Poly-Alterous Gray-Ace, Just Saying Hello And Summarizing My "Situation" If You Want To Call It That

TheOtherFisherman

TheOtherFisherman

New member
I'm 28. Very little relationship anything in terms of experience. A lot of confusion. A lot of searching and a lot of daydreaming. I'm polyamorous and I'm a gray-ace if you're familiar with that. My intimate life is poly and open, that much can be said.

Where I run into difficulty is that my intersectionality extends from there into things people judge me for out of exception. They say, "Well, Jesus said not to judge but I'm sure he'd make an exception for that." And that's me, I'm the exception, and polyamory is a part of that experience. I just want it to be easy and unweird. I hate the cloak and dagger. Why can't some people just exist in a comfortable emotional space with one another where there's no jealousy? Some of us have that in our soul, I believe.

So it's a soul situation, to summarize I guess, if that makes any sense. My nickname is Fisherman, but that username is already taken so I'm TheOtherFisherman.

Oh also, to explain the "alterous", I don't feel platonic or romantic attraction, just this third kind of element. I've been having trouble finding people who are on my wavelength. I call it "poly-alterous".
 
Hi Fisherman, and welcome.

What's your daydream? Do you have a particular style of polyamory that would super suit you?
 
Evie said:
Hi Fisherman, and welcome.

What's your daydream? Do you have a particular style of polyamory that would super suit you?
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My daydream is just to be at peace with people in light of being poly. I come from such a strict mono-mono-mono culture, even with people I know who are more like friends, it's hard to move in the direction of multiple axes of relations. I've had a long history of poly culture presenting itself as an alternative in my life, and for years I took the default position of opposition to it. But that position weakened and I found myself saying a lot "I love women" but in a way that just meant I love all women, and social pressures press on that way that I feel it, and it causes me discomfort. My daydream is just to find people physically out in the world, not strictly on the internet (no offense intended) who aren't necessarily polyamorous but who are in that headspace of "you know, this is an honorable life you're talking about and I want to actively help you live it". I don't want to be explicit about fantasies or whatnot, god no, not even in my own head. I just want to shift my locale in the map of society where I can find real communities that know how to encourage some kind of healthy way of being poly, and starting from the very beginning : my own innocence. That initial innocence is my daydream. I don't want to feel dirty anymore.
 
I understand feeling "dirty" in a mono culture. It sounds like you're surrounded by so-called conservative Christians, but it's possible to feel dirty or wrong for having poly feelings, even in a more liberal atmosphere. But that is your best bet: move to a progressive city or at least the suburbs of one. That will help a lot in meeting like-minded people in real life, not just on the internet.
 
Greetings TheOtherFisherman,
Welcome to our forum. Please feel free to lurk, browse, etc.
You might find the following thread helpful: Poly-Friendly Cities.

It is hard to be poly in a mono world. So many people will judge you for it, and your own mono conditioning will interfere with your ability to be at peace about poly. I think it will help if you participate a lot on these boards. Read and see what calls to you. Post questions along the way. We're here to help. I'm glad you could join us!

Sincerely,
Kevin T., "official greeter" :)

Notes:

There's a *lot* of good info in Golden Nuggets. Have a look!

Please read through the guidelines if you haven't already.

Note: You needn't read every reply to your posts, especially if someone posts in a disagreeable way. Given the size and scope of the site it's hard not to run into the occasional disagreeable person. Please contact the mods if you do (or if you see any spam), and you can block the person if you want.

If you have any questions about the board itself, please private-message a mod and they'll do their best to help.

Welcome aboard!
 
Magdlyn said:
I understand feeling "dirty" in a mono culture. It sounds like you're surrounded by so-called conservative Christians, but it's possible to feel dirty or wrong for having poly feelings, even in a more liberal atmosphere. But that is your best bet: move to a progressive city or at least the suburbs of one. That will help a lot in meeting like-minded people in real life, not just on the internet.
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Yeah, my whole family is conservative christians, and the community I live in is, at most, moderate/centrist christians. I used to live in Seattle, so I'm separated from all of Seattle friends, who weren't even that accepting of polyamory and all got into numerous monogamous relationships by now anyway all these years after high school.

I'll be honest. I have very little explicit relationship experience. All I have is the following :
In high school, I would take girls out to "hang out", dozens of them, one by one, and it would be very innocuous I suppose you could say. I mean one of my neighbors I would go watch the sunset with in our neighborhood at a lookout and we co-wrote a song together, and she came alone to my bedroom a lot, but we never did anything. There were all these other girls I would just find myself eloping with all over Seattle mostly from my high school. It felt underground, kind of cloak and dagger. I wonder now how it looked to people. I was very popular in high school and in middle school. One girl had a huge crush on me and handed me a love letter standing in line for the cafeteria, and I rejected her because my evangelical mom said that I shouldn't go on any dates until I reached college. Women were constantly making moves on me, and now I know I'm poly it's sad looking back. And now I'm too poor to move from this quite conservative small town. And there was one girl who said she loved me and insisted upon it later on, but it was made kind of unclear what was meant by it. For years, we were kind of going steady or something and at the same time I was seeing all of these other women, never doing anything sexual, just eloping. She was polyamorous and bisexual for a while with a few different people and one day she asked me what I thought about polyamory and I told her what I thought at the time, that I thought it was unfair to the people involved (which I don't necessarily think anymore, I think that it can be done responsibly). I thought she was my soulmate, and maybe I've always felt the strongest about her, but since we stopped talking I've felt so much for so many other women.

Like I said, I'm 28 years old now.
 
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You have certainly had some interesting experiences. You didn't always approve of poly, was your acceptance of poly a recent development?
 
kdt26417 said:
You have certainly had some interesting experiences. You didn't always approve of poly, was your acceptance of poly a recent development?
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In about 2013 or 2014 I experienced a shift in how I felt about it. So it's not recent in the sense of weeks or months, but I still feel new to it. Throughout this period, I've gone back and forth in my head, but that back-and-forth has gradually died down. Now I'm just stuck with, primarily, my family's conservative evangelical-ish christian expectations, let alone the broader more universal and basic expectations of western society. I'm a north american west coast creature. Some of my influence is canadian having lived in Seattle for the vast majority of my upbringing and made regular trips to places in British Columbia.
 
Christian USA really does do a number on its kids! I read so many of your upbringing stories and it...bothers me. I was brought up going to an Anglican church every Sunday, until I was old enough to choose for myself and I chose the local Baptists because the music was more fun and the youth group more interesting. I wonder if you guys would even recognise it as Baptist. Oh well.

It was my Mum who first said to me that I may want to rethink the whole, "no sex before marriage" thing. She also told me not to expect one person to be everything for me. She largely meant maintain my friends group, but then since I started having sex, I generally preferred to have sex with friends, so, yeah...

Fisherman, I really hope you can find a way out of your religious constructions and constrictions. I honestly wish I could fund you into a healthier environment, but alas, I do not have those resources.

I sometimes wonder if it was true that back in the early days of youth subculture (largely, the 50s) that it was pretty common to date (without getting too physical) a number of people and it took a while to go steady, or have western cultures always seem to have been "going steady" from the first kiss. I used to say over and over again as a teen that I didn't want labels (post my first boyfriend, who made me realise I didn't want boyfriends lol).

I live in a society where at least my generation on down is largely, "you do you, so long as you aren't going to endanger yourself or someone else". Not entirely, but significantly.

On that soulmate note, funny how the older you get, the more soulmates you meet...

I honestly wish you all the best for your growth and happiness, I hope you reach a place of personal authenticity. If you are looking for local poly meetup groups post vaccination, I believe Facebook is largely where these things get organised. If you're worried about "outing" then consider a second account.
 
I sometimes wonder if it was true that back in the early days of youth subculture (largely, the 50s) that it was pretty common to date (without getting too physical) a number of people, and it took a while to go steady, or have western cultures always seem to have been "going steady" from the first kiss?
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In my era (born in 1955), by the time I started dating, it was common to just have one bf at a time. (If you had a gf, you didn't talk about it much in the early '70s!) I have watched old TV shows from the mid '60s, like Gidget, where she has several bfs at a time. She has one big love, Moondoggie, and he's at college, so she's casually dating a bunch of high school guys. There's one episode where 2 or 3 guys invite her to the same dance, and she accepts them all, and hilarity ensues trying to keep them apart. What a whore! lol

I never knew anyone who was dating more than one person at a time back then, unless they were "cheating." Serial monogamy was where it was at. Even if you only dated someone for a week, if they asked you out, and you went, that was that. You couldn't tell them you were interested in anyone else, or seeing anyone else.

In my summer between freshman and sophomore years of college (1974) I did do the Gidget thing. I had a bf back in college town, Rich, and I dated 3 other guys at home, Tom A, Tom K and Tony. I wasn't shagging Tony, but I was shagging the others. I did "fool around" with Tony. I don't think I told anyone about the others, since no one asked lol This was my true nature, and it's too bad I met my husband to be that fall, and he insisted I be his "one and only" after just a few weeks, and I wanted to keep him, so I agreed. Sigh... My mistake and regret. I just wasn't that much of a rebel.
 
Serial monogamy was where it was at. Even if you only dated someone for a week, if they asked you out, and you went, that was that. You couldn't tell them you were interested in anyone else, or seeing anyone else.
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That rings familiar with my youth culture, and that of today's youth, too.
 
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