So here's a perennial poly problem: what to call one's special people?
All right, it's not a huge problem, and maybe I'm the only one fretting about it. But it does keep coming up for me.
A lot of poly folks have hit on the solution of referring to their significant others as “my sweetie,” as in, “So I went out to dinner with my sweetie So-and-So, and she spent the whole time talking about how her other sweetie was having a hard time with one of his sweeties....”
But I'm not really a fan of “sweetie” – too saccharin for my taste.
Other options aren't a whole lot better.
At a party in the Bay Area I once attended with Parker and Scott, we were introduced as “Viny, her husband Parker, and her O.S.O. Scott.” It took me a second to decode “Other Significant Other,” and I wasn't sure I liked it. Economical, certainly, and maybe kind of amusing, but also potentially marginalizing, kind of like an Honorable Mention or an “Also Ran....”
I have tended to favor more traditional terms like “boyfriend” or “lover,” but these don't seem like accurate descriptors for some of the people in my life.
Parker is my husband. Travis is my boyfriend. Okay, so far, so good.
Ex is a useful term, if you've got a relationship that has clearly transitioned into a platonic friendship. But poly people don't always simply end a relationship that isn't working.
Monogamous people, faced with a problematic relationship, are very tempted to just break it off, because they take it for granted that they can't pursue anyone else as long as they're still attached. Poly people, who don't have to be single in order to move on, tend to keep former lovers in their lives in whatever way seems to work best. In label-land, as elsewhere, being poly is a complicated business.
Is Lilianna Parker's ex-girlfriend? I'm not sure, but it doesn't sound quite right. What about that episode under the apricot tree a few months ago? Or the trip they're talking about taking together?
Another example: Scott and I broke up years ago, but nearly every time we've seen each other since then, we've ended up in bed together. So, what does that make him? Not my boyfriend, since we see each other only once or twice a year, but “ex-boyfriend” implies that we're totally over each other, and we're not.
My mother recently came up with a good catch-all term when she informed me that she had no interest in interacting with any of my (here she paused, searching for the right words...) extraneous people.
Extraneous Person. I think I like it. From now on, everyone I love who isn't part of my parent-approved nuclear family will be designated as an E.P. I'll append the identifying letters to each name, in a little superfluous bubble, like a TM.
Or maybe I should just suck it up and go with sweetie, like everyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment