{"id":987,"date":"2013-02-28T11:44:05","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T16:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/?p=987"},"modified":"2013-02-28T11:44:05","modified_gmt":"2013-02-28T16:44:05","slug":"its-not-polyamory-specific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/2013\/02\/28\/its-not-polyamory-specific\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Not Polyamory-Specific"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had someone comment that an article I wrote on great polyamory relationships wasn&#8217;t poly-specific.<\/p>\n<p>I agreed heartily. It wasn&#8217;t. You could have used the principles for a great monogamous relationship, a great friendship, or even used some of the principles for having good relationships with your parents or kids.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than take that as a big criticism, I took it as a compliment. Why?<\/p>\n<p>Friends, relationships, even ones with sex in them, aren&#8217;t <em>sex<\/em>-specific!<\/p>\n<p>Treating people well, loving them, getting to understand them down into their bones\u2026 None of those things have a great deal to do with binkie-rubbing. It&#8217;s not that sex and romance aren&#8217;t important or wonderful (&#8217;cause they&#8217;re delightful!), but if you&#8217;re <em>only<\/em> capable of loving someone, knowing them well and treating them well if you&#8217;re fucking them (or intend to), you suck and are a rotten person.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s a flip side to it. Ever given someone a free pass on crappy behavior you&#8217;d call a friend out on because of some mind-blowing sex or being insanely in love? I&#8217;m guessing if you&#8217;re over 25, you probably have. It&#8217;s probably because you&#8217;re giving the binkie-rubbing way too much importance. (We all do it at least once. It&#8217;s whether or not you learn from it that&#8217;s really important.)<\/p>\n<p>Real <em>relationship<\/em> skills have almost nothing to do with sex or romance.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Can we talk?<\/li>\n<li>Can we negotiate?<\/li>\n<li>How do we handle it when we disagree?<\/li>\n<li>How do we handle it when we screw up?<\/li>\n<li>How do we handle it when the other person screws up?<\/li>\n<li>How do we have fun together?<\/li>\n<li>How are we supportive of each other?<\/li>\n<li>Can we voice when our feelings are hurt?<\/li>\n<li>Are we willing to listen when someone approaches us with hurt feelings?<\/li>\n<li>Are we willing to be vulnerable?<\/li>\n<li>Are we able to spot tenderness or vulnerability in the people we&#8217;re close to?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Not one of those things, and these are the basics that drive whether or not a relationship is good, has a damn thing to do with sex or romance at all, much less sex or romance with multiple people. They&#8217;re the same skills I apply to relating to anyone I care about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had someone comment that an article I wrote on great polyamory relationships wasn&#8217;t poly-specific. I agreed heartily. It wasn&#8217;t. You could have used the principles for a great monogamous relationship, a great friendship, or even used some of the principles for having good relationships with your parents or kids. Rather than take that as&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/polyamorousmisanthrope.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}