A lot of the conversations I see about polyamory on tumblr seem very distant from my experience

Because they often involve (actual or hypothetical) situations where someone has a zillion significant others, or is constantly starting new relationships, or getting “compersion” from their partners constantly starting new relationships, or has some scheme going on where each relationship gives them some distinct subset of the things one normally expects out of a relationship, or … generally, stuff that is very different from anything that comes up in monogamous relationships, and often gets either lauded as this awesome unique world of experience or decried as fundamentally unstable or w/e

Whereas the poly relationships I’ve been in are just … relationships.  They haven’t been identical to mono relationships.  The poly-ness has had various consequences.  But broadly speaking, they’ve involved doing the sorts of things people in mono relationships generally do, and having the sorts of feelings people in mono relationships have, and interacting with a frequency and intimacy that would be ordinary in mono relationships.  No one is constantly starting and stopping relationships; no one cares much about the “polycule” per se as opposed to the individual people in it.  The fact that we are poly or that there are other partners involved rarely comes up in conversation and doesn’t feel “essential to” the nature of the relationship.

It feels like “parallel monogamy,” more than anything.

Yesterday on Skype, I said “I’m reading Luboš Motl” and @queenshulamit thought I had said “I’m reading the Ghost Bible” and now I wish that was a real thing

“It’s a shame you’re not into immune system humiliation.” - queenshulamit, shortly after hearing that I was getting sick for the second time in the span of a few weeks

Esther queenshulamit makes me feel like my life has a lot more direction, and makes me want to take better care of myself because I have a future.

Esther and I are both having sad days and if we lived together we would both be able to make each other feel better simply by being there and it would be an immense improvement (I imagine, on the basis of recently collected evidence).

We are both more effective for one another than the psychological medications we have respectively tried.

[Setting: about a week ago, at the liquor store]

Esther: [looks at a shelf of “Pinnacle”-brand vodkas]

Esther: [points] Rob, it’s you!

Rob: [looks, sees a bottle labelled “Pinnacle Cinnamon Roll”]

( … she has been calling me that ever since)

iodised salt for president 20xx

Esther queenshulamit is currently on a plane back to England.  She stayed with me for 12 days (I think?), we were around one another 24/7 – almost never even in different rooms since I live in a studio apartment – and we got along splendidly and I love her and she loves me.

For the time being the Atlantic Ocean is between us, but I really want to make this work in the long term, and it – well, it looks like the kind of thing that can work.

“The universe has no edge – just black pepper tuna.”

-queenshulamit​