Polyamory is HARD WORK

(Figure I'm overdue for a rant, and I know I have moved away from the theoretical side of things lately, so I thought I'd post some navel gazing for you... It only took me a week to type this in between other engagements!)

Polyamory (from poly=multiple + amor=love) is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Polyamorous perspectives differ from monogamous perspectives, in that they respect a partner's wish to have second or further meaningful relationships and to accommodate these alongside their existing relationships. (taken from wikipedia)

Polyamory is not a cop out. It is not a way of 'getting away with' bad behaviour. Being poly means being far more in control and aware of your emotions and behaviour than you might otherwise be. Being poly means taking more people into consideration, not just yourself. Being poly means putting in the homework that is looking after the feelings of everybody involved in your life, directly or indirectly. That means friends, family, life partners, play partners, and their partners as well. Being poly means being careful not to take issues from one relationship and dump them on another. Being poly is HARD WORK. Absolutely there are benefits - when things are tough, you have more than one person to support you, when things are going well, the pleasure is often multiplied, and when it's good, it is very very good, but it is not in any sense an easy option.

I knew this at the start of the year. I knew very well that, while I identify as poly, and I have no intention of being monogamous in the foreseeable future, this year I did not want the hard work involved in being poly. This year I did not want the work involved with *any* relationship. I envisaged twelve months of free space to both explore my sexuality and to focus on working out more about what i want from life with no responsibility in terms of relationships.

Being more than half way through the year, I find myself looking back over the past few months and realising what a naive idea that was. I *have* explored a good deal about my sexuality, have learned a lot about myself, and am still learning. I have explored a good deal internally in terms of my motives and motivation for being single, for being poly, for being a BDSM switch. Some of it has been a steep learning curve, some I have known for a while but has crystallised over the last few months.

This includes the fact that I am coming to realise that- apart from very rare occasions like for example meeting a world famous Fetish Diva, I do prefer my experimentation to be within an existing relationship, be it friendship or more than that.

So as things stand, I am admitting something I suspect the majority of my friends and lovers have known for a while - I'm not single. I'm poly. I have a number of relationships with different people, on a variety of levels, some of them more involved than others, all of them important to me in their own way. I have a responsibility to keep everyone involved abreast of changes that may affect them, directly or indirectly, to consider everyone's feelings when I make a decision about my own life, to pay attention, give affection, spend time effort and money, and even if I *am* insanely busy, to try and let every one know that they are special to me. I'm not always successful, but this is what I am trying to achieve.

Single seems to be about the opposite of what I am, really!

What does that mean?

In terms of the spirit of what I declared at the start of the year, actually very little. Yes I have commitments, and to a lot of people, but at the same time I am under no obligation other than that dictated by love or friendship. I am a free agent still. What I do, and with whom, continues to be *my* choice.

However, just the simple fact of keeping up with so many people has meant over the last couple of months that I am constantly worn out. Add that to housing issues, attempting to juggle a day job and a self employed career, and spending a great deal of time talking online particularly with NG, I have had very little time for myself, or other people I care about, let alone anyone new. Therefore I am declaring myself for the time being 'polyfidelitous' - I intend to dedicate what little spare time I have over the next couple of months to my existing friendships and relationships, and to *me*, and say no to anything new on offer. It's my career that I need to be focusing on at the moment, unfortunately, and I just haven't the time or energy to spare for dating.

Yes, poly is hard work, and I seem to have found my limit.

___

In terms of the last two weeks, it's been... tiring. My trip to the Goldfish bowl turned out to be rather less fun than I had hoped for - having overdone things for the previous six weeks, then having a stressful weekend with Mountain, and an insane three days at work where I put in more hours than I had done in the entire month before, my boss having rather rapidly reversed a decision to cut my hours thanks to a meeting at the start of the week. By the time Nice Guy picked me up at the airport I was suffering from exhaustion and had actually made myself too ill to play, and didn't recover from that until most of the way through the week. We were both stressed, both snapping at each other, both disappointed at the hotel room we ended up with, and the fact that we were supposed to having a pleasant relaxing week together only made it worse, of course. It's not that I wish I hadn't been there, but I do wish I hadn't been in such a state.

Getting back to the City has been stressful, too. There have been highlights, seeing Miss Sunshine being one of them, and Nice Guy's move to the City another, but I am still short on sleep, short on money and short on time. I'm praying things will finally calm down a bit over the next few weeks. I am looking forward to spending some quality time with Nice Guy, Miss Sunshine and Mountain, and hopefully catching up with some of my other friends and loved ones, looking forward to my housing finally being settled (one of my housemates having absconded with two months of our rent almost precisely when i was looking to move because of an entirely different issue has left me in a huge bind), hoping things settle down into some vague sort of routine at work, as well, so that I can finally focus on my career and not all of the rest of it, fulfil some outstanding obligations and work out where the hell i am going next. and finally, looking forward to some well earned rest.

Wish me luck!