Friday Five: Relationships

[vvvexation]

From the altfriday5:

1. What is your preferred relationship structure? (polyamorous, monogamous, celibate, etc.) Why? Polyamorous...because imposing arbitrary limits on relationships just quit making sense to me once I thought about it. Not that all limits are arbitrary, but monogamy doesn't seem to be otherwise for me.

2. How long have you known that you preferred [insert answer from #1 here]? A few years--can't pin it down precisely because it was a gradual process. The part that took longest was realizing that I was capable of comfortably sharing serious partners and not just casual ones.

3. Have you ever had relationships that were not [insert answer from #1 here]? Once. It was back in high school, and we defaulted to monogamy just because it never occurred to us to do otherwise. I was a little disturbed, though, to find that my natural boy-craziness (not to mention my newfound girl-craziness) didn't slacken in the least during our relationship; I felt rather guilty about it but hoped it was simply due to my being new at this dating thing. Funny how many assumptions you can operate under without knowing it.

4. Are you currently in a [insert answer from #1 here] relationship? Why or why not? Er, several. I should think the reason would be obvious from my previous answers.

5. Would you consider having relationships that were not [insert answer from #1 here] in the future? Why or why not? I might consider it, if someone I loved enough to spend the rest of my life with asked it of me. Otherwise, though, it's hard to see how it would be worth it.

Comments

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Why is it that when I go and look at altfriday5 I never see the questions you're answering?

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

'Cause if this week's question doesn't grab me I answer an older one instead.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Oh, there it is. I just hadn't read back far enough.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

I start at the beginning so I don't have to keep going back farther each time.

[tsgeisel.livejournal.com]

Regarding #5 - monogamy isn't necessarily deciding that you'll only be with one person - in its ideal form it's only *wanting* to be with one person.

You never know when it could sneak up on you...

Just sayin'.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

That's sort of what I was getting at, though I didn't spell it out fully. That is, if I really really loved someone I'd possibly be willing to try having a mono relationship in hopes that I would find myself content with it--but if I didn't find that I was happy that way, I would not stick with it.

As for the desire to be with just one person arising spontaneously, though, without anyone ever having requested it...well, I'll admit the possibility as an outside chance, but it just doesn't seem likely. Polyamory, after all, isn't (for me) about specifically wanting to be with more than one person; it's about wanting to let each individual relationship go wherever feels natural, and it's hard to imagine that I would ever stop wanting that. It's conceivable that the number of people I happened to want to be intimate with at a given time might at some point be as low as 1, but that would owe more to outside circumstances than inward motivation, most likely, and there's no reason to think it would be a permanent state.

[jen92373.livejournal.com]

yeah, that is pretty much the way i feel about it. in the last several years the only time i've been in anything resembling an mono relationship is when there is simply only one person around that meets my criteria. i'm picky. pretty much the only way i see that changing is if someone super special wanted a mono relationship and i wasn't willing to lose/hurt them. So far since my late teens only one person has had that potential and...he's married- which really kinda blows the whole mono thing all to hell.