anything about polyamory said ignorant things about my poly friends!) Yet I have to watch out for that stereotype's influence on me anyway. When I forgot that I'd considered polyamory with Mr. Inferno, was I being influenced by that stereotype? Or was I just missing Mr. Inferno a lot that day, and wishing I could talk to him, and maybe therefore remembering him as more influential in my life than he actually was? Or... what?
I'm visiting my father right now; we went out to dinner the other night and talked about relationships. I'm quite open about my parents about almost everything -- we don't talk explicitly about our sex lives, but we do have detailed conversations about stuff like polyamory. My dad is not at all attracted to polyamory, and we used to commiserate and theorize about how we just didn't understand polyamory.
Now that I've decided to pursue poly, my dad is puzzled. "I know this is weird," I said to him during dinner, "because we used to be on the exact same wavelength about this,” and he nodded. He asks questions, he tries to figure out where I'm coming from -- and they're all questions that I have decent theoretical answers for. Answers include: "Well, of course it's possible to love more than one person at a time. Mothers can love multiple children, kids can love multiple parents, friends can love each other, so why wouldn't it be possible for people to have sexual and emotional relationships with multiple people?" Or: "Jealousy can be managed just fine, as long as partners are communicating well and genuinely care about each others’ feelings.”
In fact, some of my answers are the same theoretical answers that he and I discussed back when we were both steadfastly monogamous. Except this time, I'm giving him those answers from the other side; and yet he can't relate any better to them, this time around.
te Kk ok
I have always spent a very large amount of time obsessively analyzing my own emotions, and often writing about them. This has been true since childhood. However, one analytical skill I can always improve is this: knowing when to say, "I'm not sure how I feel about that.”
Another important skill is staying on top of the stories I tell about myself, the ideas and memes and images and narratives that I'm trying to match myself to. It seems impossible to track all the influences on my psyche, all the different social and cultural and even biological forces. Where am I under all the programming? It's worth trying to figure it out (even if I'll never know for sure).
I don't always know what I'm thinking. I don't believe that anyone always knows what they're thinking. It's important to acknowledge this, because when people don't acknowledge it, they often simply decide to be something that doesn't quite match up with what they want. Sometimes this works fine -- if the pattern a person chooses to impose on her self can function, then who cares if it's a perfect match? (I mean, arguably, people are always imposing unmatched patterns on our thoughts and selves.) But although this sometimes works fine, there are plenty of times when it doesn't work fine. Or really at all.
I have a section in my sexual communication workshop for maxims -- little slogan-like things. I recently added a new one that I really like: "You don't always know what you're
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