Re: [UUPoly-L] old vs. new relationships?

[PiscesWaterNymph@aol.com]

I find all of this conversation fascinating, though there are a few points  
which I feel are just waiting to be explored further...
 
My partner and I met over 10 years ago when I was still in HS and she  was in 
college. Over two years we developed an intensely emotional friendship  which 
eventually gave way, my Senior year, to sexual play and  experimentation. At 
no point during any of this did we consider ourselves  "together" "dating" or 
a "couple." I graduated, I went to a different college,  we visited each other 
every weekend, slept together whenever possible, talked  for hours a day on 
the phone (I had to work at Dunkin' Donuts just to pay my  phone bill) and 
almost systematically "worked" (generally fooled around with-but  sometimes more) 
our way though our respective groups of friends--calling each  other to 
compare stories and brag! A year later I transferred schools, thanks to  a 
scholarship, and we started living together in an apt with 4 other students.  We shared 
a bed (with a loft over it-- neither of us were out as lesbians to our  
families) there for 4 years, shared finances, even a bank account and still did  
not consider ourselves to be in any way "together"-- we were even offended to be 
 called a couple by friends (whom we both continued to fool around with, 
though  this began to lead to some rather interesting pairings...). It wasn't 
until 6  years into things, when we needed to get a domestic partnership in order 
to  share health care, that we realized that we were sort of a couple, in a  
nonlinear kind of way. We're now heavily involved in the Marriage Equality  
movement, refer to each other as "my partner" and are completely and wonderfully  
nonmonogomous. It seems the only possible way things could be for us, seeing 
as  how we never, ever defined ourselves as dating or anything even close. I 
don't  imagine, however, that it is easy or even that possible for people to 
drive  themselves into this kind of mindset or relationship-- while I believe 
there is  nothing whatsoever wrong with it, I'm surprised to see that there are 
people who  think they can become nonmonogomous (or "poly" or any other term 
people use--  and, out of curiosity, where do people draw lines between all 
these  categories?)
 
I guess we've also been lucky to never have received a terrible reaction  
from those we've disclosed this information to... and we've disclosed it to  
quite a lot! Most people seem simply surprised, primarily that it's worked  for so 
long without any real problems and that we remain so secure and devoted  to 
each other . 
 
I find "poly" and "polyamorous" to be words that are too tight fitting for  
me to really identify with... they seem to imply the necessary presence of more 
 than one "love" at a time, when love is not always at the heart of 
situations in  which people have more than one relationship going simultaneously. The 
idea of  being "in love" with anyone after the age of 19 or so seems 
preposterous to me  anyway... choosing such a transient notion upon which to have laid 
an entire  society's framework for speaking of romantic and sexual love is mind 
boggling to  me...
 
So what do people think? How do the terms we are using to define ourselves  
lend themselves to clarifying our realtionships, our lives, our issues and our  
place in society? And does making yourself "become poly" make you any more 
poly  than making yourself sleep with members of the same gender make you gay? 
Please  understand, I'm not criticizing anyone's actions or choices, I'm merely 
 wondering out loud, as this is something I've never considered before. 
 
-Marie