Before getting started, remember that my RL experience is nearly nonexistent: some months with a boyfriend (we even touched a bit!) and, some years later, the men that now is my husband. So I am not the right one to talk about RL poliamory, but after three years practicing it at SL, I have learned a pair of things, mostly by the painful way of test and error.
Lately I have been asked a lot about it, up to a point like I feel like a kind of awkward guru, but a good point is that my experience has been coalesced into three simple rules:
- Love: I am not going to talk about love again, thank you, but I want to note that it is essential for any kind of relation. There is also a mistake about polyamory and sex. While poly relations allows sexual freedom (up to a point, at least) and having sex with somebody may be sharing a nice moment, that doesn’t make him/her part of that relation; it needs to be tied with love.
- Care: It is interesting how hard is to distinguish it from love, since they are usually together, but they are different. For example a new love is exciting and absorbent, but you still have to care for your other partners so they don’t suffer because it. And when one of your partners fell in love, you should care enough to keep a bit out of the way until their feelings quieten a bit (if they ever do *winks*).
- Confidence: For me this is a vital rule that most times gets overlooked. I need to know that if I say something wrong, if I do something silly, my partners will never believe that I deliberately tried to hurt them. I need them to have enough faith on me to tell me anything they need, anything about how they feel, even if I can find it hard to swallow. But beware, confidence doesn’t mean pure truth; while some lies may mean an irremediable breach of trust, sometimes little white lies may help to keep a relation steady.
Poliamory is incredible complex and it would be silly to think you can face it only with a set of rules, but they may help if you are imaginative. For example, trying to integrate all of your partners into a loving family is a recipe for disaster, since it is almost impossible that all they are compatible, but when two of them manage to become lovers it is very sweet even if that makes you feel sometimes like a spare wheel… love should make you happy for them, care should help them into their starting relation, and confidence should give you the faith to know you aren’t going to be loved less.
Is “no anal” also one of your rules? What about donkey punching, do your rules say anything about that?
O.o Now that’s an odd reply.. Wonder what that’s all about.
Ahem.. anyways… That subject is so very hard to put any kind of rules on.. It almost needs to be taken on a case by case basis.
One thing I’d like to add is on jealousy.. It is something that has no place in a polyamorus situation.
I’m not talking about the light jealousy that makes you want to pounce your partner next time you see them and make your presence known… >.>
I’m talking about the hard jealousy that eats away at the relationship, that erodes trust and can even eat away at love. That kind of jealousy is something that needs to be stifled, quelled as much as possible. And if the relationship is truly Loving, truly polyamorus, it shouldn’t even rear it’s ugly head. Trust and care take care of that, as you know those partners that have other loves will all come back, will still want those lovely snuggle times with you. ^^
/me smiles. Only case by case can be maddening if you hadn’t some guidelines (I admit the word “rules” was too strong).
I keep forgotting about jealousy; even if you are right and I somehow implied it in the care example, Katrina, you are also right about it being an angular piece of poly relations. *hugs*