And Here's The Argument

[joreth]

This started by someone's OKC journal entry about how all polyamorists are greedy and incapable of intimacy. I responded with a comment and she took it to email. Here's the exchange in full:

The Entry:

The Greedy | Mar 26

In college, my brother had a bumper sticker on his car pertaining to home ownership and the dispersement of wealth. It said "Everyone gets One before Anyone gets Two".

I feel that way about life partners. I am definitively NOT poly. And before I get attacked, Yes, I've tried it with open heart and earnestness, on more than one occasion. What makes me mental is the idea that I'm out there looking for someone I can love and trust and build a life with outside of the identity of my own independent life, as are lots of other people *who already have one at home*.

I think of this as acquisitional greed. That working on exploring a partnership has lost it's gloss, or the idea that "one person can't complete me". Whatever. YOU should complete you. A relationship with ONE other person in a qualitative way is rare gems indeed. Having that and saying "Y'know, I love X, but X and I have trouble in this one area. I'm going to KEEP going with X and find another person who satisfies me in that area." Like children amok in a candy store.

Nothing ever becomes enough, no one is ever satiated, and no heart is ever safe. Not to mention it reduces the pickings out there for those of us who have none, since I'm not willing to accept someone else's leftover pickings.

Damn - the scheduling alone hurts my head. Greedy bastards.

---

My Response:
I have a few problems with the basic ideas presented here.

1) A person can only be "acquiring" other people and therefore be "hoarding" them and be "unfair" if those people are no longer available to other people. Being poly means that my partners are still available to date you (hypothetical you), so I *can't* be greedy because I am not taking them away from anyone else.

2) The whole idea of "acquisition" and "hoarding" and such implies a property ownership that the poly people *I* know just don't have. We can't be greedy and acuiring people, by definition, because we do not see people as objects that can be acquired. My partners do not belong to me and I am not "collecting" them, I am enjoying each relationship as a unique and individual relationship that enhances my life, not as people who belong to me.

3) If someone is willing to be in a poly relationship with me, they are polyamorous and therefore *not* available to you as a monogamist even if they are *not* dating me. Being my partner doesn't take them off the market for everyone else, being themselves takes them off the market for monogomists, even if they have *no* partners at all. It's like the argument that all the gay guys are stealing the good bachelors. They're not - if a guy is willing to date another guy, he's not available to a het female anyway, no matter who he's dating at the moment.

I'm not saying that monogamy isn't a valid relationship style, or not the correct one for you, but your ideas of poly are in a completely different universe from the polyamory communities *I'm* familiar with and certainly not the kind of poly that I practice. My partners are most definately not being hoarded and I am not greedy because I only have two partners and each of them have far more partners. If anything, I'm much less greedy than a monogamist because I'm willing to share my partners with someone else. No, not willing, I encourage it. Being poly requires the exact opposite of greediness because I have to be enthusiastic about sharing my lover with someone else. Greedy people end up losing partners very quickly, and even sometimes before they get started because their reputation preceeds them.

http://www.xeromag.com/fvpoly.html
http://www.theinnbetween.net/poly1.html

---

And then she took it to email:

=====sincerelili wrote=====
Hey there. Decided to respond to the post you left me based on my journal here, since otherwise it feels like a laundry airing.

Couple of things: I started going to sci fi/ fan cons when I was 12, and by 13 I was running a department. I responded to an atmosphere of acceptance of intelligence and alternate interests, and part of what was offered in that palette was polyamory and polysexuality. So from the nascence of my sexual and amorous life, I was immersed in a culture that fully supported your views of a "more enlightened" way to partner.

I spent most of my teen and adult life trying to reconcile the ideals of polyamory with what seemed to present itself as cheap and broken ways around intimacy issues and inability to make individual connections. I thought there was something wrong with me for years in that these arrangements didn't make me happy. What changed for me was when I finally accepted that I didn't have to allow other people's determinations to push me towards one behavior or another. And I realized that while I'd accepted other people's desires to flirt and run, I hadn't ever had a partnership that was stable enough to withstand real life circumstances. So I'm done with it.

Yes, the idea of acquisition renders people into objects and uncomfortable concepts of ownership. But if there isn't a regard for the emotional health of the other partner (or partners) in this coupling, then the members are automatically objectifying the other person. Which I no longer accept. And I do feel that that's the terms I've always been offered.

So maybe you take umbrage at my language choices or viewpoint, but in 23 years of being inculcated that polyamory was the better choice, I've simply never seen it supported in a way where I wasn't badly hurt or left dangling.

-Eden

=====Joreth wrote=====
I don't like it when people claim that poly is "more enlightened". There are plenty of ways to screw up in poly, it doesn't make anyone a better person automatically.

And my point was that in MY experiences, there is no objectification and no lack of emotional intimacy. I'm sorry that you, personally, met people who did not offer you the emotional intimacy you desired, but my experiences with poly have been the ONLY ways to get such depth out of a relationship. My experiences with monogamy are what led to objectification, lack of concern for partner's feelings and lack of intimacy. And every poly person I know personally feels the same way about poly.

So I would prefer to see you base your opinions on those jerks you knew, rather than blasting an entire relationship model which, in theory and in some people's experiences, is exactly the opposite of what you claim it is.


=====sincerelili wrote=====
But in the same way you say that your experiences with monogamous people left you feeling objectified, you too engage in blasting an entire relationship model.

And let's face it: this forum on the journals and comments pages are not me proselytizing in the streets. This is a dating website, where I am approached all the time by poly people - far more than monogamous people - and my comments were on my profile offshot from my looking for a partner. So essentially I'm just shooting a warning shot over the bow as well as expressing my frustration and anger with the people who have continued to approach me from a world I'm simply not interested in. It's a dating site and I have the right to date whomever I chose within the parameters I set.

-Eden

=====Joreth wrote=====
I do not say that monogamy is bad. It's a perfectly valid relationship style and that is made clear by all the other poly people I know. You, however, are saying that poly is bad and all poly people are greedy. This is not a true statement. My statements about monogamy are strictly about my personal experiences and are not intended to imply that all monogamists are this way.

You do have the right to date whomever you want, that's not my issue. My issue is with you calling me greedy, which you did by stating that all polyamorists are greedy and lack depth in their relationships. You can choose not to be poly, but I take offense at you calling me names.



=====sincerelili wrote=====
I say that anyone, be they outwardly declaring themselves poly, or clandestinely having affairs, or maintaining multiple romances, is acquisitional and greedy. I didn't just single out your chosen community. I'd also like to point out that by aligning oneself with a "community", you align yourself with both good and bad traits. Thus Barack Obama separated himself from his church after his pastor made inflammatory remarks. To say that one person's attitudes defines the group is specious, but the actions of those that align themselves with the label of the group is to take responsibility for the actions of the entire group. If you chose to take offense, then realign your fidelities and be an individual who chooses to love whom you love with the ethical choices you've individually made.


=====Joreth wrote=====
The poly "community" maintains a very vocal position that we do not all have the same relationship style and we do not speak for anyone else even if they choose the label "poly". And I also maintain that I cannot possibly be greedy when I am the one sharing my partners with other people and not having multiple partners of my own. I am offended by your insults, not by the label I choose to use because your insults are not accurate of the label I choose.



=====sincerelili wrote=====
Okay then, we reach the crux of it. You're offended. Ah well. And there's the end of it. 

Comments

[scrappygeek.livejournal.com]

There is also an assumption on this person's part that "greed" is bad. She's not just talking about poly, she's putting forth an entire economic model I don't agree with. It was the first thing she mentioned - the bumper sticker.

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

Not too bright, is she?

[leora.livejournal.com]

Please let her know that there are people in the world who do not have friends, and that she should limit herself to one friend until she is sure that everyone else in the world has at least one friend.

[joreth]

So told :-D

[serolynne.livejournal.com]

And my point was that in MY experiences, there is no objectification and no lack of emotional intimacy. I'm sorry that you, personally, met people who did not offer you the emotional intimacy you desired, but my experiences with poly have been the ONLY ways to get such depth out of a relationship. My experiences with monogamy are what led to objectification, lack of concern for partner's feelings and lack of intimacy. And every poly person I know personally feels the same way about poly.

What stands out to me in this statement might be the crux of the difference between your experience and hers. You, as far as I've observed anyway, are more wired poly. Her experience seems to come from poly being a way to get needs met via different partners.

Or maybe it's that I'm personally struggling with this difference right now, in realizing that a lot of my pursuit of polyamory in the past years has been for fulfilling lacking needs in intimacy and relationship due to circumstance, and not being sure of how wired poly at the cored I might be. And thus, your statement that every poly person you know feels the same as you really stands out to me as placing values on me (as part of a being a poly person you personally know) that may not be entirely accurate at this snapshot of a time period.

[joreth]

I'm sure I exaggerated in the "every poly person I know" part, because my point was that my experiences with poly people did not include shallow "greedy" collectors. I wanted to allow for their existence while pointing out that a very large number of people who identify as poly do not do it out of "greed" to collect as many partners as possible while simultaneously removing them from access by everyone else.

[may-dryad.livejournal.com]

Well, she doesn't exactly sound like an asshole to me, just hurt and therefore irrational and unable to really hear you, which is obviously enormously frustrating. I wonder how many failed monogamous relationships it will take for her to decide that all monogamous people are bastards.

[joreth]

That's really one of my biggest problems with this situation. Monogamous people go through bad and failed and ended relationships after another, yet monogamy is never to blame for it. But they meet one person claiming to be poly who either isn't or just isn't compatible, and then the whole relationship model is bad and everyone who practices it are horrible people. That's what I wanted her to see, but I realize my responses to her are not very coherent or patient. tacit would have done a much better job.

[datan0de.livejournal.com]

I love her implication that people who are partnered seek other partners to resolve shortcomings in their current relationship, and by "love" I mean "don't assume that we're all as fucked up as the people you hook up with, bitch".

[mosthings1z.livejournal.com]

I was also irritated from the start, with the bumper sticker. If everyone gets a job and saves their money, THEN they, too, can be a homeowner. Gah.... It sounds as if the whole family is messed up. The apple probably does not fall far from the tree. Why would you expose a 12 year old to con? Um, duh. No wonder she is effed up. She was obviously not ready for that.