ftp.pasteur.org/FAQ//ftp-pasteur-org-FAQ.zip/FAQ/polyamory/meeting-stories

Internet Message Format | 1997-09-10 | 47KB

Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!thetimes.pixel.kodak.com!news.kodak.com!news-pen-16.sprintlink.net!newsfeed.nysernet.net!news.nysernet.net!206.229.87.50!news-pull.sprintlink.net!news-in-east.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!newsfeed1-hme1!newsfeed.internetmci.com!131.187.1.131!malgudi.oar.net!tiger.tigerden.com!infopage
From: [e-mail] (Yusuf Pisan)
Newsgroups: alt.polyamory,alt.personals.poly,alt.answers,news.answers
Subject: alt.polyamory: How (Some) Poly People Meet Each Other
Supersedes: <polyamory/[e-mail]>
Followup-To: poster
Date: Tue,  9 Sep 97  9:49:22 GMT
Organization: None Worth Mentioning
Lines: 868
Approved: [e-mail]
Expires: 14 Oct 1997 12:00 GMT
Message-ID: <polyamory/[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Yusuf Pisan)
NNTP-Posting-Host: tiger.tigerden.com
Summary: Collected stories of how poly people (people with multiple loves) meet
Keywords: faq, polyamory, multiple, love, relationship
X-Note: <[e-mail]> does automatic posting for the maintainer.
Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu alt.polyamory:66917 alt.personals.poly:28270 alt.answers:28830 news.answers:111942

Posted-By: auto-faq 3.3 beta (Perl 5.003)
Archive-name: polyamory/meeting-stories
Posting-Frequency: Posted on the 9th and 24th of each month.
Please-Note: Comments on content should go to <[e-mail]>.
    Comments on the header should go to <[e-mail]>,
    who is providing automatic posting services for the maintainer.

         How (Some) Poly People Meet Each Other


Polyamory means "loving more than one".  This love may be sexual,
emotional, spiritual, or any combination thereof, according to the
desires and agreements of the individuals involved.  "Polyamorous" is
also used as a descriptive term by people who are open to more than
one relationship even if they are not currently involved in more than
one.

This is a list of collected stories about how (some) poly people
happened to meet each other.


* To add your meeting story send email to <[e-mail]>

* To learn more about polyamory read the other FAQs and/or visit
http://www.polyamory.org/

* I compiled this FAQ after Jennie started the "how did you meet"
thread on alt.polyamory with her brief but obviously powerful short
post.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met one of my partners in college, and the other through a community
service organization.  How did you all meet your partners?

Jennie D-O'Cain <[e-mail]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [e-mail]

At a women's pagan ritual. On soc.singles. On the triples mailing
list. On a local BDSM mailing list. On alt.polyamory. At a polyamory
discussion group. At a fat women's support group.

--
Stef  **  rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty **
      **  [e-mail]     **     http://www.bayarea.net/~stef **

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met E in the hottub at the local women's bath house. I started
developing a friendship with her and her girlfriend S (whom I had met a
few months earlier during a breakfast for a mutual friend visiting
from out of town). E hinted that she was attracted to me in a post on a
mailing list that we both subscribe to, and we began flirting
via email. E & S and I discussed doing some s/m and sex play together. I
realized I was attracted to E, but not to S. I called E and asked her out
on a date. (Well, asked her over to my king-sized bed for a date, we didn't
actually leave the bedroom for about 9 hours).

I met R at an annual gathering for s/m type folks.
She had written an article in a book I'd read, and I had sent her email to
tell her about a zine I was publishing on a related topic. At the fair I
was handing out flyers for said zine, and I gave one to her, at which point
she introduced herself, and she and her girlfriend and I started becoming
friends. About a year and a half later, I left the collective that was
producing the zine, and R joined it. Around that time we started confessing
our attraction for one another, and became lovers.

-- max
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [e-mail] (Angi Long)

At my first BDSM event, a rope flogger making workshop (sort of "kinky
summer camp craft night") which he was presenting.  He told me my
knots were backwards, and otherwise hardly noticed me.  Ahead of time,
I'd been warned, "you'll flip over him.  Everyone does."  A few months
later, we exchanged hugs and a quick nibble after another event.
Then, at a party, we wound up alone in the same room, talking.  (I
stark raving naked, as was my habit at parties.)  I went to move
closer, to talk more easily, and moved all the way into his arms.  The
rest, as they say...

He's worn the key to my collar, and I his symbol branded into my
thigh, for two years now.  Happy anniversary, my love!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [e-mail] (bearpaw)

I met my current primary at a Chiltern Mountain Club event.  (Chiltern
is "one of the world's largest Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual outdoor
sports organizations", and is based in the New England area of the
US.)  I went to the event with one of my, uh, hmm, "occasional
sweeties"?  (Well, he's always a sweetie :-> but we're only
occasionally sexual.)

I've met other people through friends, and through the local "bi
community".  (ObMythResponse: not all bi people are poly.)

Bearpaw

+----------    Bearpaw MacDonald  [e-mail]     ----------+
|                   http://world.std.com/~bearpaw/                    |
|  "You can believe anything you want.  The universe is not obliged   |
\             to keep a straight face." -- Solomon Short              /
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Steve

Actually, I have met two partners right here on alt.polyamory.  Which
certainly makes me feel very fortunate that this newsgroup exists and
has the qualities that it does.  If my experiences are typical, those
who participate here are not only wonderfully romantically inclined,
but possess a strong preference for being honest and open in matters
of love.  There are not many places where people with such qualities
can be found other than by pure chance.

But to answer the question more completely, I think I'll have to use a
narrow definition of "partner" to include only those whom I will be
spending time with now or in the very near future; of these, one I met
while in college way back when; one I met on IRC; and one is among the
two mentioned above whom I met here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met my hubby Bruce through a personal ad, I met Janine, my lover, at
a support group.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1984, L and I were hanging around in occasionally overlapping parts
of the LA pagan community.  I was married, he was usually with
someone, and the concept of poly was pretty unknown to me.  I did
think he was kinda cute, and we flirted a little when we happened to
run into each other over the next few years (which was not often)...

In 1988, I had moved to the Bay Area. My roommate at the time went to
Baycon memorial day weekend, while I was off visiting my husband in
LA.  When I got back, she mentioned that she had met this nice Pagan
guy from LA.  ... It was L.  They dated for a while, so I saw him
occasionally when he was there to see her.

1992 in the warm pool at Harbin during Ancient Ways, I looked over and
saw L.  We connected a little there, and a little later he came up
behind me and gave me a hug that utterly melted me...

It's like he was a strand weaving in and out of my life until the time
was right.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I first met Elaine when I was running an Sf bookshop and she was one
of my customers, but we were both monogamous and married at the
time. We didn't meet again until many years (and several
relationships) later, at a folk music and poetry-reading group, and I
asked her out. She found out, through mutual friends, that I was
single, and then came back to the bookshop and trapped me behind the
counter until she ascertained that I meant it.

Elaine met Laurton at a photo-shoot for Gay Pride Week, stopped just
short of having sex on the table, and made a date to meet again later.

Most of our casual lovers have been co-eds of Elaine's, or women we've
met at sf conventions (I seem to be reading that one a lot on this
thread...)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My relationships are very strange, in that they grew from some
remarkable coincidences.

It all started some 20 years ago.

I was stationed with the active duty Marine Corps, newly married and
was now heading for my first assignment - Okinawa, Japan.  My new, and
physically abusive husband was also stationed on Okinawa.  I was
scared, pregnant, rather well beat up, headed to a totally new job and
country, and facing a 15 hour flight with a single lay-over in Alaska.
I did what I always do, grabbed a large book (The Star-Child Trilogy)
and a cup of coffee and sat to wait the few hours for my flight to
take off, then read myself to sleep on the plane.

Except that it didn't really go that way.  Another Marine came and
plopped himself down beside me and either ignored the book, or tried
to get me to put it down and talk to him.  We ended up swapping seats
and sitting together for the flight.  I fell asleep on him -
literally.  For his part, he just snuggled in and held on.

We became friends for most of the year that I was there.  I was
shipped out of the Corps.  He went to his next duty station, I got
divorced, and we never saw each other again.

Skip to three years ago.  I'm talking with my current husband about
cutting grass and getting divorced, and to change the topic away from
the fighting (the kids were in the next room), my husband asks me
about someone in the Marine Corps.  Wouldn't you know it was the
person I fell asleep on 15 years before?

We exchanged a few letters, then I drove down to see him again.
Everything we had as friends had magnified.  His wife and I got along
too well (almost like sisters), and next thing you know, we all buy a
house together and move in.

I know the story, but I'm still not sure how it all happened.  It just
did.

For someone who wants to meet like-minded people, I have only a few
words of advice.  Be yourself.  Be honest with everyone you meet.  You
never know who you will end up seeing again.  Or what will happen when
you do.

Peace, Sybel
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met both of my partners at the Loving More conference (then known as
Pepcon) in September 1992 at Harbin Hot Springs.  Howard and I met in
a nonverbal interpersonal exercise that opened up the conference, then
met again in the warm pool, with my husband at the time.  I was
interested in Howard from the beginning -- physically we connected
well at the exercise, then in talking he seemed interested in similar
things to me, then the following night he gave me a watsu (water
massage) and I totally fell in love.

At one point in the first evening, Gelly came floating up to us, as we
talked.  She was at one with the water and herself. That was my first
glimpse of her, and it stayed with me, though it took longer for the
promise of that time to come true.

By the end of the weekend, I was deeply in love with Howard, and the
long process of poly family formation and individual transformation
and growth had begun.  Gelly and I took almost 3 years to fully
connect with each other (the final breakthrough was at Harbin, in the
warm pool again), and my former partner and myself took about that
long to fully disconnect.  Almost 4 years later, Howard, Gelly and I
are a triad, living together with our 3 children.

Carol
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My husband met my "to be" wife at a concert where she was performing 3
years ago, and hit it off right away.  They had a serious case of the
hots for each other.  At the time we were monogamous, but we had been
talking about needing *more*.  We had been married about 8 years then,
and my husband respected our monogamy, so he didn't persue it any
further.

They ran into each other from time to time at various pagan events,
but never found the time or place to "get together", (we had
definitively decided to *open* our marriage by this time).

At one fateful gig R(hubby of record) and B(my wife, now) set up a
time for her and her husband to come visit.  I, at this point, had
still never met B or her husband, although I had seen B in concert,
and thought she was beautiful.

I had not been with anyone else sexually, at this point and needless
to say, I was NERVOUS. But, within 2 hours of meeting them we were all
nekkid in front of the fire.  The sex was great but I was still
uncomfortable with the idea (my husband would say I was insane with
guilt).  But even with having some problems dealing with the whole
poly-sex thing, I fell in love with B(wife) and B(my husband not of
record but of heart), and with the passage of time and very
understanding partners I got thru it and now I am hanfasted to 3
wonderful people.

N
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met B at a bi convention in um... 1992 maybe.  We first had sex that
weekend, and the first sex party I ever attended, and have been dating
ever since.

I met S at a soc.bi gathering at Stonewall 25 in NYC (1994).  Didn't
like him, he was grumpy to me.  I met him again, a month later, at
another soc.bi party in NYC.  He was standing behind a friend of mine
giving her hugs & making her purr, and I was hugging her from the
front.  My eyes met his. We smiled.  It was electric.  We then flirted
on soc.bi a little, started exchanging more and more and more and more
e-mail, saw each other again at a party in October, made out in the
back yard a bit, got together a month later just the two of us, and
have been dating ever since.  We started out thinking we would be
friends who had sex... but fell in love.  *sappy romantic smile*

I met P at the same soc.bi party that my eyes met S's.  She and I were
sitting next to each other, but hadn't been formally introduced.
Someone called me by my name, she turned to me and squealed "You're
Cappy?!?! I have to give you a hug!"  I said "Why?"  And she said
"Because... because you're CAPPY!"  And she gave me a most enthusastic
hug.  (She knew me from my posts on soc.bi.)

Oh, B showed up at that party too.  *grin*

I met D at our area's monthly BDSM dinners.  Again, it was a case of
our eyes meeting, long lingering looks, a long hug goodbye one night
after dinner, me murmuring something half-joking about my jealous
boyfriend, him backing off, me getting out of that relationship with
the jealous boyfriend, me seeing him again, and me somehow clearly
signalling my availability.  That was over a year ago as well.  We
just recently (as in, last week) told each other that we loved each
other.  We had been "casually dating" before that seeing each other
every other week or so, but I don't think we're anticipating much of a
change in our relationship, except hopefully more acknowledgement of
our feelings for each other.

There are other people in my life, friends I have sex with sometimes,
friends who live across the country, friends whom I've been flirting
with... but those are the three major sweeties in my life right now.
:)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met the man who is now my husband (M) when I first got to college at
an informal Shabbat held by a mutual friend.  I started hitting on him
immediately; he essentially giggled, blushed and ignored it.  As we
got to be friends, we constantly talked about how we should get
married regardless of whether or not we ever had a romantic
relationship because we had such similar views on just about
everything important: home, family, poly, etc.  I started dating
another man, M started dating another woman, his girlfriend didn't
want to be poly, my boyfriend didn't want to either, I fell for her,
they broke up, we broke up.  I got together with M as my first
relationship was disintegrating for a "physical" relationship and we
"accidentally" fell in love and got married.

Then his ex and I dated while she was seeing two men as well, then she
and I broke up (all while M and she and I were roommates), which was
really for the best (not because of roommateness.)  In the interests
of circularity, I *really* think M's/my ex-girlfriend and my
ex-boyfriend should get together except for the fact that they'd both
hate it.

So essentially, college has so far been my only resource for meeting
partners; in a hippie liberal arts college, a meme like polyamory
spreads well enough so that everyone at least knnows about it and
sorts themselves fairly well.  Makes the investigatory stage of a
relationship somewhat easier when people already have vocabulary for
it...

Skye
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met David in college, though we didn't get involved until a while
after we had both graduated; I met Elise in the Minnesota Science
Fiction Society, though we didn't get involved until about ten years
after we met; and I met Raphael on Fidonet, on the SF and Writing
Echoes: we switched to internet email fairly soon, which sped up the
process of getting to know one another considerably, and got involved
about eighteen months after we started exchanging email messages,
before we had actually met.

Think there's a pattern there?

Pamela
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met one in a basement and another in a laboratory ;-)

I'll emphasize the mundane a little. Just as I don't think one will be
very successful *looking* for partners, I don't think one will be
especially successful *looking* for poly partners. It really can "just
happen", especially if your taste in friends runs to interesting and
open minded.

I met P while we were both still in high school. A friend had enticed
me to come along to "E's house" on the basis that her mother stocked
the fridge really well (an extremely important consideration for
under-financed teenage boys ;-) ). The fridge lived up to
expectations. E turned out to be a precocious and bitchy 14 yr
old.........

She also had a much quieter and more interesting older sister, P, who
was watching the entire scene while filling in the colours of one of
those doodleart posters that were popular in the early seventies. I
helped add in a few colours, chatted a bit, and wondered how we might
get better acquainted. A friend of mine (faster on his feet, but less
patient and persistent) asked her out first, and I was so mystified by
mono (let alone poly) dynamics that I figured that was that...... When
they seemed to be ignoring each other I (dumb as an ox) asked *him*
what was going on and luckily got a relatively accurate (although
unflattering) answer. It wasn't until much later that I was dumped on
for holding back so long.....  ;-)

We've been together ever since, except for a two year hiatus spent
convincing ourselves that it was the right thing. About 10 years later
and "great with child", P came to join a group from the lab who had
got together at the end of the day. She and L met and became great
friends. I thought this was wonderful, since there were not that many
people who fit well with both of us then, yet any two out of three
could sit together and talk for hours and the three of us could go on
indefinitely. We still weren't ready for the idea of poly, so we hung
out together and kept those occasional dangerous thoughts to
ourselves.

J arrived on the scene. L finished and went off to Ottawa.  M arrived
on the scene. I finished and the four of us went off to Germany. L
went off to Ohio. We worked hard and lost touch......  then found each
other again a few years ago. This time we were ready for the idea, and
it only took us a year to get around to it.  (remember, I said
"patient and persistent")

J will be 12 this fall. M will be 9 this week. Almost twentytwo years
on, the adventure is still beginning......
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, let me say that I've never 'dated' anyone.  All my
partners have started out as friends.  Some were friends for quite a
long time before they became partners/lovers/sweeties.

I met my first poly partner in school.

My husband and I met at the library - we both worked there. I applied
for the job *because* he worked there, a girlfriend had scoped him out
for me.  However, it wasn't until after I quit working there that we
became close.

I met my hubbie when I became a co-sysop/programmer on a local BBS
that he co-owned.

I met another sweetie on a usenet news group - we're not sure which
one.

(ASB is what she thinks, I think it was alt.poly.) Two more I aquired
from a poly-email list and subsequent 'cracker munches'. (Cracker
munches are coffee-tea-chats at a local espresso shop.)

Tolovana
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My current lover (the only one I have at the moment) and I were
introduced nearly 5 years ago by a mutual friend. Soon after that, she
started dating this friend, much to my chagrin as I had become
smitten. At that time, I hadn't thought all that much about polyamory,
and I assumed (incorrectly) that their relationship was monogamous. I
thought I wouldn't have a chance with her.

A few months later I moved to another state for 6 months. When I
returned, almost 4 years ago, I found out they had broken up. I ran
into her soon after that, we started hanging out, and then one night
acknowledged our mutual feelings toward each other. Thus began the
relationship. She informed me right before we started going out, or
perhaps right after, that she refused to be monogamous in
relationships, and I thought that was just dandy. The rest, as they
say, is herstory.

Sean
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My own history of meets is quite different from all the others I've
seen in this thread. I hope that my perspective will not be so odd as
to prevent its inclusion into the above-mentioned database. I will try
to be as factual as I can, I believe this will aid the process of
deciding where exactly to place the information I'm providing amongst
the others.

First, a confession. In order to recount the story of how I met
various "others", I have to perform a very challenging and extremely
complicated operation(s). To begin with, I must come to an
"applicable" theory of "others". Then, test each individual I have
ever known against this theory and report to you the outcome. That is,
every single person, or rather, my perceptions of each, would be
subjected to the paradigm developed for this purpose.

As you see from the tone of my voice, I have a big problem with doing
these tasks. But, we should not shirk our duties--even in the face of
adversities.  So let me continue a bit longer. And if I fail, I'll be
the first to admit failure. I've done it before, in fact I've done it
so many times I feel almost a secret right to claim a certain mastery
in the area.

I want to make clear that I enjoy sharing stories of others just as
much as the next guy. Especially those "special" others that my as yet
unarticulated theory so lovingly talks of--actually painstakingly
defines.  And what hurts me the most is that no matter how much effort
I spend in this realm, I can never quite capture the nature of these
others when I apply my theory to them. My theory is always a bit too
_specialized_.

Now you may think I'm withholding something from you. And not just one
thing.  The implicit promise was for stories. And it seems that
neither they nor the theory which allows me to bring those stories to
you is forthcoming.  But I want to suggest to you, tentatively to be
sure, that just the reverse is the case: that I am now revealing more
to you than is probably decent and proper. Does anyone know what they
mean?

And now I'd like to get to the nutshell of my argument.

No matter how articulate I could become, any attempt at this is
doomed.  As is my theory, stories, and rhetoric.  The poetry of my
others is defiled by any possible grid of placement.  And while they
count for me, I never want to do a count of them, and certainly do I
never wish to publicize any such count. In sum, the desire to rank,
name, and number pales so utterly in the face of real, actual, or
imagined others that my mind goes soft thinking about it.

So why is this appropriate? Or for Polyamory at all? It's this:

   Even if there were just one of you,
   I always think of you in the plural.

-arn
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I didn't think I'd have anything different to tell, but happily
I do. We (the three of us) were high school sweethearts...  sort
of. We went to school with each other for six years, always keeping
very close, but never getting "involved" one way or another with each
other. In fact, looking back, at high school we were always closer to
each other than to the various partners we each had at the time. Hehe,
and I know it was a source of much concern for one or two of those
partners.

Things changed a little when I started going out with a mutual friend
of the three of us. (Besides each other, this girl was the closest
friend *all three* of us had.) We knocked about with each other as a
friendly social set for a couple of years until my then gf moved
overseas. The day we said goodbye to her at the airport, the three of
us shared something special just for a moment. Then we went our
separate romantic ways, but remained close friends.

A year later, it's my birthday and also that of K. (We're twins to the
day. :) We had the bash of bashes for a party, and at the end of the
night K and I are together, and very happy about the fact that our
mutual friend M has found the (other :) nicest bloke at the party. A
happy three-year interlude followed with the two monogamous couples
sharing a lot of social occasions, though for some reason the other
"he" never seemed to get some of the in-jokes... Then, almost as if by
mutual consent, we all reached some major turning points in our
lives. Uni, friends, family, work, romantic plans and
taken-for-granted assumptions about all sorts of things suddenly blew
up and didn't come down.

We rode it out, and at the end by some set of coincidences that none
of us can really piece together, the three of us were living together
and loving it. There are so many stories in between that it's hard to
point to where it happened. The weekend I spent in another state,
after which I came home and found that both M and K had been seduced
by another female friend was instrumental, as was the night that same
female friend seduced me. Discovering this newsgroup at just the right
moment helped, and so did moving house together, alcohol and playing
soccer. :)

The thing I remember most is the day we lay in bed together just to
talk. When K ran her hand up M's spine the way I'd told her she liked,
I was surprised only at my lack of surprise. It just felt so
*right*. It was that day that I suddenly understood that the term,
"best friend" was neither singular nor limiting.

A funny postscript to the story which many may appreciate is that a
year later, when we told that old friend of ours from high-school, her
first reaction was, "Yuck!" Then, "Explain it again in my language,
please." Then, "Gee, maybe it's lucky I didn't hang around..." Then,
"So why have I been through so many guys so quickly?  Can I come back
and visit?" And finally, "You know, you're the three best friends I
ever had; I suppose it's just *right* that you worked out like
that. Now I know that I chose the right friends." :)

Well, that story ended up going on for a little longer than I
intended... sorry... (a bit. :)

Cya, Rob.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
How I met my partners...

I met my wife Holly because she was dating my boyfriends roommate.  I
thought I had once again fallen for a straight woman, it took her a
few tries of hitting me over the head with a baseball bat to convince
me she wasn't.

Pooch was my game master back in college and we had been best friends
for about about 10 years and finally started dating when we went to my
ex-girlfriends wedding.  I figured it wouldn't work because of the
polyamory thing (all his prior relationships were very monogamous) but
he seems to be adjusting just fine.

So basically I met my wife by dating a guy, and my guy by dating a
girl <G>

I tend to meet my secondaries at Science Fiction Conentions.  Both
Holly and Pooch are involved in fandom but that isn't how I met them.

Samantha Star Straf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of my partners was a grad student in the same department I was in,
and we had friends in common, and we were in a party skit together,
and then he found out that my office had a cheaper coffee club, so
then I found out that he was a really interesting guy who liked to
talk .....

And then we were all on the patio of the Graduate Club one summer
afternoon, celebrating someone's passing Generals, I think .... all my
friends kept saying "P's coming to meet us!  P's going to be here,
isn't she?" and I wondered who she was .... I can still remember what
she was wearing.  She was great with child, and relaxed and happy, and
I thought she was beautiful.

And that was almost twelve years ago <happy sigh>.  Thanks for asking!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was thanks to the Taiwan police, in part.

A friend had met me in Taiwan (where I had been studying) to do some
climbing for the summer.  But when we went to climb Jade Mountain
(Taiwan's highest peak, ca. 13,000 ft.), we were foiled by the local
police.  Even though she and I were both experienced mountaineers,
they told us we needed to hire a local guide and have a party of four,
etc.  (All this, for a walk-up peak!)  So she and I split early for
Japan and spent a most enjoyable summer hitching around, climbing, and
learning delighfully un-ladylike Japanese from truck drivers.

As Americans are wont to do,at one point we were grousing to some
Japanese mountaineering buddies about the restrictiveness of the
climbing regulations on Taiwan.  Well, said one, as a matter of fact,
our university alumni climbing club is planning an Expedition to Jade
Mountain next winter.  Please join us!

(Now, a saunter up Jade mountain, even in its subtropical winter
snows, does perhaps not merit the term "Expedition", but that's what
they called it.)  So, six months later, I joined them.  Of the seven,
there was one guy who bravely attempted to traverse our language gap
several times.  I found him earnest, ruggedly handsome, and
endearingly goofy.  BUT at that time I was most decidedly Not Into Men
and Enjoying Being Single etc etc.  Yet in the months that followed I
found myself corresponding with greater and greater urgency with him,
creating fake Japanese sentences by writing Chinese (which I know
well) first, then moving the verb to the end, and then adding a
Japanese past tense conjugation, and hoping that he'd be able to parse
it.  And so it went. (I should add that although Chinese and Japanese
both use Chinese characters in writing, the two languages are
completely unrelated and have quite different word orders.)

Anyway, from him, I got a lot of thinly-veiled allegorical letters
about "burning bushes" and whatnot.  So, we've been together for ten
years, learned each other's languages, and spawned a not-so-small fry.
For the past year I've been trying to talk him into something other
than don't-ask-don't tell polyamory, without much success.  But these
things take time, ohh if I weren't so impatient....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met S in Fremantle (WA) in 1981, at a meeting in which ze was
putting foreword a scheme to start a dance/theatre project. Ze lived
in Melbourne at the time. I liked the project, thought ze was a spunk,
and when we first touched in saying goodbye after the talk, there was
a lightnening-strike of some kind of energy through both our
bodies. We just looked at each other wide-eyed. We became lovers about
two days later, and the following year ze moved to Freo for the
project, the Red Herring Dance/Theatre Company. Ze directed the dance
side, and I directed the theatre side, and we moved in with each
other, although we ended up living sometimes together, sometimes in
different houses over the next few years.

We later were taken in different life directions, but have recently
re-connected, and are together full-on again in a way I can only
describe as "incandescent". Trips between Canberra and Sydney are
expensive, but we see each other at least one weekend a fortnight.

S had lived with Jay earlier, and also lived with Jay during the
periood we were together, and this was how I met Jay. We didn't get
together for a couple of years, during a period when we were sharing a
house. Jay and I were subsequently together for 11 years. We moved to
Canberra together, though we don't live in the same house.

I met Raj in 1985 as someone with whom I was sharing a house. We got
on wonderfully, and ended up sharing our next two houses. We became
occasional lovers a couple of years later, and the relationship
remains mainly emotional, with occasional physical components. Ze
currently lives in Fremantle, so I don't get a chance to see zir
often.

I have a few casual partners, most of whom I know through Sanyass,
HAI, Pagan circles or the Canberra bisexual network and its
activities.

I also have a beloved who I have not yet physically met. Ze lives in
Wisconsin, and I plan to spend a fair bit of time with her in the
coming N'mercan winter. We'll meet in SF, where we will also meet up
with at least one of her otherloves, who bears a decided resemblance
to Darth Vadar (6'3", big, and generally dressed in black
leather). I'm currently making my independent connection with him, and
we all intend to troop around as a triad while we're all three in
Calif.

I met M through the net on conferences dealing with ecological and
community development issues, and subsequently on a conference dealing
with gender issues. We always liked each other's posts, and after a
few years, we exchanged an email letter. Since then we generally both
write about twice a week, and write about 15 pages in each letter. The
relationship deepened, and we now call each other once a fortnight by
phone.

Dhanu River
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fellow science fiction fans, to slightly varying degrees.  But in
every case, it has been friends, friends of friends, and we've met at
friendly get-togethers, small parties, or conventions.  Sometimes it
took years to get around to developing a romantic or sexual component,
sometimes it was nearly immediate after meeting in person, but in
those latter cases we had always been communicating in writing for
months beforehand.

I can get a crush nearly immediately, but I tend to need a fair amount
of time before becoming comfortable with entering into a Serious
Relationship.

Of course, now I've learned a bit of the Deadly Art of
Net.Flirting. . .  . ;-)

Gary
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My first pp (read: poly-partner) I met at a Bisexual Group Social. We
went to a bar and danced all night.

I first saw my second pp at a halloween bonfire where a friend of mine
wanted to introduce me to this person they had a crush on so as to get
my opinion of the person.  The next halloween, after being pursued by
my friend for a year, my second pp kissed my on the couch. The rest...

My 3rd pp was the lover of my 1st pp. I don't know how they met, but I
think it was at a sweat-lodge.

My 4th pp my 1st pp met at a SF convention. Iwas aked by my 1st pp to
go have coffee with my 4th pp and tell my 1st pp what I thought of my
4th pp. We talked all night and I ended up living with my 4th pp.

My 5th (current) pp I met at a toy store. :)

Leigh
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met my 1st & so far only poly partner on the net, (IRC undernet
chat) about 6 mo. ago. I recently met him f2f at his wedding in Texas
where I was a female "best man" for him. He & his wife have aked me to
become thier co-wife & (allowing for certain other stiuations in my
life), I have agreed to join them.....  Such a unique & loving
world.

M.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met my longest-term lover "K", now my wife at college.  We were each
others' first loves and first sexual partners.  Recognizing the
silliness of trying to stay together forever with no outside sexual
experience, we agreed to allow each other an "affair".  This single
permission has since turned into fairly straightforward "polyamory".

A few years later, I met my second-longest-term lover, "E".  She knew
K from childhood and always wanted her.  My initial intent was simply
to have a friend in the new city we'd moved to.  Before too long, we
were living in a big house, friends.  I can still remember how
amazingly difficult it was for me to force the words out of my
rebellious mouth.  "Um, uh, I was wondering..."  But, I did force out
the question and she was interested.  It didn't work completely work
out, we ended up moving to separate houses in another year or so, but
we remained friends and occasional lovers.  In the last few years, we
have gotten together sexually...maybe four times.

Three years ago, I had a brief intense relationship with a woman from
work, "L".  L was not at all comfortable with my marriage to K.  She
refused to meet K for months.  Her desire for social permissability /
marriage ended that relationship after about six months.  This caused
me to decide that for the near term, I will only date people in the
occult community, since they are a good deal more accepting of
alternatives.

All my encounters since then have been within the occult orders.  The
most significant of them is a woman, "A" I met the spring before last
while visiting some occult buddies in another state.  She is a lover
of another friend of mine in the order.  I admired her beauty and fire
from a distance, so made some wooing-gift-jewelry (labia rings) before
the next time I visited.  The jewelry ended up not being needed as an
ice-breaker, since the chemistry between us was quite strong the
second time we met. I am now on a twice yearly visit schedule with
her, the most recent being a wonderful trip along highway 1 on the
coast of California.  Long distance love is interesting.
Head-over-heels ... re-center ... head-over-heels ...  re-center ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A local BBS had a writer's conference that I started posting to.  Some
people on the conference regularily got together for coffees and it
turned out that one of the other posters was someone I knew from
University and another was a member of the local pagan community and
knew my teachers and my (then) lover. So we became friends.

My current SO was somebody I really enjoyed on-line because of zir's
smarts and sense of humour. Zie finally showed up at one of our
coffee-meets. By the time the group went our seperate ways I was
head-over-heels.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
B's not stupid, so he invited the two smartest, strangest, people he
knew to be his 10th grade biology lab partners. B and i hit it off,
lots of unspoken eye contact communication between two closeted bi
poly veggie pervert sex radicals going crazy in suberbia. It took me a
year to come out of my shell enough to ask her out, by which time she
was dating C, who was someone i knew and liked, straight but gentle
funny nice etc. B & i had read heinlein together so we had some mutual
understanding of what we were doing, and i was too out of it to
realize how oddly the high school was looking at us, as C & i would
wait for B each morning at her locker.

It lasted less than a year (the breakup being very traumatic for me),
but we stayed in touch, due in part to my willingness to hitchhike
anywhere to see her. She had an affair w/ my best friend/roommate,
taught me what safewords are, introduced me to L, a member of her
lesbian-separatist no-boys-allowed household under the flatirons. L
and i lived together (mono) for 7 years till she left me for some
guy. L now lives alone w four cats a house in the country and her own
business.

Since then i've mostly had one night stands with guys met on irc* (one
of the best at stonewall where cappy met s.) (*gtbear here). I'm still
looking for that coop/bi/poly/radical household situation, not finding
it here in mundaniapolis. No local bi support group like there was in
columbia, and the poly group here is great but kind of odd - they are
grown-ups, where i feel more connected to the genX/slacker set. I'm
pretty much of a hermit again, except for the net and my usual table
at the coffehouse.  - robbin
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I met my first husband while working in a Hallmark store.  He had just
started college and was with a friend who wanted to find an obnoxious
card for his girlfriend.  We got to talking and I mentioned that I was
a Heinlein fan.  He said that the was too and we got to talking.  I
was dating someone else at the time -- someone who /said/ it was okay
with him that I was poly.  (At the time, I had not heard of the term
polyamory and just used the phrase "not monogamous").  It turned out
that my boyfriend was most certainly /not/ okay with my poly
tendencies, so I went to my new friend to cry on him a bit.  One thing
led to another and we started dating pretty seriously after a few
weeks.

We married two years later.  At that time I had had two other
realtionships (concurrent), but they were not serious.

Six years later, I met my present -- I guess you could say, "fiance"
-- on the IRC (#polyamory or #heinlein, I don't remember which).  He
was someone with whom I had locked horns on alt.fan.heinlein, so I
swiftly left the channel.  I talk on IRC for fun only -- not heated
debating.  He /msged me and demanded why I left so quickly.  We got to
talking and we found that we had some amazingly similar interests.
That was all she wrote.  We'll be moving in together soon, I hope.

Noel, Axe of the BABs, Mum to King of the Babies
      and She who truly Groks Coffee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
First polypartner and spouse-of-record: A and I met via a BBS in Los
Angeles and an SCA-type war group in Thousand Oaks in 90...were
friends for about 5 months, planned a group excursion to SF with her
and her boyfriend-at-that-time, then wound up at her place when their
relationship broke up two days before the scheduled departure.  Spent
a wonderful week with her and was handfasted to her 13 months later at
Beltaine.  And it has been a wonderful 5 and almost 6 years.

Second polypartner: (here's where it gets complex, people)

J and I had known each other for about a year and a half, when she was
involved with another good friend of ours.  At the time we found each
other again, she had been out of that relationship for a year, and was
unattached.  We cuddled at a Celtic music concert locally in April of
96, and I had had some ideas of seduction, but nothing more than just
thinking about it.

After this, A and I were at an SCA event in May 96 and were having a
good time with everyone...drinking, laughing, that sort of thing.  She
developed an interest in another gentleman, R, there (which I frankly
encouraged, being open to her having another partner).  Their
relationship developed reasonably well.  Then, she was called out of
town on a family emergency.  I had to stay due to work requirements.
While she was out of town, R and I got together to go out to coffee
with some of our friends...and I called up J and invited her to join
us.  Surprisingly, J & R hit it off really well...and after dropping R
off at his place, I took J to her place...where I was invited up to
spend the night (and pleasantly so, I might add).  The next day, R and
J and I went to dinner together and we all wound up back at my place,
where R & J played while I crashed (had had one hour of sleep the
prior night)...and when A came home, R and I picked her up from the
airport with the news that R & J had a relationship developing...but
still wanted to develop the relationship between all four of us as
well.  We are now 7 months poly and living together...absolutely
blissful.

Third polypartner: M was introduced to us by R in December 95 at a
Yule party thrown by a local occult bookstore whose owners were close
friends of A and myself.  M & R were dating at the time.  We met again
in May 96 at an SCA event, where M and I cuddled for a lengthy period
of time (M & R were no longer dating).  M had to return to school
shortly after that for graduation, but reappeared on our doorstep in
August 96 saying she was "looking for trouble"...and she found me and
hasn't yet wished to leave.  M is closer to A and myself than she is
to J & R, but enjoys spending time with all four of us and the two
children that A and I have. - Troy
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** end of "How (Some) Poly People Meet Each Other"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Yusuf Pisan                             [See homepage for PGP public key]
[e-mail]                         http://www.cs.nwu.edu/~yusuf/