![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Weirdly[1], this (from Iclysdale's journal) is what I'm working towards:
have the stupid fights that families have, have endless stupid discussions where we figure out what we really meant and sort it out
... and the other stuff, too. ;-)
I had an interesting (and rather relieving) discussion with Sara last night that included our explaining to each other how polyamoury (specifically "being in multiple romantic relationships") gets defined inside each our own heads.
In *my* head, polyamoury looks a bit like this:
I start out dating Person A. Person A fills up my Romantic Calendar and my relationship with Person A means that I'm getting a particular mental (probably unconscious) list of needs and wants met. YAY!
I meet Person B. We hit it off and start dating. Now Persons A and B are filling up my Romantic Calendar (so they're sort of going halvsies when it comes to things like time). My relationship with Person A is still meeting that mental list of needs and wants. And now Person B is also meeting *another* mental list of needs and wants.
YAY!
Two different people, two different lists. Though there is probably some (maybe even lots) of overlap between the two lists.
Continue to add People (sweethearts, lovers, FwBs, etc) until I realize that I'm going to run out of personal time in-which to date anyone else and still maintain some sort of a non-dating personal life + down-time of my own.
My darling Sweetheart's mental map of polyamoury looks a bit different. In her case, she starts out dating Person A, and her relationship with Person A satisfies the needs and wants of a particular part of herself. (Maybe the artsy-spiritual side, or the energetic-club-kid side, or they hyper-sexual submissive-masochist side, or whatever). Which means that there are still a bunch of parts of herself that are not getting their needs and wants met.
So eventually she finds Person B, Person C, Persons D & E, and so on until her romantic calendar is nicely filled and, more to the point, she's got enough sweethearts, lovers and so on that the needs and wants of all the different parts of herself are being met.
This helps to explain (to some degree) why hearing her tell me that "Part of me is crazy about you, and part of me likes you as a friend but is totally uninterested in you romantically," freaks me out to the degree that it does.
In *my* mental map of romance and relationships, 100% of me is interested in being with a given partner. Regardless of how many partners I have. (Granted, I've yet to have more than one Sweetheart, so this is all theory for me at this point).
So hearing about this 50/50 thing scared the hell out of me because, to my ears, it sounds like she's having a HUGE conflict of emotional interest and my situation as her sweetheart is very precarious.
Whereas, when she's *saying* it, she means (I think) something along the lines of:
"My relationship with you satisfies the wants and needs of This Part of Me. And This Part of Me is totally crazy about you because you're exactly what it wants and needs. All the other parts of me want and need something else that you can't be without NOT being what This Part of Me already wants and needs. So be yourself, let This Part of Me be totally crazy about you, and let me go and find Other People to take care of the other parts of me".
And when I think of it that way, it's a lot less scary.
Anyway. All this to say that: Wow. I'm really clueless about this and have a lot to work on. Okay then, let's do that. Wah. :-)
But at least I know. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
[1] Actually, it's not that weird. And I know it's not that weird. I'm just still very much learning that "good, healthy, relationship" does NOT equal "we never fight, are interested in more or less exactly the same things All the Time, and the honeymoon never ends".
Intellectually I know that this is crap fed to me by the same culture that tells me that my purpose-as-a-woman is to pump out babies and/or to be a fuck-doll for The Man, and that fits of jealous rage mean my partner Really Loves Me. Emotionally, however, I'm having some difficulty letting this one go. :-P
have the stupid fights that families have, have endless stupid discussions where we figure out what we really meant and sort it out
... and the other stuff, too. ;-)
I had an interesting (and rather relieving) discussion with Sara last night that included our explaining to each other how polyamoury (specifically "being in multiple romantic relationships") gets defined inside each our own heads.
In *my* head, polyamoury looks a bit like this:
I start out dating Person A. Person A fills up my Romantic Calendar and my relationship with Person A means that I'm getting a particular mental (probably unconscious) list of needs and wants met. YAY!
I meet Person B. We hit it off and start dating. Now Persons A and B are filling up my Romantic Calendar (so they're sort of going halvsies when it comes to things like time). My relationship with Person A is still meeting that mental list of needs and wants. And now Person B is also meeting *another* mental list of needs and wants.
YAY!
Two different people, two different lists. Though there is probably some (maybe even lots) of overlap between the two lists.
Continue to add People (sweethearts, lovers, FwBs, etc) until I realize that I'm going to run out of personal time in-which to date anyone else and still maintain some sort of a non-dating personal life + down-time of my own.
My darling Sweetheart's mental map of polyamoury looks a bit different. In her case, she starts out dating Person A, and her relationship with Person A satisfies the needs and wants of a particular part of herself. (Maybe the artsy-spiritual side, or the energetic-club-kid side, or they hyper-sexual submissive-masochist side, or whatever). Which means that there are still a bunch of parts of herself that are not getting their needs and wants met.
So eventually she finds Person B, Person C, Persons D & E, and so on until her romantic calendar is nicely filled and, more to the point, she's got enough sweethearts, lovers and so on that the needs and wants of all the different parts of herself are being met.
This helps to explain (to some degree) why hearing her tell me that "Part of me is crazy about you, and part of me likes you as a friend but is totally uninterested in you romantically," freaks me out to the degree that it does.
In *my* mental map of romance and relationships, 100% of me is interested in being with a given partner. Regardless of how many partners I have. (Granted, I've yet to have more than one Sweetheart, so this is all theory for me at this point).
So hearing about this 50/50 thing scared the hell out of me because, to my ears, it sounds like she's having a HUGE conflict of emotional interest and my situation as her sweetheart is very precarious.
Whereas, when she's *saying* it, she means (I think) something along the lines of:
"My relationship with you satisfies the wants and needs of This Part of Me. And This Part of Me is totally crazy about you because you're exactly what it wants and needs. All the other parts of me want and need something else that you can't be without NOT being what This Part of Me already wants and needs. So be yourself, let This Part of Me be totally crazy about you, and let me go and find Other People to take care of the other parts of me".
And when I think of it that way, it's a lot less scary.
Anyway. All this to say that: Wow. I'm really clueless about this and have a lot to work on. Okay then, let's do that. Wah. :-)
But at least I know. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
[1] Actually, it's not that weird. And I know it's not that weird. I'm just still very much learning that "good, healthy, relationship" does NOT equal "we never fight, are interested in more or less exactly the same things All the Time, and the honeymoon never ends".
Intellectually I know that this is crap fed to me by the same culture that tells me that my purpose-as-a-woman is to pump out babies and/or to be a fuck-doll for The Man, and that fits of jealous rage mean my partner Really Loves Me. Emotionally, however, I'm having some difficulty letting this one go. :-P
Tags: