All About Love Part 2: Polyamory and Self-Love

Описание: Heya. If you made it here from the first video, thank you! I hope you liked the first video. I really am passionate about this topic and talk and write about it all the time, and so I really enjoyed creating these videos where I can express myself and share some of my thoughts and beliefs. I’ve got a few more things to say about Bell Hooks’ “All About Love” that I couldn’t fit into the first video. If you missed the first video, here’s the link:
☞    • Simon Talks All About Love  

In this video here I’ll be discussing how love is the same across any relationship, and the ingredients of love can be offered to your friends, to your parents, children, relatives, romantic partners, strangers, and even yourself.

My strong beliefs in the unlimiting nature of love has opened me up to polyamory, while before this book, for the entirety of my life, I’ve been monogamous and faithful. Now, I offer love to all of the people in my life, even when I’m in a partnership with someone. I’ve been practicing polyamory for the last year, and while I do still identify as polyamorous, I found managing both my time, and the expectations of multiple romantic partners, a bit challenging. That’s not new to me, though. You’ll hear about that in the polyamory forums as well.

I’m very open to talking about this, and have been talking about this a bunch, with the people over at the Discord. From many of the discussions I’ve had about polyamory, it’s reduced to the idea of “ethical cheating,” and thought of only sexually, which isn’t how I think of it at all. If you’re interested in talking about it, come join us. We’ve got a really nice group of open minded, non judgmental people. We hold space. We empathize. We connect. I’d love to see you there as well:
☞   / discord  

I talk a lot about self-love here as well, and how I knew about it’s importance from Ru Paul’s Drag Race, though I didn’t really see healthy examples of how to practice self-love. I’ve applied Hook’s definitions of love here as well, and have found that it truly helped me connect with a love of myself that isn’t self-aggrandizement. I’ll explain how in this video, as well.

That’s it. I hope you enjoy this video, and that some of it resonates with you, and inspires you to think about love differently. I’ve got a clear direction of where I’m going with these books and videos lately, with a message of compassion and nonviolence that I’m very keen on sharing, and I’ve been spending all of my days reading and writing about these ideas, and planning how to share them. I’ll be spending my time and energy focusing on healthy communication, the history of emotion, building empathy, modern science on how the brain actually works (and debunking the junk science), destigmatizing mental illness, and discussions of polyamory as well. If you found any value in this message, in this goal, please consider supporting me on Patreon.
☞   / simonsbookclub  

Oh! And here’s that Alain de Botton video on Romanticism I suggested:
☞    • Alain de Botton on Romanticism  

For the next book club, I’ll be discussion Marshall Rosenburg’s “Nonviolent Communication,” which is huge for me. I live and breathe this book. I’ve read it three times, listened to the audiobook three times, done the workbook. I’m even looking into attending a Nonviolent Communication retreat workshop. For real. I think the more I embody the ideas of Nonviolent Communication, the better I can connect with what’s alive in the people in my life, and the more easily compassion can flow between us. Words of judgment, criticism, shame, blame, shoulds, comparison, measurement, are tragic expressions of our own unmet needs. Sadly, we’re more fluent in telling others what’s wrong with them than we are in describing what’s alive in us. I’ll talk about this a lot more in the next book club video. I hope to see you there.
☞    • Alain de Botton on Romanticism  

0:00 Intro
0:41 Love Outside of Romance
2:11 To Love Well
3:24 Leaving our Friends for our Lovers
4:24 No Different Kinds of Love
5:40 Denying Love to Children
7:25 Men Lacking Affection
9:18 Lack of Affection Breeds Codependence
10:13 My Experience with Polyamory
11:10 Offering Love to EVERYONE
11:53 Ru Paul and Self-Love
13:15 What Does My Self-Love Look Like?
16:02 B-Love vs Deficient Love
17:28 Wrapping Up
18:12 Where We’re Going Next

#love #relationship #polyamory