Many loves creates a village

When my first wife died tragically in 1991, it was my sweet friends who were there for the kids and I. Having relationships outside of the box created the village we needed to survive. One friend, Judy, came and stayed with us for weeks. Some folks were aghast that this "other woman" was staying with me.

A niece also flew out and stayed with us awhile. My niece and Judy were a team. Given that I was making funeral arrangements and dealing with two kids in intensive care I really didn't care what other people thought.

My sister was also a huge huge help, but she was not local. I could not have done what had to be done without each and every one of them.

About Labels

We have a whole long list of labels that we attach to relationships: lover, partner, friend, family, etc. In my experience these labels are just approximations. These are all loving relationships. Each individual relationship is unique, intimate in its own way and changing over time. There's danger in drawing assumptions and creating hierarchies based solely on labels. I have found the greatest loss is not allowing yourself to love and enjoy the awesome people in your life as much as you can. No one type of relationship is better than another. It's okay to be in love with who you love, no matter what label, no matter how that love manifests. Love is love.

Book Review: Many Love, A memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s)

Many Love, A memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s)
Sophie Lucido Johnson
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8978-4

What I love most about this book is Sophie Lucido Johnson's holistic approach to polyamory. What she offers is not just polyamory as a way to structure relationships, or even polyamory as a relationship orientation. Her book (to me) offers polyamory as a way of being, living and loving. Her book's holistic approach expands the concept of "many love" to encompass the loving intimate space we call friendship, and the loving intimate space we call romance and also the loving intimate space in between.

My first wife and I opened our marriage in the late 70s. There was no Internet. There was not any narrative for what we did (that we knew of anyway.) Lacking rules, there were some negative experiences as we experimented and found things that didn't work. But, there being no rules was also a positive. We explored the "loving intimate space in between" as well as having other sexual partners. There was nobody to tell us we were "doing it wrong." There were no poly police. We went outside of the box and found things that worked that would have been unconventional even in the poly community that emerged much later. Over time we rolled our own version, our own way, of what has since come to be known as polyamory.

Decades later, as I learned about this thing called polyamory, I still found little out there regarding that space in between. Now there were rules: there were friends, and there were partners; and those were two totally different buckets. In a podcast years ago (2016 I think, not sure which episode) I recall the folks at the Multiamory Podcast referring to the "separate buckets" with friends being one bucket and "partners" in another bucket. I said, "I need more buckets."

Gracie X (author of Wide Open) spoke about it (and wrote some about) what she called emotional polyamory. She contrasted this to what the mono-normative community sometimes calls "emotional affairs." But, mostly it has seemed to me, many in the polyamory community then heavily privileged sexual relationships. The good news is the community seems to be evolving, incorporating more concepts from relationship anarchy. That's a very good thing!

So, I especially appreciated Johnson's chapter on "Just" Friends. It's nice to now look back and feel that those loving intimate "no label" relationships in between, that I so fondly still treasure, are finally being seen as something as amazing as they were. Sophie Lucido Johnson did that!

Many Love: A Memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s)

I have finished reading Many Love: A Memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s) by Sophie Lucido Johnson. I have yet to review it. I will have more to say. In short, I loved it. It's not just a poly book. It takes a different perspective on polyamory than many books I have read.

It's about love, infinite love. It's a book about how love (and poly) transcends sex and even romance and embraces, and fills the gaps between, other forms of loving emotionally intimate relationships even friendships.

I get that. I really get that!

My advice to new poly people

Be prepared for it to be very different than you expect it to be. Be prepared to learn things about yourself and/or your partner you never imagined you'd learn. Be prepared for the fact that anything you learn cannot be unlearned.

And, know that just as you are opening your relationship, you can close it again. But, it's almost impossible to get back to where you were before you opened in the first place. You will most likely be changed at the core level of your relationship, and as people, by the experience.

LGBTQIA vs. GSRM

I think all Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Minorities (GSRM) suffer when they are pitted against each other with some groups being excluded. The LGBTQIA acronym keeps growing but it still excludes many folks who do not identify as cultural normative. Many people (like Dan Savage) have suggested just using the term queer, but then say poly people are not queer. Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Minorities are the only minorities that have to fight for legal protection and rights one sub-group at a time. That's why I prefer GSRM over LGBTQIA. We are stronger when we stand together and inclusivity, in my opinion, builds strength and power.

As Matthew Bobbu said, "Much as Martin Luther King didn’t fight for black rights, he fought for racial equality; I don’t fight for poly rights, I fight for the freedom to participate in any consensual relationship one might wish to – with the exclusion of none.”

That said, there is no reason one has to choose. Different labels are appropriate for different discussions because they mean different things in different contexts.

For a Dead Kitten

Put the rubber mouse away,
Pick the spools up from the floor,
What was charcoal shod, and gay,
Will not want them, any more.

What was warm, is strangely cold.
Whence dissolved the little breath?
How could this small body hold
So immense a thing as Death?

Sara Henderson Hay (adapted for Harry)

Bobbu on Poly

Dawn Davidson has quoted Matthew Bobbu as defining polyamory this way:

“I define polyamory as ‘the belief in and/or practice of multiple loving relationships, with the full knowledge and consent of those involved.’ I don’t define the sort of relationship anyone has to have, how they have to structure their relationships, what kind of sex they can have, or what sort of love need be involved. For me, to do otherwise will strengthen the cause of a vocal minority at the expense of the quieter majority, who may not even realise that we’re fighting for their freedoms too.
Much as Martin Luther King didn’t fight for black rights, he fought for racial equality; I don’t fight for poly rights, I fight for the freedom to participate in any consensual relationship one might wish to – with the exclusion of none.”

I really like this definition! I know and respect that it may differ from many other people's definition. That's okay. This works for me.
Also, I believe the meaning of the word changes with context. It is common in the English language, for a word to have more than one meaning and it's common for people to disagree on the definition of a word. Take, for example, the word "sex." As Bill Clinton made clear, folks still have not come to a universal consensus definition on what specifically is, and what is not, sex.
I am not going there, at least not now...