I've been thinking a little about Galatians and polygamy today. Paul's letter to the Galatians was written some time between AD54 and AD 57-between the 2nd and 3rd missionary journeys. This letter to the Galatian churches is a personal one. At times, it seems almost loving; others full of anger. This letter was written to address a major controversy in the early Christian church.
False teachers were commanding early Christians to follow the Law of Moses, in order to be counted as the Children of God. Paul is angry that they are still preaching the Old covenant, even though Christ had already paid that debt in Holy blood. Early Christians were no longer required to provide daily sacrifices to atone for their failing to follow a Law that no one among us is perfect enough to keep. Paul speaks of moving away from the rigidness of the "Thou shalt nots" and the endless reinterpretations and human laws built to bubble and enforce these 10 commandments.
Paul's letter teaches us about the new covenant. We are moved out of a time of salvation by following the letter of a Law and into a period of freedom where we are guided by a Holy Spirit to act with hearts of faith, goodness, kindness, and peace. This Spirit is gentle, nurturing, and roams among us almost as a guiding Mother, instead of the distant Father of Old. This is the theological equivalent of a 180. Our debt was paid and we only had to have enough faith to believe it, accept the free gift, and ask God directly to forgive our human failings. Under the New Covenant, a heart of worship, a strong faith, and the righteous actions that flow naturally from those were more important than the works of a human hand.
These new ideas were pretty hard for some to shallow. The safe, familiar darkness that they had been taught all their lives was much more comforting than stepping outside the chains, into something new and full of wonder.
This is not altogether unlike a person choosing to welcome a marriage of three, instead of the dyad couplings we have all been taught. You have to step outside the familiar pronouns, attitudes, and jealousy to adopt a viewpoint that others may resist. One must have love, openness, honesty, transparency, selflessness, and take a risk of rejection with two people-instead of one. This choice requires a little teaching of your friends and family about a new idea and a larger family structure with even more love to spread around. There are new challenges, new obstacles, new ideas, new language, and new opportunities. You will be judged for your beliefs. All that once celebrated your old routines, will not accept your new path. You will lose someone close to you. If you make the good choices, you will gain something fought for and full of wonder.
Galatians 5:22-23: For these are the Fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
I want to build a family that celebrates these Fruits. I want my children to be like the seeds that fall on good soil, well cared for and loved. I want a family that can celebrate with me a new covenant of three, instead of a dyad of two. I don't want to be wedged between another couple, but accepted as the third point on a triangle, equal, trusted to support my partners, and connected to something larger than myself.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Barbie Doll Dreams
I was talking with a special someone yesterday. We chatted about who you should tell when you enter a poly marriage. We chatted about it for a while. Then he asked me something that caught me off guard. He wanted to know who I would want to invite to a poly wedding.
I answered without even thinking about it. I told him that I'd always wanted a big, fancy church wedding. Then I said "I want a beautiful marriage more than a beautiful wedding". The truth of that statement did not hit me until a minute later.
Someone could and some people do, spend crazy amounts of money and time planning a big splashy day. Then they can spend years paying it off or fighting about the debt. Is that a way to begin your life together? Why would anyone want that?
I think to many people just marry too young. Most of my friends are long married. Some are happy; many not so much. So much of the fighting and brokenness that ended those marriages could have been avoided. All they had to do was let a passionate love mature, just a little.
There are countless rites of passage in this world and even in our culture. For a woman, many revolve around marriage and sex. Perhaps, if our women could choose to let that moment, that clearly identifiable moment, where you shed your Barbie doll and fantastical dreams, be one of celebration, our marriages would last a bit longer. People hold on to fantasy far to long. People are taught to believe in the power of their dreams, but aren't taught that dreams require preparation and planning. People are taught that the moment you are in now, is all that should matter. That just isn't right.
True romance is magical. True love is liberating. Yet, being in love and staying that close takes work. Love demands sacrifice and selflessness. Love lives and breathes on compromise and seeing your partner(s) as a whole person, with valid needs, and beautiful desires.
A professor of mine, used to say that "before you give yourself away, you have to have a self to give." It took me 28 years to get my "self" together, enjoy being with my "self" for a while and be really ready to give and to share that "self" with another person. Maybe I'm just a late bloomer. Maybe I needed to have more experiences than my peers. Maybe I just saved my "self" a ton of misery and shame.
I believe I have the ability to make my own dreams come true. I believe that true love is forever, but forever requires effort. I am ready to create my own fairy tale, not just to trust I will wake up in the right one. Perhaps, a handsome prince will bring me shoes. I will then google him and hope his other princess has excellent taste!
Time to curl up with a hot tea and watch Ever After. Three cheers for a sassy Cinderella!
I answered without even thinking about it. I told him that I'd always wanted a big, fancy church wedding. Then I said "I want a beautiful marriage more than a beautiful wedding". The truth of that statement did not hit me until a minute later.
Someone could and some people do, spend crazy amounts of money and time planning a big splashy day. Then they can spend years paying it off or fighting about the debt. Is that a way to begin your life together? Why would anyone want that?
I think to many people just marry too young. Most of my friends are long married. Some are happy; many not so much. So much of the fighting and brokenness that ended those marriages could have been avoided. All they had to do was let a passionate love mature, just a little.
There are countless rites of passage in this world and even in our culture. For a woman, many revolve around marriage and sex. Perhaps, if our women could choose to let that moment, that clearly identifiable moment, where you shed your Barbie doll and fantastical dreams, be one of celebration, our marriages would last a bit longer. People hold on to fantasy far to long. People are taught to believe in the power of their dreams, but aren't taught that dreams require preparation and planning. People are taught that the moment you are in now, is all that should matter. That just isn't right.
True romance is magical. True love is liberating. Yet, being in love and staying that close takes work. Love demands sacrifice and selflessness. Love lives and breathes on compromise and seeing your partner(s) as a whole person, with valid needs, and beautiful desires.
A professor of mine, used to say that "before you give yourself away, you have to have a self to give." It took me 28 years to get my "self" together, enjoy being with my "self" for a while and be really ready to give and to share that "self" with another person. Maybe I'm just a late bloomer. Maybe I needed to have more experiences than my peers. Maybe I just saved my "self" a ton of misery and shame.
I believe I have the ability to make my own dreams come true. I believe that true love is forever, but forever requires effort. I am ready to create my own fairy tale, not just to trust I will wake up in the right one. Perhaps, a handsome prince will bring me shoes. I will then google him and hope his other princess has excellent taste!
Time to curl up with a hot tea and watch Ever After. Three cheers for a sassy Cinderella!
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Giggles
He called me his sweetie today. I wasn't sure I heard him right, so I didn't ask, but he wrote it down for me too. I was joking with him about a good friend of mine earlier. I help care for her 7 children and her husband is one of those Alpha male, military officer types. I told him Mindy and I were forming something like an odd poly situation (minus the me EVER joining the family) and that caring for her 7 would test me for his dreams since he wants 3-5. Mindy is making a room for me at their house for when she needs me late or overnight, we are going to start working out together, and planning more girl's nights.
He told me to make sure I let Mindy know I'm already in a relationship. He took down his searching ads and let folks know he's dating. He wrote " I am currently dating a wonderful woman. .....I met a quality young woman that K and I are dating exclusively...." He cuddles to a beautiful woman (K) every night who he adores and passionately loves, but he seemed a little jealous of me. I'm not the slightest bit jealous him with of K. I am more attracted to him because of the way he treats her, speaks almost reverently of her, and goes out of his way to make her feel special. He says helping K and I become best friends is his major goal and that whenever we need bonding time to tell him to "go away." lol I am secure knowing that while we have our endless chats and he gets to email me 10 times a day from work, his priority is to bond K and I. He is forever telling me what a smart, capable woman she is and how blessed he is to have her. He tells me he could have many women...since he's soooo great..lala lala lala lala.......but all these years K has been the only one for him. Whenever he talks about the things he wants in a 2nd wife---strong morals, good values, healthy inside and out, strong faith, good lover---no matter how that list changes the 1st or that last thing he says is "a best friend for K."
Someone called me sweetie today and I felt great. I can talk to them for hours and still be bursting with things to say.
He told me to make sure I let Mindy know I'm already in a relationship. He took down his searching ads and let folks know he's dating. He wrote " I am currently dating a wonderful woman. .....I met a quality young woman that K and I are dating exclusively...." He cuddles to a beautiful woman (K) every night who he adores and passionately loves, but he seemed a little jealous of me. I'm not the slightest bit jealous him with of K. I am more attracted to him because of the way he treats her, speaks almost reverently of her, and goes out of his way to make her feel special. He says helping K and I become best friends is his major goal and that whenever we need bonding time to tell him to "go away." lol I am secure knowing that while we have our endless chats and he gets to email me 10 times a day from work, his priority is to bond K and I. He is forever telling me what a smart, capable woman she is and how blessed he is to have her. He tells me he could have many women...since he's soooo great..lala lala lala lala.......but all these years K has been the only one for him. Whenever he talks about the things he wants in a 2nd wife---strong morals, good values, healthy inside and out, strong faith, good lover---no matter how that list changes the 1st or that last thing he says is "a best friend for K."
Someone called me sweetie today and I felt great. I can talk to them for hours and still be bursting with things to say.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Baby Steps
Real growth and change can take place in achingly slow steps. Maybe because you are walking gently, hesitantly, and with a bit of stealth? You want enough attention to make some new friends, but not so much as to disturb the looney toons. My first poly experience was before I really had a word for it. That relationship developed in less than a week and lasted for years. Some of the things I am learning are normal in talking to people and some things that most folks don't think about, just happened so naturally with us. I was poly without a poly community. I was poly before I knew what poly really was.
Over the last 6 weeks I have met some pretty strange folks. There seems to be an odd trend to send nude pictures of a current wife (ves), husband, or some combo thereof. I had gotten some exceptionally detailed descriptions of what people are looking for mailed to me. I have gotten some introductions with barely a sentence such as: "see profile" or "show me picture." One man demanded I downloaded msn messenger. One woman said she thought I was hot. A few creepy old (60+) guys asked me if I was a virgin. Several childless couples approached me. Two men said they were called to poly, but their wife just didn't understand or that she was rebelling. One of the potentials I know tends to jump down my throat and twist anything positive I share into some cautionary tale. . She said it was "irresponsible" to get "starry eyed" over a couple.
Isn't that the point?
Potentials, by the way, are what they call a single woman in the poly world. A few people called me a unicorn. Apparently that indicates something rare, beautiful, and with a mythical or elusive quality. Some potentials are very supportive, some seem to treat each other as competition to pick off. Some that I have met seem too dramatic, emotionally immature, or petty to live in an actual loving poly family. There is a potential that I am really connecting with. She seems to have the feelings of hope, nervousness, and security of beliefs that I feel. Perhaps we will help each other navigate this odd world of of ours. Hopefully, we can come up with a better name.
Is it strange?
I am looking for a quality, faithful husband in a loving, stable relationship. I am looking for someone who doesn't cheat on his wife or want some cheap fling with a mistress. I want a family who desires more children, but not one that sees me as solely a baby factory. I am looking for a sisterwife that will love me, accept me, support my dreams, cherish my marriage to her husband and allow me to do all of that for her. I want someone open enough to welcome me as an equal partner and yet discerning enough not to offer me the keys to her kingdom on the first day.
The baby factory idea really bugs me. I would welcome a childless couple that desires children. I might be open to helping another woman conceive, if I can. Yet, people go nuts about that. I've had potentials warn me that this family or that family only wants another wife for children. Aren't there cheaper ways to find a woman to carry a baby? If a couple just wanted a baby, there are surrogate options that are much cheaper than adding someone to your marriage. There is adoption and embryo adoption. You can find donor eggs and sperm. Yet with all of that, some couples would rather add a new wife. Doesn't that say something about their commitment to family? About their commitment to care for a child before and after its birth? You should look at people's motives. You should look at their expectations and promises. If you find that they have a happy marriage and can genuinely love another woman, why not chose them to date? Why not choose them to marry? This taboo is distasteful to me. I won't rush into anything. I won't seek out a childless couple and expect to be treated like a saviour. If it happens, it happens. I would consider it an honor and a great joy to help complete a family in that way. How many second wives get truly unique experiences with the husband any way? You can imagine he's already had his 1st place, his wedding day, his first married fight, the moving in process, all the first (or a dozen or so) holidays, and the entire spectrum of intimate relations, so what's left? Do you think he'd value a 2nd wife any less when she gives him a first-born? I hope not! Yet, he should treasure the second wife for her spirit and gift and then love his first wife with even more passion, since they are both mothers to his new baby.
The two couples I really got to know were not the ones that pounced on me right away or sent me dozens of emails. They didn't demand pictures or ask too personal questions. We just bumped into each other in a forum discussion or chat. They INVITED me to contact them later. It's like the Internet version of asking her for a phone number or giving her yours. I got to choose when or if I had the time and interest. We started a friendship. Why does that sound so odd to some people? Perhaps, the epic Miss Emily Post, should write a primer on poly dating. Gentle readers, do not treat a lady as a tasty morsel and please remember to keep your trousers on....
People use the blogs for poetic words and inspiring stories. Today, I was just being honest.
Over the last 6 weeks I have met some pretty strange folks. There seems to be an odd trend to send nude pictures of a current wife (ves), husband, or some combo thereof. I had gotten some exceptionally detailed descriptions of what people are looking for mailed to me. I have gotten some introductions with barely a sentence such as: "see profile" or "show me picture." One man demanded I downloaded msn messenger. One woman said she thought I was hot. A few creepy old (60+) guys asked me if I was a virgin. Several childless couples approached me. Two men said they were called to poly, but their wife just didn't understand or that she was rebelling. One of the potentials I know tends to jump down my throat and twist anything positive I share into some cautionary tale. . She said it was "irresponsible" to get "starry eyed" over a couple.
Isn't that the point?
Potentials, by the way, are what they call a single woman in the poly world. A few people called me a unicorn. Apparently that indicates something rare, beautiful, and with a mythical or elusive quality. Some potentials are very supportive, some seem to treat each other as competition to pick off. Some that I have met seem too dramatic, emotionally immature, or petty to live in an actual loving poly family. There is a potential that I am really connecting with. She seems to have the feelings of hope, nervousness, and security of beliefs that I feel. Perhaps we will help each other navigate this odd world of of ours. Hopefully, we can come up with a better name.
Is it strange?
I am looking for a quality, faithful husband in a loving, stable relationship. I am looking for someone who doesn't cheat on his wife or want some cheap fling with a mistress. I want a family who desires more children, but not one that sees me as solely a baby factory. I am looking for a sisterwife that will love me, accept me, support my dreams, cherish my marriage to her husband and allow me to do all of that for her. I want someone open enough to welcome me as an equal partner and yet discerning enough not to offer me the keys to her kingdom on the first day.
The baby factory idea really bugs me. I would welcome a childless couple that desires children. I might be open to helping another woman conceive, if I can. Yet, people go nuts about that. I've had potentials warn me that this family or that family only wants another wife for children. Aren't there cheaper ways to find a woman to carry a baby? If a couple just wanted a baby, there are surrogate options that are much cheaper than adding someone to your marriage. There is adoption and embryo adoption. You can find donor eggs and sperm. Yet with all of that, some couples would rather add a new wife. Doesn't that say something about their commitment to family? About their commitment to care for a child before and after its birth? You should look at people's motives. You should look at their expectations and promises. If you find that they have a happy marriage and can genuinely love another woman, why not chose them to date? Why not choose them to marry? This taboo is distasteful to me. I won't rush into anything. I won't seek out a childless couple and expect to be treated like a saviour. If it happens, it happens. I would consider it an honor and a great joy to help complete a family in that way. How many second wives get truly unique experiences with the husband any way? You can imagine he's already had his 1st place, his wedding day, his first married fight, the moving in process, all the first (or a dozen or so) holidays, and the entire spectrum of intimate relations, so what's left? Do you think he'd value a 2nd wife any less when she gives him a first-born? I hope not! Yet, he should treasure the second wife for her spirit and gift and then love his first wife with even more passion, since they are both mothers to his new baby.
The two couples I really got to know were not the ones that pounced on me right away or sent me dozens of emails. They didn't demand pictures or ask too personal questions. We just bumped into each other in a forum discussion or chat. They INVITED me to contact them later. It's like the Internet version of asking her for a phone number or giving her yours. I got to choose when or if I had the time and interest. We started a friendship. Why does that sound so odd to some people? Perhaps, the epic Miss Emily Post, should write a primer on poly dating. Gentle readers, do not treat a lady as a tasty morsel and please remember to keep your trousers on....
People use the blogs for poetic words and inspiring stories. Today, I was just being honest.
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