Search results

This thread isn't about you or about me. It's about trying to help the OP figure out her husband's response and how to deal with it. I had hoped my reaction, as a profoundly vanilla person, to recent developments in my wife's relationships might shed some light. My reaction to my wife is...

There may be something else at work in the OP's husband's response. Speaking from my own experience as a deeply vanilla person, I have struggled even to understand the point of BDSM. To me there's something alien and incomprehensible about kink. (Please don't hate on me for daring to write...

This isn't about polyamory, per se, but it's really pretty cool and worth sharing around: http://www.upworthy.com/do-i-have-your-consent-to-show-you-this-video-about-the-part-of-sex-thats-often-overlooked?c=ufb1

I came across this on the Code Switch blog on npr.org: http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/03/23/291525991/when-vanilla-was-brown-and-how-we-came-to-see-it-as-white Vanilla - the spice and its history -are not so bland as metaphorical uses of the term might suggest. Consider: Europeans...

A quick update on the state of things: The contacts I made on OKC last fall have all gone by the wayside. Just as I was about to delete my account, again, I wrote to an intriguing woman who had looked at my profile but not written. She wrote back, and we've started an enthusiastic...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/researchers-find-human-beings-naturally-evolved-to,35529/ Really, this is a spot-on satire of the tendency of evolutionary psychology to shape itself to researchers' particular interests.

Cautionary Tale It's been a while, but this showed up today: http://www.theonion.com/articles/open-relationship-gives-couple-freedom-to-emotiona,35334/

Hyperskeptic's Resolutions I have a couple of resolutions for the end of 2013. Year-End Resolution 1 I intend to change my relationship with the Internet, with the aim of leaving more time and focus for other projects, both professional and personal, and more of my attention for the people in...

Do you make New Year's resolutions? I do, but with a slight twist: I treat midnight on December 31 as a deadline rather than a start date. Otherwise, a New Year's resolution is just an excuse for putting off the effort to develop new habits. I'm starting on mine today, but it would be nice to...

Well, yeah, that might be a good place to start. Really, though, a better place to start would be just to relax a little. Breathe. I may just be reading into your description of the situation, but it strikes me that there might be some remnant of the kind of competitive relationeering that...

I really can't respond to the poll, as framed. The idea of "helping" all of "wildlife" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. For one thing, the value of a particular living thing - intrinsic or otherwise - has to be considered in relation to other values - e.g., the value of species (not the same...

Welcome to the forum. I've always found support and insight aplenty here, and hope you may do the same. That sounds about right. I suspect you'll save yourself a lot of time and heartache approaching openness with this attitude. I would say you're most of the the way there already, just...

Institutions, or The Personal and the Political I have at least one theoretical worry about the ideas in this thread. To use the label 'relationship anarchy' for an approach to relationships necessarily takes all of this out of the realm of the personal and into the realm of the political: to...

Thanks for this. It strikes me as an especially clear and direct statement of the idea. I wonder if it would be fair to summarize this take on RA in a way that might, unfortunately, come across as a slogan: relationships should be intentional, not conventional. Have to work that into a chant...

Hello, and welcome to the forum. I suppose the word one would use depends on one's own attitudes and expectations of others. So, your husband may be a generous spirit, always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, and hope for the best, or he may simply be naive, or worse. If he...

Romance Stew This brings me right back around to the line of thinking that led me to starting this thread. The thing is, 'romance' is a treacherous term for anyone who takes a radical approach to relating to other people - that is, an approach that tries to get at the roots of things -...

I see. Thanks for clarifying. I'm not sure I'd go the direction of labeling poly+RA as "true poly" . . . that seems a little heavy-handed to me, a little too much about ideological purity for my taste. But it seems we're just using the concepts differently. Again, that's all right. I would...

The Uses of Concepts Okay. It wasn't my aim in starting this thread to push the idea of RA on anyone, even on myself. I'm really only trying to see if the idea does any useful work for me as I continue to develop an unconventional way of relating to other people. If it doesn't do useful work...

Yeah, this pretty much sums it up. The label - relationship anarchy, relationship-queer, or whatever - doesn't add a lot to that. (I suddenly find myself thinking it all comes back around to Aristotle's idea of philia - friendship and/or affection.)

If the concept is useful at all - and, for me, the jury is still out - it may be most useful when used in a way that is somewhat independent of 'polyamory': it's not a substitute but a supplement. There are various approaches to polyamory, and it may be useful to have a more precise language...