Got asked about functional boundaries, but it was worded “working boundaries” and I was so tired I thought that meant boundaries in work. And then there was the idea of me being a hater of almost the whole of humanity while also wanting to kiss a lager percentage of girls than the average guy is willing to deal with at once. If I hate people so much, why get so deeply involved with more than one?
Actually, I don’t see it as a problem, so long as you understand where I’m coming from. In some ways you could define me by the phrase “empathy can eat you alive.” See, I can’t just feel for a person I want to help them if I can. The world is greatly divided into two classes for me. Those people I would leap into a pack of wolves to save, and those people I would throw to the wolves just out of spite. Actually if I saw a person about to be attacked by wolves I probably would go render assistance no matter who they were, but you know a lot of metaphors break down if you examine them too closely. The point is that I have the same amount of affection as everyone else in the world, I just spend it on a significantly smaller group of people.
There was a time, when I spread it out over a larger area. I tired to help wherever I could, did good deeds, got taken advantage of, got turned sour on humanity through a combination of people’s selfishness, stupidity, and the very real fact that if you do something for someone they will begin to take it for granted and in deed be annoyed when you fail to deliver what had been thought of as a perk. Then you have this post here, which goes into my other problems.
The problem with people that bother getting to know is that I have an extraordinarily hard time giving up on people and empathy can be tough road to travel if you’re unable to disconnect from someone who has clearly decided to leap off a cliff. I don’t like giving up, I don’t like saying something is over until it’s really over. Knowing this about me, I’ve had people who would jump to get away from something, knowing I’d be there to catch them. That’s not so bad when it’s one person, or even two or three, but when your numbers get to the dozens then it gets a little tricky. Then, someone falls. Someone who never relied on you, someone who never abused the trust, someone who really needed someone to be there. That’s when you start to announce you’re done and you walk away. Then you get fat and drink beer. You then learn to grow orchids, start saying “pfui” and get a leg man to do the real work.
So, how does that relate to poly? We’re getting to it, just hold yer dad gun horses.
You’ve got to know how part one works to understand part two.
So how does poly work? I have only 10 or 20 people I can stand in the world, by which I mean people I know in person and I know them well enough to say I can be in a room with them for more than 2 hours without wanting to kill them. 10 sounds like a lot until you start actually naming people. Once you try putting names to numbers it quickly dawns on you what a small amount of people we’re talking about here.
How does that relate? Well, as I said I really like the people I like and my patience problem isn’t really a problem with my patience. My problem is in dealing with people who are so stupid they really can’t believe it’s not butter and will go one for an hour demanding it must really BE butter in stealth mode. That sort of thing is where my patience ends, when people aren’t even intelligent enough to realize that it’s not butter no matter what the packaging says.
I’m willing to take the time to listen to a person’s problems, provided that I actually think they’ll understand whatever comments or suggestions I might make. A lot also depends on the fact that when they have a problem with people the problem isn’t really them but they’re too solipsistic to see it. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to how unreasonable people can be simply because they don’t want to spend their wholes lives catering to the complainer’s whims. I’ve also spent a lot of time burying bits of complainers… in places. Might be a field, might be an abandoned building in down town Detroit. I know you’re reading and you’re not going to get me giving you a hint about where he is. Besides, he really did go to Cuba and if he got whacked down there it’s nothing to do with me. I was doing Vincetti in Chicago that week, so why would I lie?
If a person comes up to the required standard though, I will track to the ends of the earth to help solve their problem and give support if that’s what it takes. Anything I’m able to do, but that sort of commitment means that only a select group can get that treatment, and besides the standards! It might sound snobbish, but don’t much care. The opinions of people who think helping in a situation is saying “Oh, I’m sorry your father died,” once upon hearing it and never following that shit up, don’t really interest me. Drop everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) so you can rush to be by the side of someone you haven’t seen in three years so you can offer emotional support and action if needed when they’re in deep trouble*, then we’ll talk.
*And that turned into a fuckin’ hair ball anyway.
I can’t give in a half assed manner, I can’t give my all to everyone, and I refuse to help dumb motherfuckers who get themselves in shit over and over again without ever even trying to learn or better themselves. It’s not so much a point of giving up as it is not getting involved in the first place. This gets complicated because of something I would talk about in a filter if I had that filter but I don’t have that filter because you don’t talk about
Instead, I set up a selection process. A quiet, informal set of questions that Fancy and I go over when someone new pops up. If they answer a few important questions, I ask a few more, and then a few more until I make up my mind about them. No, you can’t see the list of questions. No, you can’t know what the levels are. No, there is no bullshit about thetans and paying won’t get you advanced to a higher level.
And this is where poly fits into it. I’m able to dedicate my emotions to only a few people, so I can dedicate a lot stronger emotions to people than most. Or maybe I’m just cleverer than other people, who knows? Probably that’s it. When I attract to a person, I’m not really thinking about the level of attraction we’re talking about until I can get in my head what level the other person is operating at. I can happily wade in the warm waters of the friendzone, if that’s were someone wants to put me. If we both feel there is more there, okay so be it.
I once heard someone talk about poly like this “I see people who say they give their all to their partner, but I give as much to my partner as they do, and I give it twice. I must have twice as much all to give as they do.” I’m not sure how fair that is, it sounds sort of unfair to me actually. Because actually, poly people are perfectly capable of giving less than normal people, they might spread it over a wider area too.
I give a lot, but I might be giving more than a normal poly person does, no peer group to check on. However, I live in a house with my two girlfriends and we do well. Of course we are three private people. Each of us has a room we can go to in order to be alone. There are common rooms if we all want to be together, which happens a lot, but there are private rooms for when we want to be left the hell alone, which also happens a lot.
Those are those barriers we were talking about. They are semi-physical and semi-agreed on. When people are in their rooms, I tend to leave them alone. Syd’s office and Hol’s room are on the second floor anyway so I have to go up stairs to see them. They work because we let them work and we work at them working. And then comes the inevitable question, what if we add someone new? Well, she (I assume it will be a she) will get her own space if she moved in with us and we’d work on where her boundaries are and how best to respect them.
So why do I live like this? Well, because I like to kiss all the girls. How do I manage to get what I need from the relationship? I take from each person what they’re prepared to give. What if I need something that the two girls don’t have to give up? That’s why we’re always taking applications here at Fancy & Al’s Home for Wayward Cat Girls. Just in case someone has something to offer. It used to say Cats/Girls, but the s and the slash fell off in a storm during January.
I think that’s all for now, if you have questions I’ll be happy to misinterpret them and give you an answer that had nothing to do with your question.
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