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[fadavitalis]

Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*

My cat: Father is…evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.

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Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*

My cat: Father is…evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.

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I just love it that Dutch queer organisations are becoming more and more aware of the growing number of polyamorous people in this country. I'm feeling so honoured I was interviewed and photographed by Bi+ Nederland to spread awareness and inform people.

Our visibility matters, especially in this highly conservative climate.

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polyamory and bisexuality could have saved camelot

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polyamory and bisexuality could have saved camelot

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I realized I was okay with my partner having other partners by the time I was 13 (though I didn't have a word for it at the time) and the reason I realized this was because I was so full of seething hatred (the kind only 13 year olds are capable of) for the love triangle in twilight that by the time I got to the third book I was like "who CARES if she has two boyfriends. I wouldn't care if my partner had other partners as long as I knew about it and everyone was okay with it. Anything is better than this nonsense"

I realized this several years before I realized I liked girls. I'm a lesbian. Anyway I just think "realizing you're poly via twilight hate" is objectively hilarious but it does, unfortunately, mean that twilight was a formative experience for me.

Twilight defined a generation. Love it🫶 or hate it🤬, it still shaped you. Very few escaped this fate.

Your fate, specifically, though, is objectively hilarious

Seriously though, at least you got something worthwhile out of the books! I often think it is easier to define ourselves first by what we are NOT than by what we ARE, so I can't say I'm surprised. Hating love triangles seems to be a common theme with us polyams 😂

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Fact: Polyamory often requires you to make sacrifices.

Suggested sacrifices include

three coins from a long-lost treasure

several short pieces of string, preferably in different colors

the assumption that jealousy is an indicator of a healthy relationship and its absence suggests a lack of interest in your partner

an egg

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“When the handle has snapped off the basket that held all your eggs…” gone girl tier monologue

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A lot of people fear losing their partner to polyamory, and that sincerely is unfathomable to me. Polyamory allows me to stay with a partner through more incompatibilities, because I can get that fulfillment somewhere else.

If I, as a very cuddly person, have a partner who isn’t interested in much touching, that’s okay, because I can get someone else to pick up the slack. And even though that person may not be the type of conversationalist I want, they’ll be perfect for curling up and watching movies with. And so on and etc and so forth.

I’m not claiming polyamory will fix already failing relationships, or that poly relationships immune to ever breaking up. But it relieves so much anxiety over finding The Ultimately Compatible One that I can be content with The Pretty Good Ones

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Let me introduce you to what a GM called "world's most dangerous panda."

This is from the latest LARP of the weekend of 20 to 22 September. Red Assa was the war cleric of a goddess of vulcanos and bloodshed, undercover as a blood thirsty pirate. It was fun playing a brute with an axe, a big change of pace from my usual diplomatic roles, for sure! It did cost a lot of energy, so I'm not sure I'd want to play her again.

Go try a new hobby, they said

Try LARPing, they said

It'll be fun, they said

Welp, now I have a new hyperfixation, more LARP more better, AND a new partner and a bunch of new friends. I don't have time for this much social stuff, help!!! 😂😭

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Go try a new hobby, they said

Try LARPing, they said

It'll be fun, they said

Welp, now I have a new hyperfixation, more LARP more better, AND a new partner and a bunch of new friends. I don't have time for this much social stuff, help!!! 😂😭

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Yes, please, let's also kindly stop interfering with human bodies without their consent if not absolutely medically necessary.

You can tell if someone's actually pro intersex liberation by seeing their reaction to the phrase "abolish the sex binary" Yes I said sex. Like biological sex. It's not binary.

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i think "it takes a village" shouldn't be just "to raise a child". we should understand it takes a village to do literally everything we do. all day every day. without our communities we would not have drinking water or electricity or clean streets or food or shelter or anything. we cannot do any thing alone. we just can't. and with that comes the fact that you are not alone. you already have a community, seek to be an active part of it, you will feel better. reach out and thank them, they're happy to have you too. i promise. it takes a village to live.

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btw, shoutout to disabled people who don’t do everything right.

to disabled people who knowingly do things that will make their condition (temporarily or permanently) worse.

to disabled people who aren’t the ‘perfect’ disabled person that does everything possible.

to disabled people who refuse to push themselves too hard or try to live up to able-bodied standards, and to disabled people who (knowingly or not) push themselves too hard and suffer because of it.

able-bodied people seem to struggle with the idea that disabled people can do whatever they want with their bodies. they seem to think disabled people should be doing what’s best for them 24/7, and should never do “bad/wrong” things.

disabled people deserve respect and autonomy, always.

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YES, THIS!

Thoughts on the ménage à trois during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics?

First I'm hearing of it but this is France we're talking about.

They should have shown them fucking.

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A very nuanced answer to my question! I couldn't ask for better and definitely recommend following the account!

Opinions on "one penis policies" and how to address and deconstruct them?

Oh lawdy.

So I am generally leery of one penis policies. They are both predisposed to and often arise from unhelpful beliefs, which means one penis policies in practice are often a little fucked up.

But❗ I don't think people asking for them are irredeemable assholes, and I think there may even be some ways to do it that are sensible.

Very long post, so

First, for this post from this point forward, OPP is short for "one penis policy"

For those who don't know OPPs are exactly what they sound like. The stereotype is that a cis bisexual woman in a committed relationship with a cis (straight) man will approach him about opening the relationship. He is sympathetic and wants to let her explore her bisexuality, so he allows her to see/fuck/date other women only, figuring that he should be enough to satisfy whatever she'd be interested in doing with men. But it should be noted that the inverse can also be true. This post, while talking about it in terms from this stereotype for simplicity, can apply to a variety of situations with the appropriate swaps of genitalia and pronouns.

Why I'm leery:

As with most things that get into sketchy�� territory with polyamory (and nonmonogamy more broadly), OPPs almost exclusively arise from insecurity. And the thing about insecurity is that for most people, the more you concede to it, the worse those insecurities get, which can snowball later down the line. Having a rule the protects some of those insecurities can encourage people to neglect working on them through other means, and opens the door for the man to feel betrayed if it later becomes important for the woman to pursue another man for any reason.

In polyamory especially (as opposed to other forms of non-monogamy) where at least one goal is to fall in love, they're really restrictive for the woman -- how many gay women down with polyamory are there? That rarity means it may take years to find a suitable partner. And it puts a heavy burden on the woman not to catch feelings for any other men, which can be really hard and heartbreaking in the same way it can be really hard and heartbreaking to be stuck in a fully monogamous relationship as a poly person.

Its kinda sexist? Often, it arises from the belief that penis-in-vagina is Real Sex and anything the woman does with another woman can be therefore written off. Inversely, sex with another man might "taint her" in his mind more than another woman for the same reason. Here there's an intersection with the insecurities in that a lot of men seem to think their "dick game" is the most important thing to their partners (when most studies show things like foreplay are usually more important), so our example man fears the direct comparison of penis size 🍆 and other masculinity things that could never possibly come up with women (incorrect, but more on that later).

Or, the straight man here could be fetishistic about lesbians and thinks its hot his lady is fucking other women🥵, so that's why its fine.

There are particulars that are ambiguous, and these can often cause problems if encountered. How do trans people factor into this? What if our woman gets with a woman who prefers sex with a big strap? Is that fine cause its still a woman, or will the man still feel betrayed because its "basically a penis"? Does this not call into question the validity of the whole rule to begin with? These things are rarely considered ahead of time.

In short, they often are formed for shitty reasons and put an undue burden on the woman. The consent of it feels less than authentic on both sides -- if he were really okay with it, why would he restrict her and if she only wanted to date other women it wouldn't be a "rule" she had to maintain.

Why then, do I not denounce all OPPs?

Let's consider some examples of pure intentions that could result in an OPP. Or at least, not-fucked intentions like above.

I think its really natural to want to have something special between yourself and your partner. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting there to be something only you can provide your partner. Its very common to have certain activities, acts, terms of endearment, etc. reserved for a particular partner in non-monogamous relationships! Why should "PiV sex" be treated with such hostility, but "watching our favorite TV show" be seen as a reasonable thing to disallow your partner from doing with someone else?

The man is trying to be supportive and flexible. He genuinely feels he can offer anything she might need sexually/romantically with a man, because polyamory is new to him, and because she's still offering him everything he needs sexually/romantically. The simplest explanation is that its the immutable fact of his gender that's causing the dissatisfaction, and he's very sympathetic to that! In this example, he's a little confused, but he's got the spirit. Non-monogamy is a big thing to most people, and allowing it -- even with restrictions -- should be recognized as the monumental step it generally is.

With that in mind, maybe our man even recognizes this is a big insecurity of his, and wants to work on it. Maybe he plans to address these insecurities, but knows this will take time, and is allowing her as much as he can without it being too much for him. Should he not be allowed some space to adjust, to work on those things? Should we not admire him for trying to broker a compromise🤝 rather than shutting down the woman's desires?

The woman might be okay with it.👍 She may feel she primarily wants to date/fuck other women, so a OPP is a small concession to make for her partner's comfort and reassurance.

There's kink things. I know I said lesbian fetishization was a negative just a moment ago, but even with that there are ways to do it respectfully. I'm not going to kink shame. If our theoretical couple finds it hot for him to put restrictions on what she can do sexually even when he's away -- who am I to stop them? Or any other number of kinks could play a part here! "I'm your only Daddy, but I'll let you go on playdates with other little girls" is not my kink, but I think it should be allowed for the people that are into it. 🤷‍♀️Idk, I admit this is probably my least well explained paragraph but basically it being a kink thing may be a sort of shortcut which circumvents some of the earlier concerns about authentic consent -- maybe they're just freaks who like it like that.

So then. About that question of deconstructing them.

Careful examinations of motives and feelings of all parties is required to know whether any one OPP holds up. There needs to be a lot of work put into the conversation, preferably before the relationship is actually opened. Its going to be personal between those two people, and -- like literally fucking everything with polyamory -- its going to require a lot of introspection🤔 and good communication🗣️.

If you find yourself in a OPP you feel is too constraining, you're gonna have to make a lot of time to talk through it. Be prepared to explain in detail and several times why its problem to you, while reassuring your partner its not because you find him unsatisfactory in some way. Be committed to hearing him out and taking his concerns and insecurities seriously. I recommend making a point to let everyone air their grievances before working on problem solving any of them. As always, avoid blaming.

Then, here are some ideas I think could you could try to help ease some of the insecurities and issues a OPP protects:

Shift the special thing to something other than PiV sex. Make it something else meaningful to you both. It could be some other sex thing😏, it could be the restaurant you went to on your first date🍽️, it could be listening to certain songs🎼, it could be ballroom dancing💃, it could simply be a day of the week 📅you only focus on each other, it could be anything you both value, and it could even be several things!

It may feel more reasonable to allow your partner other guidelines instead of gender. This can fall into many of the same pitfalls of a OPP, but it can also be a good middle ground if negotiations are tough. Maybe she can only date/fuck people shorter than he is, or with a smaller dick, or who makes less money than he does. Maybe she can see other men as long as they don't fuck in the bed he shares with her. Maybe any number of other things would help reassure him while being less burdensome on her.

Offer a lot of reassurance🤗. This is hard and scary! If he is willing to work with you, you better be working with him, too! Tell him you missed him and shit. Tell him how valuable he is to you because he allows you this freedom. Help him see things from a better framework when he's struggling. Do all this even when he doesn't ask for it.

It may help to give him something in return.🎁 Like, don't get me wrong, a very transactional relationship is rarely the most satisfying one. But a simple "I recognize how much work this will be for you, and to show you I also willing to put in work for your sake, I'm willing to try [something important to him]" isn't unreasonable. I think its easy and kinda fair for him to grow resentful if he's asked to accept everything she wants without her giving him anything he values.

If he's trying but still genuinely struggling, put a specific time-delay on when things will take effect. This allows him to prepare for it mentally (without it being something that will maybe happen some day, and thus not soemthing he needs to worry about right now). It gives him time to mull things over, so he can come to her with any concerns before they're already in the thick of it. The length of time will vary based on the situation, but I think something measured in weeks would probably be fair.

Seriously consider anything else he asks for that would make it easier for him.

Best of luck out there! Go live your best, most free lives babes!!

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