Liebe Poly-Freund_Innen,
Hier sind sieben Ausschnitte von insgesamt 13 Beiträgen aus „meinem“ Zine „Juggling the Rainbow“, persönliche Berichte über nicht-monogame Beziehungen.
Wenn ihr lesen oder vertreiben wollt, wendet euch an das FLT-Cafe Kiel unter fltcafekiel@yahoo.de, weil ich noch in Neuseeland bin.
Mit Poly-Grüßen – Luca
Open Hearts and Minds: a few thoughts on polyamory (by Felicity):
[…] It is thinking about friends that made polyamory ‘click’ for me. I had always thought that you could only have ‘true’ romantic feelings for one person at a time, but I realized that just like when I make a new friend, when I meet someone that I feel attracted to, it doesn’t take away from the feelings I have for others, rather it enlarges the circle of mutual positivity and support. I have an infinite amount of love to give and to grow, and when I make a new friend I don’t have to remove an old friend from my life in order to enjoy my new friendship.
My partner and I are practicing the primary partner model. This works for us because we have a strong foundation and are committed long-term to dancing through life together. For us, a casual one-off sexual encounter is okay, but if we think that there is the possibility of entering into a relationship with someone else, we need to discuss it with each other first. Ideally this works as a checking-in process where my partner and I talk about how things are going with us, and if this new relationship is highlighting any issues we need to work through in our own relationship with each other we take this chance to make out relationship stronger.
[…]
Hannah Ho Wai Ling:
[…]So the main reason I live and choose to be in open relationships is because I can’t be in closed ones. I’ve tried many times and they don’t work for me. Saying that though, this open three and a half year relationship I’m in at the moment has not been a walk in the park. It’s been a lot of hard work. It has required infinite amounts of reflection (no matter how undesirable), honest acknowledgments of personal limitations, and a commitment to screw up and be willing to deal with the consequences and make amends. There have been many times I’ve wished I was programmed for monogamy.
Along with the expected crap I knew I would be needing deal with, such as “socialised jealousy equals love, you just have sexual issues you haven’t dealt with, it can’t work, you can’t be that serious about your partner or that into them if you’re sleeping round blah blah”, was something else unexpected that cropped up and was very difficult to sort through.
One of the biggies for me in this current open relationship was race. I’d expected all the other stuff, but I thought I had finished (so naive..) dealing with my racial inferiority and internal racism years ago. Oh the joys of living in a white centric colonial settler society means the work is never done…
We are Chinese, Cantonese from Southern China, whose migration tales wind through Malaysia also. Growing up in Aotearoa in the 80’s and 90’s there wasn’t (and still isn’t) a whole lot of media that shows Chinese people as attractive and “normal”. […]
Non-monogamy by Kerem:
[…] I think the uncomplicated and shallow place I took the concept of non-monogamy to is fucking someone else whilst in a primary relationship. I’m not very impressed with that attitude anymore (although I don’t think as a general rule it’s a bad thing.)
I feel like some of my experiences, the things I said, people that I or my partners slept with while we were in a primary relationship etc., came from a position of lack of knowledge, vocabulary, emotional maturity and/or relationship experience. They also were the result of immense attraction, emotional bonds with close friends, and a healthy sense of adventure.
I may be harsh with myself but I think I didn’t take enough responsibility for my actions. I didn’t think through their effects and consequences on other people- especially the ones I loved most.
Today I see non-monogamy as something very different: […]
First & second touch (byTaika):
I am pretty sure I was polyamorous before I realized I am queer. […]
When I was about 19 I became politically active and fell in love with M. this anarchist, pro-feminist guy. I got introduced to his living community in a former squat and there things were different from anything I had known so far. To me it literally smelled like freedom and eventually I moved in to learn how to question society’s norms and be aware of their limitations in our very personal lives. Through this I got to know terms and meaning of open relationships and M. was happy to accept me wanting to have a non-monogamous relationship because he was convinced that jealousy is a bourgeois claim of ownership over your partner and he would like to challenge that. We had a quite good theoretical concept as he said he wouldn’t need to know who I kiss or get intimate with as long as it didn’t affect or change my feelings for him.
It all went well for both of us. He was not interested in casual sex himself and I looked after my own needs, mostly I kept it confidential as there was no need to gossip. This was also the time when I had my first crush on a woman and after a bit of flip-flopping we eventually got it on. I told M. about it because he knew her and all this was so new and exciting for me that I couldn’t hold myself back and really wanted to share it. He was very supportive and positive and once we were all at the same concert he spoke to her and how they should be open about potential problems.
I was stoked how finally I had found what I wanted. A primary partner I was in love with and I could still act on my crushes, my flirt/sexual and other needs. It felt very good to be so autonomous and still so so close with someone. […]
NRE the Ultimate Aphrodisiac (by Chris):
[…] One of the main benefits of being polyamorous is that you don’t have to rely on one person for all your wants, needs and desires. If you’re feeling neglected then why not go and see another lover of yours. Of course this only works if you have another lover. I was in a steady loving relationship with one partner for a couple of years where I, only, had two short romances with other people, while she had two other ongoing lovers. I believe this kind of relationship could work, however I don’t recommend it. She was ‘spread too thin’ and I was too concentrated on her, which created a negative imbalance.
[…]
Sarah Tea-Rex:
[…] But here I was crushing on this poly girl. I got to know her more and realized that I actually really liked her. We flirted a lot. Eventually we talked about how we felt and I was honest about my misgivings with polyamory. She told me about her several lovers and her experiences with polyamory.
She invited me to go dancing with her- dancing with her and her other lovers and her lovers lovers and their lovers lovers. I thought the whole situation was a little hilarious, absurd and awesome. I had never seen a queer poly community so honest and open. It was just a group of friends laughing together with seemingly little competition, animosity, or awkwardness between them.
That’s what made me question the routes of where my “monogs girl” identity had come from. It seemed like polyamory was made to work here in ways it never did for me in Montreal. I thought to myself that maybe there really aren’t any rules and there’s actually a huge range of relationship styles which suit us depending on the people we’re with and the situations we’re in. Maybe I had boxed myself into monogamy too quickly after only a couple of experiences with poly-dating. Instead of lumping myself under some pre-determined (and dare I say, capitalist) relationship script I could try to define each relationship on its own terms, each time.
[…]
Molly & Jaq (by Emily):
About three years ago I wrote an article about polyamory, proclaiming that monogamous relationships were mostly all doomed to suffocation and drudgery. At that time I was seeing three people, two of whom had been or were seeing other people while I was seeing them. There was a long period in my life where I was partnered up to one person, a serial monogamist so to speak. Those men isolated me, made me feel second-place and at times controlled and abused me. New polyamorous relationships became a way of finally breaking free of those constrained relationships and making decisions on what I actually wanted and needed in an intimate relationship, while not having to become some dickhead oppressor myself. Ironically I have now been with my current partner for almost three years, the last two of those years without having other partners, and now we are having a baby soon and planing to build a house and, well, create a life together. The whole thing has been a bit of a roundabout journey for me.
[…]