other people. We isolate ourselves from anyone not our husband or wife. We model the notion that one person is all we need. We perpetuate the misbelief that that one person will satisfy us completely.
That can’t be good. Or right.
slave shae 