polyamory

Deviant Life #35

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I’ve had to field this sort of thing a lot, and my response is pretty much the same. I’ll never regret the good times I shared with someone even if a relationship ends before I wanted to. Yes, I always mourn the end of a relationship, but in the same way I mourn the death of a friend. When a friend dies, I don’t bellyache about how I wish I’d never spent all those years putting time and energy into cultivating that friendship. I cherish the memories we created together, however sad it might make me that we won’t be making more. I don’t see why the end of a romantic relationship should be any different. Time wasted being bitter is time that could be being used to form new connections. I want to always more towards where more love is, not stay stuck in an empty space where love used to be.

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Deviant Life #33

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For as long as I can remember, the Polyamory community has had a strangely sex negative segment that was largely born of the desire to distance themselves as much as possible from the widespread assumptions by people outside of the community that polyamory was all about fucking around indiscriminately. It’s why, despite the huge amount of common ground they share, a lot of the polyamory community holds animosity towards the swinging community…something that largely goes one way since people in the swinging community don’t have any anxiety over being mistaken for polyamorists and being scorned for being all about love.  These purists afraid to admit that a lot of loving relationships start from a place of sexual desire were the first to start talking about “true polymory”.

However, as Polyamory has really been taking off in the last ten years or so as far as the attention it’s been getting in the media, the demographics of the polyamory community have undergone a huge shift and consequentially an influx of new ideas. This has largely been a good thing, but one of the less pleasant side effects is that there’s are now a multitude of new ways for people, according to other people, to be “doing polyamory wrong.”  Instead of just one group of assholes slut shaming people who are more sexually open than them, we have a whole new group of assholes who are basically commitment shaming people whose style of polyamory involves any elements they don’t like.

I think it’s important to remember that Polyamory as a movement has no deities. There is no one true model everyone is meant to mold themselves and their relationships to.  There aren’t even any basic rules. Even the basic definition of polyamory meaning “many loves” is as open to personal interpretation as the independent words “love” and “many”. I mean, isn’t someone with two romantic partners really just practicing duoamory? Two doesn’t seem like “many” to me.  That’s exactly how pedantic anyone who starts talking about “true polyamory” seems to me.

 

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Deviant Life #32

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If anyone is wondering what Audrey’s response was to one of her boyfriends running it by her that he was thinking of asking out one of her girlfriends on a proper date, she squeeed with delight. She ships Isaac and Joy pretty hard.

(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon and can also be followed on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram.)

Deviant Life #27

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This one is overdue because I’m a dumbass that writes scripts while half asleep then sends them to my artist without proofreading them, then notices errors while getting ready to post the strip.

Valentine’s Day can be a weird holiday when you’re polyamorous. Personally, I don’t celebrate it if I can at all avoid it, but obviously it’s a big deal for a lot of people and it can be a beautiful and fun thing but also a common catalyst for spikes in jealousy, competitiveness, and leveraging of couple’s privilege.

(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon and can also be followed on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram.)

Deviant Life #24

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As someone who is is always polyamorous but occasionally has been involved in swinging, I’ve often found myself caught between people who don’t understand that polyamory isn’t about pursuing casual sex for purely recreational purposes and people who don’t understand that being polyamorous doesn’t preclude being able to do exactly that.

While the polyamory community has definitely been opening up a lot more in recent years to the idea that sex can be enjoyed outside of long term relationships, as relationships anarchists and those who practice solo polyamory have created more visibility for low enmeshment relationship models, there’s still a lot of people that like to slut shame and tut-tut about “real” polyamory when people are having sex more casually than they think is appropriate.

A lot of it comes from reflexive defensiveness over frequent accusations that polyamory IS just about fucking around, but the level of sex negativity can reach nearly puritan levels when they scoff as sex without commitment as though that hasn’t been standard in even “monogamous” dating culture for as long as my 42 year old ass can remember. A lot of my most loving relationships started with a friendly sexual hook up that sparked a realization that there was a strong emotional connection there and we decided to build on it.

No, polyamory doesn’t mean just fucking around, but neither does it mean you have to be deeply enmeshed in a committed relationship to fuck. Love and sex are different things that go together amazingly well, but it doesn’t diminish one to enjoy the other independently.

In Discerning Deviant news, I’m excited for the next couple of weeks as not only will the next new Deviant Life strip post next weekend instead of the one after in order to catch us up for missing an update over the holidays, but it will be a triple sized update.

As a side note, if you like the idea of Deviant Life strips going up weekly instead of bi-weekly, consider chipping into out Patreon. As of this writing, we’re only $35/month away from reaching our goal before going weekly for real.

(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon and can also be followed on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram.)

Deviant Life #22

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Long distance relationships are tough, especially for someone like me whose primary love language is touch like Audrey’s.  When I was younger, I was adamantly against them, having the belief that ultimately long distance relationships were doomed to be shallow and disposable.

I turned out to be pretty wrong about that. Despite my efforts to avoid them, I’ve still managed to have multiple long distance relationships that have ended up among some of my best relationships.

(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon and can also be followed on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram.)

Deviant Life #13

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Meet Dace, a more casual partner of Audrey’s, and Sam, Bernard’s big brother.

As someone who respects monogamy when it’s a reasoned choice and not something people are railroaded into by assumptions and societal pressure, I generally don’t like to take jabs at monogamy. However, I’m kind of feeling fed up at the moment with how common it is for polyamorous people to be coerced into monogamy by possessive partners.

In happier news, I’ve had a rather lovely week. I went with one of my partners to see The Beatle’s Yellow Submarine on the big screen, was on the Curious Fox: Communication panel, and had a wonderful time at WitchFest. All of which was delightful.

(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon and can also be followed on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter.)

Deviant Life #7

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When I wrote this comic, the intention was for it to be posted right before I hopped a bus south to go to Euphoria, an unofficial regional burn, which was supposed to take place in Georgia this coming weekend (April 26-29). However, shit went wrong, and Euphoria isn’t happening. This is a huge let down for a lot of people, but shit happens when you need a large, secluded location for such events and rural areas tend to be the domain of xenophobes.  All we deviants can do sometimes is roll with the punches and keep on searching for places to call home.

On the bright side, not being able to go to Euphoria ended up pushing me towards going to Frolicon next month (May 17-20). I had a pretty great time last year, but because the added effort and expense of attending two events in Georgia while living in New York seemed overwhelming, I chose to only attend Euphoria.  Obviously, with no Euphoria to attend, now I can attend Frolicon and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I won’t be teaching any panels this year, so it’s going to be purely a vacation, hopefully with a great deal of debauchery with friends both old and new.

(Discerning Deviant is supported entirely through reader sponsorship via the Discerning Deviant Patreon and can also be followed on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter.)