Continuing
from last week’s blog:
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| Amazon.com Stranger in a Strange Land Buy Link |
In the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A.
Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw tells Ben Caxton, “Love is the condition in
which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” This is the kind of love Eric, the Phantom
has for Christine Daaé in The Phantom of
the Opera, and Eponine has for Marius in Les Miserables.
Do you think
if push came to shove you would be willing to sacrifice your love and freely
give him/her to another because him/her happiness is so important to you that
you could not live knowing they are miserable without that person?
I think I can
say yes to that question. Fan of
Heinlein that I am, I read Stranger in a
Strange Land and Time Enough for Love
long ago. I grasped Heinlein’s ideas
about being able to love more than one person at a time. I didn’t stop loving Elizabeth when Christine
came along. Why should I stop loving my Dear
Hubby or boyfriend if another man came along?
Or if another woman came along (provided she was a good woman who I knew
would not take advantage of him or hurt him).
I didn’t know
there was a name for such relationships until much later. It’s called polyamory. The difference between a poly relationship
and cheating is honesty and communication.
If you have a relationship with someone behind my back, you’re
cheating. If you are honest and communicate
with both the other lady and me and we have the right to see other men and we
are honest and communicate openly with you and them, we are polyamorous. I always thought military families should be
poly so if one husband was deployed there would be someone around to fix the
plumbing or the car or whatever when it broke.
Not to mention co-wives keep you company and to babysit when you need a
break. And there are the financial advantages
of mingled incomes, having been a Navy wife who never had enough money and
always had stuff break down when DH was out to sea. But, I digress.
I ran into a
group of poly people at a karaoke bar, and started dating a man. We happened to be exclusive for about a
year. Didn’t exactly mean to be, but
were. I care a lot about this man and he
is legally blind and unable to drive.
When we decided we wanted to be closer, we lived in the same apartment
building. (Neither of us wanted to live
together, but that enabled us to see each other daily and still have our own
space.) I drove; he carried. And, I drove him out to meet other women
because I knew I could not fill all of his needs, and if I was going to have
co-sweeties I wanted to be sure they were people with whom I was compatible as
well. Of course, we’re human. We can’t all be like Jubal Harshaw and Ben
Caxton or like Eric and Eponine, or Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. Boy,
that’ll make you cry, too! Except for
poor Sidney who had to be where he was in order for Lucie Manette to have her
HEA, if Raoul and Eric had been able to share Christine and Cosette and Eponine
had been able to share Marius, those movies would have had much happier
endings. But then, I guess they were
meant to be gut-wrenching tear-jerkers.
Clearly Victor Hugo was not writing a romance, nor was Gaston Leroux. I wonder what they’d think of the musical
versions that have us women swooning over the likes of Alfie Bowe, Hugh Jackman
and Gerard Butler and grabbing for the tissues?
I do not
consider programs like Big Love to portray polyamory. The polygamy of religious sects in which
woman are treated as chattel and do not have the same right to add men to the
family that their husbands do to add women is not my idea of true love. And if I get onto that soapbox, I’ll have a
third blog and it will be a rant. I do
believe Elizabeth is making a roast and may possibly even have finished
staining the deck around the pool by the time I get there for supper. Who knows?
We may even watch a movie musical this evening. Seems that’s where I started this tome. All though, I’ve cut it in half so by the
time you read this, it will be next week.
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