Polyamory and Mental Illness: New Blog Series

Yeah, I think you're fine to post notices of new links to your series; it's certainly poly-related (and not selling anything either). I suppose you could ask the mods if it's okay, though I'm betting they'd be fine with it.
 
The woman I opened up my marriage to be with had all the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I was with her 5 months, and I'm still shaken up by it nearly 3 yrs later. I have never experienced a break up so harsh and painful. She really scrambled my eggs. She used "poly" as an excuse to openly triangulate her lovers, to disappear for weeks at a time, to be as emotionally abusive as she liked because if I didn't like it, I could just go be with someone else.

It made me wonder how many Cluster B's abuse polyamory as an excuse to behave in ways they'd have to hide if they were mono.
 
I think it all comes down to whether the person's willing to admit that they have a problem and need help. Not likely to happen with a narcissist. :(
 
My experiece has been similar to kdt's. People who are willing to do the work and take responsibility for their illness can do well in any kind of relationship (with the right partners, anyway), people who are not willing to take responsibility and use their mental illness as an excuse for the way they treat people will destroy any relationship. In monogamy it will be that their jealousy and control need to be catered to because "you're my other half and if you really loved me you wouldn't hurt me this way." in poly it becomes "I don't need to be considerate of your needs because poly, that's why" and for far, far to many people, it ends up being both at the same time.
 
The woman I opened up my marriage to be with had all the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I was with her 5 months, and I'm still shaken up by it nearly 3 yrs later. I have never experienced a break up so harsh and painful. She really scrambled my eggs. She used "poly" as an excuse to openly triangulate her lovers, to disappear for weeks at a time, to be as emotionally abusive as she liked because if I didn't like it, I could just go be with someone else.

It made me wonder how many Cluster B's abuse polyamory as an excuse to behave in ways they'd have to hide if they were mono.

There is a helpful discussion about that in this current thread, How Much is Too Much?

http://www.polyamory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73745
 
I think people often have times when they just need to be heard.
 
KTD,

Yeah, everyone needs to be heard sometimes, but I think a lot of people just plain don't realize how refusing to hear a mentally ill person in the middle of a crisis can just make things a thousand time worse.

Or maybe I've just had some particularly bad experiencing in that area *shrug*.
 
I dealt with depression while in and out of our 38 year triad. It got much worse after it ended though. Our shared girlfriend was a sadist to my masochist and when it ended, my depression got worse. Seems that BDSM is often the refuge of people suffering depression according to my doctor. I can believe that as it was an escape and stress reliever for me. Since treatment began I no longer desire the extreme S&M activities I once did. There was a time when I could not orgasm without being in pain. Now things are back to normal. In a way, a poly triad itself was not a problem. The fact that our third sexually dominated us was.
 
Hello guys! I'm not trying to be a troll here but having some background in internet marketing strategy, SEO, and mass psychology, the thread subject, imho, is a subtle disservice to the polyamory movement. I know it's not intentional but it can be worded more positively. Relating the two keywords, pol*amory and m*ntal *llness is just strengthening the negative stereotype of polyamory among the many users of the internet who may casually google these words but who will just skim the index results without reading the articles or posts in depth. I hope I'm not alone in this observation. Just thinking for the greater good. Peace out.
 
I have no problem with the thread subject title. It is accurate and states what the thread is about. We don't have to be constantly selling/marketing polyamory. It is okay to admit that polyamory has its difficulties, just like monogamy and many other things in life. If people want to jump to conclusions without studying the subject, I guess that's what they'll have to do. I like Jessica's honesty.
 
I work in online marketing professionally. I chose to relate polyamory and mental illness specifically and intentionally because I wanted my audience (poly folk) to be able to find my blogs on the topic quickly and easily. Given the response I got to the first post in the series (20 times my usual views) this is a topic many people in the poly community needed to see addressed. I'm in the 'business' of addressing the needs of the poly community, not hiding our warts just in case some mono folk might get the wrong idea.

That said, have you googled Polyamory and mental illness? Obviously google shapes the search results to the individual, but when I go incognito (admittly of limited use in getting "unbiased" search results), I get a couple listings from my blog, the reddit version of this thread, a few forum posts and person blogs from other people.

Halfway down the page there's "Why I'm No Longer Poly" from Boldy Go--if you want to talk about publicity that is bad for polyamory go read that blog post. I don't agree with everything the author says, but definitely hits a few nails on the head about problems in the poly community. And down at the bottom a couple things like "5 ways polyamory can fail" from Psychology Today and "Poly People I can do with out" from Heartless Bitches International--whose description includes "Sadly, far too many people suffering from mental illnesses are drawn to poly..."

Gotta say, if my posts about
Opening Up About Mental Illness - Polyamory on Purpose
polyamoryonpurpose.com/opening-up-about-mental-illness/
Apr 5, 2015 - This week we're going to look at the whens and hows of telling poly partners about mental illness. If you don't have mental illness yourself, stick ...

Suddenly doesn't look like a bad marketing deal.

It's like I said on the PLN a few months ago when I stumbled across the top Google post for "polyamory hurts kids"--people will be googling stuff, and if we don't get our voices at the top, other people, people who are not our friends, will.

So while my focus was reaching poly folk who need these blogs by making my posts easily Googleable, I'm totally okay with any mono folk who happen to stumble across them as well.
 
For anyone interest, the top post on polyamory hurts kids used to be this gem by conservative "psychologist" Dr. Ruskin (in quotes b/c I asked folks on the PolyResearchers if there was any research behind her claims, and a couple of folks got interested in her credentials. They didn't find much.)
www.drkarenruskin.com/polyamory-not-healthy-for-children/

Today when I google polyamory hurts kids incognito the top four posts are three of mine and one by Dr. Eli Sheff. Definite improvement, IMO
 
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