smk comments on Polyhacking - Less Wrong
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What if you're wired in such a way that, when you strike up a romance with someone, the New Relationship Energy wipes out your romantic feelings for everyone else, and only when the NRE has run its course do romantic feelings for other people return? Is that something you can self-modify out of, or otherwise deal with in a polyamorous context?
I like The Ferrett's take on it:
Also, his clarification in the comments:
Many polyfolk deal with this sort of thing, much as people in monogamous relationships deal with their partners becoming absorbed by a new interest, being assigned to six-month deployments overseas, driving trucks for weeks at a time across the country, having crushing deadlines at work, or otherwise having things come up in their lives that force their partnership to take second priority for a while.
The common thread in my experience is an acceptance that they are not the absolute top priority in their partner's life (partners' lives) 100% of the time, and that's OK, and the relationship is still positive and valuable.
So, yes, that is something that some poly folk can deal with in a polyamorous context.
Whether it's something you can self-modify out of (second person used advisedly), I don't know.
Being absorbed by a new interest or being busy or away aren't quite the same thing as not being into your partner anymore.
That's certainly true. But, again, IME being OK with not being the absolute top priority in one's partner's life 100% of the time helps one deal with all four of those not-quite-identical things.
I should also note that your first description made it sound like a temporary thing, whereas your second description makes it sound more like a change of the baseline; is that intentional, or am I just over-reading?
Temporary but lasting several months, I'm told.
I'm not such a person, but I've dated poly people who seemed to hyperfocus on their new love interests like that. One in particular stands out as someone who'd become deeply infatuated with the current object of attention, almost to the exclusion of others.
Said person was also very new to introspection, rather comfortably selfish (that's not a "boo!" signal, just a relevant and somewhat abnormal trait -- they didn't have much empathy or concern for the feelings of others if it didn't impact them directly and insofar as they knew it might cause others to feel hurt, didn't want to self-modify), and wasn't very able at the time to understand people feeling hurt as anything other than an attempt to manipulate due to a lengthy abuse history.
I'm sure that there are people closer to "baseline" (whatever the heck that is) who are poly and do this. I do get rather intense NRE, and my feelings for each of my partners are somewhat different, but it still doesn't wipe out the feelings for other people. I think the advice I'd give such a person, if they wanted to change this for the sake of their partners, would be to cultivate a lot of self-control, and maintaining perspective. Your new love may push different buttons than your old love, but what you're experiencing is a neurochemical rush which will not last -- when it passes, you and your existing loves will either be grateful it's over, or picking up the pieces. In short, I treat NRE as something on the order of puberty or psychoactive drugs in terms of its emotional intensity: be aware you're extremely biased in this state.