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  • Vreyan31@reddthat.comtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldRed hat = No cat
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    1 year ago

    I’m aro/ace and not dating, but my circle of friends is progressive and most have become poly over the last 5 years.

    So I’m acquainted with probably +25 poly guys, most of whom skew progressive (but there are a few who lean more libertarian in there too, and a couple anarchists), and am good enough friends with probably 5 progressive poly guys to have a good sense what they have learned, how they treat their partners, and what their partners find appealing.

    To be fair, to me polyamory looks like an insane amount of effort for the payoff - bc I am not interested in even one relationship let alone the intense effort of managing multiple. But from what I have seen, successfully being poly means learning a ton about boundaries, communication, and maintaining respect because all parties constantly have to manage jealousy and limited attention each of their partners. If you don’t respect one partner - poof!! – that relationship is over. And your other partners will likely hear about it, in detail, from both sides and litigate it bc they have a stake both in you and in being someone with you. It is a ton of drama.

    But it also seems to be a crucible for learning how to negotiating needs and figuring out how to talk about it openly with each other to build connection - and that process both requires and builds respect for your partners.

    Like I said, the guys I know who have stuck with it and learned the necessary people skills now have the problem of having too much interest. Including one friend who had terrible luck dating before and who I worried was on the verge of becoming an incel. Then he dated one of my first friends who was poly, and she kind of taught him in no uncertain terms how this works. Between that and his next poly girlfriend, I watched him become someone who is deeply considerate of his partners and is also confident about his boundaries and what he can offer. He’s got like 4 relationships going on, 2 of which are long term.

    And again - the biggest change I saw in him was that he stopped seeing the women he wanted to date as games to win or challenges to overcome, and stopped carrying the frustration and shame that comes with the ‘failure’ to ‘score’. He still looks at women with clear desire, but that desire doesn’t make him feel like he has to be manipulative or play games.

    I don’t know how to explain it except that he has a respect for the women he courts that most single guys do not. Maybe it’s that he has less to fear from rejection, so he doesn’t have to mentally dehumanize women as a coping mechanism. And this is a feature I see in most poly men, and have seen emerge in men as they fall into poly.

    Actually - I’m going to ponder the ‘able to respect women more bc they have less to fear from rejection’ idea more, personally.

    That alone may be a big part of their appeal, because a lot of the threat that women have to navigate when being courted is how to safely disengage if a promising flirtation turns sour. There is a lot more enthusiasm to explore or move fast when you are free to say no without fear of a possibly violent meltdown.

    And poly guys aren’t going to meltdown. They are ok with a no, they are emotionally braced for that and have been through worse feelings already. And they have other relationships to fall back on.


  • Vreyan31@reddthat.comtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldRed hat = No cat
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    1 year ago

    Pardon, but it smacks of weird defensiveness that you feel the need to bring up that serial killers often have intimate partners as some kind of counterpoint to the fact that men who figure out how to respect women’s boundaries are highly sought as partners.

    Serial killers likely find partners by being manipulative and playing mind games - ie, being psychopaths.

    Clearly the evidence that men who respect women have major success fostering reliable and enjoyable relationships with them is somehow highly threatening to a lot of guys.

    Something has to immediately be said that instead says “but not respecting women also works.” Followed by crude red pill thinking - “And aren’t all women dumb bc some seem to like danger? And also, women are superficial, so pretend to like a puppy bc that works a lot.”

    I know media has taught men that masculinity is basically defined by being able to disrespect women and think of them as winnable objects but –

    Mentally healthy women aren’t falling for that shit. And you guys hate the baggage that the traumatized ones have who are insecure enough fall for that crap.

    You could give up the machismo to try… respect and growing into someone who could be happy?





  • Unfortunately, I feel like these times call for explicit clarification in what should be obvious.

    “…when Jews can live anywhere in the world without fear of persecution… for being Jewish” (but like everyone else can be held accountable as individuals for crimes including war crimes; that being Jewish doesn’t turn prosecution into persecution)


  • Cops do not like confronting actual criminals - criminals are dangerous. But they love to intimidate and force total acquiescence from regular people and excuse it by saying ‘its what we have to do ‘in case’ they are a criminal’.

    Once criminals figure out that cops don’t want to confront them, those criminals learn to accommodate that. So they get worse. They figure out who they can rob and intimidate with impunity - and it’s mostly the poor. But also, they can break into middle class people’s cars, porch pirate, even B&E into homes, and cops don’t want to deal with that. So many people post on reddit bc cops won’t do a thing if, for example, a disabled person has their motorized wheelchair stollen, so people try to play detective on their own. Have a stalker or an ex who has credibly threatened your life? That might only help them catch that person if you are actually murdered.

    Cops deter crime in wealthy areas, but the rest of us are on our own.

    Fear of being caught might deter the naive from testing if they can get away with shit, but in reality, there is essentially a truce between cops and criminals, and if you know how to be too much work and risk to bother catching, a lot of what we consider ‘criminals’ don’t have a lot to worry about.