Gather ye ’round little poly chilluns, ’cause Mama Java’s about to go off yet again. (I’m beginning to suspect peri-menopause…)
What the unholy fuck is up with you nutcases and “Spiritually Polyamorous” or “Platonically Polyamorous”?
What’s wrong with the good, old-fashioned word for it:
Friends
I mean, really people, what’s with the “special” words and terms? Are you afraid that’s not good enough for you? Why in hell would you want to insult the concept of friendship by saying that if you don’t use a special word for the relationship, then relationship is somehow diminished? I don’t know about you, but for me, friendship is pretty damned valuable. If I call you my friend, buddy, I value the relationship.
I have news for you guys. While I concede that polyamory is not all about sex or romance, sex and romance are most certainly part of it.
I have a friend. I think the world of this person — funny, smart, amazingly wise about the human condition. We’re both poly, but ya know what? We’re friends. Not “just friends” as if things are diminished. We’re friends — and that’s a valuable thing!
I think of there is no sex or romance involved, no, it’s not a poly relationship. It might be important. You might treasure it. And you know what, treasuring your relationships, sexual or not is good. Loving someone is never a bad thing to do! You don’t need a special word to make it “more important”. Friends is good. Honest. Even when you’re really, really close.
I have a strong dislike of the contortions to try to make it seem like we’re “not bad” in the eyes of the monogamous because “it isn’t ABOUT sex”.
NO relationship is ever about just one thing. Any monogamously married person with a successful relationship would agree that his marriage is not ABOUT sex. The thing is, it’s not about “not sex”, either. There is that component.
I have friends that I love very much. We use the phrase “I love you” to each other and by God we mean it. But there’s no romantic component. These aren’t people I would kiss or “go further” with. But love. Yes. Deeply. These are people I know down into their bones, know their foibles and faults, as well as their triumphs and strengths and I love them. I just love them. No big deal. Nothing dramatic.
I’m not weird or unusual in this. I’m hardly some specially-evolved loving being. These are things that any healthy adult experiences. It’s… it’s so normal.
It’s why things like “emotionally poly” or “platonically poly” really frustrate me. What the hell has happened to the very simple, natural human concept of “love” that we need to tie it in to a movement that by god did have its genesis in multiple loving sexual partners? Has our view of something so natural and human gotten that whacked that we need something special and dramatic when we love our friends? To me, it smacks of needing to be a special little snowflake 1. You’re not. Honest. There’s very little in love and romance that’s not part of the human condition –really.
But, it’s a good part of the human condition. Celebrate it, sure.
Just cut it with the dramatic language to make it something it ain’t, ‘kay?
1 I’d attribute that expression if I could. I’ve seen it running around in a few places and I really love it!
I believe “special snowflake” comes from a Lewis Black standup routine. He was trying to come up with a better metaphor for how different everyone is from one another and failed, and lamely went with “we’re all…snowflakes.” He groaned, the audience groaned, and it promptly turned into a running gag.
But anyway. Kick-ass article, as always. Thanks!
I’m so delighted with this post, it feels orgasmic. Really! You’ve put into words the feelings I get when I read about how it isn’t about the sex.
Oh hell yeah !
I absolutely agree! I get so tired of the people you mention. I just don’t think it is polyamory if a romantic relationship with sexual potential is not involved. WTF is wrong with friendship? Why do they think it’s somehow less valuable than a lover? I love my friends, and I tell them so.
I think a lot of people today should investigate the out-of-fashion concept of the romantic friendship. It’s a lovely thing.
Actually, 00goddess, you might enjoy the Wikipedia article on Platonic Love — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_love
So, basically, for you, polyamory *is* about the sex. No worries then.
Well I disagree with you on this one.
I have friends, who are friends. Love ‘em, but they are not partners.
Then I have the good old fashioned husband, to whom I made a monogamous commitment a long time ago.
Then you have my OSO (-s, past) with whom I fell in love hard. But, see husband, above. And yes it was a lot of wrangling and extra-marital sexiness that went down before we came to some agreement about what would be allowed and what wouldn’t. The choice was mine whether to stay with my husband under those rules, or leave. I chose the rules, and my OSOs of the time chose to stay given that reality.
I agree that our agreement is not full-blown polyamory. It might be romantic friendship, if romantic friendship involves hot erotic exchanges most days for 5 years. My OSOs and I certainly have expressed our sexuality together and love together and done erotic stuff I would not do with my friends, and just haven’t had certain kinds of sex.
It’s not about the feelings; it’s about the agreement. If the agreement changed, I’d be in my girlfriend’s bed in about 5 minutes, minus airport & flying time. These are NOT feelings I have for my friends. If my husband said “hey I’m good with sex with others,” I’d -tell- my friends but it wouldn’t change the relationship.
I think a lot depends on one’s definition of non-monogamy here. In my husband’s and my original marriage, a lot of what my girlfriend and I do would have been outside the bounds of monogamy. The ethical part (for me) is where the negotiating came in.
In summary: I just don’t see where you’re going to draw the line here. Orgasms? Nudity? Penetration?
Wow, I always love reading your stuff even when I disagree with it. I hope we meet someday.
“Friends” to me generally doesn’t imply romantic feelings, even if the friendship is long and strong. But as 00Goddess says, there’s also *romantic friendship,* something else again. Romantic love has a magic that “friends” just doesn’t imply. I have guy friends — but I don’t caress their hair, hold their hands, drift into reveries and get moo-eyed about them when we’re apart. A romantic friendship is where those sorts of things happen — and that qualifies as poly in my book. Even if it’s “platonic” and “spiritual,” meaning that (for whatever reason) you don’t intend to end up in bed.
The Victorians knew about this. Christian kids who choose to wear chastity-pledge rings know about it. I first experienced it among waterbrothers. Most of us were teens, except for a 33-year-old high school teacher and his wife — and the boundaries of age and role-in-society were things that neither we nor they wanted to cross sexually. But that couple was certainly more than what “friends” would imply to most people who hear the word.
“You are not a beautiful unique snowflake. You are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world!” — Tyler Durden
Full points on this post btw.
Nice observations. One saw a similar phenomenon with bisexuality when it was the flavor of the day, though that thankfully has mostly run its course.
I have to say that I count as lovers my friends (and they wouldn’t be considered lover-like if they weren’t friends first) with whom, for one reason or another, a fully featured sexual and romantic relationship isn’t going to be (or not at this time). I suppose that takes the stretching of labels even further.
I find myself in that situation a second time. The connection is there but cannot be realized now.
Perhaps, as I think about it, I think of them as lovers because I would dearly love them to be lovers. It is less painful than accepting that though they’re beloved friends, they still remain outside the inner circle. If it were just me, I don’t think I would think “lover”. I believe it has to do with the desire for more on the part of both parties but that being tempered by other people’s needs that must come first (primary partners’ comfort levels, relationships and families in flux, etc.)
(Didn’t mean to be working out my relationship issues all over your web site…)
Does that mean we’re the flavor of the day now?
If we are the flavor of the day (and I think maybe we are), I patiently await the day that we are shoved to the back of the fridge, forgotten but not discarded. If poly is the new bi, what, do you think, will be the new poly, in 20 years or so?
I don’t need to disagree with you,
But what about when it’s grey….?
sexual energy is often not the crux of a relationship/friendship
but it can be there…..
examples:
The woman I know from high school, we fell into bed every 10-18 months or so,
definitely a romantic friendship, but not sexually oriented…..
friends i might (or do)fuck under the right circumstances
someone i love and want an ongoing connection with, sometimes sexual sometimes not…
the old friend I flash frequently just to give him a little thrill….
Someone said…
If my husband said “hey I’m good with sex with others,” I’d -tell- my friends but it wouldn’t change the relationship.
And here is where I’m at… IT DOES CHANGE THE RELATIONSHIP. I’m finding that some people simply cannot wrap their mind around someone having the freedom to engage in multiple sexual and emotional relationships, yet realizing they don’t want to do so with THEM. I have at least one person who knows I am poly who assumes his friendship is worth less because I’m not fucking him. His problem, not mine you might say… but it IS my problem as it’s changed/changing our relationship.
Otherwise — I agree with the general timbre of the article. Our society has become phobic about intimacy — whether that be on an emotional or physical level. “Friend” has been bastardized in part by the online meaning of the term — you can be a “friend” to someone simply because you’ve added them to a buddy list, blogrolled their writings, or sent them a “woo” on OKCupid. You may know nothing about them, but hey, now they are your friend! So that has made people want to differentiate the many types of friends one can have.
I would rather had the word stay the same, and we come up with new words for these slight approximations. But I don’t always get what I want.
Although I value the diversity that all these opinions provide, I have to say that to me, friendship has nothing to do with sex. Real friendship has to do with honesty and trust and two people having true intimacy. In that respect friendship is no different than what a good relationship is meant to be. Sex…is merely a bonus.
The thing is, there is two ways of looking at the “hyper-labeling” phenomon…either I’m trying to be defensive, “Seriously, I’m not a sexual freak – we’re JUST friends,” or I’m trying to be inclusive.
The problem is the language. And the problem with the language is the society in which it evolved. We were never supposed to talk about any of this stuff; so we never developed those terms to express those concepts.
Ask yourself why we use the same word “love” when we talk about parent-child love, and lover-lover love, and sibling-sibling love. Why we have a word to describe someone who has lost a spouse (widow/er), and a word to describe a child who has lost their parents (orphan), but we have no word to describe the survivor of a set of twins, or the mother who is childless. Yet we still have words to describe someone who has never wed (bachlor/spinster)
Say you are my friend, and I have just started a relationship with X, and I want a way to communicate clearly to you all that X means to me, and is coming to mean to me, and to clearly have you understand the facets of our relationship simply so you can know how important X is to my life. To be able to share with you the new joy that I have found.
Do we have a way to do that in our language? Does it matter, or change what term I should use if my relationship with X is sexual or not?
The hyper-labeling keeps coming up in each phase, and it ends up deviding us further because we end up all chosing our favorite terms for the same things, and thinking we’re special little snowflakes because we’re the only one with that particular relationship, using that term.
Why do “widows” feel connected, but gays, bis, polys and kinks feel devided?
We’re not all friends, and we can’t all be friends. “Friends” has gotten a bad rap, because it got over-used as a cover while gays struggled for acceptance, “This is my roommate friend Joe.”
How do we rattify the language to be inclusive, sharing, and better able to communicate our special and unique connections, without it being defensive and isolating?
This is a very interesting discussion. I am monogamous, but my first sexual relationship was (as I now see it) as a secondary for a polyamorous woman. At the time, I wanted to refer to her as my girlfriend, but she suggested that just using friend might be more accurate. We weren’t “just friends,” obviously, and while I saw us as lovers, she didn’t. Friends with benefits, perhaps. It’s that last term that makes me think that perhaps the term “just friends” is sometimes appropriate. Because we have terms like “romantic friends” or “friends with benefits,” the word “friends” without qualification becomes broader in connotation than what is meant by “just friends.”