Friday, February 15, 2013

Alternative Life Choices

So.... wow, where do I begin. Well... Hey everyone, I'm Greg and I'm Polyamorous. Now, before you start jumping to conclusions (oh, too late?... damn you!), I'd like to give some perspective about this aspect of my life.

A few quick points that I'll throw in from Wikipedia for perspective;
I've been wanting to be open about being Poly for quite some time now. But, until now I haven't felt it was the right time to say it. I didn't even know there was a word for how I felt all these years until recently. Also, I wasn't sure if this was something I really needed to say outloud or just keep to myself. But I'm not ashamed and my life is in a good place right now for me to be open about this particular subject matter.
In order to create some context I have to tell a story (pardon the bullet points);
  • Years ago, back in the 80's I watched a movie called Paint Your Wagon (originally released in 1969) with Lee Marvin as Ben Rumson and Clint Eastwood as Pardner. For those who don't know, the movie is set around the California Gold Rush, before the State entered the Union. Ben and Pardner become gold pan-mining partners through circumstances.

    Long story short, (cause it IS a 158 minute movie); there are no women in this town. At one point a Morman man and his two wives pass through town. The Morman man, fed up with one of his wives, Elizabeth, wants to get rid of her for being difficult. And so he offers her to any man willing to make the biggest offer. Ben, drunk and out of his mind, doubles up the highest offer and wins and suddenly wakes up the next morning married. But she's not just a submissive woman and pulls a gun on him the first night of sex, ensuring he knows she's not just some whore. He spends a good deal of time learning to be with a strong woman and so she ends up being a good wife for him in return. A nice reciprocated relationship for that time period.

    However, now that he has a wife, the rest of the townsmen get jealous. Which makes him jealous in return and worried that others might try to take his wife. So he makes a plan to go and kidnap French women going to another town (on their way there to work at a Cat House) and then talks them into work in their town instead.

    (we're just about there...)

    While his character is away doing this "daring mission", Pardner and the Elizabeth end up spending a lot of time together. Too much time. And when Ben comes back, he catches Pardner and Elizabeth riding bareback together on a horse. Ben gets mad, confronts them. And Elizabeth tells Ben that she loves Parder. So Ben just says it's over, and wishes them a happy life. However, Elizabeth tells Ben not to go, that she loves him too. Ben says "now you can't have us both." To which Elizabeth responds; "Why not, I was with a man who had two wives..." And so then after all this, Ben, Pardner and Elizabeth agree to be together as a wife with two husbands.
Now, there is a lot of subtext and story and drama built within that movie, surrounding their relationship. And the relationship isn't the primary focus of the movie, but rather the last 1/3rd of the movie I'd say. But after I had watched the movie, I just couldn't stop thinking about that fact of that arrangement. I mean, I must have been in late Elementary School or early Middle School. Starting to just barely get those hormones and feelings for women. And it made so much more sense to me than people saying they could be with one person and one person only for the rest of their lives. Especially when I heard so much about divorces and cheating and manipulation. So the rest of my life, probably 20 years, I watched people in Monogamous relationships, myself included, go through bouts of jealousy, possessiveness, lack of communication and bitter mis-understandings.

It wasn't until about a year after my wife left me that I had found myself growing deeper and deeper into a depression. Jealous of so many other people's relationships. Angry that I couldn't have who I wanted to have in my life. Resentful that I was into women way out of my league. I was growing desperate. And women knew this, because I was projecting that desperation, which made me even more unattractive and it was such a vicious cycle. And then, by chance, I met someone who expressed interest back. However, the catch.... she was with a man and a woman in a Polyamorous relationship. This woman and I started spending more time together and we started sharing our affections for one another. I got to a point where I realized, if I was going to get closer, I had to think to myself "was I comfortable with her being with other people?" And quite honestly, it took me a night to think about it on their couch. *laughs* And the answer was yes, I was very comfortable about it.
 
That relationship lasted about six months. It was a very wonderful time in my life. By entering what I call a "Healthy Polyamorous Family", I was able to see people who communicated their intentions. I met people who did not get jealous about people spending time with "their" partner. There was an amazing amount of self control and personal self-health within everyone I had met. I had also met couples who had been together for over 15 years or more who were in Poly relationships the whole time. I got to hear their stories and how they made it work. I then met people on online communities who told me their stories as well. This was exactly what I had wanted and I now knew there were people out there who lived the life I wanted to live.

Now of course, it wasn't all peaches and cream. Just like a Monogamous relationship, it takes hard work to make things flow between two people, let alone more than two. That relationship had its ups and it definitely had its downs. But what I got out of it was so much more. It is now two years later and I haven't been with someone in a serious relationship since then. I've had a few girls that I've gotten close to. But things just didn't work out. And yet, I'm happy. Happier than I have ever been in a long time.

The reason for being happy is quite simple; I don't need the bullshit I see within most Monogamous relationships. I've now watched so many people cause their own relationshi-destruction because of that jealousy. Or mis-communications leading into devestating arguments. I've seen the needy and clingy nature of people who expect the other person to conform to their ideals and then get angry when it doesn't go their way. I've seen people get upset that their partner is out with a friend at a bar as the constant joke of almost every sitcom I've watched. And then I saw it in real life. A woman would get upset that her "man" was out with his friends all night, neglecting her at home. So she cheats and says something like "what do you expect?" and so on, so forth. There are so many examples and this obviously goes back and forth between men and women.

Living a Polyamorous lifestyle to me doesn't mean orgies 24/7. It means safe partners in life. Safe mentally and physically. People who are willing to focus on bettering their lives, losing the dependent nature of having someone in their life all the time. And finding someone (or many someones) who feel the same way. I've had people tell me "I'm too selfish of a person to let my partner be with someone else." And wow I just find that such a turn-off now. I watch Romantic Comedies, and while I enjoy the comedy aspect of the movie, and generally the love aspect, the whole desire to go through all the crazy things these people go through for love just baffles me now.

So if you're a female friend of mine, or someone who just barely knows me or is "friends" on Facebook or another Networking site, then you see now why I act the way I act. I'm attracted to you. I like some aspect about you. But that doesn't mean I want to sleep with you. It doesn't mean I want to control you or tell you how to live and love. It means that I want to get to know you and see what level we can meet back with one another because of that attraction. And I certainly don't want to "take you away from your man", but if I do connect with someone, I want to enjoy and share those connections without people getting jealous or upset. Because I'm perfectly happy with people I know also finding happiness within others. I have no need to "Be Everything" to someone. I'm already everything to myself. And that's pretty damn good..

Edited Once: 02-16-2013

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