A series of short posts from The Rollercoaster FB page from 2021 through 2024.

So, whenever a post or meme pointing out a social justice problem is shared, there is a specific subset of replies that forms a recognizable pattern.

So as a few of you know, I've been working on putting together a programme (called EPIC) to allow small groups of people to explore platonic physical affection. So this post is going to dig into why I think that's important.

This is an adaptation of a Facebook post, but while that was using an image of words, I'm re-typing those words for better accessibility. I'll post the quoted words, and then my added comments below that.

• Monogamy: having one partner to disappoint.
• Polyamory: having multiple partners to disappoint.
• Relationship Anarchy: disappointing everyone in your life in different unique ways.

This seemingly endless pandemic is certainly not doing any favours to anyone's mental health.

So someone asked the question of what is the difference between egalitarian polyamory and relationship anarchy. I've seen a few good answers, but figured I'd add my take.

New Relationship Energy (NRE) is something that a lot of people experience, regardless of if they're monogamous, polyamorous, or relationship anarchists.

So I was browsing FB this morning, and came across a post making fun of unicorn hunters in one of the polyamory groups. Normally I'd laugh and agree with it. Except this was a meme of "When you see a cute girl on Tinder, but the profile is looking for a third, and her man is a solid 2/10." Which maybe could have been somewhat amusing, until I went into the comment section. I've never been more disappointed in the polyam community.

Pretty sure whoever made the picture below meant it as some kind of dark ominous warning, but honestly that all looks good to me. To hell with their so called "creational norm", or as I like to call it, "patriarchal heteronormative toxic monogamy culture".

So I probably have a few posts worth of thoughts on the concept of "friends with benefits". I've given the reasons I don't particularly like the term itself, but for these posts I'm using it, as it's well understood.

Sorry for a lack of updates. Life's been keeping me busy. So here's a few random comments I've made on other posts lately that I think should be shared here as well. This might be slightly long, so bear with me. I'll put nice headers on each comment to give a bit of context.

This is a collection of the original posts from The Rollercoaster FB page from March 2020 through the end of that year.

Still sorting the next couple of "Hang-ups" posts in my head, sorry for the delay, my brain doesn't always work quite like I'd want, and sometimes I wonder why I try to run these pages when I have such problems expressing my thoughts. Then I re-read some of the comments I make in other groups/pages and realize in those cases I seem to have no problems getting thoughts to convert to words. Maybe it's only on my own pages where "writers block" takes hold because I want things to be "perfect" (which is of course an arbitrary concept that has little meaning, and certainly doesn't describe any aspect of a social media page...) Anyway, while waiting for my next theory post, here's a few comments I've made on various posts with absolutely no context. Enjoy!

Read all the way through, trust me!

Having been a part time nudist, and supporter of nudism rights, the hang-ups society has about nudity always baffle me. I get that for a lot of people, they automatically associate nudity with sexuality. I can assure you, they are completely separate! Some people think I'm joking when I talk about going to nude beaches, but I'm completely serious. It's certainly a way to step out of your comfort zone, particularly for those of us with body image issues. However soon you realize everyone is naked, and every body has it's own "flaws". Then you realize they're not flaws at all, they're simply our individual characteristics. Some are indomitable, others we can change in various ways. I highly recommend experiencing it at least once to just about everyone!

Still have the first of the Hang-ups posts in the development stage, and will post in the next few days. In the meantime, here's a part of a reply I made in a group that I thought might resonate here.

My Post: Who's the most important? — 2020-04-14 08:19

So, a discussion came up in one of the polyamory groups I'm in about what effects the isolation/distance is having on relationships, and libido. Some people noted a loss of interest in both, others noted a crazy libido and desire for contact with partners (both existing, and new.)

So taking the conversation back into a more serious direction for a moment, I'd like to discuss a common form of gatekeeping within the polyamorous community: The exclusion of people who are aromatic, asexual, demi-romantic, or demi-sexual.

Haven't really been active on here lately, sorry about that. With the current regiment of medication, meditation, and therapy working for depression and anxiety, I'm going to branch off into other topics related to mental health. I kinda started that with the self image posts. What I didn't mention was the personal reasons why self image therapy speaks to me.

On terminology — 2020-02-28 03:09

This is a collection of the original posts from The Rollercoaster FB page for the first two months of its existence (started New Year 2020).

So, a while ago, I had an idea about how maybe "threads of attraction" (i.e. platonic, romantic, sexual, etc.) are actually made up of separate strands of more basic emotional responses. I thought that maybe alterous attraction was caused by having strands from both the platonic and romantic threads wound together into a single thread. Well, after deciding that I was pretty firmly in the demi-romantic/grey-romantic spectrum, I've been doing a bit more research on the topic of attractions. All of it coalesced into a new revelation, one of those moments that makes me feel like Neo when he finally can "see" the code behind the Matrix. There are no threads! Only the strands are real! What we think of as platonic, romantic, or sexual attraction are just the most common collections of individual strands of emotional responses that humans experience. They are not the only configurations that may exist. Indeed for what may be a small minority, but still a statistically significant amount of humanity, we experience very different configurations of emotional attachment. The concepts of alterous attraction, and queerplatonic relationships fit into this theory beautifully.

So a bit of a follow-up on a few things I've written about, along with more self revelations, one of which has taken way too long to realize!

This is the first in a series of posts about non-traditional types of attraction, and how they fit in the context of relationship anarchy. First up, is one that I've experienced enough times that I'm starting to wonder if it's my default setting.

As a bit of fun on my FB page, I created a convenient flow-chart to determine if I'm flirting with you. After a bit of feedback, I made a few alternate versions, enough to suit everyone I'd hope.

Random morning thought. I've talked about all the various kinds of attraction, I've talked about alterous attraction, and I've talked about modular personality traits. What if all the types of attraction aren't as separate as we think? Maybe the threads of attraction are made up of separate strands of more basic underlying emotional responses, and some combinations of those strands can have similar but distinctive properties, which we give different names to. Given this concept, alterous attraction might not be two threads that have become entangled, but a single thread with a combination of strands resembling both the other more common threads. I'm thinking these odd thread configurations are my default instead of the stereotypical threads of attraction. Damn, I'm going to have to contemplate this more later. Anyway, that's my rambling for the morning.

So in my break time this week, I've been working on a few things for this page. Some of it might work, some of it might not. I'm kinda just experimenting. I tried making some diagrams and charts, but they were boring. I might look at making some videos where I talk about these subjects in my usual awkward manner (I am far more comfortable behind a camera than in front of one, something I should work on!) Anyway, here's a little taste of where my creative outlets are going, a short poem about my own thoughts on alterous attraction set on a neat stock photo I found, using an interesting colour palette I hope doesn't murder the eyes of any colour-blind folx reading the page.

In several past posts I've said attraction comes in two forms: passive, and active. Passive is "I think they are attractive in that aspect, but I don't really have any desire to connect with them in it." Active is "I am attracted to them in that aspect, and would connect with them in a heartbeat!"

What makes a person? What underlying traits define our identities? Why do so many identities overlap with each other? How do we form relationships with other people? What are different frameworks with which to handle those relationships?

2020-01-01 08:48

So many things I want to write about, but the FB Al-Gore-isms make it difficult to get all the posts seen if I split them up, so this is going to be a longer post instead. First off, a couple flash backs to previous posts.

A conversation came up in one of the groups I'm a member of, asking how people define the difference between a friendship, and a partnership. As a relationship anarchist, I think that can be really tricky, and the lines between the two can get really blurry. To keep things super simple, I would say a friendship is someone with whom I have a positive bonding connection with. Be that social, platonic, romantic, sexual, any combination thereof, or something else entirely. A partnership is a friendship with mutual commitment to grow together in the aspects of connection we share. This is why as individuals we can have friends-with-benefits (a phrase I don't particularly like, but am using here for ease of reference), while at the same time having platonic partners. It's not about the "level of intimacy" (another phrase I'm not super comfortable with), but about the mutual commitment. The concepts are not mutually exclusive. And relationships are not static, they change. A friend may become a partner, a partner may become a friend. You can find you have relationships that don't fit into any pre-conceived categories. That's all okay! In the end, I don't think there are any set-in-stone definitions that everyone can agree upon, so just enjoy all of your interpersonal relationships for what they are: unique!

So I'm taking a slight diversion away from the usual topics to talk about something I feel pretty strongly about. Bullying. In what seemed like serendipitous timing, literally a few minutes after finishing A.S. King's fantastic book "Everybody Sees the Ants" (a huge part of which is on the topic of bullying), I was browsing FB and came across a meme picture that was joking about bullying. The joke was pretty tame even if like certain other kinds of jokes, it's one of those things I don't personally find funny. The comment section on the other hand was a gong show. There were obviously some decent human beings who pointed out how horrible bullying is, and then there were the bullies and bully defenders who really do think that tormenting others is funny. I'm trying to run a somewhat objective page here, but from someone who experienced bullying first hand for a large portion of my school years, FUCK BULLIES AND FUCK ANYONE DEFENDING THAT BEHAVIOUR. Okay, I think I'm done. Just needed to get that off my chest. We'll be back to random thoughts on relationships and uplifting memes once I'm in a good headspace again. I'm not sharing the original joke, but here's a random selection of some of the comments...

I shouldn't have to explain this, but some of the posts I've seen lately make it clear that it apparently hasn't been said enough: If everyone involved in a relationship is consenting, and >=AOC, it's nobody else's business. End of story. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Back in the spring, I started a series of posts on jealousy, and briefly touched on the difference between jealousy and envy. I kind of want to expand on that, because while jealousy is talked about a LOT in the various relationship communities, envy is far less discussed. I think that's a problem. So first off, jealousy has it's root in fear. Fear that your connection with someone will be loosened or broken by their connection with someone else. It's explicitly about connections you already have. Envy on the other hand I think is more rooted in self doubt and feelings of inadequacy. In a relationship context, it's when you see people with connections that you don't have, and really wish you did. The people you are envious of might be your own partner(s), or maybe friends, acquaintances, or even strangers that just remind you of "what you are missing". That's the real danger of envy, it so fills you with feelings of self-criticism that it can blind you to all the good in your life. I'll expand on this subject further in a later post. Right after I spend several hours/days reading similar posts written by people far more eloquent than I and wishing I had that writing ability...

2019-11-08 07:43

So instead of talking about relationship structures (examples of those being strict monogamy, open relationships, swinging, or any of the many versions of polyamory) how about we take it a bit more meta and discuss relationship frameworks. What is a relationship framework you ask? Well, I think the best way to describe it would be to say it’s the way we internally view and describe all of our interpersonal relationships to ourselves (and how we try to explain said relationships to others, even if that’s a lot more difficult.)

Depression doesn't just ramp up the negative emotions, it ramps up every emotion. Riding the emotional rollercoaster that comes with every depressive episode can be confusing, terrifying, and oddly exciting (as strange as that sounds.) I know this doesn't seem to have too much to do with relationships which is the overall theme of this page, but reflecting on our personal headspace can definitely help us with our interpersonal relationships as well. When you're riding the emotional rollercoaster, you may be taking others along with you. Some may get in the car willingly to hold your hand during the scariest parts. Others might simply be standing too close as you swoop down during a low section, and get caught by your danging arm. Now they're holding on for dear life, hoping you can let them go. Maybe I'm taking this metaphor a bit far, but I'm still looking for a platform so I can get off this ride.

2019-02-02 09:05

So, before we can explore the toxic topic of "jealousy as a virtue", I guess we need to get a firm grasp of jealousy as a concept.

This is going to be a large topic, so I’m going to split it into a few parts to make it easier to write. In our interpersonal relationships, not everyone involved is always going to have the same attractions towards each other. They may be out of sync, or asynchronous; they may be completely different shapes, or asymmetrical. There are many variations on this theme, but probably the most famous is unrequited love. Songs, movies, and social movements have been born from this one seemingly simple topic. I don’t think it’s quite as simple as most depictions would make it seem though.

This was originally posted in multiple parts, but I prefer them to be together this time.