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moonlight wrote:
... And, I've been told that I shouldn't settle for being second best because I deserve to have my *own* dom that's *just* mine. That I don't *have* to share and that holds me as the most important thing in his life.
C Steele wrote:
Remember that many people (probably most if you look at society at large) place a high value on monogamy... From that perspective, it is very hard to understand why anyone would choose polyamory, given the choice to have a mono relationship with the partner of their desires.
I'm well aware of that. Some days I wonder why I do it myself. :) Seriously. It's just damn hard. I sit and think "I'll never have a "normal" home or relationship if I keep doing this." But, then again....I *do* have three people to keep me company...not counting kids, pets, and friends.
- C Steele wrote:
Imagine a truly vanilla person trying to understand BDSM relationships... They just don't have the frame of reference to understand it. To a certain extent, I think the same is true when mono people observe poly relationships. Since they would never choose it, it is hard to understand why anyone else would.
I don't think it necessarily has to be a vanilla person that can't understand it. Many BDSM folk don't either. And they *do* have the frame of reference. I'm not saying that I don't understand why I've been told that in the past. From people that are *honestly* trying to understand it, I don't mind. From people that *do* understand it, it drives me bonkers.
I do educational work sometimes about polyamory, bdsm, alternate sexualities, and paganism. I understand honest questioning. It's not always honest confusion, lack of understanding, or curiosity, though.
- moonlight wrote:
... The doms, in a lot of instances, have wanted the subs for themselves. Or haven't understood polyamory/polyfidelity and thought that the sub was "settling" for something.
C Steel wrote:
Do you think that every single person in a poly relationship wants things that way? Or would you acknowledge that perhaps some of them are settling for the poly, because they don't have the choice of having a mono relationship with the person they are interested in? In other words, I suspect that some people in poly relationships *are* settling, and for the observer who has a strong mono orientation, it is natural to imagine such a subtext to all poly relationships.
No. I am speaking about what has happened to me. Not what happened to J. Random Polyperson. And my feelings about it. I don't assume that all poly people have the same motivations that I do.
What I *DO* think is that people shouldn't "settle". That goes for me, people that *want* to be poly but aren't, are poly but don't want to be, or whoever. Not being who *YOU* are is bad for you. Do we always get what we want? No.
But, if you work at it you do have a higher chance of getting it. I've known for a long time what I want. And I settled for something that wasn't it. Because I thought it would work out in the end. Well, it did. Just not how I thought it would. To work out, I had to get a divorce and move to a new city to be with the people that I *could* do what I wanted with.
There is no guarantee that you won't have to make sacrifices in order to have what you want. It's never easy to do. But if you *truly* want something, then you shouldn't "settle" because you think it's the best you can do.
- moonlight wrote:
The subs, on the other hand, I think often were intimidated by the idea that they could *share* with other women. Oddly enough, I've found that male subs don't have this problem as much. I'm sure it exists to an extent, but from what I've seen it's a peculiarly femsub problem.
C Steel wrote:
There is a widely held theory that, in general, men are by nature poly, and women are mono. It isn't too hard to come up with reasons why this may be so, particularly considering reproductive capacities and the support and nurturance of offspring. Curiously, I have not observed that stereotypical gender difference in myself (a mono male) or in my immediate circle of friends -- in fact, sometimes it seems that the bias is in the opposite direction.
Yes, it's taught in most sociobiological classes or classes on animal behavior. And, for a lot of reasons, it works for the "lower" animals but not for the "higher" ones.
Particularly humans. Humans are social creatures. To behave the way you talk about above would bring instability to a social group without special "rules" in place. There would most likely be a higher rate of infantacide, for one.
Males that behave in this nature, you see, tend to go out and kill the offspring of other males to bring the females into estrus again so that they can spread their genes. It's not about poly. It's about spreading your genes as far and as wide as you can. This is why you hear about mothers with offspring going to such lengths to defend them. If they don't *THEY* go through it all again and usually end up with fewer genes in the gene pool. For females, you *have* to have as many of your offspring survive as you can. Not breed as often as you can.
Monogamy, it is my belief, is one of these "social rules" that was developed in order to be in social groups. Poly people bend those rules and that is why there is sometimes such resistance to it. *Particularly* when it comes to females with more than one male. It just doesn't make "sense". A male with more females would fall into the "males need more females to be successful genetically" thought processes.
Again, all of this is just my thoughts on why I am poly and how I interpret the behaviors of others on occasions. It *is* irritating to hear people tell me that I'm settling for something that is not "best". Or that I should *want* one mate. Well, at the moment, I *DO* have one partner. He, however, has three. *shrug* That's not settling. I have someone that makes me immensely happy. And *that*, more than anything, is what I value.
