I’ve been thinking about communal living, poly-amory and open relationships. It’s time to start writing. Of course the problem with where to start is still something I’ve yet to solve, but editing is the necessary step for any finished writing, and so I write without regard for beginnings.
Poly speaks of different lovers, but I’d like to suggest as well different loves. There are different ways, or kinds of love. You can love someone in a moment, for the moment, a light and easy love, and there is a passionate love, unconditional, non-temporal. And these loves can exist simultaneously.
love is a relationship, but a relationship can also be a mistake. You can make a mistake in a love relationship, and you can make a mistake in a mistake relationship.
When people speak of open relationships they are most often thinking of multiple relationships. Relationships are generally understood as a coupling; that we are to choose one lover. When this choice is made, which is really the expression of a wish or desire, the expression is reciprocated by the other or rejected, the rejected person continues to search or remains open to potential lovers, but the reciprocated wish, the affirmative choice, closes the relationship and ends the search. In the case of the commonly understood open relationship everything remains the same, but the search continues. Practitioners of the common open relationship are poly-amorous in that they have a number of lovers, but lover in this sense is a common term that implies an exclusive or closed relationship. The common open relationship can be understood as a series of exclusive or closed relationships. It is only open in the sense that it is not limited to a single exclusive (closed) relationship.
The open relationship I desire, is completely open. It is non-exclusive or positively, inclusive. It could be described as a community of lovers. The question is always “How does that work?” There’s a need for the development of a theory that is yet to exist, based on actions that have yet to be performed.