complicated relationships

[beige_alert]

I always thought that a poly group marriage sounded really complicated, but Joyce has been telling me about the relationship train wrecks that various members of her family have been having while pretending to be monogamous, and now two husbands, a wife, and a wife-in-law seems downright simple by comparison.

Moral of the story: If you are not being monogamous, don’t pretend! (And if you can’t be good, be careful, and if you can’t be careful, try to keep it down to five or six verses.)

Comments

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that "family" seems to mean small children and the parents of small children. I don't belong to a family, apparently, being a grown-up and not having any children. I've also noticed that every discussion of taxes and benefits revolves around a hypothetical "typical" family of four that does not describe me nor anyone who I know well enough to know their family situation. They never give four or five examples to cover a wider range of possibilities. That "typical" family is often chosen with great care to best show off the proposal being advanced and isn't actually very typical at all.

The relationship expectations of the people around me have perhaps been less traditional than average. My mother married a man 20 years older than her (and thus single until he was in his mid-forties), and so does not find it especially odd that I tend to date older women. In college one of my girlfriends joked that since we seemed to be the only heterosexuals in our group of friends maybe we should start a support group for heterosexuals. She openly maintained some erotic contact some of her other friends. A long-time friend and (on and off) lover is in one of those complex poly marriages. I know a few other poly people, and this very small sample seems to have had as much success with their relationships as anyone else. I've been fairly monogamous myself, but, as mentioned above, not all my partners have been, which hasn't been a problem for me. Of all my friends in the not-a-sexual-partner category that I trade hugs and back rubs with, the one I have the most physical contact with is a gay man.

That's all totally average, right?

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

It's true that the 'typical' family is less common than it used to be. Mine is *not* typical, but I'm quite monogamous.