What is this "lifestyle" you mention?

And it will still make no sense. It sounds no different than showing up and asking us about our garblyfunch.

What in hell is a garblyfunch? I don't know, yet I suspect it's involved in this Sooper Sekret Poly Lifestyle people keep asking us about!

Swinging does fit the description of a "lifestyle", according to the Outlaw Biker/Elks Club analogy.
 
so, i put forth: please don't bite their head off when they use the word. just know that it is the only context we can understand at the time being and that we are trying to BLEND into a new community.
Challenging the use of a word is not biting someone's head off. No one's getting bent out of shape just by pointing something out, discussing it, and defending a viewpoint.
 
Swinging does fit the description of a "lifestyle", according to the Outlaw Biker/Elks Club analogy.

But isn't it true that people of various lifestyles can swing? Even though there is a set of practices widely accepted and used by swingers, what makes a sexual activity a lifestyle in and of itself?
 
But isn't it true that people of various lifestyles can swing? Even though there is a set of practices widely accepted and used by swingers, what makes a sexual activity a lifestyle in and of itself?

Yes, that's true too. You can certainly have swinging Outlaw Bikers. Just because something is true doesn't necessarily make it mutually exclusive with respect to all else.

If you go back and re-read Autumnal Tone's Biker/Elks analogy, the answer to that should be apparent. It isn't the "sexual activity" that makes it a "Lifestyle". It's going to parties and clubs and subscribing to a particular and specific set of activities and behaviours SURROUNDING the sexual activities that all who do the "Lifestyle" have in common.

To take the analogy one step further - sexual activity is to swinger as motorcycle riding is to outlaw-biker.

Sexual activity and motorcycle riding are not "Lifestyles", but swinging and outlaw-biking are.

If this doesn't help make it clearer, I give up. I can only re-phrase things so many ways before i decide that the other person just is not going to get it no matter how many times one tries to explain it. The posts are all here to read and re-read. I would say the same thing again if needed, so instead just read this one until it goes in.
 
Its not a lifestyle for me.. it can be for others.. *shrugs*

I just don't enjoy when people say what I do is a certain way vs what I am doing.
 
examples from wikipedia... if you want to get technical :)

check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_(sociology)

below is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_lifestyle :

+The following are examples which may be considered by some to be alternate lifestyles:
-Nudism and clothing optional lifestyles.
-Living in unusual communities, such as communes, intentional communities or ecovillages.
-Lifestyle travellers, homebirths, homeschooling, home gardening, housetruckers, New Age travellers, vegetarianism, meditation, hypnosis, reincarnation and feng shui.
-Non-typical sexual lifestyle, such as BDSM, swinging, polyamory and certain types of sexual fetishism or paraphilia.
-Furry lifestylers.
-Alternative spiritual practices.
-Alternative medicine and natural methods of medical care or herbal remedies as medication.
-Eastern religion as sought and practiced by some western converts into faithes based in East Asia and South Asia, like Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Shintoism and so on, as opposed to Monotheism or Judeo-Christian belief systems.
-"Non-mainstream" religious minorities, such as the Amish for example pursue a non-technological or anti-technology lifestyle.
 
I guess if Wiki says it, we'd better take notice. Because as we all know, Wikipedia is published by experts in their field of study, and is subject to extensive vetting and peer review before they are allowed to put anything up on the interwebz.
 
The Wikipedia excerpt sounds like the way I feel. For me whatever is non-typical and affects my life is a lifestyle. So I have a vegetarian lifestyle, and I have a poly lifestyle, and I have a non-shaving lifestyle. That means I get up, have my meat-free breakfast, kiss both my husbands good morning and go comb my armpit hair. It's all normal parts of my life, none of it is a normal part of the masses' lives.
Note: this is a dramatization. I don't currently have two husbands, often don't eat breakfast at all (although when I do it's indeed meatless) and don't comb my hairs daily, be them on my head or elsewhere.

But hey, I honestly don't have a problem with people not calling these things lifestyles. For me, the way I choose to lead my life (or, the style I choose for my life, if you wish) are lifestyles, but if to you the word is heavily charged with other meanings, well then it makes sense not to use it.

For me, vegetarianism affects my life because right now, out of the 5 restaurants in the square down from where I live, only one has a vegetarian option in either appetizers or main dishes. So, big effect on where I eat. And if I'm with more than one partner, I'm going to walk with both of them in the street and get nasty looks and comments (same with just walking alone just by virtue of not shaving) so both affect my life on a daily basis too.

But then, I would also consider being diabetic a lifestyle if I have to check my blood sugar after every meal and get an insulin shot daily. Or being a smoker because you need to take breaks and go out to smoke. So I realise my definition of lifestyle might be a bit more loose than average.
 
The point being made, though, is that while of course how a person chooses to live is a lifestyle, which includes many things, but "a lifestyle" is not necessarily the same as "the lifestyle" as if there is one agreed-upon, mutually predetermined way to be in order to qualify as having that kind of lifestyle.

Someone can say, "I am polyamorous" or "I lead a polyamorous lifestyle," where it still remains open to interpretation and is obviously a choice that person made to incorporate polyamory into their own individual lifestyle -- but it simply assumes too much if that person said, "I live the polyamorous lifestyle." Then, someone would hear that and say, "Oh, what is the polyamorous lifestyle?" or, "Oh, I want the polyamorous lifestyle." And what would they do, model their lives after the person who said it in the first place? Then they wouldn't be creating their own way of living and being polyamorous, and if they run into someone else living polyamorously but in a vastly different way, they could think either that person or themselves are doing it "wrong." So, to say polyamory is a lifestyle to adopt, when it is simply the choice to love more than one, can contribute to erecting barriers and misunderstandings.
 
Thank you, Indie, for your clear and concise sum-up of the debate so far!
 
Yay!!

Thanks for directing me from here:

http://www.polyamory.com/forum/showthread.php?p=335674#post335674

...to here, so that I can talk about this (with the background of previous discussion so I can see where nycindie and others are coming from) and not be off topic as all get-out.

So. The oh-so-loaded word "lifestyle."

And I see the point made differentiating between "part of MY lifestyle" and "THE lifestyle." I see, it's a negation of the "one twue way-ism" fallacy.

Now I get it!

OK but folks who are into BDSM call it, very commonly and with wide acceptance, "the lifestyle." And most of us agree though, that your kink is not my kink and that's ok...in other words, aside from a few basic concepts like consent, there is no "one twue way."

Doesn't mean that we hate the word "lifestyle" simply because there is no sanctified and codified set of absolute rules that apply to everybody.

Context. So if I happen to be a person out in the wild who has opened my marriage, or perhaps I am solo-poly and I have a boyfriend and I've met someone new and am starting to date another...whatever. I am doing my poly in my own life-bubble. And maybe I've read some books, maybe I post in a forum. That is one thing.

But then you look at this group that is functioning as a community...where we get together for discussion groups about How We Poly. We had a damn picnic! And some of them, it's a Master and a primary and secondary slave. For some it's two or more couples with kids cohabitating and raising family together in a communal sort of thing. For some, it's mostly about sex, and for some it isn't sexual at all. But it's a big deal to all of them. And they want to talk about it. Whether they are open to everyone they know and speak like poly-activists...or heavily closeted except in the kink community where they need not fear judgment... These people, who in my situation because the discussion group happens to be held out of a BDSM dungeon club space, tend to also be kinky people...they consider polyamory "a lifestyle."

And by that they mean it to be part of their identity, as well as a life structure that they choose to live.

Honestly I do not know of any...THING...that is referred to as a "lifestyle" where the rules are the same and it looks the same and it's done the same for and by everyone.

If I did, I think that would be creepy. It would be more of a cult than a lifestyle.

Thanks again for nudging me to a more appropriate place to share this train of thought. *hugs* :)
 
I have no problem with the use of the word 'lifestyle". To me it means style of living. In that context both polyamory and mongamy are lifestyles.

Like Spork above, I do have a problem with people who use it as a "one twue way"-ism. I do see that more in the BDSM community than anywhere else.
 
To me, if something is part of one's personal identity, it is incompatible with being referred to as a 'lifestyle'. That's why 'gay lifestyle' makes no fucking sense to me, and actually annoys me quite a bit. I didn't choose to be queer, I just am. I do choose to be part of the queer community, that is true, but to me, a lifestyle choice is something like, I don't know, being vegetarian, or cycling to work, or holidaying abroad. To me, a particular 'lifestyle' is almost like an aspirational choice. Something I absolutely do not need, but something I'd quite like. And crucially, lifestyle choices like that tend to shift and change depending on what's currently 'on trend'. A lifestyle choice, as I see it, is usually reflective of your principles or political outlook - and typically involves a certain amount of bragging (in the sense that you are doing something a little bit hard because you think it's better for you, and by extension, that you think would be better for other people too). It's a choice you make that's inherently outward looking - designed to display your values and principles to the outside world. Poly is not a choice in that vein for me. It doesn't reflect my identity. It doesn't reflect my politics. It doesn't reflect my LIFE. What brand of toilet roll I buy? THAT'S reflective of my lifestyle and the identity I would like to project to the world. Who I'm fucking? Not so much.

So, calling poly a lifestyle doesn't jive with me, not because I'm a believer in the innateness of polyamory (quite the opposite, actually - for me it absolutely is a choice whether to have an open relationship or not), but because there's nothing aspirational about it. It's neither better nor worse for me than monogamy.

Spork, you seem to be using 'poly lifestyle' where I would simply to refer there being a poly community. YOUR poly community contains a lot of people into BDSM. Mine, less so. Perhaps NYCindie's even fewer. The fact that the phrase comes with the additional baggage of long association with the swinging community makes it even less attractive to me to use. I understand the way you are using the phrase (since you have explained it), but I disagree that it's useful, because I think you will need to explain your particular usage of it to every single person you meet in order to be sure you are communicating it correctly. It's a very ambiguous, often emotionally loaded, term.
 
I remember this thread from 5 years ago! lol

I hate the term "the lifestyle." I guess swingers use it as code with each other, or to ferret out people who they think might be swingers but aren't sure.

"Are you in 'the lifestyle?'" "We've been in 'the lifestyle' seven years.'"

It's code so you don't have to say "I have meaningless sex with others at parties/orgies."

It's such a stupid word, a holdover from the 70s or 80s... I went around my house last night after reading this thread, speaking like that character from Gilligan's Island, saying out loud in a Thurston Howell III voice, "Buffy and I are in The Lifestyle."

It just doesn't apply to me and how I live my life. And it's unclear what use it is for polyamorous people. Their lives are not as similar as swingers' lives. We don't have the "club," as was said upthread. We don't need a code word.
 
I get annoyed as heck when someone I know as a swinger asks me what I think of "the lifestyle"... because I'm not a swinger. Sometimes I engage in casual sex, but to me that's more "oh, hey, he's hot and why not", not because "ooh, sex with many other people, woohoo!" (Not that there's anything wrong with the latter way of looking at things; it just isn't *my* way.)

I can kind of see Spork's point, though. Yes, being queer, or poly, or kinky might be an innate part of someone's personality and being. In that way, it isn't a lifestyle. It isn't a *choice* to be queer or (for some, at least) poly or kinky. It's just who you are.

But *engaging* in, say, a same-sex relationship, or polyamory, or kink is, to some extent, a choice. It might be a choice made because the other options don't seem viable, but there are always options. I lived monogamously for most of my life, until three and a half years ago. I was bloody miserable, because monogamy isn't me, but I still made the choice to live that way. Now, I make the choice to live poly and kink instead of hiding who I am and my desires and interests. So to that extent, I can see someone saying I live a polyamorous and/or kinky lifestyle, though I would be more inclined to just say I live, and love, polyamorously and kinky.

But saying *the* poly lifestyle, or *the* kink lifestyle, or whatever... yeah. I would strongly disagree with categorizing it that way, because there is no one lifestyle, there are many different *lives* that might happen to fall into one of those categories.
 
I remember this thread from 5 years ago! lol

I hate the term "the lifestyle." I guess swingers use it as code with each other, or to ferret out people who they think might be swingers but aren't sure.

"Are you in 'the lifestyle?'" "We've been in 'the lifestyle' seven years.'"

It's code so you don't have to say "I have meaningless sex with others at parties/orgies."

It's such a stupid word, a holdover from the 70s or 80s... I went around my house last night after reading this thread, speaking like that character from Gilligan's Island, saying out loud in a Thurston Howell III voice, "Buffy and I are in The Lifestyle."

It just doesn't apply to me and how I live my life. And it's unclear what use it is for polyamorous people. Their lives are not as similar as swingers' lives. We don't have the "club," as was said upthread. We don't need a code word.

I love this. I love you for saying this. I laughed.

Yes, I do think there is something of that 70's swinger culture that flavors the word and the concept.

When I was a kid in the mid to late 80s, I had an aunt and uncle who were swingers. I didn't know it. They were the sort who would go to retreats together and swap, and the aunt went with my Mom to see male strippers, and they (the aunt and uncle) had statues of naked people, including a young couple in a passionate embrace on the coffee table. In their home, along with the weird coconut people and the wet bar with the weird light fixtures, the shag carpet and rattan, oh and the coffee table was full of seashells. Yeah all of that is irrelevant. But the memories are fun. Point is, when I was like 6-8 years old, I really was uncomfortable about the naked statues.

But those two had probably the happiest, healthiest, till death do us part marriage out of any of my relatives, and both of their sons grew up to be very successful and happy adults. "Lifestyle" is absolutely a word they would have used. And yeah, there's a certain cheese-factor there.

But to say that something is "a lifestyle" I would go just a bit further (or in a different direction) than whether one "identifies" as <whatever> or whether one chooses to do <whatever.> I'd ask, how much of your life stuff revolves around that thing?

OK so there's a woman who is super successful and very independent and she's got her own fancy apartment and she's got lovers in six cities that she sees when it's convenient for her. A very glamorous person! I would not say she's living a "polyamorous lifestyle" although she is poly, and she certainly has a lifestyle! It's more that of a wealthy child-free jet-setter, this imaginary person, that's how I'd describe her lifestyle. Her love habits are just a part of it, maybe not even a very big part!

Now look at someone whose daily life revolves a lot more around their relationships. Maybe they live in a communal household of some sort. Poly is a huge part of the lifestyle they lead.

I would have to explain it to people in a place like this, yes. In group meetings at Voodoo, not so much. But again, bear in mind that the leader of the poly discussion group actually was the one who gave me a hard time about going functionally mono with my Zen. She really cannot imagine, once being part of a "poly lifestyle" ever wanting any different. And I've had people here too, who, in my blog have said, "But is he asking that of you? Why does it mean you have to..." I don't have to. I want to.

Because you see, being poly, as a lifestyle, was not a working thing for me right now. I don't have the time. I have other obligations. And the stress of it was out-weighing the good I was getting from it. So, I'll step off that boat and be mono again for a time. For however long that works.

Kink on the other hand, is non-negotiable for me. I don't see myself wanting to give up SM play in my future, ever, at all. Poly was interesting, and often fun...but not a NEED. BDSM though, is a NEED that I have. And since I don't only do it at home with a partner, and hide it from the rest of the world...I actually have a magnet with the BDSM triskele emblem on my car, I attend kink events in two cities at various venues, and I hope to be part of the community for a very long time...in fact I wish I could be making a living building toys and furniture among other things, and I wish I could make MORE of my life about kink and the community... So I would say that I am into that as a "lifestyle."

And people in the community would understand that, with no explanation needed as to the fact that I am not a 24/7 slave or Master, etc. The details aren't that important.
 
I think the reason "lifestyle" is mentioned..

is because it is seen as a choice. Monogamy is seen as the norm. In mainstream society, we are still at a point where nothing else is seen as "normal" or "Acceptable." Being gay, I hear the same stuff about being LGBTQ.

It implies choice, though, which I find to be offensive. Being neither gay nor poly is a "lifestyle choice" for me. Both are natural orientations, and I want them to be respected as such.

I don't know that they will be in my lifetime, but every time I am confronted with this description on EITHER issue, I make sure the person or people I am talking to understand that it is in no way a choice at all. It is as much a part of who I am as my eye color.

Further, I refuse to accept that people who use this community to heal existing relationships who are simply somehow non monogamous to "save" a marriage or relationship as truly poly. They perpetuate the idea that we are just a bunch of sex addicts with commitment issues, when nothing could be further from the truth. I will never again be band aid on problems in an existing marriage or relationship with which I had nothing to do.
 
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