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https://www.quora.com/Do-polyamorous-people-have-a-partner-that-they-love-more-than-the-other-others/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper?ch=1&share=406a3090&srid=B7tY
I really fucking hate this question.
Q. Do polyamorous people have a partner that they love more than the other/others?
A. Do people with multiple kids have one kid they love more than the others? If we’re being honest, then yeah, some parents probably do. But they would generally be considered bad parents by everyone else if they ever uttered that out loud, even though we really can’t help having the feelings that we have.
But do parents of multiple kids love each of their children *differently*, since each child is a different, unique, individual human being? That’s probably more common, and also not considered to be bad parenting.
Some people who call themselves “polyamorous” do put limitations around the amount of feeling they have for various partners, most notably those in hierarchical relationships (where the “primary always comes first”). These are generally considered by other polys to be people who are unsafe to get into relationships with because, as already established, we can’t help our feelings, so we know right up front that our feelings are not safe with them as we will be discarded if we ever catch feelings.
Other people who are polyamorous develop qualitatively different kinds of relationships, and hence have different sorts of feelings, for different partners. We can’t “rank” them into who we love the “most”, we just love people differently in the same way that most people love each of their parents differently, or love their sibling and their best friend “equally” but “differently” from each other.
Our feelings and our relationships are built on the unique combination of ourselves and the other person. There is no other relationship in the world that will ever look exactly like any given relationship because it’s made up of the people in them, and the people are unique individuals. Therefore, the feelings that go along with that relationship are a completely unique blend of a variety of emotions that will never be replicated with anyone else.
In addition to that, emotions and feelings change and flux over time. “Love”, for whatever definition anyone uses (which, incidentally, is *also* unique and individual), waxes and wanes and is influenced by and affected by all sorts of other feelings. How anyone feels on the first week of a new relationship and how they feel 10 years in is going to look and feel different. Which feeling is “more”? Well, the intensity and passion was probably “more” that first week, but the security and comfort is probably more 10 years later.
Each poly person loves in their own way, and each relationship they have is unique to those two people in that relationship. Just like monogamous people. So there is no way to answer a question about how all polys “love”, or do anything, really.
I, personally, do not have any partners that I love “more” than anyone else. I love people differently. A partner that I have been with for many years might qualify as someone that I “love”, while a person I just started dating is probably too new for me to say that I “love” him, so when those are the circumstances, you could possibly say that I “love” my long-term partner “more” than the new partner.
But the new partner still has the *potential* to also reach those same stages of love if given enough time and we wind up being compatible in those ways. The longer-term partner isn’t defaulted as the one I love the “most”, it’s just that this relationship happens to have lasted long enough, and we are compatible in the right ways, to reach that level of deep, intimate, all-encompassing love, while the newer partner isn’t there *yet*.
Sometimes a newer relationship hasn’t yet reached that stage, so in the snapshot of that moment in time, I might “love” one more than the other, but that newer relationship will grow into that stage eventually. Other times a relationship never quite reaches that stage, as we find out that we are not compatible and we break up before getting to the “love” part.
This is not a yes-or-no question. It’s both yes, no, and, to quote Marissa Tomei “nobody can answer that question, it’s a trick question”.
To single poly people out by asking if they love one person more than another is to imply that nobody else does, when the reality is that love can maybe be qualitatively described but we have no measuring tools for determining quantity of love. It’s not something that we can measure.
Love between different people looks different from each other. Some love feels strong, some love feels soft, some love feels deep, some love feels gentle, some love feels hard, some love feels like a liquid that seeps into every nook and cranny and some love feels like a solid mass crashing into everything and taking up all the space. And an awful lot of the time, love looks like all of the above, but at different times and in different moments.
Which one of those loves is “more” than the others?
I really fucking hate this question.
Q. Do polyamorous people have a partner that they love more than the other/others?
A. Do people with multiple kids have one kid they love more than the others? If we’re being honest, then yeah, some parents probably do. But they would generally be considered bad parents by everyone else if they ever uttered that out loud, even though we really can’t help having the feelings that we have.
But do parents of multiple kids love each of their children *differently*, since each child is a different, unique, individual human being? That’s probably more common, and also not considered to be bad parenting.
Some people who call themselves “polyamorous” do put limitations around the amount of feeling they have for various partners, most notably those in hierarchical relationships (where the “primary always comes first”). These are generally considered by other polys to be people who are unsafe to get into relationships with because, as already established, we can’t help our feelings, so we know right up front that our feelings are not safe with them as we will be discarded if we ever catch feelings.
Other people who are polyamorous develop qualitatively different kinds of relationships, and hence have different sorts of feelings, for different partners. We can’t “rank” them into who we love the “most”, we just love people differently in the same way that most people love each of their parents differently, or love their sibling and their best friend “equally” but “differently” from each other.
Our feelings and our relationships are built on the unique combination of ourselves and the other person. There is no other relationship in the world that will ever look exactly like any given relationship because it’s made up of the people in them, and the people are unique individuals. Therefore, the feelings that go along with that relationship are a completely unique blend of a variety of emotions that will never be replicated with anyone else.
In addition to that, emotions and feelings change and flux over time. “Love”, for whatever definition anyone uses (which, incidentally, is *also* unique and individual), waxes and wanes and is influenced by and affected by all sorts of other feelings. How anyone feels on the first week of a new relationship and how they feel 10 years in is going to look and feel different. Which feeling is “more”? Well, the intensity and passion was probably “more” that first week, but the security and comfort is probably more 10 years later.
Each poly person loves in their own way, and each relationship they have is unique to those two people in that relationship. Just like monogamous people. So there is no way to answer a question about how all polys “love”, or do anything, really.
I, personally, do not have any partners that I love “more” than anyone else. I love people differently. A partner that I have been with for many years might qualify as someone that I “love”, while a person I just started dating is probably too new for me to say that I “love” him, so when those are the circumstances, you could possibly say that I “love” my long-term partner “more” than the new partner.
But the new partner still has the *potential* to also reach those same stages of love if given enough time and we wind up being compatible in those ways. The longer-term partner isn’t defaulted as the one I love the “most”, it’s just that this relationship happens to have lasted long enough, and we are compatible in the right ways, to reach that level of deep, intimate, all-encompassing love, while the newer partner isn’t there *yet*.
Sometimes a newer relationship hasn’t yet reached that stage, so in the snapshot of that moment in time, I might “love” one more than the other, but that newer relationship will grow into that stage eventually. Other times a relationship never quite reaches that stage, as we find out that we are not compatible and we break up before getting to the “love” part.
This is not a yes-or-no question. It’s both yes, no, and, to quote Marissa Tomei “nobody can answer that question, it’s a trick question”.To single poly people out by asking if they love one person more than another is to imply that nobody else does, when the reality is that love can maybe be qualitatively described but we have no measuring tools for determining quantity of love. It’s not something that we can measure.
Love between different people looks different from each other. Some love feels strong, some love feels soft, some love feels deep, some love feels gentle, some love feels hard, some love feels like a liquid that seeps into every nook and cranny and some love feels like a solid mass crashing into everything and taking up all the space. And an awful lot of the time, love looks like all of the above, but at different times and in different moments.
Which one of those loves is “more” than the others?
