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Thread: The OT thread V1

  1. #2891
    The "compartmentalizing" thing is what makes me question if you can truly claim to love someone (other than in a selfish way for the 'role' they play or desire they meet) for who they are if you are basically putting them in a box with a label. You aren't loving someone for who they are then, just what they do for you. Those studies found that most poly people consider their primary (if hierarchical) to give more relationship satisfaction, and their secondaries to be more sexual/romantic satisfaction. Easy to see why. You get the old jeans at home that you don't have to impress and have as a safety net due to the assumed stability and quality, while still getting the thrills of new conquests without as much concern for quality. But when those roles start to overlap, and the new romantic partner starts to become more compassionate in nature as a relationship matures, it starts to conflict with the primary (the compartment walls break down) and loses what made it desirable in the first place. Secondary relationships end up as sort of serial non-commitment dating scheme. OR, the reality is that despite how much we try or tell ourselves that we can control our desires and attractions... we can't, and while a 'fling' might be easier to dismiss as real potential, an ongoing secondary relationship can just as easily end up becoming more desirable than the primary. I know some people IRL that ended up like this, and I think to a large extent, the idea of poly was used to allow one person to pretty much date and find something better (or see if there is something better), and avoid going through the losses of one relationship until something else is in place so you really don't care anyways. Pretty shit thing for the other person, but hey, "you agreed we should do this too!" means little culpability for the free-spirit that shows no desire for self-control.

    The other Poly mythology you hit on is the whole 'monogamy is just tradition' thing. Many progressive movements like to use this as a scapegoat too, blaming differences between men and women on things like the patriarchy and dated social views. I don't agree. Men and women are different and its not sexist to say that... despite what Google thinks. The brains work differently, motivations are different, attractions are different, goals, etc. Take away all the technology of society opening heavy doors for women so men don't have to, and things get very "traditional" pretty quick. Technology has made many "man jobs" easier for anyone so now women can be equal in most respects, but take away the car, the gun and airplane, the birth control, the forklift... things get lopsided. Anyways, what I'm getting at is that this idea that its just society or tradition and we are just sheep if we follow isn't even close to the truth. Society is also a reflection of how our minds work.

    Neurobiology and brainscan technologies are showing the truth about many beliefs. They can now watch "love" on the brain. Interestingly enough, unless your brain is abnormal, it turns out sex and romantic love light up the pathways almost identically and nothing seems to come even close or activate as much of the brain. This makes sense considering the chemical bomb that goes off during sex... highly addictive if just about the dopamine and the strongest behavioral modifying activity known. The whole "you see someone different after sex" thing is true... we are wired for it. The young guy and gal who have sex and the guy starts to get protective and the gal gets clingy... just natural instincts that we learn to suppress or manage with experience because society tells us we should. Many grasp to the idealism surrounding 'love' because it is a strong emotion and it seems insulting in today's culture to tell someone else things about their emotions that they don't agree with. We want to think love is all powerful, infinite, etc... and quantifying it seems offensive. fMRI imaging has been used to do just that. Instinctively, I think we all know love can be compared and quantified, and we see the effects commonly... like that friend who seems distracted because that new person they met.. sometimes even distracting them from work. It seems "falling in love" means that up to 85% of your thoughts tend to be about that new person. And wait, quantifying love with time is easy... do you love someone when you are unconscious? Nope. Unless you have a brain capable of multiple parallel conscious thoughts, pretty hard to love one person and another at the same time.

    We may not have a unit of measure, but we also instinctively can compare people. Some poly people claim they love everyone equally and all that self-talk crap. I call bull. Our brains fundamentally compare everything and its the base mechanism for how we learn. Some poly people claim equality so as to make their situation seem more ethical and equitable, and others admit to a hierarchy as a believed means to control or prevent another relationship from threatening a primary. Its an illusion though. Open the door, tempt fate... sometimes we have feelings like 'koi no yokan' or 'love at first sight'... starting a relationship with someone while claiming to be in control of how your feelings will develop or how far once you've kicked the door wide open seems delusional. All the "looking is fine just don't touch" and "everybody watches porn" mentalities shrink the boundaries of where we might cross the line, and we embrace them. We are training our minds to entertain anything and everything, all fantasies are okay... just don't act on them. Yeah, right. We can't control our subconscious, but merely train it and through practice try to steer it... but the more we practice a lack of self-control in thought, its no shocker that we see less self-control in our behavior. You can only watch so much Japanese midget bondage shibari porn before you start to think "man, I think that would be fun to try sometime."

    But we do compare... and by comparison we instinctively know when we feel someone loves us more or less, or when someone loves us more than someone else.

    For many, the idea of love is obsessive. Research has been backing up that it is sort of an "all consuming" and very addictive process. To me, the whole idea that someone is going to claim they can love me just as much when they are in the moment with another is a fallacy, not to mention... why are you thinking about someone else when you are intimate with someone? If it was true, that would cross so many lines its not funny, lol.

    To many, love involves some degree of knowing that at any given time you are thinking about your partner and they are thinking about you... but we can't because of life, so more accurately its knowing that you are someone else's highest priority... at ANY GIVEN TIME. Sure, maybe they are at work, but if you have an emergency nothing else will come first. Hard to claim things like that in polyamory, especially if its egalitarian. Bottom line seems to me that due to limited time and resources, when we are faced with challenges that limit our availability or mobility, you end up having to choose one over another, or trying to keep both ends up starving both. And the egalitarian poly community has a point... how can you claim to love someone who is considered a 'secondary'? Putting a limit on your priority for someone with permanent intent is degrading.

    So for you the secondaries were just used as tools for comparison to your primary? Seems apathetic to me. Your focus seems to be on the roles people play in your life and what you benefit from them. Seems like a male version of hypergamy to me, commitment or intimacy aversion, or indecision maybe? But if you love someone in an altruistic way, the comparing becomes pointless. You don't wonder. You just know. It's more about what you want to share and give than what you get in return. Figure out how strong you feel that motive is and the rest doesn't really matter. Sorry, but it seems like you are assessing your relationships on paper.

    So when someone loses their job, gets fired, or has trouble at work... do they decide that working is the problem and therefore stop working? No, they reinvent things! But when relationships have their rough patches and start to fail... do we invest in them to reinvent them like a business owner trying to save a business? No. We tend to think of relationships as something that should be effortless. We give our effort and our best selves at work, and come home with a less motivated attitude. Add in our modern hypersexual media (oh, sorry... 'freedom'), porn culture, tinder... seems more attractive to fix our periods of unfulfilled desires with the seemingly limitless and minimal effort fling. Its easy to blame monogamy or marriage, but maybe we as people are the failures because we don't cultivate the skills we need to adapt.

    I don't know... I picked my woman because to me, no matter what I'm doing, the person I'd rather and always be doing it with is her. There's nothing she can't give me or doesn't have... so why look for something else from someone else? I'd rather be in a nasty fight with her than on a date with a stranger. I guess I don't feel that she's lacking anything or that I need to look. Not to mention, most of the things you mentioned other than sex... you can do all that with other family and friends anyways. So it seems that despite claims made by many poly people that "its not about the sex"... well, take that away and... its just a friendship, you know? Seems the thrills and variety are the real attraction... aka "mental freedom". Of course its freedom... its less responsibility, focus, effort, self-control, etc. Everything has a cost though.

    As for the history arguments... its a general claim that seems to "make sense" but... slavery also existed throughout history but that hardly works as a 'pro' argument. Pick something specific if you like though. You are right, "sexual revolutions" and the like aren't something new. The thing is, if they have been around so long and that fact is used to perpetuate their acceptance... how come they failed? If the ideas worked and have such a history, what conspiracy theory is there for why more people didn't adopt it? Historians on the subject have noticed that such periods in a society are usually followed up with that society declining (and vanishing) or going through a backlash in the face of the problems that result.

    The poly myth that a relationship can be opened up and nothing changes, or the whole "loving someone else doesn't mean I love you any less" and "I love you both the same" is just a pile of crap unless you aren't all that attentive/invested in the first place. Yes, if you open up a relationship it is 'less than' and you are loving your partner 'less than' before. Trying to sell it as otherwise is self-serving and dubious. Comparisons about how you can love multiple children the same or how you have love for multiple family members or friends is just sophomoric. Are you saying you love your kids in the same way as your wife? Ewwww... Oh, wait, I guess its not the same then, is it? So then I guess "not all love is the same", and then that whole train of thought starts to fall apart quickly when you start to contrast how you can claim two people are the same to you if you feel one person lacks something that you look for elsewhere.

  2. #2892
    i think you are painting with a broad brush, in almost every way.

    1. all poly relationships are not structured the same, or utilized in the same way
    2. all poly relationships are not justified for the participants for the same reasons. even two partners in one may have different reasons why they are in such a structure
    3. all people are not the same in regards to what they think, feel and how they work in there own world, ie, brain scans may show some trends, but they are just trends. they aren't actually hard and fast rules about anything. we are all different, what one person thinks and feels about relationships and sex is different than another person. that is simply fact. there isn't one way for everyone to be happy in a relationship.

    i will also agree with you as to the motive of some poly reasoning to be to lay an anchor baby so to speak, and then seek out someone better on the side. i've seen that before, i've actually done that exact thing. that is exactly what has changed in my mind through the years, is that finding a better thing is no longer what i am interested in doing. im interested in building now, not finding. that why i don't just jump into this easily.

    i mock traditionalism not because i think its a bad idea. in fact i told this woman exactly that, i'd be happy dating her monogamously, because i would, without a seconds hesitation. i mock it because the farther i go in life, the more i realize that everyone's wants and needs something different. relationships are negotiations, and to think that we all should operate under the same negotiation terms of our relationships is simply stupid. trends, brain scans, etc ... we are actually all different, our relationships and what we want from them, are different.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  3. #2893
    the last woman i dated was kinda obsessed with what is 'normal' in a relationship. it was confusing, she would always ask her friends and advisers if something that was happening was normal or not. sparing the psycho-analysis of why she was this way (oh i have ideas), it betrays the obvious problem you are assuming .... that there is a normal.

    there is simply what works for human beings to have there needs met, and things that don't. and in a relationship one has to understand there partners needs, and not whether they are normal or not, thats actually irrelevant. the only that matters is if you are willing to meet those needs or not.

    this is why the box of traditionalism is a farce. i may need my partner to sing whale songs while i jerk off in order to be sexually satisfied ... and its pretty not-normal if that's what i need. but, normal or not is really simply irrelevant ... whether my partner will fill this need is all that actually matters. show a guy who needs that brain scans all day saying its not normal, and it won't make it any less true for him, that that is what he needs.
    Last edited by cockerpunk; 01-25-2018 at 04:59 PM.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  4. #2894
    Yes, I say normal, and by that I guess I should really be saying 'ethical' for all conscious people. I do not subscribe to the bear minimum "mutual consent is all you need to be ethical" idea.

    I know... multiple structures for poly... I mention that with the egalitarian vs. hierarchical viewpoints. Triads, Open vs. Closed, unicorn hunters, etc. Every 'model' of poly seems to be in response to the perceived downside of another, but seems to inherit some other problem anyways. Not saying its all the same. That's the problem for so many polys it seems... must be why they are trying to push it now. Poly pretty much means 5% of the population, and then within that there are so many types and models because everyone has designed some custom style that suits them, so now just meeting someone who is compatible just based on the 'model' means you are looking at what, 1/1000 the available people out there who keep it simple with monogamy. Either that, or you are trying to shoe horn someone into your relationship style... see this a lot with poly, more than with monogamy with all its 'traditional' downsides. Seems to place the relationship, the role, or position ahead of the person though, doesn't it? IDK, I think starting with the person, as you seem to indicate also in your rants about traditional expectations, is the way to go... and then shape the relationship around that. The thing is, for multiple reasons, this is the problem I see with poly. In so many ways because of the compartmentalization, limitations, one relationship influencing the others (another poly claim about relationships don't affect each other is just such nonsense)... kind of hard to love someone for who they are as a person when the relationship starts with pre-existing conditions about the role they will play in your life due to what else you have going on.

    Still don't get why you mock traditionalism... those things that you have come to embrace were never hindered by traditional views or monogamy. The assumption is that the traditional is synonymous with 'roles'... marrying someone because of their qualifications on paper, thinking of her more as 'my wife' than for who she is, and people doing this to themselves (worked in China for years where role based relationships are evident). But what I find ironic is that even though the model may look non-traditional on the outside... its embracing and legitimizing the role based mentality towards relationships where the person is defined more by the relationship rather than the other way. It looks different and new on the outside, but all the compartmentalizing, boundaries, limits, labels... its so similar. Isn't that the underlying problem with traditionalism? The what defines the who? But we don't really have that anymore anyways... not conforming to traditional roles is just a personal choice and relies on a person developing assertiveness skills and doesn't depend on poly or mono.

    But what it seems you are conflating is what you consider 'needs' and 'desires', and how to achieve these, and how important they should even be to begin with compared to each other. First of all, nobody should have 'needs'. That makes you NEEDY. If you are looking for a relationship to meet some 'need' of yours, you should be single. You don't need sex, you don't need half that other crap, and not from anyone else anyways, or from your romantic partner exclusively anyways.

    But what I also see in this case is that you don't like your role to be defined by society, or traditional views. Ok, but pretty much everything you describe about why you favored poly for it's non conformity isn't inherent to poly, and the irony is that by making your desires into needs you are in effect the one defining roles for other people you are with. I'm not going to say someone's not meeting my needs because they won't do anal. Once again, what's more important in your relationships... the person or the role they play? You don't want to conform until you're the one making someone else conform to your needs it seems.
    Last edited by JimBobFett; 01-25-2018 at 06:32 PM.

  5. #2895
    i mock traditionalism because monogamy is a "role," just the same as any other.

    and you'd be wrong about morality, it really just is based on consent. otherwise, what would i be based on?

    like most defenders of traditionalism, you seem to see poly as an argument, as something to be debated, as if we all would just agree on some new relationship structure and then boom, its done. people arn't like that. relationships are not like that. poly isn't a response, and different poly structures are not responses to your criticisms, they are in response to people's diversity of needs and wants. no one is trying to convince you to be poly. i certainly am not, and if someone is, you really should question there logic.

    I am merely stating that your attacks on poly are, by and large, unfounded. if people want to live some different way to me, or you, or whatever, i don't care. no really i don't, and you shouldn't either. if it makes them happy and it doesn't hurt anyone, i don't care. there are pros and cons to any relationship structure, certainly there are many to traditionalism too. so what?

    any argument you make based on some static, fixed, model is simply not going to work for everyone. you'd be a fool to even consider it. one size does not fit all.

    I just wonder if i can compromise my own needs with her needs. thats why i brought it up. i don't know, i will have to talk with her more. I am also interested in why she feels strongly about being poly, i have my suspicions but until we talk more i won't go into that.
    Last edited by cockerpunk; 01-25-2018 at 06:41 PM.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  6. #2896
    Relationships are a series of compromises, whether it is you, your partner or both of you. Traditions are notcompromises in that theybare "rules" of what should be expected of you, versus what you want. So that partner should fulfill enough of what you want in them to satisfy you. With that, you should be nearer to the same page on life changing things, i.e. kids (as the biggest thing). You can change hair colour, jobs, where you live but children are the one thing that you will always have.

    Now, her non-monogomy thing is just a way of her not playing the field but to not be tied down to one thing. She may be fooling herself from previous relationships in that she got hurt. Hell, she may not be at the stage where she knows what she wants. She could say that today she is hetero and tomorrow lesbian. Not to say that you have to give anyone a hardline on certain dates that she must commit to, but after a certain period, you should tell her that you want more, i.e. marriage, full time commitment, children etc.. not that you should be wasting time, but if you are at that period where you want to be there, then you should not be fooling yourself and your partner with little games. Welcome to adulthood. Some jump in, some dip a toe and some skirt the edge of the pool till they slip and fall in whether they like it or not.

    With that, do not fool yourself in trying to change how a person is. If they are not ready for anything, the adage goes, "you can lead a horse to water,..." really applies. Not that you should be a hardass with any sort of demands, but you should aware of what you want versus what she wants.

  7. #2897
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    Quote Originally Posted by cockerpunk View Post
    i mock traditionalism because monogamy is a "role," just the same as any other.

    and you'd be wrong about morality, it really just is based on consent. otherwise, what would i be based on?

    like most defenders of traditionalism, you seem to see poly as an argument, as something to be debated, as if we all would just agree on some new relationship structure and then boom, its done. people arn't like that. relationships are not like that. poly isn't a response, and different poly structures are not responses to your criticisms, they are in response to people's diversity of needs and wants. no one is trying to convince you to be poly. i certainly am not, and if someone is, you really should question there logic.

    I am merely stating that your attacks on poly are, by and large, unfounded. if people want to live some different way to me, or you, or whatever, i don't care. no really i don't, and you shouldn't either. if it makes them happy and it doesn't hurt anyone, i don't care. there are pros and cons to any relationship structure, certainly there are many to traditionalism too. so what?

    any argument you make based on some static, fixed, model is simply not going to work for everyone. you'd be a fool to even consider it. one size does not fit all.

    I just wonder if i can compromise my own needs with her needs. thats why i brought it up. i don't know, i will have to talk with her more. I am also interested in why she feels strongly about being poly, i have my suspicions but until we talk more i won't go into that.
    Fascinating topic. Thanks Gordon.

    I'd read Bob's posts again. I didn't see him defending traditionalism or attacking poly at all. Just pointing out that the "rules" that define both are almost identical. And that you were being a bit hypocritical by saying you don't like conforming with societies traditionalist views, yet expect a person you are in a relationship with to conform to your views. That is how I read them anyway. Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick.

    Personally I see a poly life as being WAY too complicated. It it fucking hard work keeping one monogamous relationship running smoothly where you both share almost identical views on pretty much everything, from what to have for dinner to sexual preferences and desires, let alone multiple co-existing relationships were everyone in the group has slightly differing (I hate the term) needs, goals, ideals etc Just seems a sure-fire way of one or more people ending up being very unhappy and hurt.

    Using the reason that people now live longer as an excuse for the propensity of relationships to fail in modern life is something I can't agree with either. I think any couple that has a deeply rooted relationship based on love and mutual respect and acceptance will tell you that the thing they fear most in the world is being left (through death) by their partner and that a lifetime seems too short to them. I think increases in divorce rates in Western society are more base. A more mobile and liberated female population is one. Their rapid empowerment has outstripped mens ability to accept it and the new dynamic certainly puts more stress on a relationship. In many ways.

    And people don't "change". People may suppress desires early in a relationship in order to conform to type or prioritize their more immediate needs/desires (getting laid), it just becomes harder and less desirable to keep them subdued with time. But if you are in a strong relationship with your partner nothing should be off the cards to discuss. Guaranteed, both parties will have made concessions earlier in the relationship to make things work. An "open" relationship to me is one where you can share anything with your life partner.

    I think Bob's posts are fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to share them.
    Last edited by Jack Wood; 01-26-2018 at 09:43 AM.
    Dear boy, I work at Planet Eclipse, don't you know..

  8. #2898
    i agree, the annoying thing to me about poly now, the prospect of it ... its that it will take a ton more work. again this is 180 degree reversal from my 20s where i would consider it a perk. now im like ... eh .... dating more than one person is tiresome.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  9. #2899
    the physics of climate change has been well established for over 100 years:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awbF9K7BmhM
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  10. #2900
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    https://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/2018p073650

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