Saturday, February 1, 2020

Romantic Polyamory (Death Is Elsewhere)



Recently I was having coffee with one of my oldest friends. We don’t see each other that often, but she’s known me for almost 30 years -- since before mr.d and I were a couple. Over a delicious dark roast in her chic apartment, I caught her up on the poly news: not only have I had at least one other partner for the past, um, 12 years, but for about 6 months now, mr.d has also had another partner. They are long-distance, but they’ve been getting together every month, and they text every day, and it’s all very sweet and delightful. I told her about the poly word “compersion”...

Compersion is empathetic happiness: when someone else’s joy gives you joy. It often gets described as the opposite of jealousy, but to me that feels like an oversimplification. I sometimes still have twinges of jealousy, or at least envy. But overwhelmingly I am happy that they are happy. It makes me feel joy, knowing that my partner of 28 years has gotten to connect with a lovely person and is reveling in that new relationship energy.

In August, I was in NYC alone for a writers’ conference. Mr.d was planning his first big weekend date with his new partner – also in New York, a week later. He and I are both big Ragnar Kjartensson fans, and “Death is Elsewhere” was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I skipped the Saturday afternoon keynote speech to head over to the Met. I beelined to the Ragnar K. video installation, lingered there, and eventually went up to the roof deck (photo). It was a lovely solitary interlude in the middle of a busy, chaotic conference weekend. I texted mr.d that the installation was definitely worth their while, and that I thought it would be romantic for them to see it together.

It was romantic for them. This made me extra happy. This is my distinction between jealousy and envy – I wasn’t jealous of them having that time together, but I would have been terribly envious if they had gotten to see the Ragnar K. installation and I had missed it!

My old friend asked me if mr.d and I are still romantic, or if it’s more like living with a good friend. I stumbled over my answer a bit, because it’s still romantic and we are the best and closest of friends. We enjoy watching a dumb tv show together or laughing over something weird that happened, and we kiss every day, and also we have other lovers. I can’t imagine not having him in my life. I also can’t imagine wanting to “tie him down” (he is not into bondage) or to keep him from having other sexual and romantic connections in his life. How could it enhance my life to limit his?


 “You only get one life, I think you should be extremely greedy about making sure that you get everything you want from it.” – Captain Awkward

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