Can you get me Ms. Illeg's number?

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I'm telling you a multiple first lady system would be great for the blog industry. It would be like a baseball game only with first ladies instead of pitchers being brought in and out like relief pitchers, cleanup pitchers, southpaws, pinch hitters, etc., creating endless discussions.

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This came to me via Twitter and it's very well said:

"Newt's aproach to polyamory is like blindsiding someone with a hockey stick and then draping them with a jersey after the fact."

As to how many people in Arkansas practice polyamory, it's hard to say, but I've known a few.

if you're really curious, get someone from among your writers to ask around. If you get someone capable of writing about it seriously--which means you need one of your younger freelancers, preferably one with a testosterone shortage--it'll be a good article. Of course, you could always sensationalize it instead. That'll be successful, too.

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Oh my, Grandma, what big eyes you have . . . except I thought HE was supposed to be the wolf.
Polyamory? I've been around a lot of men who would support it, but not a single woman as far as I know. Quite the opposite. It was always sad and not a little disturbing to see young wives, out late at night with two or three sleepy pre-schoolers piled in the back seat, hunting for their wanderers. And that was only the lucky ones with a second car in the family.
As far as I know, I've been lucky.

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The religious right screams paradoxically that gay marriage will destroy marriage, but the poster child for home-wrecking is the religionists' own, Gingrich.

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I am curious about (and unoffended by) the dislike on the post I wrote earlier, and am splitting it into two parts to see the results.

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This came to me via Twitter and it's very well said:

"Newt's aproach to polyamory is like blindsiding someone with a hockey stick and then draping them with a jersey after the fact."

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As to how many people in Arkansas practice polyamory, it's hard to say, but I've known a few.

if you're really curious, get someone from among your writers to ask around. If you get someone capable of writing about it seriously--which means you need one of your younger freelancers, preferably one with a testosterone shortage--it'll be a good article. Of course, you could always sensationalize it instead. That'll be successful, too.

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Oh, okay then. Two dislikes for curiosity answers my question.

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John, they disliked both your posts. Don't let it bother you, they probably just don't like you for some long forgotten comment or because you were jousting back and forth with them on another thread where you were right. Yes, the dummies hold grudges. Me, I occasionally vote like on the rare post where they make sense.

They disliked my posting of the youtube link to the world's biggest model train set on yesterday's line thread and except for the above two reasons I cannot see why someone would dislike it. At least click on it and watch before disliking me, which I doubt they did.

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Or could be they thought I was full of it. You never know. I was curious and now I'm satisfied.

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In the Animal Farm world of FOX News couldn't you see them spinning polyamory as a great thing should it become necessary to elect Newt.

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Second to pre-nups, polyamory's been awfully good to me. My preferred grounds for divorce.

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Swinging's been around for years, and the best I can tell, Polyamory is just another refined word for swinging. How many people in Arkansas practice it is anyone's guess. How many admit it is another guess.

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OK, I'll hold up my hand. You old timers already know this story, but I'll trot it out again. Back in the mid 90s mag and I stumbled into polyamory. Hell, we thought we had invented it until we did some pre-Google searching on the Internet.

For 9 years I worked at night while mag's day of baby raising started at 7 am. We'd have about about an hour each day for togetherness, 6 days per week. Anyone can do anything for a month or two, but having a schedule like that year after year opens up many cracks for a couple to fall through.

I got acquainted with a very nice lonely woman who also worked at night. Friendship turned to love pretty quickly and I successfully justified my cheating because I was taking nothing away from my poor tired sleeping wife. In many cases cheating causes a person to fall out of love with the person they're cheating on as they fall more in love with the new person. Well...that didn't happen. To make it sound really yucky, it was like my children....which of my daughters do I love the most? And if I could answer that question...would I run off the less loved of my children?

Polyamory isn't something for People Magazine. Relationships come in all shades. People who fall out of love will use the first excuse they find to file for divorce. People who really love stick with their mates even when it ruins their lives....go watch the visitors streaming into Cummins and you'll see what I mean. Anyway.....three years into my cheating, a nice new male friend helped us set up our first 300 baud modem and after 10 1/2 hours, I managed to install AOL 1.0 and the whole world came to our doorstep.

In a few months our nice helpful new male friend started coming to my doorstep too. mag, being a better person than I, told me about what was cooking and ask for my permission to take a walk on the wild side. In light of my nighttime activities and because I'm not a hypocrite, I couldn't tell her NO. And besides...my 3 years of having a nighttime wife had made me appreciate mag more, not less.

A couple of weeks later a joyous mag asked me one night if I had ever been tempted by another (remember how spacy you are in the first days of a new love) and not being much of a liar or hypocrite I admitted my 3 year old relationship with X. And boy did the shit hit the fan! Maybe it's a male-female thing, but for every good reason mag had for entering into a new relationship, my same reasons were sleazy-slimy-wrong. But because mag and I were still very much in love, we did the brutal work of talking and talking and screaming and crying and carrying on until we both understood each other pretty well. Well enough to continue our accidental experiment with all parties in the know for another 2 years.

I know it sounds crazy, I'm sure it's not for everyone, but having relationships with 2 other people cemented our love for each other. All these years later we are still good friends with our "others." They moved on and found mates of their own and though we don't discuss it, apparently they feel like our accidental experiment did them no harm either.

People are multidimensional, as are their relationships...no one size fits all. A blanket rule is absurd, and the fact that a few of my friends who knew what was going on back then kept telling me to shut up and cheat, explains to me why so many people watch Fox News & vote Republican. Some of my most religious, conservative, narrow minded friends openly praised Jesus on every corner while they participated in the kinkiest of sex habits in private...and I'm just not built that way. It turns my stomach to think that Newt and I may share something in common, but if the shoe fits I'll wear it.

As the song goes.....Free your mind and the rest will follow...

PS One of the old friends who knew of our experiment back then brought it up at the bar a couple of weeks ago. I was the only married person at the table....as she said that it was amazing to think that of all people, mag and I would be the couple with a great marriage going into its 30th year. I took it as a great compliment of which I am very proud.

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"Know any polyamory practitioners around Arkansas?"

There are definitely swinger groups in NWA. By invitation, couples only of course. How do I know this? My college roommate and his now ex-wife ran in those circles for a time. They got involved in a last ditch attempt to save their failing marriage. It didn't help and actually hastened its final demise.

To each their own. Just don't be a Newt-sized hypocrite about it.

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plainjim, I know a woman in Kansas City who was in a four-person marriage with another woman and two men*. They stayed together twenty-some years and raised good kids. One woman left the marriage; the other one has now outlived both her husbands. The last one she legally married, at his request, in the last year of his life.

I'm pretty sure that's a little more than "swinging".

*you learn the most interesting things reading science fiction

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Re the picture- is Callista on meth? Those zombie eyes. Eeeew!

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A lot of big words and ideas have been thrown around on this thread. I only have two to add: Douche and bag. See Gingrich, Newt.

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Just as a reminder . . .

"Everyone lies about sex." Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough for Love

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On poly being a man's game:

If you do a bit of research on who promotes polyamory, you'll find that the vast majority of supporting voices (or at least the most vocal) belong to women. The original poly groups were female-led, the majority of books on polyamory are authored by women, and the speakers on polyamory panels are primarily female. Why is this so? I will take a guess that it is because polyamory is, in the view of most of those who practice it, about establishing emotionally intimate relationships with multiple people. Establishing emotionally intimate and fulfilling connections seems to be something women identify with.

On definitions:

As noted, polyamory and swinging are quite different (although both involve ethical and responsible non-monogamy). In swinging the couple is the primary focus of the relationship, and sex is the goal with people outside of that relationship. In polyamory more than one person may share the primary focus of the relationship, and establishing a relationship is the primary goal outside of established relationships. Most swingers I know would run away screaming from any sign of a new relationship that even remotely challenges the primacy of the husband/wife couple.

On cheating:

Neither polyamory nor swinging is cheating per se, but the definition of cheating varies from person to person and what one might consider cheating another might be okay with. Sex, in and of itself, isn't necessarily cheating. Kissing, flirting, holding hands, hugging, and fantasizing aren't necessarily cheating. Context within the relationship is what determines what is cheating and what isn't. That's why it is important for everyone involved in a relationship to agree on a well-defined set of rules; too many monogamous relationships rely on assumptions about what is "okay" without recognizing that each person has a very different set of assumptions. If two people discover that they have conflicting desires about the type of relationship they want, they should consider parting ways.

Regardless of whether one chooses monogamy, polyamory, swinging, or any other relationship style, what is important is that everyone involved finds the style that works for him or her.

On offensive quotation marks:

The word polyamory shouldn't be included in quotation marks. It is a real word, recognized by the Merriam Webster dictionary.

And one last note:

Despite Max's obvious bias against relationship styles that do not include monogamy, he does make one salient point: a couple should discuss the type of relationship they want BEFORE anyone steps out.

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Polyamory and swinging and cheating are totally different. what newt did is plain ole cheating. swinging is just sex. polyamory is many loves. for example, lady i know has a husband of 13 years. they have a great relationship. she also has a boyfriend of a little over a year. they are all friends. they go do things together (the 3 of them) and the lady also spends time with jsut the boyfriend. it doenst damage the family, its not harmful, its just love. and it happens more often than you think and is MUCH more common than you think. in fact, if you have any questions about said lifestyle, there is a poly support group that meets twice a month in fayetteville. knowledge is power! assumptions suck and are hurtful! :)

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"The Internet has facilitated the practice, article says. Well. I don't know if I'm buying. Know any polyamory practitioners around Arkansas?"

When I read your post, Mr. Brantley, it was rather taken aback to see such speculation. A simple google search would have answered the question in short order. As others have pointed out, polyamory is alive and well all over the U.S., including Arkansas. It is also being practiced in many other countries, England, South Africa, and Australia, to name a few.

To Brian Welch: Thanks! You did an excellent job, couldn't have said it better myself. Indeed, there are more women than men leading the polyamory movement. My own motivation for a poly life is to escape as much as possible the cheating culture. And as Newt so accurately demonstrated, cheating and then disclosing later is NOT polyamory and is seriously problematic because in secretly violating a relationship agreement we violate trust, something that is very difficult to restore (though not always impossible.)

Thanks in general to all who corrected Mr. Brantley's misinterpretation of what polyamory really is. It's about a lot of things, but as it says in the Bible, the greatest of these is love. As already pointed out, it certainly isn't for everyone, but it is a legitimate alternative to traditional monogamy if it is practiced with openness, honesty, and the consent of all involved. There is certainly a fairly steep learning curve, with those with reasonably good self-esteem and self-awareness mastering it most quickly. Once that happens, an abundance of love, emotional intimacy and connection and support is the payoff. Polyamorists design their relationships with significant amounts of intention and a lot of communication with those involved - this tends to bring people closer, and the relationships, when pursued with integrity, become deeper.

All this said, monogamy is still an entirely legitimate option if entered into with serious intention between the parties beforehand instead of reflexively living monogamously because that's what people do. All marriages will benefit tremendously from communication and deliberation about how the marriage should be structured. I was recently married to my long-time partner, and that's what we did and will continue to do as time passes to be sure we remain on the same page.

Anita Wagner Illig
http://www.practicalpolyamory.com

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Ms Illig, Thank you, so well put. If any of you still have questions about poly in arkansas, please email nwa.polyamory.group@gmail.com.

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