Anglican Mainstream ? Blog Archive ? How queer and poly ...

June 26th, 2011 Posted in From Lisa's Lookout, Gay Marriage | Comments Off

The impact of?gay marriage (see the coverage on NY) on the rest of us?is just beginning to be manifest ? see below from the New York Press, especially on 'non-monogamy' (formerly known as 'the affair' or 'being unfaithful'). According to its practitioners, gay marriage operates according to?different ground rules?from?traditional marriage,?which make it?more progressive and trendy,?even?more therapeutic (!), than traditional marriage.?This sexual opening up of marriage, launched by gay marrieds, may?(or may not) work for them, but for the rest of us this is extremely worrying.? Marriage has?meant sexual exclusivity (in theory, and often in practice)?and been the means by which women and men?attached to each other and to the?children their sexual union had created, bonding them together to rear their offspring, who need both a mother and a father.?Opening this up to other?partners?will destroy (or at least seriously damage)?this mechanism;?who most loses are the ones with greatest vulnerabilities, the children.?Below is from?the?important?poly site:? http://polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/.??

From gender-role squabbles to non-monogamy: What straight couples can learn from same-sex couples to be happier in their own marriages.

?Varied approaches to sexuality is probably the most taboo of the constructs that same-sex couples may import into marriage, and one that Coontz approaches very delicately. "I want to be very careful about how this is phrased, but there is a prevalence among some same-sex relationships, particularly gay male relationships, to establish long-term commitments while allowing for nonmonogamy," she says. "While this is not for every opposite-sex couple, just as it is not right for every same-sex couple, it is one of the ways that some people may handle the pressures of a world where people want partnerships but live long lives and have frequent opportunities."

It was just such frequent opportunities that led married New Yorkers Kurt Walters and George Karabotsos, both 48, to open up their relationship sexually. They were monogamous for the first three years of their relationship, but finally began to question whether or not it was the right choice for them?.

Thirty-nine-year-old New Yorker Mikey Rox [says] "I prefer removing the temptation by allowing my partner and me to explore, provided we are both on the same page about it and have established rules." For Mikey, it lessens the chances that his marriage will dissolve.

But is this a model that same-sex couples should be frightened of? "Quite the contrary," says Manhattan-based psychotherapist Bob Bergeron, author of The Right Side of Forty: The Guide to Happiness for Gay Men at Midlife and Beyond. "Same-sex couples might not necessarily want non-monogamous relationships, but they can learn a great deal from non-monogamous, same-sex couples about how to talk to their partners about sexual desires inside and outside of the relationship." As Bergeron explains, "talking about your desires doesn't mean you act on them, but not talking about them can create more trouble."

"Don't knock it until you've tried it," Carrellas says of non-monogamous marriages?. "An open marriage might not be for you, but perhaps there is some other area in your marriage where you could use, to your benefit, the same tools that some other couple is using to negotiate their sexuality.? Read more?here

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Source: http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2011/06/26/how-queer-and-poly-partnerships-benefit-straight-marriage/

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