Adventures in Polyamory

I keep hearing from readers that they’re surprised that I’m so open in this blog. And the feedback is almost unanimously positive that I am…but I keep hearing the same questions over and over about it. 

Questions such as, “Aren’t you afraid of being so open?” and “Do you hold anything back?”

Yes, I hold plenty back…gotta keep some of the mystery, right?

And yes, there’s some risk in being so open. But if you’ve read my user manual, or if you’ve read some of my posts about my past, you know that I can’t stand dishonesty.

One of the mechanisms that I developed to cope with my past is extreme openness and directness. I am this way in all aspects of my life.

But even beyond that, I’ve discovered that because of how society views the poly community, there’s an element of shame attached to being polyamorous…and I am using this blog to help fight that.

In reading and researching poly, I found few blogs that were as open about poly as I wanted them to be. I want the bad as well as the good. I know I’m not perfect, but if most of the blogs and forums I find are all “Poly is nothing but sunshine and rainbows!” then I’m going to think I’m failing every time there’s even a minor issue in my relationships.

We are all human, we all make mistakes, and I want my blog to be a window into the reality that is my poly existence. Not scrubbed and sanitized for the masses, but the truth.

The best way to educate non-polys about our lifestyle is to be as open and honest about it all as we can be.

Now, to be perfectly fair, there aren’t many of us in the poly community that can afford to be as open as I can. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Our society is unfortunately defined by the monogamous paradigm, and anyone that lives outside of that norm is by definition not normal…and there can be severe repercussions to living outside of society’s norms.

I’ve made the choice to embrace my status as outside the norm, and to define a new normal, and to tell everyone who doesn’t respect that to go take a flying leap.

Not everyone has the freedom to be able to do that, and I respect that. But for those of us who can, we should.

It’s only by showing our society that their neighbors, brothers, sisters, children and co-workers that are living alternative lifestyles are just as normal as they are that we’ll gain acceptance.

And as we gain acceptance, more of us can come out with less and less fear of consequences. We have seen it happen over the years with the gay community…I say, we’re next.

UPDATE: If you’ve been reading my updates about the breakup of my marriage, you’ll see that I’m suffering the consequences of this open policy. My own husband, who willingly and actively participated in polyamory with me, who was poly and married when I met him in 2005, has decided to use monogamy with a new partner as a tactic to gain custody of our son. He is fully participating in slut-shaming tactics, implying that my private sex life somehow affects my fitness as a parent, and flat-out said in court documents that his home is the better one for our son simply because he is now monogamous.

I am not going to change who I am or what I believe as a tactic. My private sex life has nothing to do with my parenting, and never has. The fact that the courts are taking it into account in determining custody of our son is a sign of just how poorly polys are viewed by mainstream society…and we need to work to change that.

The only factors that should affect the custody arrangements of my son are how I parent. Who I date, what I do on those dates, and how many people I am dating at any given time have zero relevance on whether I’m a good mom. I did not involve my son in my private sex life before the split up of my marriage, and that hasn’t changed. 

What I’m going through in this divorce isn’t really all that dissimilar from a nasty monogamous marriage breakup…it’s just different mud that’s being thrown.

What sets this apart is that this mud is being considered much more than it should be, simply because society is squicked out by it.

I will continue to be open, and to share the good, bad and ugly I encounter in this lifestyle. As I said above, it’s only by showing our society that their neighbors, brothers, sisters, children and co-workers that are living alternative lifestyles are just as normal as they are that we’ll gain acceptance.