7 ms·

I would like to know of a polygynous or polyandrous hacker http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523224 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523224

by karlzt 16y ago

thrown1 16y ago
I created a throwaway account to reply. I'm not even sure this topic is Hacker News but hopefully I can add some insight. I'm a regular contributor here. Where to start? I'm male, around 30 years old, American, raised Christian, not active in the religion. I was fairly awkward with women and people in general when I was younger, but I put myself through lots of experiences, learned a lot, and eventually became much more social, though I'm still a natural introvert. I'm seeing women in a few different places. I have one regular girlfriend where we meet during the high ovulating part of her cycle each month, which starts 14 days from the first day of her period. We have our first kid's names picked out. I have another two or three women that are very important to me. All know, though I go light on details to hopefully avoid jealousy. Thinking about how to set up homes, schooling, and parenting is difficult. I study a lot to learn about it. I intend to support all my children and to grow my family slowly as I can afford to provide. I work a lot, and I try to work smart in addition to hard. I do a mix of work with steady pay and with upside. All my closest friends know, roughly 3/4ths of them approve. My parents know, they don't approve at all. I'm not sure when I'd go public with this: Just like being gay 100 years ago, it'd break a lot of potential opportunities and meet lots of scorn and criticism by people. I have some professional acquaintances on here who probably won't recognize this. A couple close friends are here too and will likely recognize this is me. If you have any questions, go ahead and I'll reply when I've got a break in a little bit. I've thought about this extensively over a great many years. Also, if anyone has any bad reactions, or criticisms, or warnings, or think this is bad, then I invite you to share those as well. Actually, it'd be helpful to me in gauging people's reactions, so all are welcome to ask or respond if they're curious.
- starkfist 16y ago
  How is this different than being a dude from the trailer park or ghetto who has 4 kids with 4 different baby mommas?
  - thrown1 16y ago
    When you have a family, you can do it with planning, foresight, and an ability to provide for your children and raise them well. Or you can do it without those things, which is usually what happens in the situation you described. So having a family this way is different from a trailer park the same that a normal couple planning to have 4 kids together that they can afford to provide for differs from a trailer park couple having 4 kids they didn't think about having, weren't ready for, and can't provide adequately for.
    - starkfist 16y ago
      It still sounds stupid to me, but good luck.
mst 16y ago
I am, I suppose, arguably both. I'm part of something that's more like a clan than anything else - there are ten members currently and each person's relationship with each of the others is somewhere between friend and full partner, though most of us are partnered to at least two of the rest (and myself and the strongest personality female partner are both partnered to most of the rest as well as each other - I'm currently writing this sat on her flat's deck in PDX). This doesn't prevent any of us having partners outside the group, either, although if I expect to emotionally commit to somebody I try to at least introduce them to the rest since these are the people that I trust with my life and my future. I, personally, seem to have been gifted with a very minimal capacity for jealousy; the other members vary, and it's not really a problem - anything that makes anybody unhappy is taken as something to be understood and resolved by conversation and change. The cross-support possibilities help a lot, especially given that a number of us have fairly high velocity lives and can disappear for days at a time dealing with work (though a number of us are in IT of some form so sometimes we lean on each other for help during crunch times too). All relationship patterns require lots of effort to work well. All relationship patterns involve drama sometimes. The difference in my experience (I've done monogamy, open - i.e. single emotional, multiple sexual partner, multiple-independent-partner poly, and now clan) is what sorts of drama, what sorts of effort, and what sorts of people. Currently the clan approach is my favourite, but then again at any given time the approach I was using was my favourite. I don't generally go out of my way to broadcast my choice of relationship pattern, but I also don't go out of my way to not mention it - to refer to one of my loves as my partner without making the existence of the rest clear seems to me to be disrespectful to the other people that I'm in love with. This hasn't, so far, caused a problem with any client to my knowledge when it's come up in social conversation - but even if it did I'd simply stop discussing my life with the person who found it troublesome, it wouldn't make me any more willing to lie about who I love and why if asked a direct question. I'm not really sure what else I should cover - it's hard to know which things people will find remarkable about your life when you're in the middle of living it. I'll try and monitor replies here though (or I could start a Tell HN in the reddit IAMA style if people preferred)

I would like to know of a polygynous or polyandrous hacker http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523224 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523224

by karlzt 16y ago

I would like to know of a polygynous or polyandrous hacker http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523224 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523224

thrown1 16y ago

I created a throwaway account to reply. I'm not even sure this topic is Hacker News but hopefully I can add some insight. I'm a regular contributor here. Where to start? I'm male, around 30 years old, American, raised Christian, not active in the religion. I was fairly awkward with women and people in general when I was younger, but I put myself through lots of experiences, learned a lot, and eventually became much more social, though I'm still a natural introvert. I'm seeing women in a few different places. I have one regular girlfriend where we meet during the high ovulating part of her cycle each month, which starts 14 days from the first day of her period. We have our first kid's names picked out. I have another two or three women that are very important to me. All know, though I go light on details to hopefully avoid jealousy. Thinking about how to set up homes, schooling, and parenting is difficult. I study a lot to learn about it. I intend to support all my children and to grow my family slowly as I can afford to provide. I work a lot, and I try to work smart in addition to hard. I do a mix of work with steady pay and with upside. All my closest friends know, roughly 3/4ths of them approve. My parents know, they don't approve at all. I'm not sure when I'd go public with this: Just like being gay 100 years ago, it'd break a lot of potential opportunities and meet lots of scorn and criticism by people. I have some professional acquaintances on here who probably won't recognize this. A couple close friends are here too and will likely recognize this is me. If you have any questions, go ahead and I'll reply when I've got a break in a little bit. I've thought about this extensively over a great many years. Also, if anyone has any bad reactions, or criticisms, or warnings, or think this is bad, then I invite you to share those as well. Actually, it'd be helpful to me in gauging people's reactions, so all are welcome to ask or respond if they're curious.

starkfist 16y ago
How is this different than being a dude from the trailer park or ghetto who has 4 kids with 4 different baby mommas?
- thrown1 16y ago
  When you have a family, you can do it with planning, foresight, and an ability to provide for your children and raise them well. Or you can do it without those things, which is usually what happens in the situation you described. So having a family this way is different from a trailer park the same that a normal couple planning to have 4 kids together that they can afford to provide for differs from a trailer park couple having 4 kids they didn't think about having, weren't ready for, and can't provide adequately for.
  - starkfist 16y ago
    It still sounds stupid to me, but good luck.

mst 16y ago

I am, I suppose, arguably both. I'm part of something that's more like a clan than anything else - there are ten members currently and each person's relationship with each of the others is somewhere between friend and full partner, though most of us are partnered to at least two of the rest (and myself and the strongest personality female partner are both partnered to most of the rest as well as each other - I'm currently writing this sat on her flat's deck in PDX). This doesn't prevent any of us having partners outside the group, either, although if I expect to emotionally commit to somebody I try to at least introduce them to the rest since these are the people that I trust with my life and my future. I, personally, seem to have been gifted with a very minimal capacity for jealousy; the other members vary, and it's not really a problem - anything that makes anybody unhappy is taken as something to be understood and resolved by conversation and change. The cross-support possibilities help a lot, especially given that a number of us have fairly high velocity lives and can disappear for days at a time dealing with work (though a number of us are in IT of some form so sometimes we lean on each other for help during crunch times too). All relationship patterns require lots of effort to work well. All relationship patterns involve drama sometimes. The difference in my experience (I've done monogamy, open - i.e. single emotional, multiple sexual partner, multiple-independent-partner poly, and now clan) is what sorts of drama, what sorts of effort, and what sorts of people. Currently the clan approach is my favourite, but then again at any given time the approach I was using was my favourite. I don't generally go out of my way to broadcast my choice of relationship pattern, but I also don't go out of my way to not mention it - to refer to one of my loves as my partner without making the existence of the rest clear seems to me to be disrespectful to the other people that I'm in love with. This hasn't, so far, caused a problem with any client to my knowledge when it's come up in social conversation - but even if it did I'd simply stop discussing my life with the person who found it troublesome, it wouldn't make me any more willing to lie about who I love and why if asked a direct question. I'm not really sure what else I should cover - it's hard to know which things people will find remarkable about your life when you're in the middle of living it. I'll try and monitor replies here though (or I could start a Tell HN in the reddit IAMA style if people preferred)