Answering an interesting poly boston chat question

[wispfox]

Also answered on poly boston's chat email list, so if you read there, you've seen this.

why are any of you poly?

Because I have very few things in my life where I can pick any single thing as being absolutely better than everything else. Multiple things, yes...

Because I'm generally affectionate with all of my friends, and unless there are circumstances preventing it, tend to be attracted to all of my friends, intensity depending both upon how close I feel to them and on the level of physical (chemical?) attraction on my part. Related to this, however, is that while I can be attracted to people I do not know, I have absolutely no interest in acting on it. Apparently having (or having a good sense of the possibility of) a friendship is a requirement for me.

Aforementioned circumstances refer to the rather bizarre, though useful, fact that my mind refuses to consider any sexual behavior with people who are not available for any reason (most common one, and the only one I can currently think of, is if they are in a monogamous relationship). The same thing occurs if they are sufficiently different from me in their forms of insanity to cause anything beyond friendship to be simply impossible. Note that 'sexual behavior' in my mind does *not* include flirting or cuddling or other similar stuff I prefer to be able to do with all of my friends.

Comments

[hawkegirl.livejournal.com]

That wasn't so long that it needed a cut - really!

[kahoki.livejournal.com]

I concur with your thoughts on being affectionate with female friends, but despite the fact that my dad always teased me about having a *harem* because of the deproportionate number of lady friends, very few of them were interested in a sexual relationahip, which often left me at odds since the guys or girls they did get intimate with often had a whole series of headaches and heartbreaks associated with them.

Guess it is harder to find reliable friends than passionate lovers, so my interest in polyamory is to quantify if having a deeper involvemet with many women but not neccessarily being sexual is something inherant in me or their perceptions of how intimate they felt comfortable becoming. Perceptions have led me to believe tha poly has it's own sets of pit falls associated with it, so am still learning as i go, though not at a very assertive pace.