Truetalk has been writing since he was a teen, and only in the last five or so years has he taken himself seriously as a writer. He lives in the Vancouver area of BC, Canada, where he has lived for most of his life. He finished his degree in psychology at Simon Fraser University in ’95 when he started his counseling practice for individuals and couples. He recently completed his PhD in psychology and philosophy at University of Life in Black Rock City. His counseling practice though broad in a practical sense, is specialized in alternative relationships, including the various forms of polyamoury, polyfidelity, or what ever other poly-like relationship you may be working on. He has studied the human psyche for almost his entire life, and has a thorough understanding of consciousness, human psychology, and our current social structure and how we as individuals or groups function and dysfunction within our culture and general social milieu. He would love to hear any feedback from the readers of this community, answer questions or even take requests or topics to write about.

Previous editions of this column can be found in the Monthly Columns Archives.

Between matter and spirit

This next chapter in my book to you will be more focused upon the notion of being single and not wanting to be monogamous. Basically, I do not want what most people do, I do not want a monogamous relationship, so really the only girls I am going to connect with are either casual encounters of unknown duration or with poly-aware girls who understand and appreciate how love can be poly.

The newest thing to perceive for me is that I do not want what most women I meet are either in already or are seeking to be in at some time. They all (generalization I know) want to have a monogamous sexual, emotional and spiritual connection. Thus, their deepest relationship is confined to one person. I am not going to go over again how that does not sound healthy to me, let it be enough to say that I see that as too much responsibility to give to one person.

We are a social being, and there is the spiritual too, which all nests in the flesh, there lies the mind and emotion too. We are free and able to love on any of those levels of existence, and we do. Monogamy is beautiful too, it has its place and purpose in our consciousness, it is not there by accident. We have grown up with it, and it has taught us much of what we know today about love. As we continue to grow, I am starting to see a pattern in the evolutional and movement between matter and spirit, or a connection in the way love is expressed. It is the notion of polyamory that is allowing this idea to logically unfold into existence. The expression of love which exists on all three plains of existence has changed over the centuries.

For instance, our love for god has changed over the centuries from the pantheistic to the monotheistic, and then recently, possibly to a whole-theistic understanding, and this seems to be the movement in our evolutionary growth on a spiritual path. How we have loved and exchanged love with God. Then with love for each other, this has changed over the years too. In the past and in different cultures there have been many forms of polygamy. This was before history was written, and represents an almost unconscious existence, like pre-ego, or early childhood memories. Then it was believed to be okay or proper in a way to have only one wife and husband, to indeed create this bond called wife and husband, which was a sacred union of two people. We learned devotion and trust, and responsibility, loyalty and honesty in these relationships, and many other wonderful things. We also leaned some not so beautiful things, for instance we also learned dependency, rebellion, expectation and obligation.

I though do not want any of that. I am satisfied with my practice and experience with monogamy and feel no need for it anymore. Like the same notion where I walked away from the institutionalized church, because it was not offering me any more growth and it felt stifling. Here too I am simply walking away from an institution of modern society. I don’t even feel bad any more doing this, I see it sitting there all in shambles, this institution called marriage. Monogamous love is residing in a shell of a being, there is not any life in marriage now. Love needs a higher more fertile ground to grow and become fruitful now, and it seems to me like polyamory is just that growth in love that we as a social being need.

That is the first thing I notice about being single. Most people are still living in this frame of mind that it is somehow not right to have more than one love, I feel that especially. I am thankful that I am able to find and be with a small community of like minded people who do indeed understand this, and they too seek to find different relationships. This is actually where I want to take this chapter next in my explorations of what it is like being a single polyamorous man.

There is no single or not in poly, there is only each other. There is an attitude I believe, and it is best manifest with the person who is with no one person in any deep full connection, an attitude of freedom. They are what you might call single, but I will argue against that in a way that shows that thinking is based upon the monogamous understanding of love, and that in poly there really is no single-- only poly.

In the older system, the status of the other was the first thing that mattered, because if you were with someone else already, then you were not naturally allowed to be with anyone else, you were out of the game so to speak. These rules were broken all the time, and many an excuse was conjured, imagined and used for the fuller expression of love. This is not something a person with a poly attitude need ever do. In the eyes and touch of a polyamorous person, there is no need to find out the status of the other person. This is a meaningless question to the polyamorous love relationship, in the strictest of senses.

In practical terms this is not how it is done. There is always the awareness of who is connected with someone and whom, and who is not. I am starting to think that this is not really all that much needed. I am not sure how far I can take this concept, but lets play with it here and see just how far it can be drawn out. It is a residue of consciousness from the fact that I was raised and even had monogamous love and experienced all of its rituals and processes.

Can I look at everyone as single. Or if not single then not as single or taken at all, but only as a person, a lady or man, someone to be with, to love and respect to share and appreciate, or not. It does not matter who they are with so much, as it matters who they are, do you like them, are they fun, do they make you laugh, do they listen and hear and share, do you like to be with that person, and … and do you want to have sex with them? These are questions that might run through the mind of a poly-single man or woman.

That is the first thing I notice about being in the community of polyamorous people, the traditional boundaries of matrimony are gone. These are not the things that keep us from each other, it is more internal things that prevent our loving each other. From there what do I see? So what is it that prevents each of us from loving each other, fully completely, why are we still choosing, what are we choosing? I think possibly one of the first responses will be the need to manage the use of time.

We have only so much time in any given day or week or month and year, and so on. You can take this out as far as you want, and I suspect that the farther out you can take it, the better you will be able to find the time. So out time is limiting us, we need to choose times to see people and do things with people that we love. This all takes time, and well that is the most obvious and foundational reason I could think of for limiting the love you have and give.

The next one is the natural attractions we each as individual hold and have. There is certainly a difference in how I feel towards different strangers or new people who look different and talk different and sit different and dress different, etc. I know I like a certain look, and then I also see how some people become more attractive as you get to know them. Some people are attractive at first, which usually implies some kind of physical attraction at first, but not always and necessarily. Some people become more or less attractive with time, and or getting to know more about them. Thus, attraction is not stable, it can change within an individual. I do not feel comfortable with trusting a deep and full love relationship on the basis of such an unstable feeling. So although this attraction may seem to guide and direct the connections you make with others, I would say that in the larger picture they do not.

There needs to be some deeper more stable reason for the sharing of love with someone. There is also this feeling that it is safest to love someone who will receive the love I offer. Thus, I tend to love or to express my love to those whom I feel safe loving. I see problems in this though, and I want to look at them for a moment. In this scenario, love will only be fruitful when I feel it first? I believe that there is some tentative move towards the idea of loving, and then a wait and see, will they respond openly or not? Is that what most are doing, or is there some other criteria that will allow me or open me up for deeper love?

What about not having any intentions, of being aware of love and open to love and open with love, of not fearing the act of loving, not expecting anything in return, and being able to love freely, with respect to what that other person wants of love, and then allowing that to happen, what about that? It sounds right, eh! In this there is also being open to love, allowing love to fall on me, and willing to accept another’s love, not rejecting, not pulling back, rather of staying aware of their love. We only want to love, and to express love in our own unique ways, and by its very nature, love is best expressed with someone who also loves, and that will also be in their unique form and expression of love, and together they create a synergy, and ebb and flow of life and consciousness that is love.

Those are some of the things I am seeing now as a real person who is living a conscious poly existence. I am not sure how much of that is fantasy and how much is reality, because it feels so distant to me right now. I too have an ebb and flow in life, and at times I can feel my love spilling over and out into the world, and it is received in varying degrees and ways, and at other times I am closed and introverted, holding onto my love, or loving myself more than the world around me. And then I receive my own love, and am nurtured by it and share in my own love.

Finally, I ask you, and I understand there will be a bias, because of the audience that this is written for, but none the less, does that scenario sound possible under the controls and restraints of monogamy? It is at first, in that yes this can be done by anyone, but then under the controls and characteristics of monogamy, the love will be distorted, that will not be possible again, and then the love changes. It becomes held onto in the realization that there is no lawful possible way that will happen again. You love only this person, only their love will come to you, in the sense that you can return it fully like that again. I am sure it is possible, and it has been done for millennia, but is it necessary? I think not. The face of love is changing as we take on this new form of having love, it is not so much held onto as appreciated, nurtured, respected, and enjoyed. Polyamory-- the use of open, honest and respectful love, without pre-scribed limits.

Truetalk is a contributing writer as well as a member of this online Community. He can be contacted here or through our message board Forums.

Truetalk ; February 16, 2007

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folks have read this article.