Today’s the Day My Wife Met My Girlfriend

August 22, 2010 by Dick.

I am not Yale Marrat.

In that novel, Robert H. Rimmer turned the story of one man’s unconventional marriage to two women into a national controversy. Although my daughter has always said my life is a country song and while my controversy has not played out on the national stage, it does affect people in many states.

My name is Dick Harper and I haven’t cheated on my wife.

But I do love — and am in love with — two women and I’m shouting it from the rooftops!

[This is the final piece in our ongoing polylocution puzzle about boundless love. You really really want to read gekko’s companion piece, Going All the Way (Poly, Part 4).]

If you have hung in through eight or ten blogs and more than a hundred comments, you may have guessed there is something special between Nancy Ahern and me. She gives me great joy.

For the record, Anne not only knows about Nancy, she knows Nancy and she gave us her blessing. They have partied together. Anne stayed in the house of Murphy and Teegan when the girls attended a NASCAR race together without me. With all of that, she does not approve of this lifetime friendship and love.

For more than 30 years, Anne and I have shared the deaths of our parents and the lives of our children and grandchildren and coming great-grandchild, job gains and job losses, old house hassles, used dog stores, baking cookies and fixing furnaces, … and laughter. We have two important things in common: we like elephants and peanut butter. April 1 is our anniversary. No Foolin’.

Dr. Phil calls what we’re doing “right.”

For more than 7 years, Nancy and I have shared the travails of our parents and our children, job gains and job losses, real estate conundrums, used dog stores, hermitting and hanging mirrors, … and laughter. We have two important things in common: we like Mets baseball and we’re both paper-trained. Today is our anniversary.

Dr. Phil calls what we’re doing “wrong.”

The Victorian standard of serial polygamy holds that “one must fall out of love with someone old when he or she falls in love with someone new…”

I disagree. The point is not to lose your love for someone “old” but rather to expand it. Love may give us energy but it acts exactly like entropy.

Entropy measures the disorder or chaos of a system. Energy is finite but the entropy — the carrier of energy — of the Universe is always increasing.

Love can assuredly be chaotic but only those selling unhappiness would want to limit how much love we can have in our lives.

Only those selling unhappiness
would limit how much love
we can have in our lives.

By now, you may think that the people I love or the people Anne loves have somehow lessened my love for her. Nope. She and I have been friends and lovers for a big part of our “grownup” lives. That hasn’t changed.

By now, you may also think you know what is going on between Nancy and me. I won’t tell you if we are sexually intimate, because that is not your business. I will tell you we have been lovers and best friends for seven years today, because that is.

I fell for the beautiful gekko smile; I stay for the conversation.

And that, dear reader, is making love for the rest of our lives.

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[Editor’s Note: Nancy and I are concluding this public conversation about life and love. Please read Going All the Way for her own announcement.] Next week, we return to regularly scheduled political ranting; I’ll report later on some of the difficulties we have faced.

I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.
I’m pretty sure I’d do it all again.
–Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List

Posted in Society, Naughty, Random Access | 4 Comments »

It’s All About the Sex

August 15, 2010 by Dick.

Or is it?

Polly Wolly Diddle All Day, gekko said.

[If you haven’t been following this ongoing polylocution about boundless love, please read the first two pieces in the series along with gekko’s companion piece, On Betrayal, On Joy (Poly, Part 3) , for her take on spit-shining.]

I like sex. I like love better. And I guarantee the sex is better with a lover than with a sexer, something I did not know at 21. A question remains to resolve this week: one can have sex without love but can one have love without sex?

Polyamory, the Movement, talks about love and open communication and responsible non-monogamy. Polyamorists the people talk about the sex.

Important Note: Condoms break. Those involved in a polyanything relationships should plan regular bloodletting for the obligatory STD tests.

“Humans are the most sexual of all the primates, willing and able to do it just about anywhere, anytime, with anyone (and even with other species if the Kinsey report is to be believed in its findings about farmhands and their animal charges),” Michael Shermer wrote in Scientific American .

Old joke: Billy Bob and Luther were talking one afternoon when Billy Bob tells Luther, “Ya know, I reckon I’m ’bout ready for a vacation. Only this year I’m gonna do it a little different.

“The last few years, I took your advice about where to go. Three years ago you said to go to Hawaii. I went to Hawaii and Earline got pregnant. Then two years ago, you told me to go to the Bahamas, and Earline got pregnant again. Last year you suggested Tahiti and darned if Earline didn’t get pregnant again.”

Luther asks Billy Bob, “So, what you gonna do this year that’s different?”

Billy Bob says, “This year I’m taking Earline with me.”

Ba da boom.

Hugh (Call me Viagra™) Hefner, going strong at 84, opened the doors to the sex party in December, 1953, with a $1,000 loan from his mother and a 50¢ cover price. Since then, sex in person, on television, in the movies, and on the Internet gets more hits than God and Mephistopheles combined (Sex: About 656,000,000 results; God: About 476,000,000 results; Mephistopheles: About 1,060,000 results. Source Google™)

This week, while no-longer-androgynous gekko talks about lifestyle, I shall search for spit and spunk to prove that “it’s not just the sex.” Positive results under an alternative light source don’t prove love and the lack of bodily fluids doesn’t prove fidelity.

Over on the other pages, Nancy “came out.” Eleven years ago, she had sex with a man who wasn’t her now-ex-husband. She made the decision to cheat as well as to hide it from him. Sex.

The long-married Fred and Gwen Strong have Friday night date nights and have for a couple of decades. Sex. Fred and his girlfriend Carol spend every other Thursday evening at the Comfort Inn. Sex. Fred spends Saturday mornings sitting side-by-side with Bonnie in the comfortable chairs in the library visiting room; sometimes they simply read but often they talk. They usually hold hands. No sex.

Does there have to be sex to be lovers?

Intercourse always starts before coitus commences. When thousands of miles separate potential lovers, they could have months or years or millions of words before they have even one kiss.

Talking too close is far more dangerous than dancing too close.

Emily and Barny Feeler have had a kind of no worries online fling for years: proximity, immediacy, and blood tests not required. It’s fun and they could probably sustain it indefinitely — after all, they live thousands of miles apart. They get to play with words, play with ideas, and even play at sex. The new age way of touching someone without ever touching. No sex.

They have also learned enough about each other to become friends.

It’s all about the sex?

Were Nancy and her turning-point fling lovers? Were Fred and Bonnie? Fred and Carol? How about Emily and Barny as lovers?

The consensus view holds that having sex with a non-spouse is cheating but not having sex with a non-spouse is not, I wrote last week. The consensus view is frequently very wrong. If the poly relationship has no groping and panting, is it still what many call infidelity? I suggest that it is and not because Jimmy Carter ran into that attack rabbit or was unfaithful when lusting in his heart.

Relationships don’t fail because of sex present or sex missing. Relationships fail because the people in them stop liking each other.

Relationships succeed because the people in them do like each other.

Nancy and her brief crush probably weren’t lovers. They had a sexual attraction but she didn’t report on the bond she now understands she wants to feel.

Library Fred and Bonnie could be lovers. They have a long-term, intimate relationship, know each other’s children’s birthdays, and would go out on a rainy night to fix a broken down car.

Motel Fred and Carol meet the test. Carol has an intimate relationship with Fred that is similar to Bonnie’s. And, of course, they have sex every other Thursday.

Online Emily and Long Distance Barny are assuredly lovers. There is no sex but they know each other’s most intimate secrets from office gossip to menstrual cycle. They share everything and would do anything for each other including fly across the country to move a … bureau.

And that, dear reader, is making love.

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[Editor’s Note: The rest of this series on Polyamory may be found here . Please also read gekko’s companion pieces, Poly Blogging , and the newly minted part 3, On Betrayal, On Joy , for her take and lots more commentary.]

“When there’s someone that should know
then just let your feelings show
and make it all for one and all for love.”

Posted in Society, Naughty, Random Access | 6 Comments »

It’s All About Cheating

August 8, 2010 by Dick.

Or is it?

Chatter has increased about cheating and polyurethane. We’ll have to reach for the dictionary again.

[Editor’s Note: gekko and I are continuing our conversation in four long acts. Please read Green Eyes for her take on polyurethane.]

Remember the kid with the big ears in grade school? Cribbed off your quizzes until Miss Noble boxed his ears for it. Cheaters and tattle tales defined first grade morality.

So what’s cheating? Cheating is an act of lying, deception, fraud, trickery, or imposture. Cheating is lying to or deceiving or tricking your unknowing partner whether for a better grade or for sex.

Without knowing anything more than we might talk about poly-something-ism, the comments in the first week of this series flowed from “I am willing to take the tests” to “burn ‘em all at the stake.” If you are married, the consensus view holds that having sex with a non-spouse is cheating but not having sex with a non-spouse is not. Remember that. “Not having sex with a non-spouse is not cheating.” We’ll see that idea again next week.

Our preoccupation with nasty, dirty, slithery sex may go only to our Victorian great-grandparents but cheating is far older than that.

The Times called Renault’s order to Nelson Piquet, Jr., to have an “accident” at the Singapore Grand Prix, the “worst single piece of cheating in the history of sport.” The crash allowed Fernando Alonso to win a race, but that was just two years ago. The first incident of actual cheating I could find occurred in the Summer Games of 388 B.C. when Eupolus, the boxer of Thessaly, bribed three opponents to take a dive. On the relationship front, Bishop Burchard of Worms’ Penitential of the year 1012 offered 194 different sexual sins including cheating with your wife’s sister and your son’s fiancee. It was a best seller. It included positions.

Fidelity (straight- or in-) is still big business today. Cheating is a major industry. Happiness apparently isn’t. Our schools, our churches, our news broadcasters don’t survive on good news; they all sell unhappiness. Or put it on the news.

gekko overlooked Fred and Gwen and Bonnie and Carol in her sampling. Fred and Gwen Strong have been married for a couple of decades. Fred and Bonnie spend every Saturday morning together at the library; Fred and Carol spend alternate Thursday evenings at the Comfort Inn when Fred is supposed to be bowling. Gwen knows about Bonnie but not about Carol. Is Fred cheating with Bonnie? How about with Carol? On another hand we have Sarah and Ralph Pother. After 25 years of monogamous marriage, Ralph announces that he is polyamorous and Sarah disagrees. He is honest and open and communicating; he wants a lover. Is Ralph cheating? Finally gekko’s own long-married, toothsome couple, Paul and Polly Dent, have several lovers between them. Paul and Polly know and approve of each other’s lovers. Are they cheating?

And does it matter whether we think they are?

Society enables illegal immigration and tax evasion and welfare fraud, and yet we do not live in an enabling world in our own personal lives. Instead we live with Prohibition.

We all know how well the Noble Experiment worked out.

Jealousy, negativism, and assuming the worst of others all go hand in hand with Prohibition. And Puritanism. And Cheating.

“The accusation [of cheating] is laced with far more ferocity than when someone talks about defaulting on a loan,” gekko wrote.

As she almost said, Instead of knitting the fabric of society, prohibition- and bigotry- and rule- and expectation-driven jealousy creates gashes of anger in our lives.

Relationships should make us happy.

We define happiness as contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, and joy. A person who believes himself happy is just that.

I like to smile. Jealousy makes us frown. Cheating makes us jealous.

Fred and Gwen Strong self-report that they are a little dissatisfied; Gwen will be more than just unhappy when she finds out about Carol because Fred is not only stepping out on her, he is doing it behind her back. That relationship does not make them happy even though she does not know he cheats.

Sarah and Ralph self-report that they were happy until Ralph “changed the rules.” Their new relationship does not make them happy because some say he cheats.

Paul and Polly Dent self-report that they are happy with each other and happy with their various lovers. No matter what our panel says, neither Paul nor Polly thinks the other cheats. Their relationships do make them happy because they are not cheating.

Probably ought not call it cheating if your partner approves. Probably ought if she doesn’t.

“I want a good wife,” Mark Twain wrote. “I’ll take a couple of them if they’re good enough.” Mr. Clemens looked for happiness.

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[Editor’s Note: The first part in this series on Polyamory may be found here . Please also read the companion pieces written by gekko, part 1 and the newly minted part 2, Green Eyes, for her take and lots more commentary.]

Next week, we get to look at the sex. And smiling. (And you wondered why I tagged these pieces as “Naughty .”)

Posted in Society, Naughty, Random Access | 8 Comments »

I Love You. And You. And You…

August 1, 2010 by Dick.

Here’s an important distinction: open, casual sex keeps you from getting elected. Deep dark sneaky secret sex gets you on the front page of the New York Times.

Prostitutes cost Eliot Spitzer the governorship of New York, not to mention 80 large. The next NY governor, David Paterson, confessed his own infidelities right after he was sworn in. Next up? Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s soul mate was his Argentine mistress. Oh, yeah, and then there was Bill.

[Editor’s Note: gekko and I again take up a conversation in four long acts much as Shaw described Major Barbara as “a discussion in three long acts.” Before you read this article, please go read Poly Pliability for our starting point.]

Polygamy comes from the Greek poly- meaning many plus -gamos which indicates a “strong smell of fox urine.” It is a marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time. Probably because at least one of them smells a little off.

Polygyny also comes from the Greek poly- plus gune from which we derive woman or other female medical terms. It is the state or practice of having more than one wife or female mate at a time. Monogyny is practice of having single mate although that term, too, usually implies marriage.

Polyandry comes from the Greek poly- as well plus andr- which seems to have meant man but is also the root for automaton (android) as well as a popular phone.

“Many robots” makes more sense than “many phones” although the robots can’t really offer meaningful conversation.

You have already figured out that Polyamory comes from the Greek poly- with the amory tacked on from the Latin amor. No, it didn’t come from a National Guard Armory although battles have indeed been fought over it.

Polyamory is a made-up word for a real — and historical — cultural phenomenon. By all accounts, Thomas Jefferson had a long, continuous relationship with Sally Hemmings. And Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson and her king kept company for 20 years but didn’t they sleep together for 15 of them. They were in many ways partners in politics, in war, and in the arts. Madame de Pompadour remained at Louis XV’s side for 20 years until her death at age 43.

It is a lifestyle choice with as much dignity and commitment as traditional monogamous marriage is supposed to have, the lovely gekko writes.

Emphasis added.

I suspect most Americans would disagree. SWMBO does. According to polls, about 80% of Americans say that extramarital sexual relations are always wrong. That’s up from the early 70s (right after the “Free Love 60s”), when about 70% of people said the same thing.

Except that something between 3% and half of married men and a third of married women cheat. 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to the Forest Institute. They can’t all be upset about the pound cake.

So is polyamory cheating or is it something else?

Polyamory, however, is not really merely wife swapping, gekko adds.

So Henny Youngman (”Take my wife. Please.”) was neither swinging nor polyamorous?

“I’ve been in love with the same woman for 49 years,” he said. “If my wife every finds out, she’ll kill me!”

That, in a nutshell, is the rub. Stay tuned.

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[Editor’s Note: gekko and I have again begun an ongoing conversation. Before reading this piece, please go read Poly Pliability for our starting point.]

Posted in Society, Naughty, Random Access | 15 Comments »

The Polyamory Posts

August 1, 2010 by Dick.

G. B. Shaw described his Major Barbara as “a discussion in three long acts.” Following that model, gekko and I have undertaken a polylocution about boundless love in four. Or more.

If you haven’t visited this series before, we suggest you read it in this order:

Part I

• Poly Pliability
• I Love You. And You. And You…

Part II

• It’s All About Cheating
• Green Eyes

Part III

• On Betrayal; On Joy
• It’s All About the Sex

Part IV

• Today’s the Day My Wife Met My Girlfriend
• Going All the Way

Other Resources:

• Quantum Love: a Beginner’s Guide to Polyamory
• Slipping the Ties that Bind
• Never Do This: Catalog of Poly Mistakes
• Elizabeth F. Emens: Monogamy’s Law: Compulsory Monogamy and Polyamorous Existence
• Stanley Kurtz: Meet the Future of Marriage in America and Beyond Gay Marriage

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