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PolyCat.org
Lots of poly101 (and some poly202) resources and articles.
YAY!
Some favourites:
Quantum Love (101): Moreover, in polyamory, there is no social construction to rely on, no pre-written script to validate my emotions. So I am thoroughly me, with a responsibility to be honest with myself and with everyone else involved about my passions, resentments, needs, desires, my history and my dreams.
Fixing the Refidgerator -- How to deal with the scary stuff in polyamourous relationships.
NRE, Falling In Love, and Conscious Choices.
What Not to Do - Non-Disaster Version.
Posessive Jealousy vs Informative Jealousy -- How to tell the difference, and what they each mean.
How to Communicate 101
Link Posts:
Feelings, Communication and Negotiation.
Related Link:
Poly for Dummies.
Quotation: Own your feelings. No one can make you sad or angry or happy, they are your emotions. They exist in your head and nowhere else. You own them. You. There are always choices. Accept that sometimes you are going to feel good or bad for no reason at all - not because of the people or events in your life. When you make someone else accountable for your feelings, your disempower yourself.
This statement actually kind of drives me nuts.
In particular it drives me nuts because it tends to appear, if not in the same breath, certainly in the same article/101 post/book as statements like:
"You can't make a rule that says 'no falling in Love with other people'. You can only make a rule that says 'no more than two nights a week spent on dates with other people'. You can make rules to govern people's behaviour, but not their emotions".
Because - as every poly101 text says - emotions aren't rational.
You can't just *decide* not to feel, say, jealous and then actually be successful. You can decide to ignore your jealousy or not talk about it, and have it be the elephant in the room, and spend a lot of time crying or angry, but you won't actually *stop* feeling jealous until you actually sit down, figure out what the Real Problem underlying the jealousy is, and then sit down *with your partner* and figure out how to address *that*.
You can choose how you react to the emotions that get stirred up in a given situation, but... you can't choose the emotions themselves.
Statements like "you own your emotions [...] there are always choices" imply a significant degree of consciousness and rationality that emotion doesn't actually have.
I can't tell myself: "You will no-longer feel threatened by XYZ" and have it happen, any more than my girlfriend can ask me to do the same thing.
My girlfriend makes me happy. She makes me angry. She makes me feel safe. She makes me feel threatened.
She doesn't make me feel insecure, but she does trigger my insecurities fairly frequently.
I know that it's her presence in my life that is the cause of this or that feeling of peace or joy or wellbeing. I know that it's this or that action *of hers* that causes me to feel angry or crushed or safe or cherished in this or that situation.
That doesn't mean that I think the key to making myself not feel angry/crushed/anxious/fearful or whatever it is that's eating me in Situation Q is to get rid of Sara, or to make Sara pretend to be something she's not or feel something she doesn't.
The key to making myself stop feeling guilty about having three secondary sweethearts and half a dozen casual/play-partners while my primary partner is only dating me and casually playing with one other person... the key to that is neither to cut all of my sweethearts and five of my play-partners out of my life, nor to pressure my primamry to throw herself into more relationships than she wants.
It's to make sure that I'm giving my primary what she needs from me while also realizing that she's happy and comfortable with the number of partners she has and isn't actively looking for more.
I can choose how I deal with the emotional responses I produce.
Because they're mine.
But I can't choose which emotional responses I get in the first place, because emotions are not subject to that kind of rational decision-making.
Anyway. Blah blah blah, polyamoury.
Quotation that I actually like:
Let down your walls, trust, open up, risk and let yourself be vulnerable. Without vulnerability there is no intimacy. Emphasize friendship over romance. Take your time. Savor what you have instead of dwelling on what you don’t have. Practice truly unconditional love. Share. Learn.
Lots of poly101 (and some poly202) resources and articles.
YAY!
Some favourites:
Quantum Love (101): Moreover, in polyamory, there is no social construction to rely on, no pre-written script to validate my emotions. So I am thoroughly me, with a responsibility to be honest with myself and with everyone else involved about my passions, resentments, needs, desires, my history and my dreams.
Fixing the Refidgerator -- How to deal with the scary stuff in polyamourous relationships.
NRE, Falling In Love, and Conscious Choices.
What Not to Do - Non-Disaster Version.
Posessive Jealousy vs Informative Jealousy -- How to tell the difference, and what they each mean.
How to Communicate 101
Link Posts:
Feelings, Communication and Negotiation.
Related Link:
Poly for Dummies.
Quotation: Own your feelings. No one can make you sad or angry or happy, they are your emotions. They exist in your head and nowhere else. You own them. You. There are always choices. Accept that sometimes you are going to feel good or bad for no reason at all - not because of the people or events in your life. When you make someone else accountable for your feelings, your disempower yourself.
This statement actually kind of drives me nuts.
In particular it drives me nuts because it tends to appear, if not in the same breath, certainly in the same article/101 post/book as statements like:
"You can't make a rule that says 'no falling in Love with other people'. You can only make a rule that says 'no more than two nights a week spent on dates with other people'. You can make rules to govern people's behaviour, but not their emotions".
Because - as every poly101 text says - emotions aren't rational.
You can't just *decide* not to feel, say, jealous and then actually be successful. You can decide to ignore your jealousy or not talk about it, and have it be the elephant in the room, and spend a lot of time crying or angry, but you won't actually *stop* feeling jealous until you actually sit down, figure out what the Real Problem underlying the jealousy is, and then sit down *with your partner* and figure out how to address *that*.
You can choose how you react to the emotions that get stirred up in a given situation, but... you can't choose the emotions themselves.
Statements like "you own your emotions [...] there are always choices" imply a significant degree of consciousness and rationality that emotion doesn't actually have.
I can't tell myself: "You will no-longer feel threatened by XYZ" and have it happen, any more than my girlfriend can ask me to do the same thing.
My girlfriend makes me happy. She makes me angry. She makes me feel safe. She makes me feel threatened.
She doesn't make me feel insecure, but she does trigger my insecurities fairly frequently.
I know that it's her presence in my life that is the cause of this or that feeling of peace or joy or wellbeing. I know that it's this or that action *of hers* that causes me to feel angry or crushed or safe or cherished in this or that situation.
That doesn't mean that I think the key to making myself not feel angry/crushed/anxious/fearful or whatever it is that's eating me in Situation Q is to get rid of Sara, or to make Sara pretend to be something she's not or feel something she doesn't.
The key to making myself stop feeling guilty about having three secondary sweethearts and half a dozen casual/play-partners while my primary partner is only dating me and casually playing with one other person... the key to that is neither to cut all of my sweethearts and five of my play-partners out of my life, nor to pressure my primamry to throw herself into more relationships than she wants.
It's to make sure that I'm giving my primary what she needs from me while also realizing that she's happy and comfortable with the number of partners she has and isn't actively looking for more.
I can choose how I deal with the emotional responses I produce.
Because they're mine.
But I can't choose which emotional responses I get in the first place, because emotions are not subject to that kind of rational decision-making.
Anyway. Blah blah blah, polyamoury.
Quotation that I actually like:
Let down your walls, trust, open up, risk and let yourself be vulnerable. Without vulnerability there is no intimacy. Emphasize friendship over romance. Take your time. Savor what you have instead of dwelling on what you don’t have. Practice truly unconditional love. Share. Learn.
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