let's talk about...
As you know, I'm reading The Ethical Slut, and I'm finding it to be a very good book. One of the things I'm enjoying is the way they've put words to things I have been thinking and feeling for a long time. It's not so much that they found a language for it all, because I've managed in my own way to find a language for it too. It's the way it suddenly starts seeming normal when I read it in a book.
This is noticeable because it feels decidedly not normal when I talk about it to other people. For example, I spend a lot of time with my kayak friends, who are all older, slightly more conventional lesbians with good jobs and settled lives. Occasionally they ask me questions about my personal life and I try to answer. I try to explain that I want to relate to people on the essence level, that I want to follow the pulls of interest and attraction whenever I can, that I want to let each relationship with each person find its level, that I feel claustrophobic and stagnant when I try to be in a real relationship with one person for a long time.
I try to explain it, and they try to listen, but I think they think I'm crazy. They usually stay with me for awhile, then their eyes glaze over and I can tell that what I'm saying is either so uninteresting or so impractical to them that they can't even be bothered to follow along. So I give up.
It just seems so natural and obvious to me and I think if people would just listen they would get it. But that's foolish and I realize I'm behaving like some kind of christian missionary out preaching the gospel. I shouldn't be proselytizing for polyamory, or whatever it is I think I'm doing. I guess the bottom-line is that I should just shut up about it for awhile until it isn't so new. And I should also reevaluate why I might talk about it and who I might talk about it with. It's just like my spirituality. I don't talk about that with almost anybody, it's the most personal thing to me. I guess that's how I'm starting to feel about this.
This is noticeable because it feels decidedly not normal when I talk about it to other people. For example, I spend a lot of time with my kayak friends, who are all older, slightly more conventional lesbians with good jobs and settled lives. Occasionally they ask me questions about my personal life and I try to answer. I try to explain that I want to relate to people on the essence level, that I want to follow the pulls of interest and attraction whenever I can, that I want to let each relationship with each person find its level, that I feel claustrophobic and stagnant when I try to be in a real relationship with one person for a long time.
I try to explain it, and they try to listen, but I think they think I'm crazy. They usually stay with me for awhile, then their eyes glaze over and I can tell that what I'm saying is either so uninteresting or so impractical to them that they can't even be bothered to follow along. So I give up.
It just seems so natural and obvious to me and I think if people would just listen they would get it. But that's foolish and I realize I'm behaving like some kind of christian missionary out preaching the gospel. I shouldn't be proselytizing for polyamory, or whatever it is I think I'm doing. I guess the bottom-line is that I should just shut up about it for awhile until it isn't so new. And I should also reevaluate why I might talk about it and who I might talk about it with. It's just like my spirituality. I don't talk about that with almost anybody, it's the most personal thing to me. I guess that's how I'm starting to feel about this.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 2:46 PM
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