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njlauren -> RE: Mono vs poly? (9/1/2013 7:46:49 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: JeffBC
quote:
ORIGINAL: NuevaVida
Sorry Jeff I gotta jump in here and ask something because your reply confused me and I'm not sure if I'm misinterpreting. Are you saying monogamy is NOT a choice for you? Since you ponder flying and can't fly, you ponder poly but can't poly? Am I connecting those dots correctly?
This is going to be hard over text but I'll try. This is a very nuanced conversation that gets into questions about "free will" and "self-determination" and I've had trouble expressing it over text before.
Let's start right out with the fact that I have little tolerance for the whole "I'm wired that way" line of reasoning. I don't accept that line from either Carol or myself. Both of us would see that line as serious shirking and a major crime in our marriage. So in the extreme example then yes, everything is a choice. I just find that to be an absurd stretch. Right at this moment I am choosing to breath. But seriously, does anyone think like that in normal non-pedantic english?
So more accurately I'd say I have a strong predilection and no particular interest or drive to change that predilection. It is a default stance. In my mind you don't "choose" your default stance. You "choose" something non-default. So I didn't "choose" to be dominant and I can't choose that -- probably ever. But I CAN choose to be submissive (actually, that'd make me switch since I'm not so sure I'd be able to root out all the dom wiring). Conversely, Carol could choose to be dominant but not submissive. Someone more in the middle of the bell curve could choose either. Similarly, I never chose to be straight nor can I choose that. But I could choose to be gay (not act gay, BE gay). At least I think I could.. in extreme cases like that certainty is only had after the fact.
My comparison to the crows was only to point out that my mind considers a great many things. Consideration of something does not equate to choosing in my mind. Choosing is something that might possibly happen AFTER consideration. I guess I just have a hard time calling something which has always been as natural, automatic, and right as breathing a "choice". In the strictest sense of the word it is. I just find that absurd. I never chose to be monogamous. I just met women, fell in love, then had no interest in doing it further. It was the leaf floating downstream not a choice. The Poly thing in our marriage IS a choice.
Does that in any way at all clarify? LOL
The problem with your idea is assuming that when you choose to do something, you become that. For example, you could choose to have sex with a man, but that wouldn't make you gay. For example, a lot of gay people, at least in the past, end up in straight marriage (pressure from family, society, carreers) but that doesn't mean they chose to be straight, it means they chose to in effect pretend to be straight. You could choose to have sex with men, but you probably would not enjoy it much, and i suspect the whole time you would be miserable, really wanting to be with a woman, if having sex with a guy, you very well might be fantasizing about having sex with a woman.
Choice is a funny thing, we can always choose to pretend to be something we aren't. There are people in the middle, for example, a bisexual person can be with people of either sex, and enjoy it, in varying ways and they probably do have a real choice (though as with straight people, bi people don't really choose who they fall in love with or are attracted to IME). . Occassionally, there are gay men and women who hook up for sex, but that doesn't mean they are straight, or even really bisexual.......
I could choose to be with someone who is poly and grit my teeth and bear what is going on (assuming I am monogamous), but that does't make me poly, it means I choose to put myself in that situation.
And saying it is a choice the way you say it also leads to ugly consequences, it is like the religious morons who say gay people can get married, they just need to marry someone of the opposite sex, hah hah, aren't we so clever. The reality is that many people are hardwired for things, and some things, like sexual orientation or gender identity, are not fluid in people (people who are fluid with sexual identity probably were bisexual in the first place IME). For example, the religious right tries promoting reparative therapy to cure gay folks, to 'make them straight', and what time has shown is that it is basically a joke, that as much as they try, as motivated as the people may want to be straight, it fails, within 5 years 95% of people treated are back in gay relationships, and the other 5% are suspect......it is so bad that the APA and many state governments are banning this kind of 'therapy' as being fake. With gender identity, many years ago there was a famous case of a young boy whose genitals were mutilated in surgery...the doctors convinces the parents the best thing to do would be to bring the kid up as a girl, they had the help of one of the biggest experts on gender in the world, John Money, who said he could condition the child to consider themselves a girl, they did all kinds of therapy, etc, etc, kid was put on female hormones at puberty, you name it..and was miserable, eventually reverted to living as a boy before killing himself....
Even statements like 'we are not wired to be monogamous' have come under serious scrutiny, evolutionary scientists like to claim that our sexuality is mired in things like spreading sperm around, women are set up to have sex with multiple men to insure diversity.....and yet, they also have figured out that monogamous behavior might have been why human beings developed the intelligence we have, that having monogamous mates guarantees a better food supply, which in turn allows brain development..so it could very well be that people are wired for monogamy, what I would call their natural state. It doesn't mean people can't be poly and be happy, there are people like that, there are men who are perfectly happy fucking anything that is female (or looks like it), but the point is, there are people who couldn't make the choice to be poly and be happy with themselves, and I am talking in a deep seated way.
Obviously, choices can be made, but for example, if some evil scientist tomorrow programmed Carol to be a dominating bitch from hell kind of domme, like in the fiction that is out there, cruel, abusive, etc (like I said, fictional), would you be happy being her total sub, or would you balk? There are no absolutes in all cases, and some people do manage to in effect settle for what doesn't necessarily work for them. I went through the transition process, therapy, you name it, I was on the cusp of going full time as a woman, when a lot of circumstances , the consequences of going forward and what it would do to other people I love, my ability to provide for them, a lot of things, crashed around me, and i made the decision to revert, literally all the way. I have no doubts who I am inside, or what I am, but I also saw the consequences and made a choice to use your terms..and no, I am not totally miserable, but I am not myself, I am locked out from a lot of what I know I am, it isn't always comfortable, but in the end I think I made the right choice, even though I am not fully experiencing me, and I pay a price for it.....it doesn't mean I wasn't what I felt myself to be, it meant that I was willing to sacrifice that..but it also doesn't mean that I am what I portray myself as these days, a married middle age guy, either.
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