By Maria Padhila
This is a short roundup column of some fun stuff happening in the media, because it’s past 2:00 am on a deadline, I’ve been writing for work without more than a few hours sleep for weeks, I need to drive out of here in four hours to spend three days camping in 100-degree heat, Chris is on the couch, and Issac is downstairs in our bed and that’s where I really want to be!
Sorry to be a lame columnist lately — too many paid work crises. Love? Sex? All I want is sleep. Truly. Please.
I’m looking forward to things calming down now that some major government moves have happened, and I want to catch up with the blogs and the comments here. It’s nice to know there’s a site where I’ll rarely be bored.
Part I: I’d been hearing rumblings about a major cable show on polyamory for a while, but couldn’t track anything down. This past week the releases came out: Showtime will be airing Polyamory: Married and Dating beginning July 12 at 11 pm. Seven documentary episodes, and apparently lots of sex scenes. The people in it are really great looking — just had to throw that in. It looks as pretty as The L Word or Queer As Folk!
And here’s a great surprise — one of the ‘stars’ is Kamala Devi, whose Tantra Theater I wrote about here a month or two ago. She wasn’t able to do an interview back then, and I’m worried I’ve missed my window, because I have a feeling she’s going to be pretty booked for a while.
What was really shocking was that, after seeing so many people talk of awkward, dissatisfying or even deceptive experiences in mainstream media with non-monogamy, Devi had this to say in her blog:
“Working with the director, Natalia Garcia, was a rich learning experience for me. She is a spiritually minded woman of vision, who is committed to women’s liberation and conflict resolution. The polyamorous community is blessed to have an ally in Hollywood who is not afraid of sex, nor obsessed by it either.”
Somebody… balanced? Unbelievable.
There’s information and trailers on the Showtime site, but the best place to get the full lowdown is from Alan P., the poly media authority. He’s got links and excerpts. Some in the comments say they feel it looks “exploitive.” Hmmm, about as much as The L Word? Even though that was fictional and this is documentary, it’s still television — they have an agenda, and that agenda is to get viewers. If something good happens along the way, that’s gravy.
Here’s a bit from the news release:
“Exploratory Docu-Series Dives Deep Into the Alternative World of Polyamorous Relationships: The new SHOWTIME docu-series, POLYAMORY: MARRIED AND DATING, exploring alternative relationship structures, premieres on Thursday, July 12th at 11 PM ET/PT. Polyamory or ‘poly’ as it is often referred to, is practiced by couples who believe that they can also have deep, committed, long-term and loving relationships with people other than their spouses. Unlike polygamy, polyamory is not based on any religious tenets nor does it involve multiple spouses.”
Sounds like they’ve got the general idea pretty well down. So I’ll set the DVR and see what happens.
Part II: I was really excited to see that a pair of filmmakers is trying to get a documentary about Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee off the ground. The groundbreaking couple, married for 57 years, broke every myth in the book wide open:
• Don’t ever work with your spouse
• Artists can’t live together
• Don’t mix love and politics
• Black marriages don’t last
• Marriages between two big egos never last
• Marriages between two famous people never last
• Open marriages never work
• Once you have an open marriage, you can never go back to a traditional one
Etc., etc. If you don’t know much about this couple, here’s a start — their views on open marriage.
Part III: The movie Savages, which features a MFM triad, opens next weekend. I’ve been seeing some interviews with the actors and actress in it, and all three say they don’t believe such a relationship could ever work in real life. Aaron Johnson even said he thought the female character was “selfish.” Kick-Ass, indeed! Ah, youth.
thank you to commenters for supplying the depth i lacked this time 😉 anyway, love the sabbatical idea. kind of like rumspringer, a word that always makes me laugh–your rump springs free for a while 😉 time for a sabbatical or a nap.
Yes on the sabatical idea, but why restrict it. I’m in the process of strategizing how to put my current situation on the back burner in every sort of way in order to befriend this so-called self who seems to have been so overlooked thus far. I’m looking for a year off in just about every way, if I can just figure out the how of it.
During the best parts of my life, I move from one deep friendship to another. I have seen and participated in the process of the “bwessed awwangement” and after a certain point it becomes clear that *everyone* experiences it as confinement. One enforced socially through the expectations of family/friends that you have a fixed configuration; enforced internally from the fear of solitude or dying alone or being seen as ‘unloveable.’
I don’t expect to have any impact on the social body with these views – at least in this sneezy little span of 4 score years, but having seen the dynamics between a few hundred couples in their 70s and 80s now, I am more convinced than ever that modifications need to be brought in and sanctioned for this formal arrangement.
Extramarital sex or no sex, every woman needs to take a sabbatical – every seven to ten years, a year OUT of the ‘relationship.’ For example. It should be built in to the structure of the wedding/anniversaries. Every 10 years a sabbatical fund should pop up like a 401K.
I think what a lot of people experience as ‘toxic’ is just too-much-of-you’ness. In the wilds of intimacy, we sometimes forget that every demon is attached to a coterie of angelics, and it takes *s*P*a*c*E* to discern this clearly.
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“I resolved that I’d rather be alone than be in a toxic relationship”. Thanks for your comment, yeti. My one, long term relatonship so far was indeed toxic – and couldn’t have been anything else, with all the stuff I was carrying. I too, have preferred solitude and self-examination for many years now. I realised long ago that the archetype of marriage wasn’t for me, either. But now that I’m finally learning to relate to myself, I feel that there is also a possibility of relating to and loving another. Or, in your case, others. Good luck with it, yeti. Sounds like you’re doing fantastic healing work on yourself.
The Big C – a TV series dealing with a totally different topic, but also very taboo, finally reached Italy and lasted for about two measly months before they took it off. The L Word, on the other hand, has been pretty succesful here. But I’m sure audience ratings are fairly high because people are titillated, not because they’re enlightened. Land of the Pope – huh!
Hope you manage to get some good sleep and rest, Maria.
I’m coming out as poly curious. I’ve been a wandering monk with plenty of close friendships, but no sexual relationships since 2001, with a brief blip in the summer of 2004. Early in this phase I resolved that I’d rather be alone than be in a toxic relationship. In retrospect after many years of introspection, various forms of physical and mental therapy, meditation, and internal awareness practices I realize that I held too many unexamined fears back in the 90’s when I was sexually active to survive even a mono-relationship let alone handle a poly situation.
With an 8th house moon in Gemini, retrograde Venus in Aquarius, 7th house Taurus Mars, and Lilith the mean apogee plus Eros, Juno and Mercury conjunct the sun in Capricorn I just don’t think I have any business trying to ape the act of the modern nuclear family. I’ve wandered so long now alone and learned how to transform loneliness into cherished solitude I’ve realized a concept Planetwaves has talked about a lot: the relationship I have with myself is my primary relationship. From the root of solitude I can then perceive that there’s more facets to my love than can fit into the tight confines of traditional marriage.