Polyamory, and how my mom's choice in kids' music inadvertently programmed me poly

[azurelunatic]

Tagged for your protection.

I still am boggled by a system of romance that demands that if you see another one you like, you have to put the first one down and take the second one, or keep the first one and avoid the second one, rather than keeping both quite happily...

I was raised on Raffi. There are two songs that were instrumental in forming my views of relationships.

"When your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends, the more we get together, the happier we'll be."

This told me that it was a good idea to try and be friends with everybody. Not just everyone I knew, but if my friends had friends, I should get to know them too, to see if there was anyone who could be my friend, and I should introduce my friends to my other friends, to see if they would get along. Then we could all be happy, because the more good friends we have, the happier we could be! Then we could all have someone to play with!

This played out quite handily in high school. I was the bridge between an interesting different number of social groups. I was friends with the little computer geeks, being one of them. I was friends with the art people. I was friends with some of my little sister's music and drama people. I was friends with the freak/weirdo contingent. I was the only female who would talk to the gamer/anime guys. Eventually, a lot of the groups did meld together into a new, improved version of the Library Monkeys, under Shawn's not-so-wise leadership, and my babysitting.


The second set of significant lyrics: "It's mine, but you can have some. With you I'd like to share it. 'Cause if I share it with you, you'll have some too!"

Examples were given in the song. A book, a block, a treat -- sharing all of these things made everyone happier! If you shared, you could play nicely, instead of fighting about something.


I put them together in my head. I noticed how other kids got grabby about their friends -- "She's my friend, not your friend. She was my friend first, so nyah-nyah!" -- and decided that you were supposed to share your friends too, not just your toys and your books and your desserts.


When I became interested in the appropriate sex, I inherited that class from "friend". A boy you were in love with was just like a friend, I decided, only you wanted to marry him and live with him and sleep in a big bed with him and have kids with him and work on pottery and quilts while he went to work.

Somehow, the "there can be only one person that you love like that at one time" trigger never got flipped in me. I could have more than one friend at a time, couldn't I? And sure, Mama and FatherSir only had each other, but they liked each other the best, and it was probably hard to find girls who would get along with FatherSir, because sometimes he could be a pretty big meanie, since he was a boy.

I knew I had to get married some time or other, and in preparation for that, began going over my options locally. Which guy did I like the best? I had to like one guy the best, even if there wasn't someone who was really really nice.

When I hit middle school, however, some issues began to crop up. I would get a crush on a guy, and then I would get a crush on another guy before the first crush wore off. I began to notice that when I got a crush on a guy and it was based on something that we could actually be friends about, I would like him even after I didn't have a crush on him any more. So I had to start making lists about who I liked, because I didn't like just one guy at a time.

Another layer of complexity was added with high school, and my first bad case of Unrequited Love. Not only was I in love with Darkside Junior (no relation to m'love), but Bugs Potter had decided that I was cute, and Bugs did interesting things to my hormones and he was a friend.

Now, Darkside Junior was definitely unavailable. There was no question about that. But I was in love with him, terribly and horribly. And Ryan was cute, and Bugs was cute and nice, and ... and I wasn't about to wait for my first kiss until I fell out of love with Darkside Junior. I was definitely somewhat conflicted, because I felt like I was "cheating" on Darkside Junior, because I didn't love Bugs at all... but there we were.

As if it wasn't complex enough, I then had my nose directed smack in the middle of the fact that I was bisexual.

In this frame of mind, I wound up at CTY, a notorious hotbed of teen romance. I fell in love with pyrogenic, who was already dating boojum. By the time I realized that he was taken, it was already too late. I was in love, and there was no undoing it. He was flattered, rather than insulted.

When the Lady E. fell in love with him, too, and one of my enemies let me know that I was expected to hate her for loving My Man, I responded by binding our friendship closer, as she had as much right to love Pyro as I did. The Lady E. and I wound up engaged, both united in the love of pyrogenic. We were a little grumpy that Pyro was taken, but had no wish to split up the epic love that was him and boojum; we just wished that Kim would share her toys.

Comments

Re: bridging and songs into polyamory

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm familiar with the bridge aspect. Many of the events that we host involve the cross-pollination of groups, the dim sum most of all. I was amused and gratified when someone told me that they were unsurprised that I knew someone because they thought of me as being an interface between many of the groups the person was a part of.

As for songs and polyamory, I had the opposite approach. I heard all these songs about loneliness, betrayal, and sorrow around 10–12 or so. Me, being the problem solver that I was, realized that if everyone could just share then 90% of the painful songs would just go away. After all, we were supposed to share, right?

BTW, I added this post into my poly memories. I forget to add things to there much too often.

Re: bridging and songs into polyamory

[azurelunatic]

My parents were also bridges, my father mostly so.