I know that I’m poly, to some level.
I call myself “theoretically polyamorous,” as in, I know that I’m capable of being being attracted to or in love with multiple people at once, but I don’t put it into practice in my life, i.e. in a practical sense, I am monogamous.
There are many reasons for this. When I think about how I act when I’m dating someone, it takes enough time and energy to just do that with one person that I can’t imagine putting equal time and attention on even more people. Also, contradictorily, I can be quite jealous and possessive. I need the person I’m with to be very focused on me and for me to be “#1″ in their romantic life. I know polyamorous people have to deal with jealousy, as well, but I don’t even want to explore poly as an option because I’m afraid that the negative results will end up largely outweighing the positive.
Recently, I started becoming attracted to another guy here. I thought about talking to L about opening up our relationship – not even so we could date other people, but just to engage in casual sexual relationships – but I felt uncomfortable with even that. I know L would be up for it because he doesn’t want to “restrict who I am” – but I don’t want him to do it for that reason, I want it to be something he is interested in doing as well. I also know that if he did something with another person I might end up panicking over it, and I don’t think it would be fair for one of us to be doing things with other people but not the other. I’d need to deal with my jealous feelings first, or find a better way of coping, for an open relationship to even be an option.
L knows about all this, and basically told me he didn’t care that I felt attracted to someone else; that it was normal. He was more bothered by my mentally beating myself up over the attraction than the attraction itself.
Anyway, what ended up happening was that for a while I treated the guy with a combination of wanting-to-get-to-know-you friendliness, antagonism, and trying very hard to not take any notice of him at all. Eventually I decided it would be better for me to spare the poor man my nonsense, and cease all contact with him except brief, cordial greetings when I ran into him.
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Besides the thing with this guy, there have been other perplexing things that have happened; my feeling desire due to seeing some people engage in rope play – people I wasn’t even attracted to usually (perhaps that just means I have a real fetish for rope play); and, with a handful of people I know, not wanting to date them, have sex with them, or engage in any other sort of sexual activity with them, but wanting to form a very strong emotional bond with them (perhaps that’s just close friendship and I’m misinterpreting it as something else).
Maybe if I could just find words that describe these things, it would be enough of a solution.
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3 Responses to Examining My (Conflictingly) Poly Self
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One of my lovers has expressed similar thoughts to me: she has no philosophical objection to poly life, having shared women with me before, but she wants to monogamize because being poly is just too emotionally exhausting. My advice, though, would be not to make opening up a reverse quid pro quo–I’ll do it only if you want to do it. Always follow your desires, especially if your lover is encouraging you to do so.
i don’t know; typically i’m all for following one’s desires, but perhaps not if it might stress out my partner or put a strain on our relationship, and i care more about my relationship right now than i do about trying out the poly thing…
I remember when we first opened our relationship. It was my idea, and I really, really wanted my partner to go and find someone to date too.
I finally realized that I wanted him to go out and date so I could feel okay about what I was doing when I went out on a date.
Finally, I realized that I needed to let him do what he wanted to do at his own pace, and take him at his word that it was okay for me to do so. Eventually, he did begin dating, on his own timetable. Before (and after) that point, he told me what he needed from me to be okay with our relationship being open. It had very little to do with what I did with other people — he wanted me to be with him and spend time with him and express affection for him when I was with him. As long as I did those things, he was okay with me dating whether he was or not.
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