Sitcoms

My favorite comedy on TV right now would definitely be how I met your mother. I have grown to very much enjoy that show. When I watch it though I keep thinking about their group of friends. You have the married couple, single girl, the guy who only wants sex and the guy looking for marriage.

In Seattle there is this phenomenon known as the Seattle Freeze. It’s basically this thing that people from Seattle do where they lock out any new people you can always tell too. People in Seattle are very surface friendly but try to join a group of friends. It’s nearly impossible.

Last night I met someone and asked if they were from Seattle, she took a few seconds as if contemplating which I knew meant she was from four miles outside Seattle. She explained she had just moved to Seattle from Redmond. There’s this notion of distance here that is foreign in other parts of the world. Seattle is so protected on all sides, no one in or out without crossing the bridge. Bridges.

I think about ted on the show and wonder why he is friends with barney. What is he still getting out of all of it? They aren't from the same place and don’t move in the same social circles.

Once a month I put on a grand performance and make myself outgoing, outspoken and friendly. It takes an entire day to prepare and I can only keep it up for a short while. It’s worth it; I always meet wonderful people but slowly the fade away. For the longest time I thought it was me but I have learned otherwise. Everyone says the same thing: it’s impossible to meet friends here.

Think about it. Where are you from? Did you grow up here? Do you have your group of friends that you have known for years and every memory involves them? Or are you the one who has moved up here and are still not entirely sure who your group is? Maybe you’re different, maybe you have your established group, let me ask this: when was the last time you let someone new in? How long did he last? Did he ever feel welcome?

Ted has no reason to hang out with the group on the show. He has money (though I have no idea how) and seems to spend nearly every minute with another girl. I barely understand how he has time to be friends.

When you talk about things like meeting new people, making friends I think the same advice is thrown out all the time: join something you enjoy- take up football or golf, join a book club. Its basically saying 'find people with similar values'. So is that what it comes down to?

Are you friends with people who have similar values to your own? If not, how do you make it work? Lets say you are a staunch atheist, is your best friend a born again? How do you make it work?

I went out the other night with a group of guys that I genuinely adore but I had nothing to add to any conversation as the entire night people were just discussing what its like being gay, how hard it is, who they know who hasn’t come out yet. At one point someone turned, feeling bad for me I’m sure, and said 'lets talk about straight people things for a while.' what on earth is a straight people thing? Banging chicks? Football? I think they expected me to suggest a conversation but I was a bit out in the deep end. It was an odd moment.

On the show the conversations are usually about events from they’re past, shared memories or random pop culture debates if not about something immediately at hand. I have a hard time with that. How do you get to the point of shared memories if you have nothing to talk about in the initial?

I went out the other night to this party where I knew just about no one. People were exceptionally kind and I rather enjoyed meeting many of them but at some point every single conversation turned to that awkward moment where the person was attempting to figure out some commonality with me. And while I understand what happened next, it didn’t get easier, they would all ask the same question: who are you here with? When I explained I wasn’t really there with anyone it would be followed up by a worse question: oh, I see, well who are your partners. And cue lights. Best way to end a conversation, especially with me. I know why they asked and I appreciate the intent- trying to find a common ground, a common group to establish a friendship. Has to be something right? But when I am as staunchly anti poly as I am and in a great deal of pain about my current status, having that question again and again never helps.

Marshal and lily is the married couple on the show. Marshal was a roommate with ted so I understand that connection but I do wonder about lily. I was talking with someone at the party about the types of people you meet at the gatherings. Part of the reason I went was I wanted, desperately, to meet some new folks, to meet some new friends. But in the end it’s the same story: same people, different drinks. A guy was telling me that the reason its that way is because the poly people tend to keep going out looking for more, being more social, gathering more and more while the monogamous people find what they are looking for and drift away into oblivion. This caught me off guard. It seems wrong to me.

I don’t want that to be my life, I want to find a partner I can then enjoy my life with, my friends with, my events with. I am not looking to find someone and squirrel away to die. I mentioned that to the boy who said he didn’t think most married people felt that way. I assured him that I believed him wrong. What married couple never wants other interaction? After discussing for a few minutes he relented and told me something I had not considered, he admitted that poly people get bored of monogamous couples-nothing to gain. It seems that instead it is the poly people who contribute to this; they are the ones who don’t really want more friends, just partners which makes sense from their point of view right? Why have a just friend when it can be a friend and a play partner.

I thought that was crazy and couldnt be true though so I started asking some other folks some questions. I asked a number of my poly friends about their Friendships. Most admitted they didn’t have close friends out of their laundry list of toys/partners. They didn’t have time and didn’t see the point in investing in someone they wouldn’t have an intense (Read sexual) connection with. I was taken a back.

Then I remembered the one person I see every month who truly doesn’t care for me. He has been nothing but polite and kind to me but I know he doesn’t really like me. I rather like him and have tried on a few occasions to spend time getting to know him but I understand that I am not someone he would like to do that with. And please, don’t misread this, I greatly respect him and like him I understand that he does not wish to get to know me better. Anyhow so we share a number of acquaintances that speak of him regularly and I mentioned to two that I have had a difficult time getting to know this individual. Entirely separately they replied the same: you aren't someone he is going to fuck.

I think that perhaps what happens is that we get thrown into a city at some point in our lives and we try to make the most of it. Most people meet friends through work. It’s how I have met some of my closest. College is a wonderful place since everyone is new and half aren't local, it has worked as a wonderful way to meet people who are open to new friendships. But as for finding common ground, it gets a bit harder in this community.

There is not a true-shared identity amongst the group on the show. They seemed to have randomly collected and lack any nucleus holding them together or letting others in. they are just static.

I have worked quite hard to try to be social and more out going but I know I fail sometimes.

When evan left me, I gave up. I disappeared for nearly a year. I just stopped.

Last month something similar happened. I thought I had met someone for whom I could, well, shouldn’t have, but did, develop strong feelings. When that blew up I did it again, I crawled into my safe cropping of rocks and let the world spin its maddening slow spin around me. I watched the tide ebb and flow around me and prayed it would just take me out to sea.

I feel like these parties, these gatherings, are ways of putting weight around my neck. I feel like every time I have to make a compromise that boils down to: conform or be lost. I think about whatever the hell name he wants me to call him here, Eduardo and I imagine how he would do. I think in my head he does better than he really would in life. I imagine him fitting in perfectly, talking to everyone and making a ton of friends. And then I think of me. Of the way people stare at me waiting for me to answer who my partners are. And I know I don’t belong. Not because of anything anyone else has done but because I don’t know how to have that sitcom friendship. I don’t know how to get past the part where I don’t know any common values. So I compromise.

Until a year ago i had no idea poly was read beyond the group of mormons living in Utah. I came across it so much here i thought it might be worth a try. i knew fairly quickly it wasn't for me. to me it felt like being poly is lazy, it’s selfish and it’s greedy. Its glutinous and I think ruins friendships. I think it puts people in an unnatural situation and pushes out people who want to have true emotions and true feelings. My experiences were pretty bad though. So i kept thinking that old timeless tune: well it may not be for me but it clearly works for them. But even that doesn't seem as true anymore. I want to believe it because occassionaly i get these incredible glimpses of poly relationships that seem so happy. and i want to think it works because, well, in my world view, love should trump everything. but that hasnt been what ive seen. 


instead, ive watched as People treat it as a drug, going from one hit, one high to the next. And they become addicted. No matter who it hurts. I think its tragic (has been for me at the very least and for far too many people i've seen) but it has been so prevalent in the community that it is taken for granted as the accepted practice. It is the normal and monogamy is considered "Archaic" as someone told me the other night. All it means is that we have (and I swear this will be the one time I say this) a male ruled mini world. Lets face it; evolution encourages this in men correct? Don’t be foolish enough to dispute that part. So what happens? in my singular hypothesis, we have a bunch of men collected who somehow found a way to get a group of women to say 'no this is as good as it will get for me, I will go ahead and sleep with this guy because this is all I can get.' so men hit the jackpot here. another option, they somehow found and CONTAINED a group of women who are wanting to have sex and convinced them that it is "more free, more modern, less part of the system' to have multiple partners. Yes. Way to prove something there, women. You’re conforming just the same, except for sex. Anyhow. So men have it made in the shade here. They got to the point where they got hotter and hotter women somehow coming because they weren’t accepted elsewhere. Why the hell would any man want to settle for one then? So he keeps coming and coming and coming, needing more and more and more partners. Only he says that’s not what it is any longer, now he is willing to say primary partner but he is looking for play partners. Yes. Somehow this was ok. You know what's amusing. Ask any poly guy if they're polygamous and watch their eyes bulge out as they take a defensive stand against your insult. 

It’s not ok. It’s not safe. Its not love. It’s not trying. And it’s not good enough. I should get to be worth more than that. I should get to have a man say that I’m worth more than that. And I should get to have friends who understand that too. Real friends. This city is hard, this community is worse.

Married couples don’t stick around because they aren’t welcome. Transplants don’t stick around because they aren’t welcome. and Sitcoms don’t stick around because they aren’t real.