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Printabletackam said: jessyMD32781 said: i wrote that early in the morning (for me) when i was feeling kinda bored in general. then wouldn't you know i went on thinking about it later in the day when i wasn't tired or bored. the human brain works in funny ways. anyway, even if all parties are agreeing to a poly situation, someone is getting the short end of the relationship stick and is therefore being cheated. if you are having simultaneous relationships with more than one person it is inevitable that one person is getting more love than the other, more attention than then other, etc. the person who's not getting enough is the one who is getting cheated. or at least cheated the most. in a poly situation, everybody is technically getting cheated, just some people are getting cheated more than others. the other thought i kept having when i was thinking about this issue is if you have a good father or mother. i know it's none of my business and i certainly don't expect you to answer it but it seems to me that a person who would live such a lifestyle must either have relationship issues in general or have a strained relationship with his or her family. many people who have bad relationships or alternative relationships had some stuff going on at home that wasn't the greatest and then they either replicate it or overcompensate for it in their relationships. the reason why i thought of that is because polyamory is so different from sexuality, dispite past arguments that polyamory and homosexuality are comparable. arguments that i find insulting to homosexuality. When people say things like "all homosexuals had bad childhoods," it's a bunch of bunk because sexuality is a pretty much an inborn trait. no one turns gay, either you are or you're not (with shades of grey). but something like polyamory is a conscious relationship choice and one that could lead to many problems down the road. it just seems strange that someone would choose such an unstable kind of relationship. Of course monogamy can be plenty unstable in its own right but is seems like polyamory is inherently so. Myself and my two partners all grew up in two-parent, stable, loving households. We all had good childhoods. We've all been able to maintain long-term relationships. In fact, you can't maintain poly relationships unless you are very good at relationships/communication, and we know that. Really. Honestly. There's nothing wrong with us. We're normal, happy people. We just make choices that are different from yours. . .choices that wouldn't make you happy, but that make us happy. Why be so insistent that there is something wrong with it? There is debate about the sexuality comparison. I personally feel that it is more of a lifestyle choice than an orientation, but there are people who disagree with me. Where it is comparable to homosexuality is that people have very personal, often negative reactions to the way we live our lives, even though we're not asking anybody else to be poly. It's also comparable in that we face some of the issues regarding the (lack of) legal recognition of our families. I can't marry Matt, and that causes all of the problems for us that it would for a gay couple. But I do think that the comparison has limits, personally. Love is not a thing that we have a limited quantity of. Anybody who has multiple children will tell you that a new person creates a new love that doesn't detract from the old. Attention? I don't want anybody's undivided attention, that would be annoying. We're all pretty independant people. We certainly have to make each other priorities in our lives, just as a time-management issue. But nobody feels cheated. I think it's silly to look at somebody who is happy and enjoying their relationships and tell them, "no really, you're being cheated." Oh really? 'Cause I feel fine. 
And lastly, I think monogamy is at least as unstable as polyamory. The challenges are just different. i wasn't insistingt that anything was wrong with you. i was more comparing it to a child of divorce who vows never to get married because his/her parents did such a bad job at it or decides to have the perfect marriage and family and do a "better" job than his/her parents. People do take what they saw from their parents' relationship and apply it to their own as they get older. it's just a fact. there really wasn't any need to take offense to that the way you did. 
i also find it interesting that you say there is nothing wrong with you and your partners since you came from loving, stable, two parent households. 'Cause nothing ever goes wrong in those kind of households, right? only children of divorce or those born out of wedlock are fucked up. i get it... i'm glad that nobody feels cheated in your situation. i was simply explaining how i see polyamorous situations. just because you don't feel cheated doesn't mean that your not being cheated. i'm glad that you can be happy, happiness is hard to find, but that isn't going to make me magically think that you are not being cheated in your relationships. you are, in my eyes at least, you're just happy with it and that's cool. it's more than what most people can accomplish. and as far as the love thing goes, i know many people who have grown up with siblings and not one of them live in a family where one parent or the other doesn't have a 'favorite' child. i've observed it in other families and have been told stories by friends, etc. You may not be able to measure love the way you can measure water but there is such a thing as spreading yorself too thin. no one has anyone's undivided attention ever, even in monogamous relationships. life gets in the way. and i agree about monogamous relationships being unstable at times and said as much in my previous post. anyway, you're begining to take this way too personally and i can see where it's going to end up. so let me just say that i don't care what kind of relationship you're in since i don't know you personally and i don't agree with polyamory and i never will. i'm glad that you're happy and i hope that you continue to be. happiness can be hard to find. | |
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jessyMD32781 said: tackam said: Myself and my two partners all grew up in two-parent, stable, loving households. We all had good childhoods. We've all been able to maintain long-term relationships. In fact, you can't maintain poly relationships unless you are very good at relationships/communication, and we know that. Really. Honestly. There's nothing wrong with us. We're normal, happy people. We just make choices that are different from yours. . .choices that wouldn't make you happy, but that make us happy. Why be so insistent that there is something wrong with it? There is debate about the sexuality comparison. I personally feel that it is more of a lifestyle choice than an orientation, but there are people who disagree with me. Where it is comparable to homosexuality is that people have very personal, often negative reactions to the way we live our lives, even though we're not asking anybody else to be poly. It's also comparable in that we face some of the issues regarding the (lack of) legal recognition of our families. I can't marry Matt, and that causes all of the problems for us that it would for a gay couple. But I do think that the comparison has limits, personally. Love is not a thing that we have a limited quantity of. Anybody who has multiple children will tell you that a new person creates a new love that doesn't detract from the old. Attention? I don't want anybody's undivided attention, that would be annoying. We're all pretty independant people. We certainly have to make each other priorities in our lives, just as a time-management issue. But nobody feels cheated. I think it's silly to look at somebody who is happy and enjoying their relationships and tell them, "no really, you're being cheated." Oh really? 'Cause I feel fine.
And lastly, I think monogamy is at least as unstable as polyamory. The challenges are just different. i wasn't insistingt that anything was wrong with you. i was more comparing it to a child of divorce who vows never to get married because his/her parents did such a bad job at it or decides to have the perfect marriage and family and do a "better" job than his/her parents. People do take what they saw from their parents' relationship and apply it to their own as they get older. it's just a fact. there really wasn't any need to take offense to that the way you did.
i also find it interesting that you say there is nothing wrong with you and your partners since you came from loving, stable, two parent households. 'Cause nothing ever goes wrong in those kind of households, right? only children of divorce or those born out of wedlock are fucked up. i get it... i'm glad that nobody feels cheated in your situation. i was simply explaining how i see polyamorous situations. just because you don't feel cheated doesn't mean that your not being cheated. i'm glad that you can be happy, happiness is hard to find, but that isn't going to make me magically think that you are not being cheated in your relationships. you are, in my eyes at least, you're just happy with it and that's cool. it's more than what most people can accomplish. and as far as the love thing goes, i know many people who have grown up with siblings and not one of them live in a family where one parent or the other doesn't have a 'favorite' child. i've observed it in other families and have been told stories by friends, etc. You may not be able to measure love the way you can measure water but there is such a thing as spreading yorself too thin. no one has anyone's undivided attention ever, even in monogamous relationships. life gets in the way. and i agree about monogamous relationships being unstable at times and said as much in my previous post. anyway, you're begining to take this way too personally and i can see where it's going to end up. so let me just say that i don't care what kind of relationship you're in since i don't know you personally and i don't agree with polyamory and i never will. i'm glad that you're happy and i hope that you continue to be. happiness can be hard to find. You misunderstood the tone of my post. I'm not upset or offended. I did not mean to imply any neccessary causal relationship between the fact that we came from stable families and the fact that there is nothing wrong with us. They are two independant facts. Draw conclusions as you see fit. 
I'm not sure I agree with your objective view of cheating/being cheated, but hey. I'll take cheated and happy over. . .um. . .non-cheated?. . .and unhappy any day of the week, so it's all good. I do thank you for the discussion. And seriously, I wasn't offended. I'll tell you if I'm offended, and I suspect you won't much care, and the org will keep turning. | |
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Zelaira said: She Wants him Bad and she Wants him Bad ..She's ...a Hot Fox.....
WHAT UP PAISLEY!!!  | |
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tackam said: jessyMD32781 said: i wasn't insistingt that anything was wrong with you. i was more comparing it to a child of divorce who vows never to get married because his/her parents did such a bad job at it or decides to have the perfect marriage and family and do a "better" job than his/her parents. People do take what they saw from their parents' relationship and apply it to their own as they get older. it's just a fact. there really wasn't any need to take offense to that the way you did.
i also find it interesting that you say there is nothing wrong with you and your partners since you came from loving, stable, two parent households. 'Cause nothing ever goes wrong in those kind of households, right? only children of divorce or those born out of wedlock are fucked up. i get it... i'm glad that nobody feels cheated in your situation. i was simply explaining how i see polyamorous situations. just because you don't feel cheated doesn't mean that your not being cheated. i'm glad that you can be happy, happiness is hard to find, but that isn't going to make me magically think that you are not being cheated in your relationships. you are, in my eyes at least, you're just happy with it and that's cool. it's more than what most people can accomplish. and as far as the love thing goes, i know many people who have grown up with siblings and not one of them live in a family where one parent or the other doesn't have a 'favorite' child. i've observed it in other families and have been told stories by friends, etc. You may not be able to measure love the way you can measure water but there is such a thing as spreading yorself too thin. no one has anyone's undivided attention ever, even in monogamous relationships. life gets in the way. and i agree about monogamous relationships being unstable at times and said as much in my previous post. anyway, you're begining to take this way too personally and i can see where it's going to end up. so let me just say that i don't care what kind of relationship you're in since i don't know you personally and i don't agree with polyamory and i never will. i'm glad that you're happy and i hope that you continue to be. happiness can be hard to find. You misunderstood the tone of my post. I'm not upset or offended. I did not mean to imply any neccessary causal relationship between the fact that we came from stable families and the fact that there is nothing wrong with us. They are two independant facts. Draw conclusions as you see fit.
I'm not sure I agree with your objective view of cheating/being cheated, but hey. I'll take cheated and happy over. . .um. . .non-cheated?. . .and unhappy any day of the week, so it's all good. I do thank you for the discussion. And seriously, I wasn't offended. I'll tell you if I'm offended, and I suspect you won't much care, and the org will keep turning. my ideal is not cheated and happy. basically, if you're not being cheated, you'll be happy. or at least that's how my relationships have always worked. neither partner was cheating the other and both were satisfied and happy in the relationship. it does exist and is very common in couples who communicate. carrying on more than one relationship is not the only way to be cheated in a relationship. some people's partners' are married to their jobs or their hobbies and don't give their relationships proper attention. i would consider those relationships "cheated" relationships. obviously you're not going to agree with that since you think that your cheated situation is ideal for you. and you don't think that it's a cheated situation. there's nowhere to go from there, really. i'm glad that you weren't offended. if you were i would have just backed off. i don't really like offending people unless they stab me first or are behaving like assholes in general. then they deserve it. anyway, talking about cheated relationships makes me sad. i think i'll go to bed now. i have work in the morning. | |
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