Does polyamory require independence ?

[FallenAngelina]

polyamorous people have stand-ins when their "main" partner can't be there because they have other aspects to their life that need attending.

I wonder if your friend is aware that poly people are not having sex and skipping around hand in hand with partners 24/7. Some of us are just regular folks with lots of regular stuff to do. Some of us even work!

 

[SEASONEDpolyAgain]

I wonder if your friend is aware that poly people are not having sex and skipping around hand in hand with partners 24/7. Some of us are just regular folks with lots of regular stuff to do. Some of us even work!

I don't think she so much mean physical support as emotional support. If I'm going through something major but my nesting partner is away tending to his terminally ill mother, I can turn to my other partners for the specific type of support one usually gets from a partner. I can also get support from friends but it an advantage to have more than one partner in a crisis. Where your crisis is also their crisis.

 

[FallenAngelina]

I don't think she so much mean physical support as emotional support.

I know what she meant. In my experience, partners don't stand in for one another and fill holes. Love doesn't work that way. One partner doesn't fill the "need bucket" during a rough patch while the other is off tending to others. If one partner can't be there, that partner is missed. If anything, poly requires a person to be much more emotionally self-sufficient than monogamy calls for. In poly, we often don't have our beloveds at our beck and call (as is often assumed in monogamy) and if relationships are to last, we must be proficient at keeping the "need" to a minimum. The view that one partner can fill an emotional need when another can't be there is a view that looks at Love as a commodity. In poly, we know that Love is unlimited but also unique to each person. Hopefully, we also know that going around needing people (instead of simply enjoying people) to regularly fill us is one step shy of codependence. Monogamy can be a fertile breeding ground for crippling emotional dependence and expectation.