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I knew you were poly as soon as you mentioned Heinlein as one of your biggest influences on your theory of romance. :) Love without expectations is a wonderful

I knew you were poly as soon as you mentioned Heinlein as one of your biggest influences on your theory of romance. :) Love without expectations is a wonderful joyous thing. A couple songs my longest partner and I love are https://climbingpoetree.bandcamp.com/track/cant-help-but-fly-the-poly-song https://climbingpoetree.bandcamp.com/track/cant-help-but-fly... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeGFu05xB-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeGFu05xB-8

IgorPartola 7y ago
Heh. Heinlein wasn’t actually how I came into it, but because his writing was always in the back of my mind, it made it a lot easier to accept. I fell into it the way one falls into a puddle: by a series of mishaps. And those links/songs are excellent, thank you!
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  I am glad someone bought up Heinlein. He has certainly been a very important influence in my life. I don’t like the label of ‘poly’ and I don’t understand the definition of ‘love’ as we know it in society..and I have a dim view of marriage as a social construct as I see how it can be regressive for women(I am female). That Heinlein quote is one of my favorites. I embrace it better as something that causes a tumble and release of brain chemicals in a certain synchronized way. I also wonder if entheogens can help human beings grasp the concept of love and guide them to be emotionally non violent(to themselves and to those they love) about it. Perhaps we will all love each other universally if someone added ‘shrooms in our tap water.(I was being facetious! Altho..it is more of an absurd seed for maybe a weird tales story contribution.)
  - IgorPartola 7y ago
    I kind of agree. I got into an argument with an ex once about how love is just brain chemistry. She didn’t like that because that made it not romantic. I think it makes it more romantic: out of basic biochemistry you get “this insane feeling!” I do think we would all be nicer to each other and ourselves if we didn’t strive to make our partners our “everything”. It isn’t the solution to all our problems but it is a solution to a problem that plagued many marriages/long term relationships. If it wasn’t, cheating and marriage counselors wouldn’t be as common as they are. I don’t really like labels in general (I prefer to use verbs than nouns if I use one), but poly is what I have been doing for about 7 years now. In addition I have realized that other forms of non-monogamy fit me as well. Love can be felt more or less in those than in poly.
    - ay 7y ago
      > love is just brain chemistry A great read about that is “a complete idiot’s guide to chemistry of love”, which gave some solid peer-reviewed confirmations to some of the trends I thought I was spotting. Quite much agree with the rest, not a lot to add :) - life is most beautiful in its diversity.
    - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
      Relationships run into the danger of co-dependency if young people have baggage while transitioning into adulthood. In a lot of ways, the baggage can be multi generational and gets heavier. I don’t know the answer but monogamous relationship is suitable when children enter the picture. It’s a whole different ball game now. Digressing a bit, I am fond of beckoning the monogamous nature of our bird friends. It is very expensive for them to gather resources to raise their young(aka perpetuate their species) and monogamous bonded pairs have a better chance of a surviving brood. Perhaps in times of restricted resources or hard to access survivability resources, monogamy is the best answer. Consider apes and big cats, they have completely different social structures. They conserve energy when the alpha leads the pack for food. The alpha also gets the pick of his ‘harem’, as it were..And they are not monogamous. So there’s that. I think that while we like to believe that we have access to free choice as human beings, we are not that far removed from our mammalian cousins. Having said that, we are also finding ourselves in a situation where resources are becoming scarce(exponentially increasing population) and mating choices are restricted due to individual’s place on the economic and social hierarchy. I am compelled to pick serial monogamy over poly or true monogamy. Our biology compels us to obey the brain chemicals. To disregard that is an enormous act of will against nature. Unless we deal with the pesky problem of religion, values and morals along with our resource constrained hierarchical world, hypocritical forced monogamy is here to stay. In a lot of ways religious morality induced monogamy has paved the way for pair bonding and successful child survivorship statistics....so from the gene POV, monogamy must be winning in some way.
      - IgorPartola 7y ago
        I have read several books that would argue that our biology specifically predisposes us to not be monogamous, especially when it comes to child rearing. Sex at Dawn and Sapiens are two examples. The latter makes a weaker case for it, but it equally rejects that we are biologically monogamous. The author there argues that best we can tell, when we were still evolving to be what we are today, there were tribes that practices essentially polyamory and group parenting, and there were more monogamy-centered ones, leading to the conclusion that we do have a choice in the matter. Bonobos, great apes closer to us than Chimps, are non-monogamous to a fault. I have two children that are a result of a non-monogamous relationship, and yes, it was definitely easier to have the extra hands and extra resources during their first few years. While anecdata, I will also bring up the example of my 80 year old grandfather. When he was in his 60s, my grandmother suddenly died. A few years later he reconnected with an old friend, and they developed a romantic relationship, and are married and still together. They are some of the most co-dependent people I know. Happy, it seems, but co-dependent. I think co-dependence doesn't just afflict young people.

IgorPartola 7y ago

Heh. Heinlein wasn’t actually how I came into it, but because his writing was always in the back of my mind, it made it a lot easier to accept. I fell into it the way one falls into a puddle: by a series of mishaps. And those links/songs are excellent, thank you!

jelliclesfarm 7y ago
I am glad someone bought up Heinlein. He has certainly been a very important influence in my life. I don’t like the label of ‘poly’ and I don’t understand the definition of ‘love’ as we know it in society..and I have a dim view of marriage as a social construct as I see how it can be regressive for women(I am female). That Heinlein quote is one of my favorites. I embrace it better as something that causes a tumble and release of brain chemicals in a certain synchronized way. I also wonder if entheogens can help human beings grasp the concept of love and guide them to be emotionally non violent(to themselves and to those they love) about it. Perhaps we will all love each other universally if someone added ‘shrooms in our tap water.(I was being facetious! Altho..it is more of an absurd seed for maybe a weird tales story contribution.)
- IgorPartola 7y ago
  I kind of agree. I got into an argument with an ex once about how love is just brain chemistry. She didn’t like that because that made it not romantic. I think it makes it more romantic: out of basic biochemistry you get “this insane feeling!” I do think we would all be nicer to each other and ourselves if we didn’t strive to make our partners our “everything”. It isn’t the solution to all our problems but it is a solution to a problem that plagued many marriages/long term relationships. If it wasn’t, cheating and marriage counselors wouldn’t be as common as they are. I don’t really like labels in general (I prefer to use verbs than nouns if I use one), but poly is what I have been doing for about 7 years now. In addition I have realized that other forms of non-monogamy fit me as well. Love can be felt more or less in those than in poly.
  - ay 7y ago
    > love is just brain chemistry A great read about that is “a complete idiot’s guide to chemistry of love”, which gave some solid peer-reviewed confirmations to some of the trends I thought I was spotting. Quite much agree with the rest, not a lot to add :) - life is most beautiful in its diversity.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    Relationships run into the danger of co-dependency if young people have baggage while transitioning into adulthood. In a lot of ways, the baggage can be multi generational and gets heavier. I don’t know the answer but monogamous relationship is suitable when children enter the picture. It’s a whole different ball game now. Digressing a bit, I am fond of beckoning the monogamous nature of our bird friends. It is very expensive for them to gather resources to raise their young(aka perpetuate their species) and monogamous bonded pairs have a better chance of a surviving brood. Perhaps in times of restricted resources or hard to access survivability resources, monogamy is the best answer. Consider apes and big cats, they have completely different social structures. They conserve energy when the alpha leads the pack for food. The alpha also gets the pick of his ‘harem’, as it were..And they are not monogamous. So there’s that. I think that while we like to believe that we have access to free choice as human beings, we are not that far removed from our mammalian cousins. Having said that, we are also finding ourselves in a situation where resources are becoming scarce(exponentially increasing population) and mating choices are restricted due to individual’s place on the economic and social hierarchy. I am compelled to pick serial monogamy over poly or true monogamy. Our biology compels us to obey the brain chemicals. To disregard that is an enormous act of will against nature. Unless we deal with the pesky problem of religion, values and morals along with our resource constrained hierarchical world, hypocritical forced monogamy is here to stay. In a lot of ways religious morality induced monogamy has paved the way for pair bonding and successful child survivorship statistics....so from the gene POV, monogamy must be winning in some way.
    - IgorPartola 7y ago
      I have read several books that would argue that our biology specifically predisposes us to not be monogamous, especially when it comes to child rearing. Sex at Dawn and Sapiens are two examples. The latter makes a weaker case for it, but it equally rejects that we are biologically monogamous. The author there argues that best we can tell, when we were still evolving to be what we are today, there were tribes that practices essentially polyamory and group parenting, and there were more monogamy-centered ones, leading to the conclusion that we do have a choice in the matter. Bonobos, great apes closer to us than Chimps, are non-monogamous to a fault. I have two children that are a result of a non-monogamous relationship, and yes, it was definitely easier to have the extra hands and extra resources during their first few years. While anecdata, I will also bring up the example of my 80 year old grandfather. When he was in his 60s, my grandmother suddenly died. A few years later he reconnected with an old friend, and they developed a romantic relationship, and are married and still together. They are some of the most co-dependent people I know. Happy, it seems, but co-dependent. I think co-dependence doesn't just afflict young people.