{"id":100,"date":"2008-03-24T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2008-03-24T04:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/2008\/03\/24\/re-run-if-it-aint-about-love\/"},"modified":"2008-03-24T00:00:36","modified_gmt":"2008-03-24T04:00:36","slug":"re-run-if-it-aint-about-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/24\/re-run-if-it-aint-about-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Run: If it Ain’t About Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a busy week and I have the flu, so this is a re-run of a personal fave.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Peeve time, and this is a big one.<\/p>\n

I get sucked into drama really easily. I\u2019m an intense person and all the gods know that I am a sucker for almost any type of intensity – good and bad.<\/p>\n

A personal Poly Drama got me talking to one of my spice recently. As we were talking, he sighed and said, \u201cI don\u2019t really consider myself poly.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point, I looked at him like he had three heads. I mean, he lives in a \t\t\t\t\tgroup marriage, for goodness sake!<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t get it. You\u2019re in love with two women. I \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tknow \t\t\t\t\t<\/em> \t\t\t\t\t you are,\u201d I said. After all, one of those women was me and I know he\u2019s in \t\t\t\t\tlove with our wife.<\/p>\n

He shrugged. \u201cYes, I am. But I\u2019m not poly. Polyamory isn\u2019t about love that I\u2019ve been able to see. It\u2019s all about playacting and drama.\u201d<\/p>\n

This cut me up short and hard. God, I soo wanted to protest\u2026 \u201cNo! No! No! Darling, it is too <\/em> about the love. It\u2019s all <\/em> about the love. You\u2019re just not seeing it because you\u2019re isolated from the community, you won\u2019t hang out <\/em> with poly people enough. You\u2019re just getting the bitching at home!\u201d<\/p>\n

However, there something about this husband that makes it really hard to bullshit yourself when you\u2019re talking to him. Oh you can scream and rail and call him names and call him a blind idiot, but it\u2019s a waste of time. It\u2019s better to shut up and think a minute. \u2018Cause no, he\u2019s not \t\t\t\t\t\talways \t\t\t\t\t<\/em> right. You do have to think. However, he is a damned intuitive man. So, I shut up and thought about what I was feeling in the moment of my own Personal Poly Drama. The whole situation on all parts was not coming from a place of love, I can tell you, and this particular poly situation is so common that if someone posted it to a discussion list it would get an eyeroll for being boring. I\u2019ve seen it and its various permutations at least once a week for the past eight years.<\/p>\n

I realized something.<\/p>\n

Polyamory is supposed to be about love, but my husband was right. Tragically, far more often than not, it is not. In my watching the poly community over the last eight years or so, I see a truly appalling lack of \t\t\t\t\t\tlove \t\t\t\t\t<\/strong> . In my own life\u2026 God, oh God, it is worse. There are days when I marvel at the complete gall I am showing in having anything to do with the poly community, much less write any articles about relationships. I make so many foolish, blind, unloving mistakes in my relationships it\u2019s not even funny. Oh, the NRE crap? Got that down pat. Sure do. It\u2019s fun and I\u2019m not running it down. It has its place, honest.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t leave out the real thing.<\/p>\n

If it ain\u2019t about the love of \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tall \t\t\t\t\t<\/em> \t\t\t\t\t your relationships at the core of it, it\u2019s not worth it. Really, it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So what do I mean by love?<\/p>\n

While I am not a Christian, but when speaking on the nature and power of love, I really think this passage is simply brilliant:<\/p>\n

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned but do not have love, I gain nothing.<\/p>\n

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.<\/p>\n

8 Love never fails. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t1 Corinthians 13<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not about fluffybunny here. The cosmic muffin nonsense that some people pass off as this universal love crap without following through gets to me. It cheapens the work, worth and power of what love really is. Don\u2019t listen to words. Watch actions. Okay, just for the record though, I don\u2019t want any of you guys quoting this article and saying, \u201cSee, see, I got hurt, so that\u2019s proof you don\u2019t \t\t\t\t\t\tlove \t\t\t\t\t<\/strong> me!\u201d Mama Java, she don\u2019t like it when people twist her words. People can fuck up, be blind, be human, be faulty and still be loving. It\u2019s whether or not you keep on trying, \u2018kay? That\u2019s the essence of a lot of what I am talking about. Do you get back up and keep trying when you fall short of your own ideals? Do you accept that your loves are going to fall short of their own ideals, and give them the opportunity to keep trying? So many poly people get on their high horses about love. Frankly, the general run of us win no damned prizes in the demonstration of love department. We\u2019re about on par with monogamous folks. That\u2019s okay, mind. We\u2019re human. But let\u2019s step down off the damned high horse, \u2018kay? We look like bloody hypocrites, and it\u2019s got to stop.<\/p>\n

I wanna go over in detail a bit of this Bible passage (any of you former Southern Baptists out there havin\u2019 flashbacks yet? LOL). I want it very clear that I do not claim for one second, by the way, to fulfill all these goals. They\u2019re goals in becoming a more loving human being. I am not there by a long shot.<\/p>\n