I love you! Now me! I love you!

[reddragdiva]

• I have been greatly enjoying Uncyclopedia (the one with the beard from the other universe) and have greatly extended the article on Vegemite. See also air guitar, Scotland, George W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, The Pope, Bands with only one song, RTFM, banned from the Internet, Wikipedia, LiveJournal, All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

• I recommend duranorak's new kittensounds music rant blog.

arkady's business cards have arrived and are apparently fantastic. BUY A DOLLY.

I hang out in a volatile social group of goths whose relationship spans are often measured in weeks and who play musical partners a lot. I've conspicuously had the same wife and the same girlfriend for two years. So people ask me about polyamory. (The idea that I am what passes for an expert opinion is genuinely frightening.)

In most cases I fear discouragement is probably the right answer — "You know how much work one girlfriend is? Two is ten times as much." — but I think I've got the key question: "If you see the love of your life kissing someone else and being genuinely happy to be doing so, will you be genuinely happy about it for them? If not, you probably shouldn't get into this."

Many people quite like the idea of a selection of lovers, but balk when you point out the opposite applies. The capacity for compersion/frubbliness/other-less-contrived-sounding-word is the vital thing. Not necessarily for everyone or all the time, but at all. Otherwise they won't be happy in this sort of arrangement.

Have I discovered the Polyamorist's Philosopher's Stone?

Comments

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking in terms of innate selflessness of the spirit. Jealousy stems from a selfish spirit, one that wants on some subconscious level to "own" another. A naturally selfless person will not be jealous because the idea of "owning" someone else simply wouldn't occur to them; and they would be happy for that other person simply because the other person was happy. Obviously self-enforced selflessness wouldn't work in the same way. But I think it's less clumsy-sounding than "compersion" and less ridiculous than "frubbly".

[reddragdiva]

Probably prone to misinterpretation, though.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

fair enough. :)
frubbly is so totally foul as to convince anyone who wasn't sure to stay monogamous all on its own.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I actually really like the word "frubbly", as it perfectly fits, for me, the "yay! bounce!" feeling of affection and excitement when I see my lover happily flirting or dating. This may not be everyone's response, but then everyone experiences other emotions in subtly different ways too.

[edwards.livejournal.com]

I suspect that if Siani saw me happily dating she'd kick me in the frubblies.