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Okay. i am very angry.

i have a message that i need to scream out to the world:

DON'T CHEAT ON YOUR PARTNER AND CALL IT POLYAMORY!

By 'cheat' i here mean "agree to have one relationship style with your partner and then break that agreement - especially on the sly".

This issue has come up a few times in my life recently. Essentially, the scenario is: "i want to have a relationship with someone other than my wife. She hasn't agreed to that, but i'll do it anyway. i'm polyamorous."

Since WHEN has polyamory been simply another word for cheating? The fact is, IT'S NOT.

You know, i've been forced to reconsider my position that polyamory doesn't include the concept of casual sex. i note again that i wholeheartedly endore the concept of casual sex - i just haven't believed that it's part of the concept of polyamory. But someone said something today that made me reconsider that. i'm not entirely convinced, but i'm certainly reconsidering my stance.

i will NOT, however, change my opinion that polyamory involves behaving ETHICALLY and HONESTLY.

And i will continue to get furious at people who help perpetuate the notion that "polyamory is simply cheating" by cheating and then trying to hide their poor behaviour behind the shield of 'polyamory'.
 

no subject

So, now someone's implied that i'm a hypocrite, because although on my LJ profile i note that:

empathy and compassion are both very important to me: i am a very strongly empathic person, and people who are unwilling or unable to make the effort to empathise with others, and show compassion towards others, are not welcome on my journal

the fact that i'm judgemental about those who cheat on their partners show that i'm actually not empathic or compassionate.

Well, it's certainly true that i'm nowhere near Buddha-like; i in no way claim to have reached the point where i can feel empathy or compassion towards everyone, regardless of their behaviour. i don't, for example, feel much empathy for Bush or Howard. On a less extreme level, i don't feel a huge amount of compassion for those who drive their cars like idiots and end up wrapping themselves around a tree.

But let's take a more complex example. What about someone who was abused as a kid, and then goes on to be a dv perp? Well, i guess i feel that, unless this person has a mental illness, they ultimately have control over their own actions. They can choose not to engage in dv behaviour. So whilst i feel compassion for what they went through as a child, and although i could try to empathise with what it must have been like (despite knowing that i can probably only reach a vague approximation to that), i do struggle to find empathy for someone who is, at present, continually and knowingly hurting another person, without regret and without indicating that they wish to change.

So. Do i feel compassion or empathy for someone who is cheating on their partner? No, not really. i would feel compassionate towards a person whose partner was not being loving, and who was shutting them out; but that doesn't, to me, justify breaking the relationship agreement on the sly. i feel that if a relationship has problems, those problems need to be talked about openly, not just shoved to one side whilst all people involved go off and do their own thing. One might then ask: "But what happens if one or more people don't want to talk?" Well, i would suggest that if that situation persists, then really, the relationship should be ended. "But what if there are kids involved?" Well, i would suggest that staying together, but then engaging in dishonest and unethical behaviour - which the kids will almost inevitably find out about - is not providing those kids with useful life lessons about relationships. How healthy is it for kids to be raised by parents whose relationship is so fundamentally dysfunctional? The most empathy and compassion i would be feeling is for the kids, whose parents would seem to be behaving so immaturely . . . .

So yes, there are limits to my compassion and empathy - the compassion and empathy i feel for others is influenced by how ethically i feel those people are behaving. Maybe that's wrong; but it's what seems most reasonable to me at the moment . . . .