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Originally Posted by filtherton
I just feel like polyamory, since it is agreeably more difficult to achieve, is a higher standard of relationship. The stakes are higher and so is the payoff.
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It's also harder to sleep on a bed of nails than a normal mattress. It is also harder to subtract 1,508 from 4,389 using your fingers and toes. Making something harder or raising the stakes does not necessarily mean anything is going to be better, it simply means that it is more difficult.
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I also believe that if i am going to be with someone who loves me, they should love me for who i am, regardless of who i fuck. The monogamous part of a monogamous commitment is above all about denying one's urges. Even in the most ideal monogamous relationship, there will always be attraction to other people.
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If that is all you get out of a monogamous relationship, then I think you're fundamentally living a different sort of life than me. I don't experience a sense of loss or self-denial by committing to someone emotionally, and only desiring to have sex with her. Having attraction to other people is one thing. I find some people to be physically attractive, have attractive personalities, but that does not mean I desire to "fuck" them. There is a distance there, an intimacy gap... when I have that deep sense of intimacy like I have now, I have no desire to be with someone else. I view the potential of such a situation to be an alienating experience. I've been in alienated relationships, I've had alienated sexual experiences... I don't see any reason that someone would seek those while in a great monogamous relationship (that has great sex).
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One can claim that true love wears blinders, but in the end, we are all animals, with animal urges. I don't think the denial of sexual urges is a necessity in proving your love to someone.
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So having lots of sex with one partner isn't enough?
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I think all urges should be acted upon if they can be acted upon in a healthy, respectful, and noncoerced manner. This is why i currently favor the polyamory, it allows the individual participant more freedom.
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All urges acted upon? That is the definition of non-discretion. To give value to anything, you have to have discretion. Freedom is the ability to choose for yourself what you want and to act, refusing to decide what you want and to stick with it shows to me a lack conviction and value-setting. The desire for extreme freedom usually is a sign that one feels oppressed in some way. And again, I feel no oppression in my monogamous relationship. The real meaning comes from making that choice. Freedom with no discretion or inaction doesn't have much value.
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It is part of my personal philosophy that attachment to anything is to be avoided when possible, and recognized and accounted for when avoidance isn't possible. I don't mean "avoidance" in the avoiding responsibility sense, more in the avoiding influenza sense.
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Then what do you have that's yours? What do you have to hold onto in your life? I'm attached to my music, my poetry, my work, and my love. If you don't make that stand and put yourself out there to make the risk to get hurt or fail, then you won't lose anything or win anything. You will simply be dis-affected in a somewhat dis-passionate life.
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An atheist isn't cynical about religion. You can't be cynical about something that doesn't exist.
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Actually, I'm an atheist, and I'm cynical about religion. Religions exist, god doesn't.
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I think the idea that there is a "right" person for anybody, in the cosmic, soul mate sense is a convenient hallucination people have when they want to believe that there is justice in the universe. I believe that everybody has something to offer me in terms of emotional and spiritual growth.
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I don't think she was arguing that there was a "right" person.
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In light of the belief that all good things monogamous can be achieved through polygamy i feel that monogamy would be limit my opportunities for growth and experience.
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What kind of growth? Other than sexually, explain this to me.
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I have found a meaningful relationship, with someone who is very special to me, we just choose to give each other the option of having relations with other people. This doesn't devalue our relationship for me, because i derive the value of our relationship from who we are and how we interact, with who we are fucking being completely irrelevant.
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Well, that may work for you, but I'm finding the previous arguments unconvincing. I get the sense with your freedom argument, that you really like having some distance. That <i>too much</i> intimacy bothers you, maybe frightens you or suffocates you. Maybe I'm wrong; if I am, I just can't quite fathom how this works.
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I've met many women who i wanted to spend my life with. Now i'm at a point where that isn't a goal. Finding someone to spend my life with isn't even a sub-footnote on the list of things i want to do with my life. I've had the monogamous experience, and i know how quickly soul mates can become distant acquaintances, regardless of how much of the future was already planned.
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So, did your new philosophy come as a result of being hurt or disillusioned with past failures? It reminds me of the quote, "All philosophy is a justification of one's self" - Albert Camus
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If you found someone who you want to be with for a long time, and actually stay with them for a long time, kudos to you. I'm certain that i can have a life that is just as fullfilling, if not more fulfilling, going an alternate route, and if i can, kudos to me. This isn't to say that i will never spend a long time with the same main partner, just that it isn't a goal.
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Well, at least here you're showing some passion. That kind of determination and challenge I think is important for a meaningful life. I appreciate the will to take something and make it work, and the "I don't care if you don't think I can, I will anyway" attitude.
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I don't believe in giving someone else power over my feelings. I believe each and every emotion i experience is my responsibility. You control how you react emotionally, and how you react to your emotions. Certainly your emotional state is effected by the world around you, but in the end, no one has power over your emotions except for you. (not you antifishstick, but the generic you)
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Yes, but is there any point to deciding not to be affected by others? Is it really living not to allow yourself to feel the highs and lows of existence? It reminds me of the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy. We're living in Apollonian times - we're very abstract, very image oriented, very much stuck into the logos mode of engaging reality. The Dionysian has its place too. We are feeling creatures, feeling love and suffering is a huge part of humanity.
To say that "fucking" others is such a disconnected experience that you don't feel that another has any emotional power over you while it is happening, then what do you get out of it? A sense of power yourself, maybe? Power does not only come from autonomy; it also comes from creativity, the ability to affect your environment, knowledge, and feeling comfortable with yourself.
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See, i think that to make a relationship special, all you have to do is realize that all relationships are fundamentally special. The the relationship that i have with my lady is fundamentally unrepeatable. Our relationship is fundamentally special, and to be shared only by us, because it is a relationship between two individuals. It is special, because it exists.
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Are you sure you aren't a mathematician?
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I could not have the relationship that i have with her with anyone else because anyone else wouldn't be her, and the relationship would be necessarily different because the ingredients would be different. The same goes for any relationship between any number of people. Sex is something we do together, but it isn't the defining characteristic of the "specialness" of our relationship. I choose to have this relationship with her because it is wonderful. It makes me smile. I am with her because she is who she is, who she fucks is irrelevant because i didn't decide that she is a wonderful person based on whether she was fucking me and me alone.
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I just wonder how you'll feel about this if the relationship continues on for an extended amount of time.
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If you think you would be objectifying a third person, then you would be. Objectification is a choice and not a fundamental ingredient in polyamory. Objectification happens all of the time in monogamous relationships. You said yourself that you feel "empowered by being comfortable about myself, my body, and my looks and I get all that from being with my partner". It seems to me that this is also a form of objectification, although instead of getting sex, you are getting empowerment.
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Empowerment is the opposite of negation (or alienation).
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There is nothing fundamentally wrong with objectification as long as it is done with the understanding that all are willing participants.
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That's true in the sense that everything is allowed. This is a fundamentally post-modern argument, and it goes along the same lines that I should be able to abuse heroin because I'm not hurting anyone else. I'm just a willing participant. Does that mean that it is good?
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As far as intimacy goes, monogamy is not a necessity for intimacy. Intimacy requires honesty, trust and respect. I understand that you find value in mongamy, but you must also understand that that value is assigned by you to monogamy and is completely arbitrary.
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In that line of reasoning, assigning value to polyamory is also completely arbitrary.