I feel powerless to help my friend. I care about her so much, and she is suffering right now, but I live too far away to help. It's only advice that she needs, and an ear, but we operate in such different context. I don't know what to say! I'm a pioneer exploring the new world of relationships, commitment, fidelity. And while I can't really know for sure, my friend still lives in the old world of monogamy-oriented relationships... what I think of as the 'owner paradigm' of relationships. She is wondering how my sweetie and I managed to stay together for 20 years with all the struggles she is now experiencing in her own relationship. The truth is, we didn't. We felt like one of the constraints that she takes for granted (monogamy) was simply too much of a handicap to put on a relationship we really wanted to survive. My friends experiences are precisely why. Yet, my sense of her is that she is fairly conservative (for a bisexual lesbian, anyway!). Irony of ironies. Some of the people Ive had the most difficult time sharing with are my gay friends. Poly really is the 'new gay'.. more queer than queer. Perhaps because there is no argument about whether monogamy is natural anymore...we all understand on some level that the truth is we are for the most part NOT wired to be monogamous. Otherwise, it jsut wouldn't be an issue. There would be no cheating. No affairs. No divorce. It's a lifestyle choice reinforced by historical patterns and social myths about right and wrong. And those of us who finally come to understand that are like fella in the Matrix who chose the pill that allowed him to see the true essense of things. How do I talk to my friend who is still in the matrix?
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