Thanks for the reply, and no apology needed; I write long comments myself!
The “without introducing new problems” part is actually kind of funny in this time context, since I had just spent a while on the Negative Polyamory Outcomes? post, and poly definitely does sometimes cause problems. If nothing else, I think it introduces new ways to screw up, in terms of both emotional and physical health… but it can also be pretty beneficial when everybody involved can handle the emotions involved. The cost of going against a societal norm will be very context-dependent, I suspect; a bunch of the LW crowd apparently live in the SF Bay Area, where it’s fairly common and has minimal societal costs, but some of us are in less-progressive areas.
Congrats on the happy relationship (against earlier expectations). I wonder how many people would be able to just slide into a consensually non-monogamous (dammit, we need better words; even that phrase isn’t accurate) relationship when they hadn’t previously thought of themselves as poly. It came easy to me—I’m actually kind of upset by jealousy in general, and once I found other people who were OK with this relationship style it just fell into place—but a lot of people do seem to have hang-ups with the idea.
Thanks for the reply, and no apology needed; I write long comments myself!
The “without introducing new problems” part is actually kind of funny in this time context, since I had just spent a while on the Negative Polyamory Outcomes? post, and poly definitely does sometimes cause problems. If nothing else, I think it introduces new ways to screw up, in terms of both emotional and physical health… but it can also be pretty beneficial when everybody involved can handle the emotions involved. The cost of going against a societal norm will be very context-dependent, I suspect; a bunch of the LW crowd apparently live in the SF Bay Area, where it’s fairly common and has minimal societal costs, but some of us are in less-progressive areas.
Congrats on the happy relationship (against earlier expectations). I wonder how many people would be able to just slide into a consensually non-monogamous (dammit, we need better words; even that phrase isn’t accurate) relationship when they hadn’t previously thought of themselves as poly. It came easy to me—I’m actually kind of upset by jealousy in general, and once I found other people who were OK with this relationship style it just fell into place—but a lot of people do seem to have hang-ups with the idea.