Hello, Big Gay World!
I’m JM Romig, or Josh if you want to get a little more personal. I blog about things and stuff that interest me. I’m not particularly flamboyant, I’m not fashion obsessed, and I’m not one to give advice about how to please your boyfriends or girlfriends. There are many bloggers who will go those places. I respect and enjoy those kinds of blogs. However, if you expect that from this blog you will be sorely disappointed.
I am interested in social dynamics and understanding the world we live in. I’m a promoter of equality and love. I don’t believe love is something that can or should be restricted by gender, class, race, number of partners, etc. I will discuss subjects that may make people uncomfortable. I will talk about sex. I will talk about love. I will talk about poetry. I will discuss my life as a polyamorus, polysexual, genderfluid queer-as-hell girl-boy, discuss gender-politics, point out contradictions within the LGBT/GSM community, preach against hate, and rant about people who promote hate. I will step to this blog as I do with the rest of my life – striving for intellectual and emotional honesty. If I don’t change people’s minds, I hope to at least entertain them.
Now that the pesky intro is out of the way, let’s jump right into a subject that I’ve hinted at already. This is probably the most controversial aspect of my life lately: Polyamory.
A few weeks ago, I came out to PRIDE as a poly person, and announced my relationship with my boyfriend. He was the third person in our relationship (which had made us a triad – I will post more about poly terms in another blog). We were welcomed with a mostly positive response. However, I still think that people don’t quite understand what this is about. So, I wanted to take this opportunity to clear some things up.
Polyamory is the belief that you can be in love with more than one person at any given time. In practice, it’s a bit more complicated than the theory would suggest. You have to fight against cultural programming. Culture tells us that we are supposed to limit ourselves to one person. Culture tells us that love is something reserved for one person at a time. It’s treated like a finite resource. It says that if you don’t follow these expectations, then you are selfish or afraid of commitment. Poly people are looked at like they are just trying to justify being a ‘whore’ (which is actually slut-shaming, and that is something I will discuss in another blog someday).
This is usually difficult for people to understand because we grew up to think that relationships are between two people and only two people. This is a thought that permeates through all of culture and not just straight culture. Even in the cartoon Rick and Steve: The World’s Happiest Gay Couple we watched at PRIDE Kent a week or so ago – they showed the two trying to pick up a “third” for a threesome, and over and over again the joke was made that an attempt at open relationships are just a “band-aid to hide deeper relationship issues”. For some people, this is true. But it’s not the case for many of us. For many people, this is exactly what their relationship needs to survive.
I’m the first to admit, this is not for everyone. In fact, it’s not for most people. It take a strong person to watch someone they love be loved by someone else. It can be hard. It takes a strong person to not feel like a cheater when taking the chance on loving another person. You have to be able to fight jealously and cultural programming.
I could go on for days about polyamory and the inner-workings of it, but I will save that for another time. Until then, strive to be intellectually and emotionally honest with yourselves, and above all – enjoy life.
-JM Romig
