From: keithd@stallion.oz.au (Keith Duddy)
Subject: Re: rethinking polyamory
Organization: Stallion Technologies
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 07:20:31 GMT

william writes:

>Scott Hanson writes:

>>The only person I "converted" became involved with someone who demanded
>>to be her only lover or no relations (even friendship) at all.  She was 
>>interested in him enough to agree to this arrangement.  I suppose this
>>would be more appropriate in alt.angst.
>>
>---
[stuff deleted]
>That by itself is a big enough threat, but then
>there is even the added complication as happened above of the other
>person demanding exclusive access or threatening to cut off all ties.

>	Of course, if it was put so bluntly, it would be easy to see that
>giving in to that person would be a bad move.  But nevertheless, there
>are alot of unknowns / uneasinesses.  

>	Is this type of thing just par for the course, or how do others
>deal?  It seems like someone must be incredibly secure within themselves
>or possibly not that attached to allow one's SO to be 'shared' with 
>someone else.  I dunno.

I think that if the 'additional' people in the arragment are told from
the very beginning that the 'original' couple was not up for negotiation
and that the new realtionship would always be shared then the 2 people
in the new relationship would rarely get close enough that the new
person would be able to demand severing the orginal relationship. I was
lucky that I eased into a relationship with my current SO where we
shifted from accepting simply outside sex to accepting "real polyamory"
at approximately the right times in our relationship that our personal
feelings of security were strong enough for this to happen comfortably.
To re-state: When we the relationship was still fairly young and we
didn't consider ourselves to be inseparable, the other people in our
relationships (more accurately in his sex life) were really only extra
sex partners and not potential close partners, and after a couple of
years when we did consider our relationship more or less rock solid the
possibility of "real polyamory" (another close partner/long term sexual
friendship) arose. (My SO, Tim, now has another "bonk buddy" who is also
a close friend to me.) This continuum was almost unplanned, but provided a
constant lack of jealousy and continuous security. 

However it must be said that with the basic understanding that I've had
with Tim since the very beginning we would both have refused monogamous
demands from new sex partners (or if we didn't we would have considered
it a serious betrayal.) This basic understanding (as well as a refusal
to use the word "love" - a topic which would take more time than I have
right now) provided a great degree of security, which was further
enhanced by *always* talking about sexual contacts and emotional
attatchments outside our relationship. When you are fairly certain
that the other person is honestly letting you know what's going on in
their head then you can always feel secure that you know where your
realtionship is at, even if that doesn't guarantee an unchanging
state of that relationship. But who wants an unchanging relationship??

>	How does one foster self-security or how does one work on one's self
>to bring one's self to a state of security where jealous is not a problem?

See above.


>william

Keith
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Newsgroups: alt.polyamory