Coming Out Poly

We're looking to hold a discussion group here in Milwaukee on the 2nd of June. It will be at the Anodyne Coffee shop on the south side of town at 7:00pm. Please bring a few bucks for coffee and a will to discuss. We're looking to change this venue to the local A Woman's Touch store; I just haven't contacted the woman about it yet. Plus it's not free, so that would be an issue.

I have a few topics in mind to talk about at our first meeting (don't worry, no silly ice-breakers). I think it'll be good to truly start building our Milwaukee community. It needs to happen.

Email: dsteiner7@gmail.com

Directions:

From the west (using Waukesha as the starting point):
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From the north (using Mequon as the starting point):
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From the south (using Racine as the starting point):
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Marriage means a lot to me. I've said that before . . . twice. When religion starts to come in (and by 'religion' in this post, I mean over-zealous, close-minded, right-winged, Christian Fundies who think they're better than the depraved world that surrounds them), I get a little hot under the collar. Here's the issue at hand.

What is marriage? Throughout our lives (for most of us) it means a life-long commitment to a person of the opposite sex. It means loving and cherishing that person until one of you dies. My parents were divorced when I was little more than 2; Nyla's parents divorced when she was 8; Elle's parents when she was 12. Only my parents remarried after their divorce. My father has been in a healthy relationship since then - 18 years of marriage. My mother, on the other hand, just divorced her second husband after 18 years. I guess my dad won that competition.

Hello everyone. It's been a busy few weeks with Nyla being gone, Elle being sick, my brother coming into town (this upcoming weekend), and everything needing to be prep-ed for that. So it's slowed down a bit - enough for me to write this rather short post.

People like to unearth as much as they can about people in the spotlight. It's a bizarre pass-time of the "Western" media. We love to know all sorts of dirty secrets about people, so we can live vicariously through them or chastise from a safe distance.

A few articles around the poly-blogosphere have raised the question of word usage. Poly in the News has an article that mentions a few terms. Mama Java - the Polyamorous Misanthrope - also has a few things to say about poly and lgbt terms.

We grow up hearing from our parents and grandparents (or other guardians) things like, "look both ways before you cross the street", "wear your helmet when you ride your bike", "don't talk to strangers", "always wash your hands". They're good advice to keep yourself safe - away from various harms and ailments. It's part of that whole paternal/maternal instinct or something.

The woman from Herriot-Watt sent me some more questions. Here are my answers.

Can I ask do you feel the factors which trigger jealousy in your relationships, have changed over time?

Last year, Nyla and I had a woman from LSU call us for an interview regarding non-traditional relationships. We spoke a lot about our newly open marriage, jealousy, intimacy, and a number of other things. It was a good discussion, and I should be getting the transcripts from that interview here in the next few days, which will be nice to read in light of this new bit of information. One of the big issues in a non-traditional, non-monogamous relationship is jealousy.

Ever since the inception of this blog, Nyla and I have had the intention of becoming a part of the community that we inevitably became a part of. A little redundant, yes, but it makes sense - trust me. By the very nature of realizing we were poly, we became part of the community - silent though it may be; our desire, however, was to become active - to have a voice within our city that represented poly. The unfortunate thing is that there really isn't much of a community for us; or, rather, we've already sort of found everyone that we can relate to.