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Abstract

not an identity — to me, this is a very important distinction.I have always had qualms with reducing myself or my actions to the status of an object, to play a role that’s demanded of me rather than what comes authentically and naturally from within myself.For a more practical reason, I’ll also say that all of the best instances of poly dynamics that I’ve entered happened organically and were never forced — in my view, polyamory isn’t something you set out to do, it’s something you fall into when certain conditions create the possibility of something beautiful and lasting, something that happens to involve more than two people. Just like having a threesome, there’s something a little unintuitive about trying to have a threesome for the sake of having a threesome, rather than because we genuinely like the participants involved.I asked my girlfriend’s take on this subject and her response was:<blockquote id="8611">It’s not spontaneous. Think about what kind of relationship we establish when we slap a label on it, when we say we want to do this highly specified thing, rather than meeting someone and finding out if there’s a genuine attraction, a genuine connection, and then seeing whether or not that person is capable of entering into a preexisting relationship. You’re meeting on the condition that you’re trying to obtain a goal, not simply to see if you click. I don’t say that I’m polyamorous, I don’t volunteer this information, and if pressed, I tell people that I have a very happy relationship with a husband and a boyfriend, I don’t even say the word.</blockquote>She’s quite right here. The monogamous analog to this would be a person who approached you and hid their intention to marry you from you, and their primary intention was to somehow to get you involved in a marriage with them — could such a person really like us for who we are if attaining a certain lifestyle was their primary motive?I think these types of actions shade our views and they permeate throughout our relationships and everything else we do.Personally, I’m slightly skeptical of people who set out to obtain and love multiple partners as if it’s some sort of imperative need, and such behaviors could be likened to men who go out to sleep with women at all costs, without regard or consideration for how they obtain this goal, the participants involved, nor the consequences of their actions. Such men need to consume to fuel their masculinity, just as many people in the community need to fuel their desire to be polyamorous — though not all, obviously. There are many out there who do this, many people who so badly want to be polyamorous that they’ll stop at nothing to become so. Many couples are in search of an additional partner to complement their existing toxic and broken relationships. Commenters have mentioned my lack of discussion on this issue, and this is likely the reason why it never comes up in my work — because I avoid polyamory culture at all costs.I’m skeptical because of the amount of predator-like behaviors which can be found in such circles. So-called “unicorn chasers” are couples who wish to invite women into their bedrooms and lives, but usually on unequal terms and almost invariably as nothing more than a complementary component to a pre-existing relationship. It could be argued, as I have, that this isn’t polyamory, this is wanting your cake and ea

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ting it too. The polyamory community frowns upon this practice quite heavily, but guess where most of the “unicorn chasers” out there are likely to turn when they want to begin their search for their so-called “unicorns”…you guessed it, the polyamory communities.Note: I’m also rather uncomfortable with this practice of labeling people and only want to describe the labels that others use frequently — I don’t use them myself.Love should be philosophized and philosophies should be practiced, but philosophies should never be adhered to without regard for individual differences and uncoerced personal volition — when what we do is forced or demanded the only moral action carried out is that of obedience to social norms.Strict adherence to any group negates the authenticity of our moral actions by rendering them nothing more than devout obligations. While it may seem trivial to some, this can have profound impacts on our everyday lives.The question was simple <a href="https://readmedium.com/that-time-i-fell-in-love-with-a-married-woman-d430190c5637">when I was invited into the relationship dynamic that I share with two others </a>— are these people going to be a good match for me?“Is this relationship going to make me happy?” I’m thankful to say, the answer has been an emphatic yes on both counts, and I believe that it’s because we didn’t really set out to do polyamory in the first place. We fell into it. Like most other relationships, we started off as just friends-of-friends, then took things up a notch every step of the way until we finally recognized that we had something going that was truly special and worth making a commitment based upon. We never tried to force a polyamorous situation in the name of supporting some polyamory culture with individuals who didn’t jive with our respective values…at a certain point, it just made sense and polyamory was the next step, never the goal. This isn’t to say that everyone who finds themselves participating in polyamory culture is like this, there are probably many wonderful individuals out there who’ve found their niche in these groups of people — but they’re not representative of everyone.I think we’re a lot healthier and happier when we’re dynamic, fluid, and flexible individuals, and this applies in more places than our love lives. Music is a great example, I’ve never fit into a music scene in any city I’ve lived because music is a dynamic expression with a near-infinity of variations of that expression, and can’t be reduced to a single genre or group style. I’m a person capable of experiencing and expressing many things, one of which might be a love for the work of C.F.E. Bach and the other might be in a relationship that contains more than two people. I don’t need a label in either instance.My love isn’t a lifestyle — no others outside of our love, joy, and happiness need to apply or comment, and when love is predicated upon ideology, it isn’t love, because love is an individual effort and ideological efforts demand that we sacrifice the very autonomy with which we make authentic choices in love.© 2019; Joe Duncan. All Rights Reserved<figure id="5781"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*GH8Lp7fRi4TAoYN1iPhXyA.png"><figcaption>Moments of Passion</figcaption></figure></article></body>

Why I’m Not a Part of Polyamory Culture

Loving Without Labels — My Love Isn’t a “Lifestyle”

In the day and age of social media, it seems that almost everything we do has become somehow politicized, taking on the character of a movement. While I speak of movements like the polyamory movement and other movements, I generally mean to describe the overall social trends and thematic narratives that people are taking up in their daily lives, rather than a concerted effort to further an agenda, and it should be noted that my work on polyamory is in no way representative of a lifestyle or community — I speak from my own experiences of what works and what does not work.

Deindividuation is very real and a very terrifying aspect of the modern existence, when people transform and metamorphose themselves into a group, and then predicate their identities upon that group’s ideas, losing their sense of themselves in the process. Not everyone does this, but everyone has the innate tendency to do this — every single one of us…but we can’t do it outside of adherence to a group in the first place.

Some have noted that my work on polyamory is absent much of the lingo, much of the opinions and experiences of the overall culture that is polyamory culture, and to this, I’ll say they’re absolutely correct — and there’s a reason.

If there was one piece of advice I could give the aspiring polyamorist within others, it would be to avoid the so-called polyamory culture at all costs. If you’re a part of these groups of people, meeting in clandestine places, practicing idolized or idealized love in various ways, and you’re happy with it, by all means, do your thing and I’m happy that you’re happy. To those considering polyamory, in my view, the goal should never be to become polyamorous, the goal should be to find what makes us happy in love and life.

In my experience, ideological groups of any sort, in general, tend to demand the great sacrifice of our respective individual identities in order to appease all members of the group, and my love and lifestyle are simply non-negotiable and not up for debate. My love is not a “lifestyle.” I refuse to allow others to rent enough of my headspace to tell me how to love on their terms, which are the subscription fees to most cultural groups that are based on a strict adherence to certain beliefs and cultural norms. Shaming can be rampant in these circles, and so can predation.

While I understand some might be curious about the controversial nature of my stance on this issue, I ask that you ask yourself, as you think and read on, if you’d be okay with the fetishization or labeling of your relationship. My love can’t be reduced to a consumer brand, and I use the term “polyamorous” as a descriptive term, not an identity — to me, this is a very important distinction.

I have always had qualms with reducing myself or my actions to the status of an object, to play a role that’s demanded of me rather than what comes authentically and naturally from within myself.

For a more practical reason, I’ll also say that all of the best instances of poly dynamics that I’ve entered happened organically and were never forced — in my view, polyamory isn’t something you set out to do, it’s something you fall into when certain conditions create the possibility of something beautiful and lasting, something that happens to involve more than two people. Just like having a threesome, there’s something a little unintuitive about trying to have a threesome for the sake of having a threesome, rather than because we genuinely like the participants involved.

I asked my girlfriend’s take on this subject and her response was:

It’s not spontaneous. Think about what kind of relationship we establish when we slap a label on it, when we say we want to do this highly specified thing, rather than meeting someone and finding out if there’s a genuine attraction, a genuine connection, and then seeing whether or not that person is capable of entering into a preexisting relationship. You’re meeting on the condition that you’re trying to obtain a goal, not simply to see if you click. I don’t say that I’m polyamorous, I don’t volunteer this information, and if pressed, I tell people that I have a very happy relationship with a husband and a boyfriend, I don’t even say the word.

She’s quite right here. The monogamous analog to this would be a person who approached you and hid their intention to marry you from you, and their primary intention was to somehow to get you involved in a marriage with them — could such a person really like us for who we are if attaining a certain lifestyle was their primary motive?

I think these types of actions shade our views and they permeate throughout our relationships and everything else we do.

Personally, I’m slightly skeptical of people who set out to obtain and love multiple partners as if it’s some sort of imperative need, and such behaviors could be likened to men who go out to sleep with women at all costs, without regard or consideration for how they obtain this goal, the participants involved, nor the consequences of their actions. Such men need to consume to fuel their masculinity, just as many people in the community need to fuel their desire to be polyamorous — though not all, obviously. There are many out there who do this, many people who so badly want to be polyamorous that they’ll stop at nothing to become so. Many couples are in search of an additional partner to complement their existing toxic and broken relationships. Commenters have mentioned my lack of discussion on this issue, and this is likely the reason why it never comes up in my work — because I avoid polyamory culture at all costs.

I’m skeptical because of the amount of predator-like behaviors which can be found in such circles. So-called “unicorn chasers” are couples who wish to invite women into their bedrooms and lives, but usually on unequal terms and almost invariably as nothing more than a complementary component to a pre-existing relationship. It could be argued, as I have, that this isn’t polyamory, this is wanting your cake and eating it too. The polyamory community frowns upon this practice quite heavily, but guess where most of the “unicorn chasers” out there are likely to turn when they want to begin their search for their so-called “unicorns”…you guessed it, the polyamory communities.

Note: I’m also rather uncomfortable with this practice of labeling people and only want to describe the labels that others use frequently — I don’t use them myself.

Love should be philosophized and philosophies should be practiced, but philosophies should never be adhered to without regard for individual differences and uncoerced personal volition — when what we do is forced or demanded the only moral action carried out is that of obedience to social norms.

Strict adherence to any group negates the authenticity of our moral actions by rendering them nothing more than devout obligations. While it may seem trivial to some, this can have profound impacts on our everyday lives.

The question was simple when I was invited into the relationship dynamic that I share with two others — are these people going to be a good match for me?

“Is this relationship going to make me happy?” I’m thankful to say, the answer has been an emphatic yes on both counts, and I believe that it’s because we didn’t really set out to do polyamory in the first place. We fell into it. Like most other relationships, we started off as just friends-of-friends, then took things up a notch every step of the way until we finally recognized that we had something going that was truly special and worth making a commitment based upon. We never tried to force a polyamorous situation in the name of supporting some polyamory culture with individuals who didn’t jive with our respective values…at a certain point, it just made sense and polyamory was the next step, never the goal. This isn’t to say that everyone who finds themselves participating in polyamory culture is like this, there are probably many wonderful individuals out there who’ve found their niche in these groups of people — but they’re not representative of everyone.

I think we’re a lot healthier and happier when we’re dynamic, fluid, and flexible individuals, and this applies in more places than our love lives. Music is a great example, I’ve never fit into a music scene in any city I’ve lived because music is a dynamic expression with a near-infinity of variations of that expression, and can’t be reduced to a single genre or group style. I’m a person capable of experiencing and expressing many things, one of which might be a love for the work of C.F.E. Bach and the other might be in a relationship that contains more than two people. I don’t need a label in either instance.

My love isn’t a lifestyle — no others outside of our love, joy, and happiness need to apply or comment, and when love is predicated upon ideology, it isn’t love, because love is an individual effort and ideological efforts demand that we sacrifice the very autonomy with which we make authentic choices in love.