I've been trying to explain to myself and others for awhile now why I think poly hook-ups are different from mono hook-ups. (Since I've really only hooked up with people since I got married, I'm no authority on the subject). Now I know that many of you are going to object straight-off and tell me that a “poly hook-up” is an oxymoron, because polyamory is about relationships, and hook-ups are really about sex. There's a pretty blatant schism in PolyWorld about this issue of sex and relationships, as my previous post on feral and tame polys and the subsequent lively conversation would suggest. I don't want to trivialize that debate, because I think it speaks volumes about the current state of evolution of poly identity. However, despite the objections of many poly people, there is clearly a sizable contingent of self-identified poly “sluts.” (Check out the profiles of the 13,000 people who are members of the “Sluts, Cunts, and Whores” group on Fetlife if you doubt me. Many of them identify as poly). And those poly sluts hook up regularly.
“Hooking up” is an incredibly vague term. My favorite definition of “hook-up” on urbandictionary is: “to do anything from make-out to have sex with someone you are not in a relationship with.” Of course, the crux of that definition is really the term “in a relationship with”. As a group, poly folks are notoriously willing to declare themselves to be “in a relationship” with someone (after all, when being “in a relationship” doesn't necessarily bring any burdens of exclusivity, the title becomes a lot more flexible). Now I'm not trying to argue that hooking up is, in fact, a polyamorous thing to do. I am even willing to concede that it may be antithetical to philosophical polyamory. That said, when two poly-identified people hook up, I think one can reasonably describe the encounter as a “poly hook-up.” In my experience, poly people mostly seem to hook up with other poly people, which only adds a complicating layer of complexity.
I know a lot of poly folks who claim that poly people are usually much better than non-poly people at distinguishing between sex and love. That may be true for some, but for me and most of my closest (feral) poly friends, it actually seems like we're endeavoring to blur the lines between love and sex as much as possible. Hence, I have several friends who agree (as do I) with the statement: “I can't help falling in love—even if it's just a very little bit—with everyone I sleep with.” Not only do we defend this admittedly illogical premise, we also tend to embrace it as a quintessentially poly ideal. Inject a hook-up with a certain degree of emotional investment, and you've already significantly altered the dynamic of it. Moreover, there's a world of difference between hook-ups with perfect strangers you pick up in a bar and hook-ups with friends-of-friends you pick up from a cuddle pile. My experiences suggest that poly hoook-ups are far more likely to come from the latter than the former.
The thing that really makes poly hook-ups different from mono hook-ups is that poly people often date their hook-ups. There is actual research on the hook-up culture documenting that it is non-normative to date one's hook-up. People might exchange numbers, but the expectation is that those numbers will be promptly lossed, trashed, or forgotten. Not so in PolyWorld, where people seem to have little or no hesitation about calling, texting, e-mailing, or Facebook-friending people they hooked up with, and then actually really dating them. I believe they're also much more likely to sleep with their hook-ups as well, which promotes a greater sense of intimacy between the partners (because apparently many people feel that actually sleeping with someone they just had drunken sex with would be too intimate...).
I think there are two main reasons for the differences between poly hook-ups and mono hook-ups. First, it's a lot less threatening to hook-up with acquaintances than total strangers. Knowing that a person is in your own social network—however distantly—almost requires you to treat them with more respect than if they are completely unknown to you, and PolyWorld is tiny. But the second, more salient factor is that poly culture has a lot less shame about sex than mainstream mono culture. If you're less embarrassed about sex, admitting that you had sex with someone you barely know is also a lot less embarrassing, as is admitting your desire for them. That makes it a lot easier to look them in face after fucking them, both figuratively and literally. It also means that poly people are a lot less likely to judge the people they hooked up with. There's a brutal hypocrisy in mainstream culture that makes people say, “well, s/he slept with me even though s/he barely knew me, therefore s/he must be a slut/sleaze/undateable.” (This attitude conveniently ignores the fact that the person doing the judging has just engaged in the exact same behavior). In poly culture, being a slut does not, inherently, make one undateable, which makes it much easier for a hook-up to result in a relationship. Which always raises the question: if you hook-up with someone and then start a relationship with them, was it really a hook-up in the first place?
Categories: Submissions Tags: communication, personal story, polyamory, Submissions, relationship, self awareness, affection, labels, sex, feral polys, hooking up, polyamoury, sexuality, tame polys, writing