Member-only story
When trying to understand a complicated idea it’s important to be sure we’re actually having the conversations we are intending to.
Several years ago a dear friend came across a few articles about Polyamory and found parts of them really seemed to resonate. They asked if they could use me as a sounding board for these new thoughts and ideas and I wanted to help but not being Poly myself I needed to do some reading and research in order to offer the proper understanding and support. I started looking for everything I could get my hands on and quickly hit some initial stumbling blocks. While there was a fair bit of material out there about Polyamory and some great resources like Morethantwo.com a frustratingly large amount of I came across seemed to end up talking about very different things than it was claiming to, sometimes twisting back around on itself in contradicting circles.
Whether we’re trying to learn about them or explain them wrapping our minds around unconventional relationship models, especially ones which seem contrary to several rooted cultural norms, is already challenging enough without the whole process getting derailed, mislead, or hijacked. Too many of the conversations about Polyamory I encountered turned out to be about different topics entirely. While there are no absolutes when it comes to human behaviour, and especially the…