Day 29 - Polyculi, Polycula!
(titile to the tune of Funiculi, Funicula!)

I have no appetite for sex. I never have had. Nobody gets my gooses and my juices glomping, nor shall they ever, and that's the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it.

But, on some level I like the idea of joining a polycule, not as any kind of participant or even observer, just as a secretary or librarian, like Giles to the Scooby Gang or the Fonz when he lived over the Cunninghams' attic.

Perhaps I should clarify, since it is only 2023. A polycule is a multi-person relationship. Thruples and beyond. The polyamorous, the people whose heart can be sincerely in love with more than one person. When I was younger I was skeptical of this, and that these were just greedy casanovas, out for maximum lust - but since I realized I'm not a casanova at all, and it's perfectly possible to be asexual and/or aromantic, it's seemed perfectly logical that some could love in a way that goes beyond a pair.

Sidebar on my miscellaneous heart: I've known for years now that I'm asexual - as I said last year, I've been offered sex in a bed by attractive people by a range of genders, and politely declined all, not through discipline, fear or confusion, but purely lack of interest.

I'm not actually sure whether I'm aromantic. I’ve long assumed so. I've craved relationships but never enjoyed being in one, and have tended to confuse liking someone with wanting to be them. Now that my gender has at last crystallized and I'm gladly who I am, things would be different, on a purely romantic level - but I kind-of hope not. I was morose with lockdown solitude, and still find life is more solitary than I like - so perhaps these thoughts about romance come from a shortage of affection of friends.

Back to polys. I'm not one of them, but a group of intimate friends sounds rich in love. Jesus had a group of intimate friends, so did King David, though those are of very different kinds. David also had several wives, as did Solomon, as did Jacob - but I don't know that any of those resemble the modern polycule. Jacob did mot love both of his main wives. David may have loved his assortment of wives, but they didn't love one another, and the addition of more to the royal bedchambers was purely a Davidic decision. He was a man getting what he wants - and his affair with Bathsheba suggests more of an impetuous scrotum than a wondering heart. Solomon had 700 wives, and I suspect they were to him as corgis were to the Queen: fuzzy possessions.

For all the polygamy in the Bible, I don't know if scripture has any polycules, but I'm not sure whether it even shows us regular couples who marry for love and romance. So many of the patriarchs marry for land, convenience and to build a dynasty. Several men are dearly attracted to their wives, but how many women in the Bible explicitly love their husbands? Two that I know of. Michal loves David (1 Samuel 18:20), who later does her dirty. Ruth agrees to marry Boaz for inheritance and to join Israel - largely for the sake of her former mother-in-law - and is pleasantly surprised to find the man she will marry is kind and attractive. Where the Bible shows multi-person relationships it's always a bad example because the husband is showing favouritism and sowing division - in exactly the same way as fathers with favourite children showing how a big family really shouldn't work.


I used to be dismissive of the idea of polyromantic love because it is so different to anything we've ever been taught, but I think it seems no better worse than monogamous relationships, so many of which grow cold and unkind and/or just rubbish. I've occasionally heard it suggested that a generation down the line, when trans people are more accepted, we might see polycules as the next group who will be the victims of a moral panic, and fighting for their rights. My eyes are open to treating them like friends and humans. Look after the trans, give an ear to the poly, stand up for the rights of traveling folks, and if your polycule has need of a quirky janitor, I might put in an application.

But what about marriage, I hear you cry. I don’t know anything about how marriage should best be, and I’m not the marrying kind, so am not the person to ask. The only thing I know is that any debate about who gets what marriage rights always comes down to crossed purposes, where people treat ‘marriage the allotment of legal rights’ and ‘marriage the sacred and religious union under God’s blessing’ as if they were one and the same thing, and that confusion makes everything louder.

I know that any good relationship lives or dies on the quality of its communication, and any good marriage between anyone has God at its core, and that everybody possible should have all the rights, to the extent to which nobody is harmed, so I’m positive and progressive, or as some would say, excessively liberal on the subject. Since I’m looking at the rights here of a group to which I do not belong, I’m not affected at all, but I think solidarity, standing for the rights of others, is a massive necessity if you want to do what is right, kind and helpful. The poly and I are in some ways opposite, in the way of our romancing, but we have one thing in common: we put the kettle on.