Things I don’t know shit about: Polyamory

I got a very interesting reply to yesterday’s jealousy-post. Apparently the irony I meant to put into my writing did not carry as well as I thought (or maybe I just sounded bitter?) – thus it prompted someone to give me a very thoughtful answer, looking at the problem from a whole different point of view.

This someone is a girl I briefly met at school and then realized from facebook status to facebook status that we share sarcasm, the loss of a parent and a thing for gay men. But apart from that, I know nothing about her or the life she lives.

In her comment, which you can find below the “Just shoot me” post, she encouraged me to ask myself why I am jealous and what of. She also reminded me that being with someone, doesn’t mean you own them. Some time later on she mentioned her experience with the jealousy-issue:           P. is polyamouros, her husband is not.

In theory, I can share the man I love  with others. I can have threesomes and I am intellectually above jealousy.

In reality, I want to be the “-est ” girl he has ever known, and the thought of someone else seeing what I see, touching what I touch, simply having what I have (but then, from Phrannies perspective: do I have it?) is driving me insane. I believe that this is part of my idea of love: that it can only be me who makes him laugh like this, and my smile in the morning, my kiss goodnight the makes him happier than he was without me.

I think about this a lot, because many people I admire from the 1920s and 1930s practised Polyamory. Most of the time though at least one of the people in the amorous triangle or square  or octagon felt hurt or left out. The same goes for many of my gay friends: they are sexually openminded, but only if it is them sleeping with someone else. If their boyfriend does, they feel just as hurt as I would.

So, eventhough the idea of not being jealous appeals to me, I don’t think it would work for me without an effort just as painful as jealousy itself.

How do you handle it?

“Also, jetzt drehst du völlig durch.”

Ich weiß, aber es ist so witzig!

Auf der Suche nach dem Spiegel-Artikel: Das ist kein Name, das ist eine Diagnose! fand ich nämlich das hier:

Just shoot me.

I am lost. This time it is not a vampires’ fault, but Jackos. Jacko, in this case, is not MJ but a girl I met because she knows my boyfriend. And his ex. And liked talking to me. And all of a sudden, there was a name to the stories. Of course it is the worst name in the world. (Any name that ends with “-ine” is bad, except maybe porcupine.)

And since there is facebook, now there is a face, too. And it’s not pretty.

The facebook stalking virus is only avoidable if you erase your membership now and do not ask your friends to let you check something on their computer real quick. EVER.

The alternative is finding an 11-year-old boyfriend who never had a girlfriend before you. But eventhough that might spare you the emotional trouble of being completely irrationally jealous of someones past, it might get you in other trouble, say, with his mom or the law.

So what is it that brings perfectly smart, functional and only mildly neurotic people (Anm. d. Red: mich), to cross the line, find the Ex, look at her pictures and compare themselves to what they see? And why is it, that no matter what exactly is to be seen on those pictures, it is never ok? If she is pretty it sucks and you feel like shit.  If she is not, you wonder what the hell he was thinking and feel like shit, too. Pretty shit, but shit.

Why does this happen as inevitably as Lindsay Lohan is going to rehab again?

Honestly, I am a rational person most of the time – and I lasted for almost a year without even asking one single (well, maybe a few) question about the evil Ex. When he told me about her, I even tried to make him see her side of things, because that’s how understanding I am. I would even go so far as to say I have to be grateful to this woman (more like thing now that I’ve seen her), for making him the wonderful man he is with me.

But then: ZAP! Random stranger tosses me a name and I go cuckoo loco nuts like an 8-year-old over Justin Bieber. My brain explains to me that one cannot be jealous of something in the past, while my stomach is telling me differently. It tingles and tightens like I’m going to be sick – and then I realize I kind of like the feeling. Which in consequence makes me feel like a complete weirdo.

Is that little spark of  unnecessary jealousy the extra spice?

What do you think?