My reintroduction into society

[pphaneuf]

"I am denial, guilt and fear -- and I control you" — Nine Inch Nails, Mr Self-Destruct

I am sorry for the long post, but I did not have the time to make it shorter.

First thing, my reading of The Ethical Slut resonated at at surprisingly deep level with me. nancyrihakova recommended the book to me (thanks a lot!), probably because I was on a collision course with non-monogamous issues, and I thought "well, I went through some pretty strange experiences, and I'm not sure this is very sane, but I'd better know what the heck I'm getting into".

Heh, what did I know... Mark me down as an apprentice slut. :-)

I understand that being non-monogamous is a lot more work ("insane levels of communication" are required, as I'm told, among other things), but you have to remember also the extra work of being monogamous: the pressure of finding the right person, deciding on whether to keep working on that relationship or give up, resisting external temptations, etc... Being happy is nothing to sneer at, and I think that being happy is worth the extra work. We'll see how this works out in time.

So this book is on it's way to reach my very short list of life-changing books I've read. For the terminally curious, they are the Jargon File (I'm even credited in the dead tree version!) and Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (referred to as "GEB").

It is amazing how they are tied together in an amazing way. The Jargon File revealed to me who I was, a hacker (in the meaning described by the File). This is where I picked up the recommendation for GEB, which deal with self-reference a lot.

I realized I was a hacker when I read the A Portrait of J. Random Hacker appendix and found myself reading about myself. For example, people who know me will read this and see exactly what I mean. But there were (only!) two things I didn't see myself fitting in: food and sexual habits. I didn't like asian food much and while open to the idea of non-monogamous relationships, I didn't really see myself be into this.

Turns out at that time, I just never had good asian food, and I'm now onboard. And, even before that (surprisingly!), I got myself involved in a non-monogamous relationship.

The self-references don't stop there! Words like grok, that are in common usage in the hacker community I had found myself to be a member of (albeit disconnected), turns out to originate from nothing else than "Stranger in a Strange Land", the Robert Heinlein novel which is thought by some to have inspired the polyamorous community a whole lot. This is just too weird to be completely coincidental.

So we're back full circle to polyamory. For various reasons that are mine, I have made the conscious choice to remain single for a while. I have also made the conscious choice not to be dead. I decided not to join any religious order (especially not the self-flagellating kind!) and not to make any vow of abstinence either.

But it's not all so easy, of course.

In the loving relationship department (which here doesn't necessarily means being "in love" in the common sense, but rather cover a large area), I have been in a deep, deep slumber that I am just waking up from. Some people, like nancyrihakova and kyotto have been poking at me to wake me up. I am fighting psychological chains I had bound myself with for so long, this is not easy.

One person I'm interested in to some level and I know is poly (so I avoid a whole lot of weird introduction issues), I had blocked off for myself in a time where I thought I needed to be completely alone. But blocking off is stupid, feeling your feelings is the only sane way, so what do you know, I snapped in a big way. Now that I've reclaimed my sanity, I'm finding that my blocking off isn't so easy to get out of. I find myself wanting to hold her in my arms, and instead find myself shyly caressing her knee with the very tip of my fingers. I find myself getting better (I managed to beat my mind into letting me put my arm around her, stupid mind!), but I see that I've crafted myself some very strong chains to bind myself into. How stupid of me, I know, but that's through experience that you learn, I suppose.

Then there's another person who I find myself more at ease around and manage to be able to be flirtatious with her, but I end up hitting a wall where I don't want to go any further. Why? Well, I don't think she is poly, and I'm just blocked at how to communicate this to her (astute readers might notice the self-referential situation again, on multiple levels too). I don't want her (or anyone else!) to be my girlfriend, not now. I just want to spend a good time and share some affection and love (again, don't stick to the obvious meaning). It's this whole thing of communicating my "I'm not so good at monogamous relationships" thing. And I can feel her being fragile in other ways, and I am not the most experienced at this.

The stupidest part is that I'm not even interested in outright sex right now! I'm just waking up now, I haven't kissed a new girl in ages! I'm feeling a bit fragile, I just want to hold someone, kiss her maybe, that's all...

I suppose this will change, but having this much problems with something this small, I find annoying. I feel it might be simpler to just go and aim for a one night stand, but it's just not what I want. I've spent all of my love life with only two different persons, developing extreme intimity before getting there. I'm all for reconsidering the things I've taken for given in my life, but not all at once!

Sometimes, I wish the handkerchiefs sometimes used in the gay community would be a society wide thing, where you could just go and check out someone and see that he or she really wouldn't be into what you want, or the opposite, that you could just go ahead.

This post might seem a bit depressing in parts, but I would like to make it clear this is not the message I am trying to transmit. I have not felt this happy and free in a very long time, possibly more than 15 years, so there is obviously some good stuff going on. Even when I'm lamenting stuff, I find myself smiling in between the cringings, heh!

Maybe things will work out with both of these nifty girls, maybe just one, maybe nancyrihakova will tie me down to a (bed?) post with someone else she'd like to hook me up with, maybe none will work out and I'll be following the ways of musicdieu, who knows?

"If the future isn't bright, at least it's colorful" — Einstürzende Neubauten, Youme & Meyou

Comments

[sfllaw.livejournal.com]

I think that the core aspects of relationships are trust and loyalty. No matter what you decide, Pierre, do not forget to find a strong core.

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

What he said.

:) Nancy

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

My exact wordings were "respect and honesty", earning you trust from others, but I agree.

[sfllaw.livejournal.com]

Those are merely necessary, but not sufficient, to get trust and loyalty.

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

What else would you say is necessary? I know that I have been disrespected and not getting honesty, and it caused me to lose my trust in some people, for some time at least.

I feel that loyalty is very similar to my idea of respect and maybe a subset of it: if you have an agreement with a person, breaking that agreement would be lacking respect for that person, IMHO.

[sfllaw.livejournal.com]

Other necessary things are: faith, self-sacrifice, altruism, benevolence, love, and a host of other aspects. These all reinforce trust and loyalty.

Really, you can have an respectful and honest relationship that never involves trust and loyalty. But it won't be a very happy one.

[musicdieu.livejournal.com]

It seems strange that I'm reading this one too late, especially since I was mentioned in the post.

I feel somewhat obligated to say something deep and meaningful which strengthens your position on my way of life, or weakens what you say, but I find that I don't really have much to share.

All of my experiences in relationships come from fucking up in some way or another, and analyzing and learning from my experience. This is only different from other human beings in that, through observation, I've discovered that most people make stupid mistakes, ruin their relationship lives, and then commit these mistakes repeatedly without ever assessing their actions and learning from them.

If there's one thing I should say, it's that no book, no matter how good, should ever directly influence your thinking on strong issues like polygamy vs. monogamy. It's just a fucking book, a collection of words written by an incompetent to semi-competent author for the purpose of making money. Hell, I could throw a bunch of shit onto paper, bind it, and sell it as well, and then if people called my so-called book 'life changing' I'd break their jaws.

I've also found that learning about relationships from other people is fucking useless, because humans tend to put way too much bias into any outlook they have on relationships, and any story they tell you reflects their own values and point of view, which are not your values, and not your point of view. What they could perceive as negative or positive is almost certainly not going to be perceived the same way by you.

Do your own thing. Fuck up a lot. Learn from your mistakes. Once you feel confident enough to apply your knowledge, go back to doing your own thing.

Keep in mind that though I may seem cynical and bitter, my choices are my own, and I choose to act and be the way I am.

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Oh, learning from my mistakes is a critical part of what is happening to me right now!

I'd disagree about the "life-changing book is shit" point, but only mildly. Don't go and think that I've read this and I'm now just blindly doing what's it said. Don't assume that all books are equally crappy either (let me tell you that the way this book is published and marketed, they don't really seem to have money too much on their minds!). My feelings while and after reading that book are more that it lined up a bunch of ideas and feelings that I already had in a linear way and made me see them more clearly. It was all there already, it just made it clear. Then there's also their guiding advice, but for that, I always apply my own judgement, don't worry. It seemed mostly good, but many things I was already doing in that particular way on my own accord (enforcing further that feeling of clarity).

Some aspects, I throw away. I do not like the distinction between poly and mono, as I personally see mono as a subset of being poly, and where all the good ideas still apply. Really, it's just sane to lay out the expectations as early as possible, and expecting the other person not to do certain things with other people is an expectation like any other, and you have to respect that. I've seen monogamous relationships fails so many times on the account of lack of communication, not stating the expectations, lacking respect and honesty, that really, it should be obvious that it's not that these things are specific to polyamorous relationships, it's more general than that and applies to all relationships (I'd stretch this even to relationships with friends and, in some ways, even yourself!).

I'm also always holding out the judgement on "life changing" on actually seeing what happens. When I read the Jargon File, I remember the feeling of not being alone, which strengthened me into following the path which I thought was right rather than the one school was trying to impose on me, and it led me where I am today, which doesn't strike me as a mistake (particularly when I see where some of my classmates are). When I read GEB, I remember seeing things differently after, and while I seemed to always have had that predisposition before, many of my architectural ideas flow directly from the multi-leveled self-referencing ideas expressed in that book.

You can't just take what people tell you to face value, that's so true. But by the same token, you can't just toss everything people tell you to the garbage pile. You have to consider each ideas and judge them on their own.

That's one of the things I hate about giving advice at work. I sometimes feel that the persons I give advice to just blindly take my opinion as gospel. I don't want that! Think for yourself! I give you what I think is good advice, but don't just apply it blindly, understand it and why I gave it, and integrate what you think is right. Tell me if you think I'm stupid!

I'm not claiming I won't be making any mistakes, far from it. I'd actually claim that I will, most certainly, make mistakes! Yes, I very much intend to learn from them, only if I do not do so will they really be failures.

Making your own choices is very important. I will not let either society or a book make choices for myself, no way.