filtherton

How about yours is the most right and fulfilling way for you. Beyond that, you have to admit that you have no ability to know what is right and fulfilling for other people.


It's happened, and i felt jealous for maybe a minute. Then, after i reminded myself that she didn't belong to me and that this was part of an open relationship i felt just fine. I dealt with it and moved on. Sharing has nothing to do with it, because i don't own her. She shares herself with whomever she wants to, i don't share her with others. Exclusion is fine, if you want a relationship to make you feel important. I'm comfortable with my relative importance in relation to my world, i don't need a relationship just because i want to feel special. I also don't measure the value of my relationships by the amount of potential they have to hurt me, i measure them by how much potential they have to make my life more fulfilling. Sometimes these two conditions overlap, often they don't.

I trust her because she has never given me a reason not to. By what other measure is trust given?


I'm not going to line-by-line this because i've been doing it too much already in this thread.

I'm not really trying to claim monogamy is useless, i just named the thread poorly. I'm just saying that for me, it is useless. Disneyland was a reference to the idealized image that everyone has in their head about what it means to be in a romantic relationship with someone you love, i think for most people this idea is formed before the critical thinking skills necessary to evaluate it are formed. People then get attached to this idea without necessarily considering the fact that it isn't the only way. Disney-esque relationships are fictional, the problem is that there is a tendency to point to them as the ideal goal without realizing that they aren't really possible. I guess the difference, and this is me speaking only for what i have experienced personally, is that in polyamorous relationships, there isn't generally this fantasy based expectation of what it means to be a participant in the relationship. No boundaries are completely predetermined.

I do concede that there are most likely just as many codependent polyamorous relationships as there are codependent monogamous relationships. It was silly of me to say or imply that polyamory had an advantage in this respect.

I started the thread out with a combative tone because i thought that would be the tone of the responses. I brought an argument knife to a discussion gun fight. That's what i'm used to in the politics board. Upon seeing a different tone in the discussion i tried amend my intial point. I am not seeking a justification for monogamy any more than i need any of you to justify for me the way i choose to live my life. What i really want is an explanation for monogamy. I said some things, than people responded and now i am responding again. Let me reiterate one last time: I know that monogamy works for a lot of people, right now it is something i am avoiding.

What everybody seems to be having a problem with is the idea that a polyamourous relationship can be just as fulfilling for all of the same reasons that a monogamous relationship is fullfilling. Let me see if i can put it into words.

Love, respect and committment, trust, growth, etc. are not rooted in monogamy. That is to say, monogamy is not a necessary ingredient in the cultivation of relationships that thrive on love, respect and committment, trust, growth, etc.. You do not need to be monogamously committed to someone to get these things out of a relationship with that person. You need only look at a good friendship to see that this is true. So why is it so difficult to imagine an open relationship where these things occur?

Look, it boils down this: People are what make relationships what they are, not some symbolic commitment or lack thereof. I think that the type of relationship is far less important than the people involved. The only important difference between monogamy and polyamory is that in one you can fuck more than one person.

What i'd like to hear is what the signifigance is monogamous relationships in agreeing not to have sex with another person. Though i've heard a lot about how that is what makes a relationship worthwhile, what i haven't heard is how.