Question that's been on my mind lately

[firecat]

Have there been periods of your life when you had no satisfying romantic/sexual relationships, or fewer than you wanted to have (if you're poly)?

How many such "dry" periods have you had in your life?

How long did each of them last?

Was anything in particular going on with you at the time that contributed to the circumstance, as far as you can tell? (Possibilities I can think of include being sick, being busy, moving to an uncongenial location, being socially inexperienced, experiencing a breakup, becoming more picky...etc.)

If this period ended, what circumstances contributed to its ending?

I'll say more about why I am asking this in a future entry.

Comments

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

I dunno whether mine counts as one long dry patch punctuated with occasional relationships, or as a couple of separate dry spells. At any rate, when I first started doing the poly thing I was pretty successful in relationships, having a stretch of five years or so where pretty much everyone who I developed an interest in being interested back. That was nice. *wistful look* But after that, things slowed down a lot. I had a loooong stretch of nearly a decade where the only solid relationship that I had was my primary relationship with Mark. During the late 90s there was a period where I had a couple of short and unsuccessful relationships, but they were pretty much it until early 2001. That was the point when I started up relationships with australian_joe and mouseman within a month of each other. (And ironically, both of those relationships also ended within a month of each other very recently.)

So what was going on in my life during those various wet and dry spells? In retrospect, the only thing that I can really put a finger on is the broad social circles I was moving among. That first five years or so of "poly success" was also a time when I was developing many friendships and connections in the SCA scene. I had joined the SCA when an undergrad during the mid 80s, and the late 80s were a time when I was expanding my social circle and meeting a lot of interstate SCA folk in particular. So I was exposed to a large group of folk who I didn't already know well and who I had something in common with. It was a very fertile ground for me to form new connections with others, and I made a number of long-lasting friendships during that period, as well as having a good number of relationships.

I think that maybe my long dry spell after that was due to a combination of getting thoroughly settled in that social milieu, and having already had relationships with the folk that I was going to connect with there. I mean, there was some membership turnover but not a huge amount... it was a pretty stable group, population-wise, and I wasn't meeting a lot of new people through it. I was meeting plenty of new folk through my work (the Public Service) but they weren't people I really had that much in common with or formed strong connections with, by and large. I met a few folk in the late 90s through my brief forays into the Queer community, and that's why I wound up with a couple of relationsips during that period. But other than that, I really wasn't meeting many new people.

Then I started posting regularly to alt.poly, in mid-late 2000. And that's why I suddenly wound up with two new relationships that started within weeks of each other... that was how long it took to start really making connections and getting to know folk through that particular medium. When I had been posting regularly for long enough that other alt.polyites were starting to get to know me and I was starting to get to know them, that's when the possibilities for romantic entanglements began to present themselves.