The Polyamorous Misanthrope

Sex is only meaningful when you’re into having a long-term, committed relationship, right? It’s what polyamory is about, right? Committed relationships. We frown on people who “just have sex”.

That, my dears, is so much horse elbows.

First of all, there’s no such thing as “just sex”. That’s a lie adulterers try to tell to wiggle out of their perfidy, to make it seem as if the treachery really weren’t so.

Sex is always and forever tied up the heart and soul of who we are as people. It can be a power thing, a revenge thing, a sharing thing, an expression of soul, a demand of ego, a simple act of generosity and kindness. It can be compassionate, cruel, promoting of life and growth, or base and destructive.

It’s never meaningless. It’s too core to what it is to be human.

The mistake comes in, I think, when we throw a holy aura around some sexual relationships and not others — when we try to differentiate the specialness of one relationship over another in terms of sex.

I should be kinder than to batter your eyes with one of my infrequent attacks of poetry, but.. Well, I’m not.

Fuck the Fairy Tales

They can go to hell

With their “Happily Ever Afters”
And their endless repetitions of One True Love.

Worse than a lie
It’s a poisoned apple so shiny and lovely
That will choke you and leave you cold encased in glass.

The reality is that all Love is True
Or no Love is.

The glass slipper will shatter and slice
Your tender feet until you cannot take a step.

But in the field where your hands callus from the plow
The corn grows and falls in harvest.
Never forever

But…

The reality nourishes in a way
That no gingerbread house ever could.

The same could be said of sex. All sex is meaningful, or no sex is.

The thing is, sometimes the meaning is good — really good. Sometimes it’s not.

People develop their own touchstones for this. While I think “true love” and the whole drama nonsense is a bad one, there are things that can tell you if you’re on the right path.

For me, there is a sense of gratitude. Not as in, “Oh dear God, thank you for deigning to have sex with me.” That’s not very respectful of one’s self, after all. It’s more of a sense of, “I respect me and my individual self, and respect you and your individual self, and here we are sharing this sweet and human thing, isn’t it wonderful? Thank you for that!”

Proposals of contract? Promises of always and forever? You don’t need ‘em.

It’s never meaningless. And when you’re honest with yourself, you’re ensuring the meaning is good.