Many hotel room beds thoughtlessly lack attachment points for… well, whatever you might want attachment points for. The solution, though can be as close as the closet.
If your room has a full-size ironing board, take it out and flip it on its top. The legs spread to a variety of useful widths – fasten a pair of wrist cuffs around the table legs and voilà! Attachment points. Add a piece of luggage to hold the board down, and proceed with your villainy!
This special guest post is by Haley Carter. A civic entrepreneur and writer, Haley lives in an intentional poly community in California and co-administers the Polyamory Discussion group on Facebook.
One of the questions most often asked in polyamory and other non-traditional relationship practices is, “Where do I find potential partners?” Haley says they might be most easily found in the very first place you’d look:
When I began embracing polyamory, I had some vague idea that I’d be able to continue dating the people I’d been seeing for a while. However, as I discovered, even though they’d either said they were polyamorous, or that we were “just friends” and my other relationships didn’t matter, those friendships faded away. There was a time after that when I didn’t actually date anyone outside my chosen family (nesting partners).
From there, I decided I needed to seriously search for polyamorous folk to date, and I spent much of 2009 on over 100 first dates, and a handful of second and third dates. That effort yielded a wealth of personal growth, a greater awareness of how to be a better friend, and the realization that I wasn’t into online dating.
But more recently, I’ve discovered that I truly enjoy dating people I already consider friends. I’m no longer “searching” for partners or sweethearts. Instead, I focus my time and and loving energy on people I’ve met while doing things I love — campouts, local art projects, monthly music socials, local (regional) Burning Man community development, polyamory discussion, both online and local/in-person, and hosting social gatherings. I’ve discovered such meaningful connections with friends who have become my sweethearts, sexual adventure companions, and partners. I could not have foreseen the depth and variety of these relationships — reality has become far more wonderful than my imagination!
And further, I will add that I don’t always know whether or not I consider someone a partner or sweetheart. Some relationships move in and out of that heart space, depending on proximity, mutual availability, and where my focus in life may be. I *love* knowing and loving other phenomenal human beings for whom that is also true.
No, polyamory does not mean “having a woman in every port.”
Some of those cities are nowhere near water.
… so, by definition, all sex is the best sex of my life.
All love is the best love.
All relationships, ditto.
(All chocolate, although that probably goes without saying.)
Now, whether all sex is the best sex of my partner’s life is up to them. But one can hope…
What won’t you do for love?
And what doesn’t your partner want you to do?
There’s a big difference between those questions. Maintaining healthy boundaries — knowing your preferences and limits, and not letting them be violated — is basic to a happy, healthy life, and not just in relationships, but everything.
But there’s often a blurred distinction between boundaries and rules, and going beyond that, to the (often dreaded) relationship veto. So, as an unrequested public service, I tried to make it all simpler. To wit:
(Rules being the most flexible of the bunch in meaning and effect.)
A veto can be included in rules, so long as they are negotiated and agreed to. But instituting a unilateral veto — or any unilateral rule, like the dreaded One Penis Policy — is a sign of a troubled relationship.
So build your walls where you will. Just don’t let anybody build them for you. Because those are the ones designed more to restrict than protect.
How do you decide?
As previously noted here, monogamy is a beautiful relationship structure; so is polyamory. Each is about doing proper justice to relationships with however many partners for whom you have the time and resources. For many people, that’s one. For others, it may be more. But I think two points are key: Being open to where love leads, and not making commitments you can’t sustain in the long term.
I have come to love the first clause and chafe at the second.
In the Facebook era, “friend” has become a verb.
It has also become a disposable noun; with the click of a button, we make a “friend”; with another, they are de-friended. That’s not much of a friendship.
Recently, one of my partners described me as her “lover.” And the younger person to whom she was speaking said, “Nobody calls them that anymore. Say ‘friend.'”
Leaving aside the lack of poetry and clarity in using the word thus, in the dating world, there is the concept of friends with benefits, a term that is so widespread it needs no further explanation. Except, perhaps this: There is an important difference between friends with benefits and friends because benefits.
If the benefits go away and they do too, they weren’t friends.
That distinction may not be important to some. But to those for whom a deeper connection makes for better sex, it’s vital.
Physical attraction may come and go. Friendships, though, endure. When you can have as much fun together doing whatever you do, and be as connected clothed as naked, that’s the good stuff. And it can’t be erased by a click.
"I will never understand why completely polysaturated people like you, who have so much love in their lives, still occasionally get the craving for an experience with someone new," I said to the mirror.
Polyamory as it is: Filling out medical power of attorney forms, one to be able to accompany a single partner to a colonoscopy, and another to add a meta to my spouse’s such form as backup for when she gets the same procedure.
Poly. It’s real life, just with a bigger cast.
It’s getting to be that exciting time again – the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit, August 3-6. I’ll be presenting twice(!) at the conference, but there’s so much more to see. Come on down!
Here’s where you register: https://www.sexualfreedomsummit.org/summit-registration/
…and here’s WHY you register: https://www.sexualfreedomsummit.org/workshops/
Really, folks, – if you care about your rights to express yourself and control your body, you owe it to yourself to attend – and you’ll enjoy!
…when I say I am part of the LGBTQ+ and polyamory communities:
The rest is details.
Thank you for participating in this date. Please be aware that depending on how matters proceed, you may find yourself in the presence of an erection.
The appearance of an erection does not require any action on your part. You are not responsible for relieving, encouraging, assisting, or any interaction with the erection. This is true even if you were the inspiration for the erection and actively encouraged its emergence.
Should an erection occur, you have the following responsibilities:
The erection’s owner is solely responsible for whatever comes next. If your further involvement is desired, it may be solicited. But erections happen. That fact does not create any obligation on you. Should the erection’s owner imply otherwise, please refer them to this text.
This notice is valid everywhere and at all times.
Thank you for perusing this Notice of Erection.
One of the faster ways to start an online pie fight is to bring up the topic of hierarchical relationships.
Some non-monogamous people practice hierarchy, in which one relationship is favored above others. (This is often the case, for example, when a married couple enters into polyamory.) And, perhaps understandably, other people find ranking relationships distasteful and/or an invitation to treat other partners poorly.
But it’s worth noting that There’s a difference between a descriptive hierarchy and a prescriptive one. Descriptive is saying “I live with X and lived with them 20 years before Y came along, so there are aspects to that relationship not matched by the other.” Prescriptive is saying, “X will always be my #1, and no other may be allowed to rival that relationship.” It’s the difference between what is and what will be.
We will always have more experience with one partner than another. But so long as:
Some people fall into love head over heels.
Some people, torso over torso.
There are people you might like to have sex with,
and people you might want to play with,
and people you might want to make love with.
But when all three come together in one person,
one moment,
one bed…
There, in that moment, is bliss.
Can there be too much of a good thing? For those in various types of open relationship, this question is a hardy perennial. If one partner is good, and two partners better, why not six? 11? 38? Is the sky really the limit?
The answer, it seems to me, depends on the answers to a series of questions:
1. What is the nature of the relationships? A live-in partner will take a different amount of time and commitment than a friend with benefits. A local partner will likely take more time and attention than a long-distance one. On the other hand, long distance relationships sometimes require chunks of time for travel or when the other partner travels to you (yay, but the calendar…)
2. Are you their only partner? Relationships that are (intentionally or by happenstance) monogamous for one of the partners may take more time and attention from the other partner than if needs are being met in each case by a variety of people. Also, if one partner has a crowded social schedule and the other’s is freer, that can make the relationship more complicated, depending on the needs and desires of the less-busy partner.
3. What do you like to do together? It’s a lot easier to make time for an evening of Netflix and whatever than to get away for weekends – and there are only so many weekends.
4. What are your other commitments like? If you have an unusually taxing job, or family to look after, or your band does a lot of gigs, that limits time available for relationships even though those other commitments are not themselves relationships. Remember also that – especially if you’re an introvert – you need to schedule time for yourself alone to rest and recover so you can be a better partner, and the more partners you have, the more time you may need to schedule without them.
5. Do you have the sort of relationships where you can see multiple partners at the same time? Like “pack” or “kitchen table” poly? If so, that eases the scheduling and reduces the calendar impact of multiple relationships. Some folks can work that way; some can’t.
6. If these relationships include a sexual component, how much time do you prefer to have between dates? Are you okay with a “shift change” approach, or do you prefer to have time to relax, shower, self-care, and do other things between dates?
And this list is only a start. I’m sure there are more questions, so chime in, folks! But the number of relationships you can handle at any one time depends on the people, on the shape of the relationships, and the demands of the rest of your life. One size cannot fit all… and all cannot always fit.
…and not necessarily a comfortable one:
I am, by any reasonable standard, polysaturated. I have three local partners and four long distance relationships. My life is full of love and loving.
Yet I still meet people to whom I’m attracted, and want to begin wooing them. It feels like a need, even though all of my imaginable needs are well taken care of. When I try to figure out what I am actually desiring, the following comes back (and I recognize that it does not necessarily speak well of me):
I yearn for that moment when the other person realizes that they are in love with me.
The relationship could end right there; in a way, everything after that is dénouement. But I just want them to feel well cared for and completely supported and to know they have that in their life.
Yes, in some cases there is a sexual attraction, or at least a curiosity about what it would like to touch this person and bring them pleasure. But I can’t say that I often meet someone and want them in my life forever and ever; just to know they want to be is enough.
Weird. And I’m hoping that that’s not right. But I’ll keep thinking on it.
Kitty Chambliss is a up-and-roaring voice in the polyamory community, doing coaching, presenting seminars, and (perhaps most prominently) putting out the Loving Without Boundaries series of interviews with longtime poly practitioners and thinkers.
We ran across each other at this year’s Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit, and when we discovered we lived a few blocks apart, it was almost inevitable that we would take things to the next level.
Which was this podcast (whatever were you thinking?): http://tinyurl.com/pourpoly
Sure, it’s an hour of your life. Listening to me drone on. But there may be a laugh or two, and maybe, just maybe, a usable insight.
To be accepted by – or even friends with – one’s metamour is a wonderful thing. But when your lover’s pet finally decides that you’re OK, you’ve hit the jackpot.
Votreplaisir 