pfc

I've made it clear in both my posts that my concern is with poly being defined by "three or more people all in one relationship together" and have acknowledged throughout this thread that many kinds of poly relationships exist. At no point have I insisted that every relationship is one-on-one-- only that I am not in a relationship with K, and many poly people are not in relationships with their metamours. I am frustrated by continued representations of polyamorous relationships as "everyone is dating each other," which is the most common representation of poly relationships in media. You're making a lot of those same assumptions in your post as you describe what you think poly relationships where people know each other look like. You'll notice I used the term "sister wives" in my first post as an example of something that people assume poly is. Poly is a very broad category of relationships. It cannot be defined by one of its subcategories.

First off, Dan has addressed this in the most recent comic, so that's awesome and makes most of my comments moot... but I still want to address this. My objection was never to the number-- I used the term "triad" because it means, for example, Grace is dating Tedd, Tedd is dating Sarah, and Grace is dating Sarah: everyone is dating. This is as opposed to a non-triad poly relationship, where Grace might be dating Tedd and Tedd might be dating Sarah, but Sarah and Grace are not dating. I suppose I could have put "triad, etc." It seems fairly clear that Dan was talking about capital-r romantic Relationships. Everyone on this earth, poly or otherwise, has a relationship with everyone else... that's not what the comic was talking about. It was offering a definition of polyamory: "Polyamory is basically being in, or wanting, an intimate relationship involving more than two people. And no, I don't mean one person having two separate partners. I mean three or more people all in one relationship together." Well, they'd be wrong and should let other people define their relationships as they want. And it doesn't change the fact that the definition of poly has nothing to do with people being friends with each other's partners (which, again, isn't even what Dan was saying). B has had partners I've never met. Sometimes it was the long distance thing, sometimes it was just that they wanted a (capital r) Relationship independent of our friend circle. And that's fine, and doesn't make our relationship somehow less poly because we aren't all hanging out in the living room together playing Cards Against Humanity. Joe can absolutely be Bob's partner without Bob and Judy having a relationship. People do poly in all sorts of ways (which is kind of my point). Someone who's solo poly, for example, doesn't have a primary partner. Since they aren't usually living with a partner, there's no reason their partners would ever have to meet. Sure, it might happen, but it doesn't have to as some sort of intrinsic part of polyamory. And it would be kind of messed up for my partner to demand that I have a relationship with all their other partners, just like it would be messed up of me to do the same. For me, being poly is all about not controlling my partners' interactions with other people. That means not only allowing them to date whoever they want to date, but also not forcing them to be BFF with the people I'm dating. Those are conversations you can have, but it's not an imperative. Some poly people don't want anything to do with their partners' partners. Some people do. It depends on the relationship. The most important thing about polyamory is that everyone knows what's going on. That doesn't mean they have to have any kind of relationship with anyone else. Once again, triads, etc exist. But the definition of poly is not "being in, or wanting, an intimate relationship involving more than two people. And no, I don't mean one person having two separate partners. I mean three or more people all in one relationship together." Not everyone who's poly has a "family," and people do poly in all sorts of very different ways. All I wanted was a definition that was inclusive of all types of poly relationships, which Dan has very kindly provided in the most recent comic Sorry to go on a rant, it's just that people get really confused about polyamory and I think it's important to clarify it.

Sure, some poly people view things that way, but many, many people don't. The problem here is that the comic is talking about the definition of poly, and equating it with triads. Don't get me wrong, those relationships absolutely exist in the poly community, especially when everyone's queer. If you're dating someone, odds are good you'll be interested in the kind of people *they* are dating. I'm poly and I'm dating a partner (D) of my primary partner (B)'s partner (K), and D is interested in dating B-- and I could see myself dating K. So if that went down, we'd all be dating each other. At the same time, just because of the dynamics of our group, that would be a series of separate relationships, even though we hang out together a lot. But also, including everyone's partners in your "family" can sometimes be downright impossible. When you're talking about a large community, it would be a logistical nightmare. Pretty much everyone I'm dating, or who is dating someone I'm dating, has a long-distance relationship with someone who has their own poly community where they live. Not only am I unlikely ever to meet these people, I'm definitely never going to meet their partners! So I have no objection to acknowledging the existence of triads... I just think it's important to clarify that "poly" is a broad term for dating multiple people (not necessarily all at once) and that specific types of relationships within that (solo poly, triad, primary, anchor, etc) are just that, subsets. It's frustrating that people assume that because you're poly, you're a. in a sister-wives scenario or b. in a triad relationship!