What Can Make Even A #Poly Person Jealous? #polyamory #polyamorous

[joreth]

Q.   What can make even a poly person jealous?

A.   The same things that make non-poly people jealous.  Because, here’s a secret … you ready?

Poly people are people.

That’s right, we’re just regular old human beings like everyone else.  We are not emotionless sociopaths, we are not aliens, we are not relationship wizards.  We’re just people.  We have all the same emotions as you do, and we fuck up our relationships just like you do.

The only real difference is that we have a culture that prioritizes curiosity, authenticity, and autonomy.  That doesn’t mean that individual monogamous people don’t prioritize those things and it doesn’t mean that individual poly people are necessarily *good* at those things.  It means that we like to *say* that those things are important to us.

So we are pressured, from our culture and from our own internal sense of morality, to respect our partners’ right to make choices about their own bodies and emotions, and we are pressured to constantly inquire within ourselves about what the signal light on our dashboards is trying to tell us, and then to solve the actual problem.

Because that’s what jealousy is - it’s a signal light telling you that something is wrong.  That’s all. Sometimes that signal is trying to tell you that you’re in a relationship with someone who is not respecting *your* autonomy, or your boundaries, or whatever.  Sometimes that signal light is trying to tell you that you have unresolved issues to deal with that aren’t your partners’ fault.

Some people don’t like signal lights.  They’re annoying.  So they put a post-it note over their dashboard and try to pretend like the light isn’t on at all.  That’s the culture that most people come from, including most poly people.  It’s the culture that tells us that if you see a signal light, if you feel jealousy, you need to make the thing that’s lighting up your dashboard go dark - you need to stop the activity that’s making you feel jealous. Doesn’t matter *why* you feel jealous, just stop the feeling whatever the cost.  Take out that light.

Poly culture tells us to pop the fucking hood and get your hands dirty trying to figure out why the damn light is on in the first place, and then fix. the. problem.

Unfortunately for us poly people, none of us are born mechanics.  We’re all learning this shit as we go too.  So our signal lights go on for the same reasons everyone else’s do.  We all got the shitty factory programming.

But *some* of us stop the car, get underneath it, and shine flashlights around until we find the problem.  Some monogamous people do that too.  Because we’re all just people.

Comments

Good to see you continuing to post!

[toshio.id.fedoraproject.org]

I like to tell stories. The comment section of someone else's blog seems like it may be a very
selfish-privileged-male-place to indulge that, though, so feel free not to publish this if it strikes you that way. I just wanted to share the story of how your writings have been inspiring over the years.

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I like to read books backwards.

I read the last page, latch onto a compelling character, and then follow their story back through the book to see how they arrived where they did. Along the way I encounter other characters and their stories and, if they're also compelling, start to follow their histories backwards to their beginnings too. If those characters continue to be engaging, I'll make my way to the front and then re-read front to back to make sure I didn't miss any piece of their life. If they aren't compelling, I can choose not to spend my time reading it because I already know how things will end.

For movies (except for Memento! Thank goodness for a famous movie I can point to when people give me the puzzled look about my reading habits), the closest equivalent is to find a recap of the movie so I can familiarize myself with the characters and plot before deciding whether to see it.

Which is how I stumbled upon your blog. I wanted to decide if a movie on Netflix was one I would want to watch. The wikipedia plot section was a summary rather than a recap so I went searching for something more complete. Google handed me one of your reviews and I found that not only did it give me the level of detail about a movie I was considering, but it opened up a whole new vista of movies that I might like to watch. Ones that focused on human relationships, personal growth, and love that accumulates, reaches out, and forces one to work on allowing the world to be a dynamic place full of change rather than trying to force everything to stay the same because it is "perfect" when we reach the end of the movie.

I've watched some beautifully touching movies because of what you've written ("The Wedding Banquet"), seen some films in a new light ("Paint your Wagons"), and added so many more to my list to see someday... ("Design for Living", "Carrington",...) That has been delightful.

And in between and surrounding these movie reviews and recommendations, there's been life lessons too. The centrality of communication and agency in ethics and healthy relationships. Forgiving yourself for your flaws but working on growing when you discover them. Knowing that being uncomfortable, jealous, or experiencing other negative emotions are not necessarily to be avoided but signposts for an area where there is something you need to look at within yourself. That thinking of bad actions as things that bad people do is a trap for both our perception of them and our perception of our own actions.

Your insights have become an abbreviated guidebook for me over the years. Often when I'm unsure if it's a good idea to do something or what the ethical thing to do is now that I've made some bad decisions, just thinking about the key elements of what you said has been enough to clarify what to do, even when fears and anxieties would otherwise interfere with my actions.

Thank you. I hope you keep sharing for longer than I can keep reading.