How do you define metamour?

Recently I have been having a great twitter exchange with the amazing Gracie X and the wonderful folks at Multiamory about metamour relations and then, what constitutes a metamour. This follows the recent Multiamory podcast on metamour relations.

I said I think that the definition needs to be fuzzy.

Here's why I said that:

If we refer to it as (only) "your partner’s partners being your metamours" that means we apply a test to the principles here.

Here is a real situation...

I have a friend who has a husband and two very close male friends, one of whom is me. Even though we have never gone beyond a kiss on the cheek I love this woman very much, I never forget her special days, we have our own things to do, etc.

If defining metamour relations means defining metamours, which means defining partners, which means defining polyamory...

That's way too many tests. The three of us men love this woman very much. Who among us is having sex with her is immaterial in the context of this. I am the only one of the three of us men who has had any experience with being and having real metamours. All these two other guys have to fall back on is testosterone, and they can be real jerks.

So, meta, means referring to itself. Amours means lovers. If the shoe fits. We are all lovers of this woman (as in people who love.) I wish we got along better. I don't care what label needs to be applied here to make that happen?

First Kiss

You, Me

Your Face, My Face

Your Eyes, My Eyes

Your Lips, My Lips

Our Lips, Our Lips

Our Lips, Our Lips

Our Lips

Something Happend

My very mellow and mild poly world is a world of ORE (old relationship energy) with souls I know really well. We have histories together that go back decades. I like that and it works. Metaphorically it's warm fires and cocoa with women I love. This is a type of poly that gets almost no press.

NRE, or anything like it, is not something I have felt in a very long time. Holy crap! I am remembering it much better now - after this last week.

Compersion and Jealousy

When I heard GracieX talk about compersion last Saturday I thought about my first wife Cindy and my own experiences with compersion decades ago. I thought about the first time I saw Cindy have sex with another man.

Besides finding it erotic I felt honored to be able to experience her enjoying sex from an angle I never could have, had it been she and I performing the act. I felt joy for Cindy and her sex partner and felt joy for myself for having that moment. To me that was a big deal. When I say honor I mean, our sexuality is a real human experience - like seeing a baby be born or seeing a person die. Human experiences can be joyous or tragic, but they are human experiences. To me, human experiences are something to be honored.

Jealousy for me has always been something else, totally something else. Jealousy for me has been this mysterious stew of emotions that usually defy logic and for me have root in my wounded child. It's not one thing or the other. It's not a spectrum for me with jealousy at one end and compersion at the other.

Truth and perceptions of truth

From what I have seen people often unconsciously build convenient (for them) memories of events often only loosely based on facts that casts themselves as victims and others as perpetrators. There is nothing you can do to change their truth. All you can do is live your truth and realize their story is not about you, the real you.

We were right after all

When my first wife Cindy and I opened our marriage in the 1970's the lack of an Internet was a curse for us because we didn't have instant access to a poly community to tell us how to do poly right and how to not do poly drama. Lenny and Mary were the only people we knew who had an open marriage. We shaped our non-monogamy together with only ourselves as resources. We had no insight of other voices to avoid the mistakes we made. Funny, but the lack of the Internet and other voices was also a blessing, because we had to use our own imagination. It did not occur to us to create rules or to establish hierarchies or to not give other lovers agency.

All we knew was that we loved each other but monogamy wasn't working for us and that non-monogamy was not something we wanted to end our marriage or break up our family over. Could we have done it better, heck yes! But, we broke what would now be considered poly rules and we found our own way. And, shouldn't finding your own way really be the goal?

Lacking even the word polyamory, and knowing what we were doing wasn't really purely swinging either, we made up our own word for what we were doing. It was a word that reflected more than a little self shaming. That word was weirdness. I wish we had appreciated the love and creativity in what we were doing more.

Now, sometimes, in my older age I think that society is catching up with us. I wish Cindy and Mary were still alive to see this. It would be interesting to be able to talk to them about what we were all doing that seemed so wrong and right at the same time; was really right after all.

Why poly matters

I think polyamory is most important because it provides a framework for people who are not monogamous by nature, to live an ethical life. Before polyamory the only way non-monogamous people, I am talking especially about people who are emotionally non-monogamous by nature, could live ethically was to deny their/our feelings. There was no way they/we could ethically be themselves/ourselves.

We would have to lie to ourselves, and to others, even when we were ethically physically monogamous. It's possible when you have romantic feelings for multiple people to not act on those feelings. But, that does not make those feelings not real and does not change who you are by nature. Not acting on feelings does not mean the feelings don't exist and does not mean you are not non-monogamous by nature.

Being married to Cindy did not keep me from falling in love with Mary, for example. Even had Mary and I never acted on that, we still would have felt it; I know I would have.