Twitterpated

I don't want to be redundant; Adam Borders did an admirable job covering the practical side of New Relationship Energy here recently.  But at the moment, I'm having trouble thinking about anything else (it's one of the symptoms of NRE, really), so I'll try to make an original contribution.

Why can't I think of anything else?  'Cause I'm twitterpated with this boy...

Now I'm sure a few of you have never heard the term “twitterpated” before.  For the uninitiated, as best I know, it came from the movie Bambi.

I know poly people who have radically different reactions to the term “twitterpated.”  That doesn't surprise me since there are a number of definitions for the term on urbandictionary.com, and none of them really agree with each other.  My friends and I use the term with a certain degree of affectionate self-mockery to refer to the types of giggly, irrational, giddy highs that accompany the early stages of relationships.  At this stage, we've also been known to make NRE into an exclamation (pronounced “nu-reeeee”!).  It's the feeling or look that makes you look like you've got flower petals in your eyes.  Symptoms include having a very big stupid smile on your face for no apparent reason, being hopelessly distracted, having a racing pulse, not being able to sleep well, and wanting to spend far too much of your (un)available time adoring the Object of Your Affection (OYA).  My best friend (who is also hopelessly twitterpated currently) and I started compiling a list of the stupid things a person does pretty much only when twitterpated:

• Engaging in multiple forms of simultaneous communication with the OYA.  For example, texting and e-mailing at the same time, talking on the phone and e-mailing at the same time, etc.
• Becoming irrationally happy when the OYA does something completely mundane (e.g. “liking” your facebook status update or bringing you a napkin when you're at dinner together).
• Staring at the OYA while s/he sleeps.  For hours.  As if the very fact that the OYA breathes is exciting and interesting.  You know you're in deep when you do this and the OYA wakes up and admits s/he wasn't sleeping either.
• Sleeping in spectacularly uncomfortable positions in order to continue snuggling the OYA.

(Please feel free to add more of your own to the comments section here)

For me and my friends, “twitterpated” is just a cute synonym for “infatuation”—an acknowledgment that real love and infatuation are not the same thing.  We think twitterpation can continue after you do really fall in love with someone, but clearly none of the things I just mentioned on the list above is sustainable for long, since most people need to sleep and hold down their jobs.  To other people, though, “twitterpated” is an annoying, overused word that elides the continuum that is falling in love.  In particular, saying that someone else is twitterpated can be a way to be condescending about the nature of their affection for their partner.  That type of condescension can be especially problematic in poly life if, say, your husband thinks he's in love with his girlfriend, but you think they're “just twitterpated.”  In my personal experience, there's essentially no correlation between twitterpation and falling into “real” love.  I've experienced all the possible configurations: I've been twitterpated and then formed a loving relationship, twitterpated and utterly failed to form a loving relationship, and not twitterpated and formed a loving relationship.

Now Adam's description of NRE was largely a cautionary tale, and I agree with him completely—poly people in the throes of twitterpation do have to be careful that that they don't end up ignoring their other partners in their enthusiasm for their new partner.  But there is a potential positive flip side to NRE as well: it is theoretically possible that the glow from your new relationship can put the shine on your old relationship as well.  My friends and I coined the term “polytastic” to refer to the highs or lows of one relationship bleeding over into another relationship.  If you've been partnered with the same person for a decade, it can be hard to remember what it felt like when you first fell in love with him as you're pestering him to do the dishes.  But if you're conscientious about it, falling in love with a new partner can remind you of what it felt like to fall in love with your old partner as well, and leave you feeling like you're falling in love with both of them—in the case of your old partner, like you're falling in love all over again.  For example, while feeling the need to constantly snuggle your new sweetie and tell her how much you love her, you can also find yourself wanting to snuggle your old sweetie more and tell her about how much you love her.  One of my favorite of these polytastic NRE moments occurred after I had started falling for the first guy I dated when I became poly.  Remembering that one of the classic cruel illusions of twitterpation is feeling like “you've never felt this way before,” I spent an afternoon re-reading all the old love e-mails my now-husband had sent me ten years before when we first started dating.  I was totally twitterpated with New Guy, but I fell in love with my husband all over again.

What I'm saying is that if you're secure enough in an established relationship, having a partner who's twitterpated can actually be a lot of fun.  Hopefully, your partner's happier (that's good for you), snugglier (oh, go join in on their cuddles with their new partner—it's one of the pleasures of being poly), more demonstrative (if he gives his girlfriend flowers, he'd damned well better get you some while he's at it), and hornier (a rising tide raises all boats, as it were).  I speak from experience here: twitterpation can be contagious.