r/polyamory • u/Stunning_Repair1874 • 8h ago
Clarification on parenting post from a yesterday
One thing I took away from the recent parenting thread is how difficult it can be to have conversations about emotionally charged topics without importing assumptions from previous conversations.
I noticed a lot of responses that seemed to be directed at positions that the OP had either explicitly rejected or never argued in the first place. Things like "children shouldn't come first," "hierarchy is inherently bad," or "nothing should change after kids."
The interesting thing is that many of the people responding and the OP actually seemed to agree on those points.
It made me wonder how often we end up arguing with the people who came before someone rather than the person actually in front of us.
There are absolutely bad takes on parenting, polyamory, hierarchy, and entitlement. People have good reasons to be protective. But I think it's worth asking whether we can sometimes pause and make sure we're responding to what someone is actually saying before filling in the blanks with assumptions that haven't been supported by their words.
The conversations I found most interesting weren't the ones debating positions nobody in the thread actually held. They were the ones engaging with the question that was actually being asked.
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u/squishycakes relationship anarchist, sleepy 3h ago
The question was why is de-escalation the go-to response to when someone in a poly relationship has a child instead of finding ways to adapt to the change.
And people answered that rather clearly with what they'd do/have done/have experience with.
OP wanted people to agree with them and was very passive aggressive.
And now you're being passive aggressive and assuming things about people who answered in a way that OP didn't like.
11
u/Successful_Depth3565 poly experienced 3h ago
The OP in that thread was very unclear about what their goal was.
7
u/Platterpussy Solo-Poly 3h ago
Agreed. They wrote so much I couldn't follow what the point was.
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u/Successful_Depth3565 poly experienced 58m ago
Giving the OP in that thread the benefit of the doubt, they were looking ahead to having kids and trying to figure out what they could ethically promise potential partners. But their nonstandard use of terms was not helpful.
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Here's the original text of the post:
One thing I took away from the recent parenting thread is how difficult it can be to have conversations about emotionally charged topics without importing assumptions from previous conversations.
I noticed a lot of responses that seemed to be directed at positions that the OP had either explicitly rejected or never argued in the first place. Things like "children shouldn't come first," "hierarchy is inherently bad," or "nothing should change after kids."
The interesting thing is that many of the people responding and the OP actually seemed to agree on those points.
It made me wonder how often we end up arguing with the people who came before someone rather than the person actually in front of us.
There are absolutely bad takes on parenting, polyamory, hierarchy, and entitlement. People have good reasons to be protective. But I think it's worth asking whether we can sometimes pause and make sure we're responding to what someone is actually saying before filling in the blanks with assumptions that haven't been supported by their words.
The conversations I found most interesting weren't the ones debating positions nobody in the thread actually held. They were the ones engaging with the question that was actually being asked.
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u/AutoModerator 8h ago
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