sorcyress | (no subject)

(no subject)

Oy vey. Can I be done with every variation of "we need to talk" with everybody I've ever known, regardless of our platonicness and yeah.

yeah.

So let's make this into a meme! Silly or serious, drop me a comment telling me why WE need to talk.

~Sor
MOOP!

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We need to talk about what exactly you are committing in a polyamorous relationship? I'm not trying to be difficult, I just generally understand the commitment in a relationship to be, you know, committing to be with one person, which obviously doesn't happen with polyamory. So... how are you defining "committed" here?

Yeah, actually, I'm curious about this, too.

I am not ignoring you, I promise, I just have had no brain this month for writing (thanks NaNoWriMo. Kindly fuck off) so I will give you an answer, or as much of an answer as I can think of, in December sometime.

The short answer is that I guess poly uses a different definition of the word commitment. When I commit myself to someone (declare them a boyfriend, as opposed to someone who it is just fun to kiss) I commit myself to a number of things --that they will take a precedence in my world¹ (ie, if Magus is in a bad space, I'm gonna ignore whoever else is around in order to try and help make things better) and I am promising them that I'd like to spend time with them, not just right now, but in the future as well.

There is a certain extent to which my boys are just as or almost as important as I am in my life². If there is a problem, I will take what steps possible to fix it. I'm committing to them my love.

This is really messy, probably aided by the fact that I am hells sick, and so I've been fighting my thoughts through a brainfog for most of a week. Like I said, I'll try and make this have better answers in a separate post sometime (and see if I can get the other polyfolk on my friends list chiming in their thoughts) but now is not really the time for it. Feel free to ask more questions if you think it'd help, or if I just succeeded in making things less clear.

~Sor

1: Aided by the fact that my three boyfriends are in three different locations. Obviously, whichever one I am currently in the same city as has precedence, barring something terrible. If one of the out of towners visits me, they gain precedence over the in-town boy who I see more often.

2: This is a personal disagreement I seem to have with you --be I in a mono or a poly relationship, or none at all, I live by the precept that "I am the most important person in my life". Period, fullstop, end of story. I've tried making other people happy at my expense before, trust me, it fucks you up but good. So, even were I monoamorous, I don't think that I would ever be able to put a partners needs as more important than my own. That's just not how I love --maybe that means I fail at love entirely. I don't know.

I don't think you need to put anyone's needs as more important than your own to show the idea of love -- it's ultimately, in my opinion, about mutual and equal respect. If making your significant other happy comes at your own expense, I can't imagine that being a healthy relationship.

(Although I'm not sure I agree entirely with putting oneself first -- I think you should definitely respect and prioritize yourself properly, but that being said, if I feel I need to put other people before me for what I consider good or respectful reasons, I'll do it. I never want to think I'm more important than anyone else.)

I'm just not sure I understand the balance or levels of precedence. How do you not make the other partners feel like they're only important until someone happens to need you more?

(I'm bad at sounding polite when I discuss things, so insert a general disclaimer here that I'm not trying to be judgmental or rude, etc.)

Damn, how'd I miss this comment?

I think you should definitely respect and prioritize yourself properly, but that being said, if I feel I need to put other people before me for what I consider good or respectful reasons, I'll do it.

That's...actually a really good way of putting it. My general reasoning for the "put yourself first" is that no one on the planet has as good a sense of what you need, when, as you do, and no one else will be as vested in making sure you get it. However, I hadn't even considered that sometimes, the right thing to do is not always the best for you.

Again though, sometimes. And in the long run, I really do think that you need to make sure that you are taken care of¹.

How do you not make the other partners feel like they're only important until someone happens to need you more?

Stacks and stacks of trust. Most importantly, the fact that I know (hope, trust, whatever) that my partners wouldn't interrupt me from being with another partner unless they really truly did NEED it. I've been lucky enough that I've never had to deal with two of them having that Need at the same time. In general, if I'm just hanging out and having a nice date with one, I won't abandon them for another unless the latter really can't deal by themselves.

((And need can be different things. Sometimes I need to have a shoulder to cry on; sometimes I need to have a date or something that equally reassures me that this relationship is still going okay. I imagine my partners have the same needs, and know that both can be important.))

Occasionally I've been shot down for hanging out with Magus because he finds it more important at that instant of time to talk with his other girlfriend. That's valid, and generally perfectly understandable, because she's important to him to, and I'm okay with that. On the rare occasion where I need to reject one boy to spend time with another, I hope they can understand it as well --other people are important to me as well as just them. With the exception of the Katters (who I have currently been dating the longest, but who did know I was poly, thanks) I have ensured that nobody gets involved with me, to any degree, without already knowing that I have other people in my life who are quite important to me as well.

This continues to be muddled, but I hope it helped at least a little bit.

~Sor

1: Now, the point that this gets complicated at is when you've got a committed master/slave relationship, or something where you have one partner subservient to the other. However, not having any experience with this, I can't really talk --just trust that in such situations, the slave really is okay and happy and prefers to be thus in the long term, and has options for talking to their master should something change. BUT I DIGRESS!

M-W says (http://m-w.com/dictionary/commitment): "2 a : an agreement or pledge to do something in the future; especially : an engagement to assume a financial obligation at a future date b : something pledged c : the state or an instance of being obligated or emotionally impelled <a commitment to a cause>"

In a polyamory (or hyperfamily (http://wiki.hypertwins.org/Hyperfamily)), I would take "commitment" as referring to the "cause" of the group of people -- whatever it is that all of them want for themselves and for each other; a pledge to dedicate one's own resources towards that cause.

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