Poly people

Those of you who either aren’t single or don’t live near or in an urban area may not be familar (I am just guessing here so correct me nicely if I’m wrong) with the “poly” lifestyle that has become more prevalent or at least more out in the open. Basically, it means having sexual/romantic attachments with two or more people at the same time – or being open to it – where everybody involved is supposed to know (differentiating it from cheating or affairs).

Before you think I’m going to tell you some juicy secret about me, let me assure you I am not! It’s on my mind though, and is from time to time because I’m curious about relationships and how people live, as well as how social mores change. When I was a child I never heard of any such thing and would not have understood if I had. I mean even sex without marriage was a foreign idea to child-me and shocking even. (I was both sheltered and naive.)

Many years back I was seeing a man who, starting early in our dating, “talked” about the polyamorous life. This was rather odd because the man himself seemed ill-suited to it and even pushed me for emotional and other commitments to him that I wasn’t prepared to give. I wasn’t seeing anyone else but did not relinquish the right by promising total loyalty to him. (You must trust that I had my reasons not to and was wisely not rushing anywhere I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go). I never really understood why he ever brought the subject up at all; he seemed theoretically interested in the subject but not at all interested in practicing it (at least at that time when he knew and was seeing me).

While I’m at this topic let me introduce a great word coined by sex writer Dan Savage, “monogamish” which is when two people are mostly monogamous with one another. That is, they have a primary relationship but it is acceptable for each to have other sexual relationships as well. The pair might have certain rules they’re expected to honor; “none of my friends”,  or “only when you’re on business trips”, or “I don’t want to know the details” for examples.

And yet again while I’m on this subject, let me introduce – if you don’t know it (I didn’t till a few years ago) – the word for being happy your partner is having sexual/romantic fun with other people, “compersion.” I gotta tell you, even though it doesn’t involve me and isn’t really my business to have an opinion, I don’t like this word or its concept. There’s something about it that strikes me as a bit smug and affected; as if a person is so evolved that they are above petty feelings like jealousy and competitiveness, and can afford to be sexually and emotionally magnanimous. I dunno – it just seems like a bit much. This probably isn’t helped by my introduction to the word by a man who told me he had felt “joyful compersion” when his girlfriend was sleeping with other guys – that is until she and her other guy fell in love and ran off. I don’t think I had the sympathetic response probably sought. I was thinking, “What did you expect??”

Anyway, I did no research to write this post. I don’t feel like it and if you want to learn more, Google awaits! This leads me to a thought that only occurred to me yesterday. I wondered what kind of people would be most inclined toward polyamorous relationships. See, I was specifically thinking they probably didn’t grow up in a big family where you could call little your own and were forced to share all the time or worse, get nothing. Where you rarely got to be the Center of Attention and had to compete for most everything, even kinda crummy stuff.  I concluded this must be why I’m a poor candidate for a polyamorous life!