Ambigamy

Man, you are so right on with this stuff. Things I've been thinking for years (ok several months) I'm seeing on each of your blogs and on mindreaders. Thank you so much for giving me thoughts to relate to. Like most people who are lucky enough to be ambigamists, I am a learned ambigamist. It happened over the course of a few too many failed relationships - and it's hard to find that balance but once you do you're hooked and it's the best (and truest) love there is!

So glad it hits home.

J

I'm a complete ambigamist who came to realize that as I lost a 5 year relationship because of it and now wish I knew it then. Do you think it's possible for an ambigamist to have a successful relationship with a romantic? I was with a romantic and would love to make it work or am I just torturing myself?

perhaps an ambigamist is simply someone who is exceptionally jaded?

Thank you for writing. I'm glad for the discussion. More articles to follow that speak directly to your points. I've also got some articles up at www.ambigamy.com that haven't made it here yet. In the mean time a few comments.

I wouldn't want to put too fine a point on the distinction between ambigamists and romantics. We're more complicated than simply slotting into these categories as though we were different species.

And yet I also wouldn't want to blur the distinction too much either so as to hedge or fudge.

I'll post an article here tonight called copassion that describes a distinguishing characteristic of ambigamists as I see them.

As for whether ambigamists can find compatibility with romantics, I'm investigating. I've been living with someone more fundamentally romantic than me for the past few months. We had lived together for a year earlier. I think under certain conditions it can work. Humor helps. And an ambigamist's ability to keep up appearances making romantic declarations. I CERTAINLY don't mean pretending and acting out promiscuously elsewhere. That is a recipe for mess and cruelty. What I mean is if you know that you want stability and security with someone, then act fully romantic so as to generate that kind of fusion.

Here I am writing about ambigamy while practicing what for this stage of my life seems to the best fit, a stable romantic relationship in which I get to borrow some of the simple bonding tendency of my partner and use it to bring out that very real romantic part of my nature.

I once had a girlfriend who professed to be an ambigamist but after a few months admitted that really she had decided she was as a way of explaining why she didn't really want to bond fully with this romantic guy to whom she simply wasn't that attracted. We wouldn't want to misdiagnose a relationship as falling apart because it mated an ambigamist with romantic when it really broke up because it mated a not-so-attracted person with a very-attracted person.

Finally on whether ambigamists are simply exceptionally jaded. The origins of an affliction don't necessarily tell you much about what to do about the affliction. Very bad conditions can arise innocently and very bad causes can lead to innocent conditions. I'm fascinated by the argument that we don't need to worry about global warming because it wasn't caused by people.

What exceptionally jaded suggests is perhaps that we should be ashamed. Alternatively that we should cut back until the eagerness returns. I've visited both possibilities. Also the possibility that things about modern times make us all a little more jaded and therefore prone to ambigamy. Believe it or not I wrote a song (and sang it--rough draft) about cultural causes of ambigamy we don't normally think of. I'll post it here tonight also.

Is Ambigamy a bad thing? Sometimes the school of hard knocks (on in the case of jadedness excessive knocks) puts us in touch with some deeper philosophical truth we wouldn't want to miss. So not necessarily.

Thanks for writing. I'm happy to have the conversation. I'm also available directly at js@jeremysherman.com

Do you think it's possible to revert to romanticism after past relationships have made you more of an ambigamist? I've been trying to change that because I can say that I am quite a bit jaded. It makes me unhappy to have the beliefs that I do, and I realize that they are a result of some emotional baggage that needs to be dropped off. It's probably the same for those whom you label "ambigamist."I'd like to think that instead of applying labels to people as being one or the other, we should just use those terms to describe one's qualities. I know that I'm still a secretly romantic person, but I also feel that I'm more realistic, or jaded than I used to be. I think that if I, or anyone in this predicament, found the right person, things could change.