anna

Thank you!

The beautiful thing about polyamory after all is that we can have both :)

I think the whole rigid concept of ‘asking a stranger out on a date’ -> ‘dating phase where every wrong move means goodbye’ -> ‘proposing going steady’ is antithetical to the spirit of polyamory in a way.

Almost all my relationships just gradually and naturally grew out of friendships. My latest one was originally a friend of a friend, and our first conversation was me excitedly infodumping about European emergency vehicles. She was super hooked and interested and I felt like she was pleasant to interact with, so we hung out more often. We talked almost every day because it was just fun to communicate about our hobbies and special interests, and we became friends. Eventually it got to the point where we talked about some deeper topics, trauma, relationships, kinks and such. And that’s usually where we get romantically or sexuall involved just by casually being like ‘ha I wish’ and ‘hey I’m here anytime’, you know? No official Big Date That Needs To Go Perfectly, no playing pretend, no charades.

I just don’t really like making hard cuts between labels such as ‘friends’ or ‘relationships’. They’re limiting and simplistic. By implying they’re completely and wholly separate, you kind of set yourself up for failure: you have to ask someone out and go on a date, which is a really scary and anxiety-inducing, awkward process. Instead of developing a relationship naturally, you come to someone with a full business proposal of long-term commitment, sex, love, unquestioned support and making living arrangements. And if anything goes wrong, the whole thing is irreparably impossible. Of course that’s scary.

I had spontaneous sex with some of my friends, and it doesn’t throw us for a crisis because of any ‘implications’ mono cishet people would associate with that ‘step’. It doesn’t mean we suddenly have to stare into each others eyes and feel our hearts beat with love. It just meant we had sex. Having sex once in a while can be an activity among friends and it doesn’t imply we need to love each other or stay committed to anything.

And similarly, you can love someone or be in a romantic relationship with someone without the expectations of typical ‘partnership’ things like them meeting your parents, you moving together, you being committed to each other for life. Likewise, you can have all of these committed partnership aspects in your relationship but not be up for sexual contact because you don’t feel like it with them. Without labels, this is all possible.

The most natural way of starting relationships is just to make good friends and just doing what you want with them until you happen to find yourself in a relationship one day and laugh about how this happened.

Good friendship and romance are practically indistinguishable anyway.

Part of why I am polyamorous is that I enjoy experiencing all kinds of connections people can make. I like short-lived relationships and commitment for life, loose and casual ones just as much as deeply connecting ones that end up intertwining my life with someone else’s irreversibly.

I like not having to go through the hoops and motions of ‘standard’ traditional relationships with a clearly defined dating phase, ‘going steady’ and all that. My partner(s) and I just do what we want and what we like, whether that’s a deep friendship with a romantic component, a loose kink adventure or a non-sexual but highly romantic marriage-style commitment. We just do what works for all of us.

It’s a difficult situation to be sure.

Blanket exclusion from romantic relationships and friendships is insane, and that says way more about the existing polycule than the person with HIV.

Sexual relationships are a different topic of course. I think the whole ‘we’re going to make a blacklist database of people you have slept with’ is creepy and abusive. We have readily available STD testing in this part of the world, we have safer sex, and we have agency over ourselves. An HIV-positive person is not a rabid animal to protect your loved ones from, they’re a person one can talk to and communicate with.

Of course everyone can set limits about their own sexual activity and even feel uncomfortable with sleeping with someone who has had sexual contact with an HIV-positive person – even if it was with protection – but I think such a bureaucratic process like you described seriously dehumanises the person in question. I generally dislike the tendency of some polycules to become bureaucratised cliques with tribunals, evidence lockers and subterfuge. I don’t want to date the equivalent of an HR investigative board.

I think the best way to handle this is to rely on the person with HIV to be responsible about disease management, and set your own boundaries for your own sexual activities in addition. If you can’t trust them to responsibly handle their infection status, why would you consider bringing them in the polycule in the first place? And if you can trust them, why the humiliation and dehumanisation of a high court process and privacy-violating ‘investigation’?

I understand where this is coming from, I think. Both are distinctly different and bittersweet in their own way.

I just don’t think having experienced unrequited love from both sides fully encompasses knowing the full spectrum of love.

I have had about ten relationships in my life, and every single one of them was different in a meaningful way. Every person in your life is a wholly unique experience, whether it’s unrequited love, a short-lived relationship or a deep friendship. I am an amalgamation of everyone I’ve ever known and loved, and I appreciate that this is what life gives me.