Mono's Block in Understanding Poly (Whale vs Scissors)

So, now that it's ungodly late, and I'm no longer occupied... (Hopefully this makes sense and isn't a total rambling mess) :)

Are there things that Poly partners just don't get about their Mono partners? In my case, it's a definite YES. He's begun to understand now, but it's taken about a year to get there, and looking back, it explains a LOT about how we would think "why are they doing THAT?!" about each other in certain situations.

It's not just relationship style - it's the love style. When my feelings grow for one, they fade for another. Always have. Never even crushed on more than one person, even back in Jr. High. A serial crusher, I guess. ;) When my marriage was failing, I was very close to my now-Partner, and I had to push him out of my life while I tried to put my marriage back together (granted, my heart was no longer in the marriage, but I'd fallen for my friend and I had to basically give my heart nowhere else to go so I could work on fixing my relationship with my husband). My friend/now-partner had NO idea why I had to do that. He could "compartmentalize" (back before he had the "Poly" term) - why couldn't I?

And I just had NO idea how he could do that. It was such a foreign concept to me, that I didn't even know how to frame a question against it. In my heart, there's room for one romantic relationship, and no amount of compartmentalizing was going to make it any different. Trying to do so would just make things more difficult.

Now, we've been through quite a bit... We've read a lot, and we've trusted our own experience, and yeah, we differ. We understand some of it, we accept what we don't, and we love each other anyway. And probably even partly because of it (I fell for him BECAUSE he cared so deeply for his friends - the two are probably just a smidge related). Heck, I even wrote a piece for his blog that basically hit a couple points mentioned in this thread.

I do not consider myself less evolved, or less inclined to look deeply at myself. I have done so. I continue to do so. My self-esteem is not that closely tied to my lovestyle or my relationship style. There are many other deeply-rooted things that have affected that, and I have done an awful lot of work now that I'm out of that marriage (emotional abuse is an insidious bitch, to the point where I still question if I should even use the term or not). I had other issues to get through in my Poly relationship, but my relationship is not ME.

That said, disapproval stinks (and I feel for anyone who's been bitten by the "he's a stud and you're a slut" double-standard), and I do feel a bit wonky when people talk behind our backs. But it hasn't stopped me from being in this relationship. It won't.

As far as the term "block", I'll go along with this. Poly is NOT native to me, and it's taken a lot of work to try to Grok. I don't yet, and may never, but I've gotten closer, and I'm glad for it. It's one reason I'm here. ;)
 
I'm curious if your statement/question is coming from a personal incident in your life in which you'd like to be poly and your SO doesn't? In which you're trying to explain how you feel and don't feel that you're being understood?

Boy, did my partner and I go through rounds of THIS...

Best I could come up with for an analogy was that it's like trying to explain what water tastes like. Each party has no idea how the other can NOT understand, and doesn't even have the words to explain it. It just... tastes like water, y'know?
 
With respect you are not the first person who is relatively new to poly that has voiced the opinion that it is somehow more "evolved" than monogamy. I would gently caution you that this can come across as very disrespectful towards monogamy, which works exceedingly well for a large group of people - telling them that their chosen relationship style is "less evolved" can feel pretty condescending.
I 100% agree with you. I wasn't saying that I believe poly is more evolved than mono, just that by the rationale I gave I can see how others could conclude that, I agree with them for their reasoning, and I get why they think that, but I cannot as I stated say whether or not poly is more or less evolved than mono, because as I mentioned for all we know going around and banging every chick around might be closer to how primitive man was than how we are now.
 
Boy, did my partner and I go through rounds of THIS...

Best I could come up with for an analogy was that it's like trying to explain what water tastes like. Each party has no idea how the other can NOT understand, and doesn't even have the words to explain it. It just... tastes like water, y'know?
I like that. Only water is not to water as poly is to mono. But that does make sense as far as trying to narrow a divide that is not possible to make any narrower than it is divided.
 
I wrote a piece for his blog that basically hit a couple points mentioned in this thread.
Excellent blog piece.

I liked the "more children" analogy better than more friends because we both have 3 children each and one between us, so I will try and communicate that to her one of these upcoming days and see if that calms her nerves a little.

And the other one was about how a poly person isn't going to fall in love with another person and out of love with you as a combined thing. A poly person is interested in loving both. This one is so hard to explain. But last night when I was talking with her I think I touched on this vein and was reassuring.

She was going in the line of "Am I not good enough to make you happy?". And I was able to tell her, "You are perfect. You make me 100% happy with you. You are wonderful. And you are enough to make me happy with you." Always adding "with you". And then something to the effect of "but you are not two people." I said "You don't have four boobies" (we use the word boobies because she's still learning English and this is what she calls her breasts. If I were to say breasts she might think of Chicken breasts. lol).

And it was like all the crying stopped, and she hugged me. I think putting it like that really helped. "You are enough for me to love you." "You make me 100% happy with you." "I appreciate everything you do so much that I love you completely." (completely meaning enough for you and us). "And I also would like to be more affectionate than we have together. Not less. More."
 
Oh, ok, here's part of the answer to my question about your children and "babbymommas" in another thread. Only 3 of them are yours, plus the one you have with her. Six of your own from previous relationships seemed like a lot for someone your age and I was thinking to myself, "hasn't this guy ever heard of contraceptives"? LOL... It's just that your posts and the way you present yourself comes across as both naive and disingenuous at the same time; of course, I'm sure it's my problem, but I'm just telling it like it is. :cool:

I apologize if I offended you at some point.
 
When my feelings grow for one, they fade for another. Always have. Never even crushed on more than one person, even back in Jr. High. A serial crusher, I guess. ;) When my marriage was failing, I was very close to my now-Partner, and I had to push him out of my life while I tried to put my marriage back together (granted, my heart was no longer in the marriage, but I'd fallen for my friend and I had to basically give my heart nowhere else to go so I could work on fixing my relationship with my husband). My friend/now-partner had NO idea why I had to do that. He could "compartmentalize" (back before he had the "Poly" term) - why couldn't I?

And I just had NO idea how he could do that. It was such a foreign concept to me, that I didn't even know how to frame a question against it. In my heart, there's room for one romantic relationship, and no amount of compartmentalizing was going to make it any different. Trying to do so would just make things more difficult.
This sounds like my Mono until this past spring when he found himself loving another and me at the same time. What has come to light since is that he falls in love with certain women (certain criteria), when his partner is struggling and he gets annoyed and burnt out on supporting them. I have learned from this that I need to spread my request for support around so as to not allow him, request of him, that he take on too much.

The good stuff that came out of the experience is that he believe how I can be poly now. He's felt something close to it and it opened his mind to how he could, should he choose, expand on that. Thing is, like my last post where I made the analogy of religions; he has seen how my mind works as someone who sees how another religion besides their own works and has decided that he is just fine being mono thanks. He has a personality that isn't interested in pursuing more than one love at a time as he has no need for more if he has all he needs in one. He would rather spend his time and energy on other areas of his life as he has enough and is satisfied with me (for now?).
 
...because I didn't need a person to myself. I could share. It seemed to me that the people who were best suited to having relationships were already having them.


Just had to chuckle here because it soooooo reflects an ongoing conversation I have been having with Dude. Although he never heard the word "polyamory" until he met me, in retrospect he never had any trouble with any arrangements he had with married women when he was single (which, as he describes them, were FWB situations with women in "open" marriages in the BDSM scene - although he is not into the "scene" himself). (His relationships with mono girls, on the other hand, ranged from "pretty good" to "crazy".)

He says he's only dating married women from now on...:D

JaneQ

PS. This all stemmed from a conversation we had about wedding rings - he always used to take note of them, and back off - with the exception of occasions when he was already friends with the couple and got "invited". I, personally, never notice them - if I am interested in talking to someone then I do - they may or may not be "available" - either way, that doesn't make them not interesting!
 
Oh, ok, here's part of the answer to my question about your children and "babbymommas" in another thread. Only 3 of them are yours, plus the one you have with her. Six of your own from previous relationships seemed like a lot for someone your age and I was thinking to myself, "hasn't this guy ever heard of contraceptives"? LOL... It's just that your posts and the way you present yourself comes across as both naive and disingenuous at the same time; of course, I'm sure it's my problem, but I'm just telling it like it is. :cool:

I apologize if I offended you at some point.
Oh no worries at all. I cannot be offended. You are welcome to all the ways that you are. And by that I mean no offense! lol :) No, but seriously, I took no offense. And yeah I am naive, but I know in my heart this is the right direction for me. But yeah, I'm naive and ignorant about all this. A true Poly Virgin. As far as coming across disingenuous, that's just because there is so much to explain and only so many words and time to paraphrase it all, so I wind up putting "spin" on my own truths, so it's compacted and easy to digest, and so it comes across as not exactly how I would be talking to someone in person about it. I do apologize for that, but if I did give you every detail I think no one would take the time to read all the useless little details and then everyone would be complaining that I'm too verbose or detailed and just to stick to the point.
 
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