Oh, Give Me A Home...

Discovering ethical ways to avoid monogamy while you're young can be a big advantage. Everyone who explores unknown territory makes mistakes, and it's nice to be making those mistakes at the same time as the folks you're dating, rather than at, say, 35, when you get to know a nice couple down the way who've invited you to this thing called "Dragon*Con".

Being young and poly also has some disadvantages, though. In fact, it has three: location, location, location! Now that I'm not living at school anymore, I'm unable to ignore the fact. When getting to know people after school, one is often already settled into a location: a home, a job, those tend to be place-based, and many folks--especially those in fields like academia, where jobs are scattered across the globe and one typically moves to an area following a job--don't know where they'll be working until they've been hired. If two people are in a relationship, it can be feasible for one to accompany the other in pursuit of that person's career. With three or more people in various stages of commitment, that model becomes less tenable.

I'm hoping that it will be possible to co-ordinate employment and education locations with at least one particular person. If not, at least there's thin comfort in the fact that long-distance relationships don't equate to celibacy. I don't really want to have to cultivate a new lover in a new place, though: my dance card is full now, and as much as I love sleeping around, I'd like to be able to concentrate on the connections I have. When I think about entering a Ph.D. program and spending seven years in that new environment--seven years, longer than high school, which seemed endless at the time--frankly, it's a bit intimidating to imagine facing it far away from certain persons. Online interaction can only do so much, and travel is pricey. How much will we change; what other people will we meet? That said, it's a little comforting to be operating with the values of polyamory in mind. We know that people, and thus their relationships, always change, we know that there's always someone new to meet, and, most importantly, we know that neither of those facts are reasons to end a loving relationship. I just wonder how well we'll know each other afterward.