"The life of a blended family". Our Poly Life is written by any one of a poly-fi quad. Each month they will share with readers about issues they face as a blended and committed poly family with nine children still at home. You can read more about them at their website; Our Poly Life.

Previous editions of this column can be found in the Monthly Columns Archives.

Our Poly Friends

Today was a really good day. Come to think of it, so was yesterday. There has been a lot of “life” setting in lately, and dealing with those issues and sometimes crisis situations seems easier now than ever before. A huge part it is due to the presence of the three loves in my life; each of them offering support in their own sweet and wonderful ways. But in another way, it is because our quad is slowly beginning to branch out and make some amazing poly/poly-accepting friends.

In the early days of our combining, I was so engrossed in the overwhelming “in love” feelings (commonly referred to as NRE) that I didn’t care if anyone outside of our immediate family even existed. I was totally focused on my new loves and our new life together. Because Big and I live in a small community squarely planted within the Bible Belt, and because he and I came from such conservative and traditional backgrounds, we were not only reserved about discussing our new lifestyle with family, friends, and neighbors – we actually felt it might be unwise for the safety and security of our immediate clan to have our new choices public knowledge. This was mostly based on the knowledge that our community isn’t well known for tolerance of alternate lifestyles.

Over time, we began making selective decisions about who, and when, and how to tell those most important to us. Other friends on the fringe just began to slip away due to distance and lack of interaction, which, quite honestly, was fine with us for a number of varied reasons. Within the last 18 months since our poly life emerged, our social life has been filtered into “before poly” and “now know and (sort of) accept poly.” The result was an unforeseen and rapid dwindling of Friday night date activities. The funny thing is, we didn’t seem to mind at all – really, we hardly even noticed for a time.

Four months after Fix and Temptress moved in, she was surfing the web one evening (her typical mid movie activity) and stumbled across the Poly Families site. She called me over and we devoured every page and link therein, including laughing ourselves silly over the similarities we shared with the cartoon SPICE. Wow, there really were other people like us! Apparently, we weren’t as unusual as we thought. That new information put a smile on our faces.

Within a few days we had come up with the idea of beginning our own blog/website in hopes of connecting with similar thinking poly folk. Maybe, we thought, if we just put ourselves out there, we could find other people who not only knew about our lifestyle, but understood it, and could possibly share with us some advice for making our arrangement last. It wasn’t long after that we had readers (with comments!), had discovered Yahoo groups, and had an invitation to come and explore Poly Percs.

Those few months were a time of tremendous growth and learning for us. We had so much to ask, to offer, and to ponder. All four of us became drawn to the poly “underworld,” where chat was plentiful and finding someone who seemed to really understand our plight was as easy as logging on to the right forum. For the first time in a long time, we were free to be ourselves behind the safe screen of our computers.

The web became our life line to a community we couldn’t quite touch physically. We discovered a local poly group, but it wasn’t, and still isn’t, all that active. We became more involved with online chats, forums, and fellow bloggers. We evolved into email groups and some more personal Instant Messenger comrades. With some, we have even met in person, meeting for coffee, dinner, or weekend visits. Those friends bring us a comfort that underscores our need for feeling we have like kind with whom to share our lives.

Our quad has met one such originally cyber friend who lives close by. (our thanks to Mr. Big) He has actually begun working with Big and Temptress with their current business venture, so he is here in the home office nearly every day. His kids blend and mesh with our kids, so now that it is summer, he brings them along when he can. The fact that most days of the week there are eleven children under roof only makes the summer seem more fun for our crew. And tonight, his Significant Other joined us for family styled swimming and dinner, followed by some nice conversation.

The glorious thing about having all these new poly friends, whether in person or on line, is they bring into our lives a certain amount of freedom; a freedom just to be ourselves. With these friends, there is no masking who we are or what we believe - and it is quite a mixed bag of doctrines here in our home! When you begin a relationship with your mind and heart open, it’s amazing how quickly the connections can form. We have nothing to hide from these new friends; we were honest about our lifestyle and out of the ordinary beliefs from the start. By “putting ourselves out there” in the beginning with our blogs, there is a lot of relational distance we don’t have to travel.

You’ve heard the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.” No matter what your variety may be, find some similarly feathered friends and settle into the comfort of knowing you‘re really not alone in Poly-ville. I’m not talking about mere sunny day acquaintances, but those that will stick with you when “life” sets in. A friend stands by you through good times and the bad, offers support and encouragement, and invites you to be your best.

Fix, Temptress, Mr. Big and I are all learning that life does not exist in a vacuum. At least not for long. Once the newness of living this alternative lifestyle settled in and we got on with the business of being a (rather unusual) family, it’s been nice to have others outside the walls of our home, but still inside the circle of full disclosure. Maybe that explains why all the while I’ve been mulling over this column in my head, I can’t seem to shake loose the Beatles. “I get by with a little help from my friends.” I raise my glass to all of you who have been so very significant to us in the last year and a half. My very heartfelt thanks…

~the Laundry Goddess, June 13, 2007

The Poly Quad are contributing writers as well as members of this online Community. They can be contacted via the email addresses listed in the Contact our Writers section, or through our message board Forums.

Top



folks have read this article.