Re: [UUPoly-L] Too many circles, lines, triangles.....

["Earth Father" <earthfather@cfnc.us>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brigitte Fires
> All this to say, Being/Identifying as Poly is not JUST about the sex, but to
> many people sex is included in their working definition and practice of it.
> Taking that part of the definition away from the equation WOULD force me to
> stop identifying as poly and find a different term. So in essence, taking
> away sex would be "destroying" poly for me. But I'm not going to tell
> someone whose definition is different that they cannot ident as poly just
> because theirs does not include sex. It's one of those instances where one
> must agree to disagree, and really it only needs to be "dealt with" once two
> people with different definitions are trying to be emotionally and/or
> physically intimate.

In numerous online and in-person discussions over more than a decade, the point
has consistently been made that while most poly relationships are sexual, this
is not an *essential* part of the definition.  It has to do with intense,
intimate, "romantic" relationships, which sometimes are not expressed sexually.

My co-parent (some would say ex-wife) and I have an intense, intimate, at times
even romantic relationship; we might even use the expression "joined at the
heart".  We are still very much partners in being parents, and we keep finding
ourselves partnering in many other areas as well; we cuddle and have even slept
together occasionally )sleep, not sex); we are each other's first line of
support beyond our current nesting partners; she keeps encouraging my partner
and me to move into the same ecovillage so we can (all) be together more; and
when she and my son decided to go to Central America for a couple of months,
they immediately called me and asked if my partner and I would join them.

We don't have a "sexual" relationship; but if this isn't "amory", I'm not sure
what would be.

Michael Rios