Be heard on the issues that matter most to you!
I see some comments suggesting polyamory as an "ideal" that should be taught instead of monogamy. One of the dangers of "millenarian" thinking is the notion that some new "ism" will be "the answer" for all our problems. Whether Communism, Free Love, Scientology or now polyamory, the same promises of a universal answer to our problems deludes us into thinking we can tell the world how they should live.
People, let's be grown up about this and stop thinking for our fellow men and women. Monogamy works fine for millions of people around the world. It's like saying "I have a peanut allergy so let's ban peanuts." If monogamy doesn't work for you (and it doesn't for me), fine, but don't try to raise up polyamory (with its many problems and issues) as a false answer.
Tom Paine
author of "Polyamorously Perverse"
http://perverselypoly.blogspot.com/
This is probably a good place to say "wow, I certainly should not have used the words 'the ideal' but should have used the words 'an ideal' instead."
I agree that there is not one ideal system that will work for everyone. A different way to express what I originally intended might be this way:
First, by "ideal" I mean a cultural belief that something is good and valuable and right.
Second, I would propose that openness, honesty, flexibility, sharing, community, compassion, and growth would be good "ideals" to espouse in a culture.
Third, those values can support monogamous sexual relationships or polyamorous sexual relationships. I would love to see our culture develop in a way that supports a range of alternatives to the monogamous nuclear family household. Such a culture, and such a society, might support extended family households, communal households (which might contain monogamous pairs or people living in a range of nonmonogamous relationships), individuals in their own households who link together in looser or tighter networks...
Now, could we do this while still giving legal privilege to the monogamous nuclear family household? I suppose so. But I hope we wouldn't.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
RC McCloud also writes at The Safe Word
it is so important to talk about equality when talking about rearranging society :)
RC, the questions you raise are all ones that I think would absolutely need attention in any reorganizing of family or rewriting of laws pertaining to households and chlidren and property, or in any changing of the culture around intimate, sexual relationships.
It's interesting that the concept of polyamory has developed as an alternative to to the concept of polygamy, not as a new word for polygamy. Part of this must be because of the assumpions about equality that seem to inhere in the discourse around polyamory. But holding those assumptions and actually creating institutional relationships that create equality are hardly the same thing! I don't think polyamory itself solves or exacerbates the problem. I do think that polyamory's assumptions tend to be more in line with creating equality in household and family relationships, than the nuclear monogamous household, though.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Two points here: polygamy is often sexist in nature, and certain groups have forced young women into polygamous relationships.
Polyamory has social pressures of its own right, including the pressure to "get over" (i.e., suppress) issues of jealousy.
I think Elizabeth's point is valid (offering alternatives), though I think few people will take advantage of them, since the myth of romantic love is a powerful and long-lasting illusion, much like other social myths.
It's really remarkable how powerful that myth of romantic love as the basis for marriage has become, especially given how many people have the experience of "falling in love" and then falling back "out of" love again. I think that "romantic love" has power because it stands in opposition to more practical and less individualistic bases for marriage (e.g., marriage as an economic arrangement largely influenced if not determined by parents or other members of the community).
It's stunning, really, to think about basing what is, at least in the contract, expected to be a life-long commitment on an emotional state, given that emotional states are fluid. That said, there is no reason why polyamory couldn't also make use of some parts of the romantic myth while ditching others.
The romantic myth as currently held contains at least two parts: one is the "falling in love" part and the other is the "you're the only person for me" part. Poly culture could, I suppose, keep the first without the second, as many individuals already seem to do in practice if not in their belief systems.
I think my own hopes for a poly culture (not one that mandates polyamory but one that supports polyamory as a valid option and that incorporates poly households into its institutions) would be on that also challenged the romantic ideal and created new cultural understandings of love and intimacy, ones that blended individualism and community, and ones that blended emotions and pragmatism. I think such understandings of love would ultimately serve people as they try to negotiate and sustain committed relationships in a way that our current romantic myth cannot.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Elizabeth, poly addresses this concept of "falling in love" with the descriptor NRE or "new relationship energy," that feeling of euphoria when we meet someone we're attracted to.
The problem in dealing with this topic is how poorly we understand the term "love," ascribing it to a variety of emotions. If one is intensely sexually attracted to another person, we assume it's love, rather than seeing it for what it really is. The term "love" is also hugely debased by our society, where we often use it to describe feelings that are transitory.
Finally, the young today are blurring the lines even more, telling their friends "I love you," instead of reserving that phrase for meaningful relationships that will last over time. As Snow Patrol sings in that song on "Grey's Anatomy" (a love fest for TV), "those three words/are said too much/and not enough."
Tom Paine
author of "Polyamorously Perverse"
http://perverselypoly.blogspot.com/
i agree with tom_paines comments about the term "love" and the phrase "i love you". as with any phrase the more its used the less meaning it carries. i(we) use it very sparingly in my(our) relationship, when we do use it carries greater meaning. if only people could say "i love myself" or "i love my life" with as much certainty and conviction as they seem to profess their love of another person...
on the subject of polyamory, i have long felt and argued that there is not "only one" perfect person in the world for each of us...and that our goal is to find "that" person. i strongly believe that there are emotional needs and emotional readiness that make a person "right". someone i met in my 20's may not be the person i would want to have a relationship with in my 40's. people twist themselves into all sorts of psychologically damaging knots trying to hold onto the myth that "til death do us part" is some kind of ideal goal...how about "to have and to hold as long as we are both content and able to give each other emotional intimacy"?
