Optimism and love have limits, unfortunately, and they are simply the imperfect frailties of the human body. Love may be an idea that spans the entire breadth and depth of the universe and our world as we know it, but we can’t go THAT far in love, even if we’re super duper massively optimistic about connecting and communicating to the creatures of the world.
I wonder if there’s a line where the possibilities of polyamory just fall apart, and things just don’t link up together. I know with certain people, they have their monogamy checklist, and without someone meeting their five or ten or fifty checklist requirements, they won’t have a relationship with the other person.
I don’t want to speak to the success or failure rate of those relationship choices, but I do think it’s well known that a scientific approach to relationships is no guarantee of happiness or connection, even though some dating sites have simplified a few of the aspects of dating to their rawest elements, and people have accepted these standards for their intimacy.
But what if there is a certain boundary that polyamory can’t even cross, no matter how open minded the person is? I think there are a few obvious cases where poly isn’t enough to bridge the gap between philosophies. We are speaking closer to fundamentalist religions and alternative lifestyles that have strict codes of interaction between multiple partner relations, and usually it’s just the men who are able to be with more than one woman, and not the other way around, but this isn’t the only space.
There are some things that are certainly, obviously, and hopefully not enough of a philosophical separation to make polyamory not work between two people, such as not liking the same shows on Netflix, or not liking the same food for breakfast. People navigate all manner of ideological differences during the negotiations of their relationships in poly, but the edge isn’t too often found, unless one has a very distinct awareness of their red flags and unacceptable traits in a partner.
Sometimes we don’t know until we are IN the relationship what kind of things the person we are with really values or how they really behave, and THAT’S when we see if we can manage to share minds, bodies, and hearts.
xo
Addi Stewart
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