Mono people lose the right to argue with me

[joreth]

One of the most common arguments given by poly people to make mono people understand us is the Children Theory.  That is, the concept that you can love more than one child, therefore you can love more than one partner.  If you have one kid, and you give all your love to that one kid, then another comes along, you can give all your love to the second kid without taking love away from the first kid.  We all know this argument, either because we've given it, or we've heard it.  But the rebuttal to this argument is ALWAYS this:  Yeah, but I'm not having sex with my kids!

 I am SO sick of hearing this answer.  It happens every single time, right on cue.  It happens so often that I can usually say it for my opposition before they can.  Usually the direction the argument takes from here is a bitchfest about how sex is not the focal point of relationships and neither side is really paying attention to the other side at this point.

Well, the monogamous community has given me ammunition I can use to fight this rebuttal.  You see, the reason why the children analogy fails to get through to some people, is because some people see love for kids as *different* from love for romantic partners.  The reason they see it as different is because of *sex*.  Those of us who understand the children analogy do not see it as different because the sex is a seperate issue.

But now, I propose that the love for a child is NOT inherently different from love for a partner.  Yes, the sex thing is still different.  But the complex emotional structure of the relationship is not dissimilar.

A romantic relationship can contain feelings of love, respect, adoration, and particularly jealousy and envy.  In our culture, we are taught that True Love naturally inspires feelings of jealousy and envy.  This is yet another topic of debate that I won't get into here.  The fact is that we as a society so accept jealousy and envy as "natural" extensions of feelings of love, that many people take it to such extremes that they believe it is NOT love without jealousy or envy!

So, let's work with this.  Let's forget for now that not everyone feels jealousy, and/or not everyone has been in the kind of situation that inspires jealous feelings, that jealousy is actually at its root an insecurity.  Let's just focus on the idea that many people believe jealousy is a natural part of love.  If you love someone, you want to be with that person.  If you are with them, it is possible to lose them.  If you lose someone, it is possible to lose them to another person.  If you love them, you will or should feel jealousy when another person comes along who can "take your place" in their life.

Parents feel jealousy for their children

That's right, non-sexual, totally "healthy" parents who believe in monogamous relationships feel jealousy in their relationships with their kids.  

When parents raise children, the expectation is that some day their kids will grow up, leave home, get married, have kids, and create families of their own.  Having one's children reach these goals is a sign of good parenting ... that you've done your job right.  

But hasn't anyone noticed the wordage used to describe this situation?  Fathers "give their daughters away" at the wedding.  They walk their little girls down the aisle, and when the preacher says "Who here gives this woman to this man", the father or the parents say "I do" and place the young lady's hand in the hand of her prospective groom, who then promises to take care of her for the rest of her life.

And don't think fathers have cornered the market on this.  There are all kinds of stories about "mama's boys" and jokes about cutting the apron strings.  The fact is that parents feel a sense of loss when their children take a romantic partner, or when they show signs of independence and change the nature of their relationship from the previous caregiving nature to a more adult relationship.

Parents feel loss and jealousy for their children.  They also feel compersion.  Many times, they feel both these emotions at the same time.  Parents (good ones, anyway) want their children to grow up and find mates.  They are genuinely happy for them when they meet someone who makes them happy.  Funny, so do poly people feel about their partners when they find someone who contributes to their happiness.  But parents are also genuinely saddened by a sense of loss and jealousy at this same occurance.  They can feel "replaced" as The Man or The Woman who once was their child's whole world, when the child is now an adult and has made a whole new world that revolves around this stranger.

Parents know that the relationship they have with their children is not the same kind of relationship that their adult-child now has with their romantic partner.  They might intellectually know that this new person can't actually replace them in their child's life.  Yet, parents still suffer from feelings of loss and jealousy when their children explore other relationships outside the family.  SEX HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.  These are emotional connections we're talking about here.  And parent-child relationships are certainly emotional connections.

So, what brought this on?  I'm glad you asked that.  You see, I knew about this strange jealousy phenomenon between parents and children, but not having had children of my own, and being somewhat of a stranger to the emotion jealousy myself, it's really hard to come up with an argument that makes sense to someone else who has had one or both.

But they've done it for me.

There is a new country song on the radio right now.  It's called "I Loved Her First" and I think it very aptly describes the feelings of co-existing compersion and jealousy that a parent feels for his child.  The fact that this song gets so much airtime, has been requested so often, and in fact is #1 on the country charts, means that there are lots of listeners who like the song.  Usually, people like songs that "speak" to them, that resonate, that they can empathize with.  That means that lots of people empathize with this song.  That means that lots of people understand what the singer is going through.  This means a lot of people feel jealousy about their kids:

Look at the two of you dancing that way
Lost in the moment and each others face
So much in love you're alone in this place
Like there's nobody else in the world
I was enough for her not long ago
I was her number one
She told me so
And she still means the world to me
Just so you know
So be careful when you hold my girl
Time changes everything
Life must go on
And I'm not gonna stand in your way

But I loved her first and I held her first
And a place in my heart will always be hers
From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
And I prayed that she'd find you someday
But it still hard to give her away
I loved her first

How could that beautiful women with you
Be the same freckle face kid that I knew
The one that I read all those fairy tales to
And tucked into bed all those nights
And I knew the first time I saw you with her
It was only a matter of time

But I loved her first and I held her first
And a place in my heart will always be hers
From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
And I prayed that she'd find you someday
But its still hard to give her away
I loved her first

From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
Someday you might know what I'm going through
When a miracle smiles up at you
I loved her first

Watch on YouTube

Parents know their children are not interchangeable.  Parents know they can fully love one child, and fully love a second child, and they are not taking love away from one to give to another.  Parents know that desiring a second child is not because the first one is "not enough".  Parents know that losing one child is not made easier by having another.  Parents ALSO know the feelings of loss and jealousy when their children grow up and meet partners of their own.

It's not about sex.  It's about emotional connections.  It's no different from polyamory.  Parents feel the same variety of complex emotions with their children.  You have lost the right to argue with me about polyamory.  You feel the same things I do.  The only difference is that I do not put a cap on my ability to love adults.  You do.  

 

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Comments

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

Must be the water 'round here, 'cause I hear that one all the time too

[leora.livejournal.com]

But don't you also hear that most people think that if you're in a serious, commited relationship and have an ongoing strong emotional, romantic attachment to someone else, but don't have sex that it is still cheating?

Some people consider that more cheating than a meaningless one night stand.

People already do separate the sex and the emotions.

[joreth]

I get that much much less often. Then again, those same people attach "sex" with the word "romantic"

[leora.livejournal.com]

Well, all I can say is bleh.

That and, I think it helps that I'm generally talking to people who like me and want to understand me. They're not starting from the premise that I am evil, but from the premise that a decent person seems to support and do something that they always thought was indecent. So, they're trying to understand and reconcile that. I don't generally go around trying to convert random people. Or spend much time around people who don't value me.

I did go through an evangelical atheist phase, but I'm trying to put that behind me.

[joreth]

:-) I get questioned a lot at work, and the nature of my work takes me into contact with a lot of people I wouldn't choose to hang around if I weren't there for another reason ... namely a paycheck. Since I'm out at work, and I wear my polypendant, and I do have some friends who are co-workers, the subject of my lovelife comes up all the time. I don't necessarily try to convert anyone anymore, since I think it's a waste of time, but when people approach me with accusations veiled as questions, I answer. This is some of the shit I deal with.

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

Sometimes
Not always
And the assumption there is that it will LEAD to sex
Love & physical intimacy being tightly entwined is part of the ery unhealthy "mindset of monogamy" I am always railing against. Did you see tacit's post about it?

[leora.livejournal.com]

Probably not before. I just went to tacit's journal and read several entries though. Do you mean this one? A good post. It reminds me of some of my own earlier rantings on subjects like Pascal's Wager (that thing is so flawed that I cannot understand why anyone takes it seriously). And what reminds me of it is that it sounds like the tired but well-thought out argument of someone who keeps being faced with a ridiculous argument that is obviously flawed, but tons of people around them seem to think has merit. Which is what this is and what many of my writings are too, because alas, there are too many ridiculous arguments that for no apparent reason many people take seriously.

Which I think means that I'm just very fortunate. These days, I don't face many of those. I live in a liberal bubble, surrounded mostly by friends, and I don't get exposed much to the general media. I don't have television broadcasting, but do have netflix. That sort of thing. It does make my life have much less annoyance of that sort in it. Although I probably have enough annoyance in other areas to balance that out. However, having just seen a Christmas play, I can totally empathize with the frustration and overwhelmingnes sof everyone believing stupid things. They told the little girl that if she just believed with her whole heart, anything she believed would come true. I cannot tell you how much I wanted to smack people. She believed her daddy would come home from the war in time for Christmas - and he did. *smite* *smite* *smite* It makes me want to reread The Little Princess. Don't watch the movies, they sugarcoat it all. But the book is about a little girl who actually is strong enough to face reality, and then it's about the things she does both when she is privileged and powerful and then when she is poor, weak, and life totally sucks.

On the up side, I do think poly is at its baby steps for being accepted. Which means it will take a long time, and there will be much horrible prejudice and hatred before it succeeds. But I think it'll make it. Who knows, maybe even within my lifetime. There are certainly people alive today who would never have imagined homosexuality being nearly as accepted as it is now. I know that it isn't all that accepted now... but my father was born in 1929, and think about all the progress on racial equality, sexual equality, and orientation equality since then. People predict about the future that we will overestimate the effects of technological change and underestimate the effects of social change. Of course, predictions about the future suck, but that one is based on previous predictions. :)

Yeah, I'm rambling.

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

It's ok, I get the ramble.
And yeah, outside the bubble the idiocy and tired arguments are rampant.