From: orc@vpnet.chi.il.us (david parsons)
Subject: Re: Het males & bi-femmes
Organization: Department of Atomic Text Units
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 14:49:13 GMT

In article <0fHTH=e00WBO03rEV0@andrew.cmu.edu> "Sherrianne M.
   Johnson" <sj1s+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes a response to an article
   of mine, where I'm replying to an article posted by someone
   she's involved with:
|>In article <C0549I.Fsw.1@cs.cmu.edu> pooh+@cs.cmu.edu (Will Timmins) writes:
|>|Re three way interaction:
|>[overly complicated relationship description]
|> 
|>|Why all this nonsense? Just a thought experiment. This is the best argument 
|>|against polyamory- things get TREMENDOUSLY complex very quickly.
|> 
|>   Not necessarily so.  It's not necessary for all of the people in
|>a polyamourous tangle to be intimate with each other.  [...]
|
|  I'm currently in a polyamorous relationship
|with Will (the guy quoted up there... :), and believe me, even with some
|relationships intertwined and some separate, it can get pretty
|complicated...

  Another case where one's milage may vary.  The only complexities
that I've encountered in being polyamorous (aside from the usual
collection of relationship problems that people get into no matter
what their situation) is that it does a pretty good job of killing
the limits of a relationship, so I find myself spreading my
affections across a large collection of people. (And for me, this
is *A* *Bad* *Thing*, because, as I've had the extreme misfortune
to discover, the intensity of my affections will go up when the
number of people involved in them go up <thus making, for instance,
a casual fling into a rather big deal when it blows up>)

  Things that may change the intensity of the relationships are the
various feelings involved with them.  I'm fond of all of the people
I'm involved with, and I think they're fond of me, but none of
these relationships are primary <except in one case, where it is
for me>, and it's moderately easy to keep them separate.

  Location, too, makes a big difference.  When dating people who
are located at 500 miles, 2400 miles, and 4000 miles away from me,
it's really easy to keep things separated (did I mention that the
location puts all of _them_ at about 3000 miles away from each
other?) because my vacation budget <unless I took the vacation to
end all vacations - i.e. got fired for taking too many vacations
:-)> doesn't allow much room for visiting multiple lovers.


|I'm just personally of the opinion that it can be extremely neat if say,
|there are three people involved in a relationship, and they all are
|involved to a full extent.   Everybody likes, loves, lusts, everyone
|else.  

  YMMV.
  Been there.  Done that.  Don't think it made any difference.

  Biases and superstitions may make these idyllic multiway
relationships difficult.  My personal biases (which have become
full-fledged paranoia) make the idea of having any sort of
relationship in chicago a definite no-no.  And if one's an e-slut
like me, the relationships tend to develop out of one-on-one email,
which seems to (at least in my case) form distinct two-person
relationships.  It would be nice if everybody in the collection
(for lack of any better word at 8:50am on a Saturday morning) would
get along with each other and each other's other lovers, but
sometimes that won't happen (and it will probably kill the
relationship if it doesn't, but that's a risk of life...)

                ____
  david parsons \bi/ frequent flyer
                 \/