{"id":62066,"date":"2012-10-13T15:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-13T19:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=62066"},"modified":"2012-10-12T14:57:51","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T18:57:51","slug":"theres-no-place-like-home-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/theres-no-place-like-home-2\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s No Place Like Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I want to apologize for last week, first of all. I got caught up in child care — my own and a friend\u2019s — and had to focus only on that. But I should have seen it coming, and made some kind of accommodation. <\/p>\n

\"Poly
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking, with all the traveling and shuffling around I\u2019ve been doing myself and seeing others undergo, about home. The whole concept of home — do you have one, do you want one, do you feel like you\u2019ll never have one? What does home mean to you? For many people, I think ‘home’ is inextricable from relationships: an intimate relationship means making a home with someone. Even if that\u2019s not the reality of how we live, I think this is our ideal, our stereotype, our expectation. Moving in together makes it ‘real’.<\/p>\n

For others, we\u2019ve had enough of equating living together with true love. I know people of a certain age who find it the height of freedom and luxury — and often the path to romantic success — to have a home or even simply a room of one\u2019s own. Some people have been through marriages and divorces and breakups and home buying and second mortgages and additions for kids and have simply had it. Relationships go here, and living space goes there, thanks. Others are living with grown or nearly so children, and getting away to a lover\u2019s space for days or nights here and there is an escape to another life. <\/p>\n

In an article online in Loving More<\/a>, the polyamory magazine and website, Kathy Labriola runs through a lot of the issues, both psychological and practical, in a way that makes good reading for poly and mono people alike. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

She points out that many clients come to her unhappy because they haven\u2019t been able to make living together as a group work. People seem to have an ingrained idea, she writes, that a group living situation is the \u201cultimate poly ideal,\u201d and they feel like failures because that haven\u2019t been able to reach that aspiration. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have often wondered why the \u2018living together as one family under one roof\u2019 scenario seems so firmly rooted in our community as the one true path of polyamory,\u201d she writes. \u201cI am guessing that it may be because it is similar to the nuclear family many of us are accustomed to. It is just like being married except you are married to more than one person … Whatever its origin as a model, the vast majority of people who try this \u2018all living together\u2019 model find that it does not work for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She looks at common challenges and proposes several different ways to live both apart and together, including what she calls the \u201cshared custody model\u201d — that\u2019s custody of the home space, not of other humans. For many poly people, the reality is caroming from one home to another, much like I did before I was married. It was a way of life that suited me, because I never feel like I have a ‘real’ home. I\u2019ve never felt truly comfortable or wanted anywhere, so living out of a backpack is reassuring to me.<\/p>\n

My ideal is the hippie-commune-organic-farm-artisanal-goat-cheese compound, of course, where each family person could have as much together and alone time as he or she likes. We play the lottery every so often in the hope of making it a reality. <\/p>\n

My reality is that I\u2019m just barely beginning to feel like where I live with Isaac is my home. Having a child makes a difference — once Tobi became part of the picture, I had to lay my fears aside and make a secure place for her. Or rather, fake it until I could make it my own. My work helps earn the home and the things in it. Still, I\u2019ve never gotten over the feeling that I could be asked to leave at any time. I\u2019m too sloppy, or too noisy, or I\u2019ll break something, or I\u2019ll lose my ability to bring in money, and there I\u2019ll be — evicted. This is my home illusion. What\u2019s yours?<\/p>\n

Once at a burn, Chris and I overheard a pair of young men walking by and discussing their camp. \u201cIf you want to get the girls to visit your camp,\u201d one said, \u201cyou have to have infrastructure<\/em>. Like a fire pit. And hot cocoa.\u201d<\/p>\n

This became a private joke (Chris and Isaac are both very good at infrastructure — the former at building it, the latter at earning it, and both at preserving it. Might have something to do with being so heavily earth-signed.), but it\u2019s the way a lot of people feel. <\/p>\n

I find The Great Gatsby<\/em> an almost inexhaustible text (you\u2019re either a Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald person and I\u2019m the last), and that\u2019s what this reminds me of. There are people who build a home, literally or metaphorically, and have the parties — make the atmosphere — and through this ritual expect to conjure their soul mate. Build it and they will come, to use another reference. Does this work? Why else do we create these spaces full of our own desires and dreams, arranging everything carefully, if not to people them with friends and lovers?<\/p>\n

Isaac and I recently went to a Nonviolent Communication class, and one exercise consisted simply in asking \u201cwhat do you want?\u201d and \u201cif you got that, what would you have?\u201d over and over. When my partner asked what I wanted, that was easy — I was having severe house envy of the beautiful Victorian home, decorated with all sorts of Asian and African art, where the class was being held. \u201cI want this house,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you got that, what would you have?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d have a beautiful place for all my friends to live and stay,\u201d I said. It went on and on, and I thought I\u2019d reached the end of it when I hit the usual place, the place where I face being an outsider, being unwanted, having no allies around me. A house full of friends and lovers would seem to negate that. But it went on from there. \u201cHaving more people to pay for things would mean I could stay home, and cook, and garden, and write…\u201d I said. And: \u201cIf I wrote more, I could work on getting things published.\u201d And: \u201cI would have a legacy — some meaning to my life.\u201d <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true, but it was a useful exercise to get at what having a home really means. If you have a home, what do you really have? And if you want a home, what do you really want? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila I want to apologize for last week, first of all. I got caught up in child care — my own and a friend\u2019s — and had to focus only on that. But I should have seen it coming, and made some kind of accommodation. I\u2019ve been thinking, with all the traveling and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}