Quote:
Originally Posted by elainevdw  Thank you, Scott, for your response, which was well-rounded and mature -- much like yourself, I would imagine.
Question for you: How do you justify putting Kim through that pain? If I was making my partner miserable and they chose to stay with me anyway, I'd have a difficult decision to make. Do I find some way to change my habits so I don't hurt him? Or do I have the courage to hurt him temporarily by breaking up with him, so that he can be happy in the long run? Letting him stay miserable isn't an option for me. |
I do not justify any pain that I actually inflict upon Kim - I would hate to hurt her. When you think about the pain or jealousy she has felt over my other relationships, it is actually pain that she has inflicted upon herself. She has been very good to me. I love her and care about her - she has given me no reason to leave her.
But having said that, I haven't been so perfect myself and there are a number of things I've done that haven't been totally in the right. Developing a system that works for our relationships has been a challenge. I have chosen to ignore Kim's feelings on some matters before because I "was not responsible for her feelings," but not much good came from it, not for any of the 3 total people involved.
Many people in monogamous relationships seem to almost instinctively know how the process works. But the truth is - much of what we learn about relationships comes from traditional things around us like our family, movies and media, and literary stories. For instance, I was just last night watching the movie
Hitch, and one of the key points I noticed that the movie follows, like many movies, is that there is a common process that we, as a society, have created, to facilitate our common cultural model of romance.
Typically you'll meet the girl, go on a date, and then the date is either a hit or miss. Either you're compatible or you're not. Either you wow her and impress her, or not. Then there's the concept of the "first kiss," the first meal together, the first this, the first that. And there's even
times and
places we have set out for this whole thing, I mean, it's almost like society has it down to an exact science!
But nobody is here to teach us how polyamory is supposed to work. Maybe we go through the whole process with the first person, then what about the second? How does a second person work? A third? How do you combine these relationships with your life? So few individuals are polyamorous that there is nothing but pure experience to learn from. And so how often do you think polyamory gets abused? Too often, is the answer. And how many guys out there are genuinely following polyamory, trying to improve their present state? Maybe not enough.
So while I cannot completely revoke Kim's feelings, or other girl's feelings, and I do need to give deep consideration to each and every thing that happens, I can still not stop her from hurting herself if that is what she wants to do. Having said that, however, I do want to emphasize that Kim and I are very happy now, and have been for a long time. We have not had one major problem at all in several months.
I'm currently holding back from getting another girlfriend for the time being because my life simply is not designed for it right now - I've got a lot of other things I'm occupied with financially and business-related. Kim told me a while back that she had an intention to switch me back to monogamy via LoA. I smiled at it and said, "But how? For the LoA, you need actions to go with it. And what possible actions would you take in order for that to happen?" To that she had no answer.
Polyamory has been something that has evolved over time for me. My initial reasons for trying it were sort of almost by accident. After so long it has become a developed part of me.