Poly...

A Latin word meaning “many.”  In English it most commonly serves as a prefix: polyester, polyvinyl, polyamorous.  For the last couple of months it’s been a common visitor on the stage of my thoughts.  It should be no surprise I’m not thinking about various forms of manmade materials to craft clothing or a waterbed mattress, but I have been thinking a fair amount about the word polyamorous, setting a framework around the concept of “many loves” as the young folk mean the word.

As a consequence of this latest recon run into the world of the young folk I’ve bumped into several things that just flat never got mentioned when I was their age.  I’ve written a fair amount about one of them, the perceptions of self and society I’ve been navigating as a result of a head on collision with a major villain in my life, a story I’ve yet to tell in full.  But in the same time frame as a consequence of keeping company with the same set of people I’ve equally been exposed to their evolving replacement for conventional marriages, the concept of polyamory, and that’s had a fair amount of time on the stage as well.

Just to set a frame of reference: I’m solidly hetero monogamous, for me home has always been in the heart of one woman.  Perhaps I’m a simple man but I need no more than that.  But at the same time I’ve never hesitated to open that home if there was need, over the years it happened several times, sometimes someone from my side of the world, sometimes from the wife’s side.  So it’s fair to say I have lived in a relationship capable of hosting  love for more than one.  Then as now it isn’t an uncommon thing for me to hold an extended family in my heart, carry a concern for the happiness and welfare of folks I’ve never claimed on a tax form. 

But those were offerings of platonic love, the mechanisms of sex and sexuality not really players in the context.  There were moments of intimacy in the physical as transient support, but those were moments rather than long term arrangements matched against the live load of life which is what the kids are working on.  From what little I’ve been exposed to it would appear they’re starting over from a level even more simple than the tribe, it would seem they’ve gone all the way back to the primordial troop as is seen in the other great apes and rethinking the whole idea.  Fair enough, given the current deplorable state of marriage I won’t say it isn’t a needed thing.

There’s no doubt balancing more than two people into working relationship to replace monogamy is daunting task.  Starting from the background of witnessing the failures of  monogamy one of the largest challenges the kids are dealing with is actually defining the loadings on a relationship in order to attempt to apportion those loadings across a  polyamorous family.  Another and perhaps more personally difficult task thrust upon them by the failures of monogamy they’ve witnessed is separating the various facets and phases of  sexuality from the other life elements that in the end become the alloyed structure of a working family.

That’s where I play in the game, trying to help the kids I know with a bit of the long frame perspective one acquires after decades of living monogamous.  Washing the dishes is washing the dishes, cooking the dinner that got them dirty the same way.  Chores are chores.  Equally it falls out that one will from time to time be providing comfort and sanctuary for another, unlike monogamy in a poly family which one gives and who receives is a far more open question to be answered, the dynamics of dependence and denial wide open. 

No one enters a marriage really knowing what they're getting into, not if it is two people or ten, everyone comes in still carrying elements yet to achieve full maturity.  In monogamy it is easily seen that she will nurture him into his full maturity even as he is doing the same for her, but in a poly relationship again the various facets of that oh so critical work will be divided out among several people and need be coordinated in some manner that provides continuity to the effort. 

Poly is a great deal more complicated a state of affairs far beyond sleeping arrangements and household chores.  The poly kids have yet to realize the final stages of parenting are actually provided by ones' mate, when one takes not one but several mates the step-parent syndromes of blended families just follows from the family of childhood into the family of incipient adulthood. But if that's how they were raised perhaps that's the only way they can be comfortable completing the final stages of growth, so I'm not going to say much against it, just be alert for the pitfalls they might not understand. 

And of course when you add sex into the mix it just goes nucking futs since sex and sexuality will be influenced by any or all of those other facets of life as they come to maturity, the poly kids are at extreme risk to maintaining the familiar and comfortable (but ultimately counterproductive to the relationship) ways of their immaturity by dividing up some specific facet of that immaturity between several sex partners where the partners in essence defend the emo status quo to defend some private delight based thereon.  Unlike monogamy it isn't nearly so likely for one to understand of the other how their sexual responses reflect the state of their other responses into a lover's bed. Tough stuff to manage, the all to often hidden ways and means and motives of sex in a poly relationship.

The kids have their work cut out for them to make it all work.  But maybe that's what they want, something with enough challenge that if they can make it work they'll have something to point to with a bit of genuine pride well earned.  As I said, they are young of years even if old in too many matters related to enduring the pain of failed families.  So many of the things they really need to consider with a level head are found in the middle of personal minefields, frankly I’m impressed at the progress they’ve made.  I'm cheering for them, and doing what I can, what they'll allow.

Of course I'm also concerned for them, as always the predators are circling their efforts, and a great many of the predators aren't honest enough to operate fang and claw but rather are hunting with innuendo and misdirection targeting what the predators know full well are the points where the kids are most vulnerable.  Evil, like rust, never really sleeps.