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	MONO, POLY, WHATEVER Overview ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A rambled musing on relationships. Mildly coherent. The core ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	In my core I believe people are good and well intended. Maybe I don't always see that goodness in people, but it's what I believe. I like this belief because it lets me approach the world in an open and positive manner. I also believe that people want to make connections in the world, and that these connections happen in many different ways. We make connections that are friendly, romantic, sexual, platonic, and/or intellectual. Often, these connections are turned into a framework: best friend, lover, partner, mentor, and so on. Getting hurt ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	Hurt is inevitable in any connection. Anyone can hurt me. A friend can do it just as well as a partner. I don't like getting hurt. Being dumped hurts, and it hurts to try to understand why I was dumped, and why someone wants to be with someone else, and why someone doesn't have the same love for me as I do for them. Fundamentally, I want people to be with the people they want to be with. So fundamentally I'm actually OK if a (ex)partner wants to be with someone else in a different capacity. If either I can't understand or can't accept their reasons, all I can do is accept this fact. And all I can do is be happy for them for their new path and, if agreeable, and find a new way to carry down our own path together (how long does it take for ex-lovers to become best friends?) Collision ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	All of these thoughts and feelings and beliefs for me collide into a single concept: commitment. For me, what the relationship is called is secondary to how it breathes; for me, it should breathe with commitment. A commitment to be open, to be emotionally present, to work through conflict, to love and show kindness, and to create, agree upon, and respect each other's boundaries. The qualities of commitment are important in any and every relationship, and they're truly always present in the relationships that survive. For me, really and finally, this is all that matters. And it's from here that I find strength to create many types of new relationships. Common carry ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	Unfortunately, starting new relationships is difficult. I come into a relationship along my unique trajectory with my particular satchel of experience. As I lay the particulate before me and in front of a new boo, there may be particles that appear to them unfamiliar, threatening, or frightening. Hopefully, too, some particles appear exciting, enticing, and loving. Commitment figures its way into a budding romance just as it defines a long lasting union. From the start there is a commitment to be together openly on new ground, examining new behaviours, reactions, reflections and challenges. What particle from my satchel will I add to our common carry? What will they add? If two particles are incompatible can we get along with our journey all the same? Frameworks ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	Relationships end. They always do. It could be death, or something more exacting but diffuse like a growing distance, a new interest, or a breach of trust. The constant is that one way or another they'll be over. But that's not a bad outcome, it's not something to avoid. For me, finding a framework that allows me to move through the changing features of a relationship in a positive way is most important. It's corny, but I do believe that /all endings are also new beginnings/. It's difficult to stomach the hurt that results from a framework disruption. For a while, the feelings may be inverse to how the relationship began. Not happy, but sad. Not elated, but defeated. Not hopeful, but despondent. Is this inevitable? Maybe. What I want ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	I want to love the people in my life. I want to be emotionally and physically available to these people--my loved ones--in ways that are appropriate, honest, and reciprocle. I want to feel my feelings freely and act on them responsibly. I want to be surrounded by people who are not threatened by what they don't understand. I may not be able to explain what brings me joy and pleasure, fulfilment and connection. And I want that to be OK. All the same, I want to participate as active player eager hearer of what brings my loved ones their own sense of love. I imagine these wants like a dinner with many people gathered around. Each person at the table representing a different part of myself: the part that grows and learns, the part that laughs and cries, the part that desires and endeavors, the part that touches and is touched. My loved ones bring these parts out of me. /They are these parts of me/. And I'd never want to find myself seated at a table without one more seat, one more meal, for that part of myself who has yet to arrive and has yet to be loved. Love ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	I've been through frameworks of monogamy and polyamory. I've become frustred by not being understood by monogamists who can't grasp polyamory, and polyamorists who can't grasp monogamy (I've also been that stubborn monogamist, and I've been that stubbord polyamorist.) Returning to fundamentals, I believe the /existence of love/ is what's important, not /what that love is called/. The framework--monogamy, polyamory--is simply the protective shell that's used to insulate its inhabitants from getting hurt, which is ironic because that hurt usually happens from the inside-out, not the outside-in. All of this leaves me feeling that whatever I call the relationship doesn't really matter. I've called it a friendship, partnership, cohabitation, whatever. Mostly, though, I've always found myself just wanting to call it love.