Dating Poly Girls- The Web Edition, Part I: The First Message

So I happen to be on OKCupid, most of the people I have dated since becoming polyamorous are also on the site, although I have met very few of them via OKC. There is hope though, because Wes was the first person I ever met through the site! He has been raising the bar for all future prospects ever since. I get anywhere from 60-100 visitors a week, which sounds good but by no means correlates to the quality of people I hear from. So here are some suggestions based on the experiences I’ve had, most of which will easily apply to monogamous pursuits as well. I will try to be as positive as possible, providing as many “Do’s” as possible rather than “Don’ts”.

First, remember what I said about dating being a competition? Well this is the written portion of the exam. If you don’t impress her with your profile, she won’t message you first and she won’t message you in return if you have a mediocre first message. Girls who are write the first message are not a myth, they exist, one writes this blog. Many of my first messages end up being “I know you’re probably interested in monogamy, but I wanted to say hello anyway because x, y, and z were really impressive on your profile”. Well, that’s the paraphrased version anyway.

Do state a few common interests. Granted, if she reads your profile she will see that you have common interests, but by bringing them up and elaborating on them she will know that you have read her profile. I worked in a restaurant for over a year, I did not believe my trainer when he informed us “People are lazy, they are don’t read the menu”, I very quickly learned the truth of his statement. If you make it clear that you have read all of a profile you already stand out against the dozens of messages from people who wrote to her because they saw a pretty face in the side bar.

This brings me to the next “Do” that relates to having read all of her profile and standing out.

Do be thorough. The art of communication should not die while textspeak lives on, and thrives.
Do write complete words with the best punctuation and grammar you are capable of, please see above comment about textspeak..
Do write more than one line, and do talk about more than just the weather or how her day was.
Do write personalized introductions, as opposed to copying the same message to multiple girls.

These issues have a lot in common, they indicate that you are paying attention, put thought and effort into what you say, and they give insight to what type of date you might be.
Being Thorough- If you say “I think we have a lot in common” or for example “Hi, I like steampunk too!” elaborate! Details about what common interests you have, and which ones are important to you, creates a bonding experience. Do you have rare issues of a comic book she says she likes to read? Or in my case, I love a variety of comics which means I only have a dozen or so of X-men, Superman, etc, if you collect a large quantity of what she reads tell her about it. Okay, you both like steampunk, she’ll want to know what you like about it and whether or not you’ve been to any steampunk events.
This not only helps you to be thorough, but will also help you to avoid one line messages. One line messages lack the content and substance necessary to get positive attention. Remember, she can’t hear your voice or catch the scent of your pheromones so you have to engage her in whichever way you are most confident. This is no time to be timid about “geeking out” on her, but don’t try to out-geek her either if she’s a geek (more on that later). So engage her sense of humor if you’re funny, appeal to her intellectual, philosophical, or imaginative sides. Although it was not in their first message, someone asked me what I would do with a time machine, I’m not sure if I had ever been asked before but I found myself giving not only a geeky answer, but also a much more profound answer than I expected. Yes, thorough messages take time to write, she might be busy so it will take some time for her to read it and write back, so use discretion as to whether one good paragraph feels like a good start to you or if you want to try taking root in a few different areas of interest to really show her how enthusiastic you are.

I would not go so far as to call myself a “grammar nazi”, but I do care about people putting thought and effort into what they say. I have no issues with lol or omg, but it actually gives me a headache and almost makes me cry when I read lazy English. “Dam gurl u r hawt” is really the worst I will offend you with, dear readers, one because I cannot bring myself to put anything worse on my blog, and two because I have deleted all messages that would have best exemplified my point. My point is, while a lazy writer is trying to save themselves time , they are in fact being inconsiderate of the reader’s time because of having to translate idiotese into English. What this comes down to is, if you don’t care how you say what you say to me, you have just made what you say unimportant.

Introduction messages being personalized becomes increasingly important when messaging polyamorous women, you need to take care not to go around sending two, or three, of them the same damned message. For reference, if you are on OkCupid and some guys says “how about something as basic as thinking you're cute, aside from the deep philosophical vibe, as a reason to contact you?” he apparently doesn’t customize his first message to people and is “very selective about who he messages and has strict criterion”. I know this because I called him on it when he also sent the same message to Gina, and later sent the same message to Angela- under a different username. This can backfire just as easily in poly groups as monogamous ones, girls talk.  No, you shouldn't have to convince every girl you message that they are some ridiculous romantic ideal of "a special and unique snowflake" or some similar nonsense, but being philosophical is not exactly a generic trait most women share for you to use it as a blanket introductory message.

Reading a profiles and match questions will provide useful information like the completely relevant 23% Match that you have in common and the equally important questions that will tell you why you are incompatible. Please do not ignore the multiple times that someone indicates that they are polyamorous or their mandatory questions that pertain to polyamory and open relationships. If a relationship with a deity is important to you, particularly of a religion that is of a patriarchal nature that believes in the Bible, there is a good chance you are not going to be compatible with a poly girl. And do not be surprised when she expects you to judge her for her hedonistic lifestyle based on this information. This is from an actual message I received “I got to tell you reading your profile it's a little intimidating but then I realize your a human being just like me with wants and dreams just like me...so with that being said you seem verry interesting and I was wondering if you accomadating to other people or do you do what you do?”  There are a lot of things wrong here, but I am going to deal with the issue of being...ahem...accommodating. So dealbreakers in my match questions deal with burning the flag, women being obligated to keep their legs shaved, caring about disappointing god, and poly-identifiers indicating comfort with maintaining an active OKC profile, being friends with an ex, staying overnight with a friend of the opposite sex, and open relationships. This person chose to ignore his own preferences as well as mine and wondered why I would jump to a crazy assumption as to why he would judge me? Don’t expect women with a low match percentage to be nice to you, don’t question why they seem hostile, I’ll tell you why, they feel disrespected because you are ignoring what is important them.

Don’t make comments about  a woman you are messaging having a long profile, there really isn’t much need to comment on it, especially if that is all you are going to say.
Do realize that by having a longer, more thorough profile she is trying to filter the number of people who contact her, she is interested in the people who are going to bother to pay attention because they are interested. By simply saying “wow, there are many words in your profile” or “that is a verbose profile you have there, I can’t read that many words” you are setting yourself up to be deleted, before or after she bangs her head on something because she is so frustrated. I will start with the latter statement, excuse me, you just used the word verbose and you’re complaining that my profile is long? As for the first statement, I looked at that guy’s profile and he apparently thinks a lethargic, almost apathetic, “I don’t really care” attitude is going to make a good impression on the ladies.  When I went to this person’s profile this is exactly what I found “Blah blah. General guy. Blah blah. Very sarcastic. Blah blah. No one reads this. Blah.” No, I didn’t translate that, I didn’t paraphrase, he said it! He is not exhibiting the wit required to be sarcastic, he is being a tool. There are two ways to be full of crap, one is because you are lying and the other is when you say something that lacks substance, it’s junk. Either way don’t be full of crap.

Don’t be full of crap, part two. 

Do take answering match questions seriously! When you message someone whose match questions are incompatible with yours, you are proving that you are lying about something. Those questions are saving you several conversations, because you don’t have to take the time to talk about them in person anymore. Those questions save you from having to tell a dozen girls that you are pro-choice, whether you like to talk about politics, and how you feel about body piercings, they are doing a lot of the work for you- if you answer honestly. Bullshitting your match questions means you have to watch your ass every time a woman asks you about them, because you have to keep up with the lie every time. If you write a message saying “I’m okay with you being poly” but your match questions said that you are not okay with open relationships, you are not okay dating someone who is seeing someone or married, not okay with your partner flirting in front of you, etc you are no longer trustworthy. I don’t know how many men I have criticized for this mistake, they often say that they “answered that a while ago and don’t feel that way any more” or that they “weren’t really thinking about how they answered”. Really? Because when I look at the unacceptable answer page, all of my answers are in red. This person has made the choice to mark other answers acceptable, or to not include a previously undesired set of candidates in his profile now that he “changed his mind”. No, I didn’t say that just because you’re hot and I wanted to fuck you. No that condom didn’t break.  No that duct tape isn’t for you. No that cloth doesn’t smell like chloroform. See how quickly that situation deteriorated? Trusting people you met on the internet is hard enough, take the time to be honest.

Don’t proposition her with your sexual interests, kinks, huge penis, etc in the first message.
Do take the time to introduce yourself, do be respectful of the fact that she is a human being and not a fantasy object, a prostitute, or a sex toy. She needs to trust you or she is not going to put herself in any kind of sexual situation with you. If you don’t care that the woman you’re messaging is a person, she can conclude that you will keep going when she is not comfortable, that you won’t care when she says no, and that you only care about your pleasure and how to get it. Keep that in mind later when we get to Part Two: The Date. If you must post a detailed description of your sexual fantasy on your profile, put it in your Journal, don’t put it on your About page six lines into your summary! I personally refuse to answer most questions about sex in my match questions because I don’t want 60-100 strangers a week to know how soon I will have sex with someone I like or how I achieve orgasms. Between sexual privacy and honesty you can keep your penis to yourself unless asked about it or are in an appropriate situation. By talking about the size of your penis in the first message you are already setting a woman up to not believe you, or you intend to use every inch of it- which can be horrifying to even the most sex positive women. Check those measurements, if you intend to use the full length of a nine inch penis on a 5’2 woman, you’d better be paying for the hospital because clearly you are trying to play tag with her lungs. Just because she doesn’t want to hear about it on the internet doesn’t mean she’s a prude or a virgin, it doesn't mean she's hoping you'll have a small penis, it just means if she wants you to thrust things at her she’ll probably say so.

Do Remember that not all attention is good attention and not all attention means someone is interested!

Join Me for the next few installments- Part II: Making a Connection, Part III: The Date, and Part IV: Is she having second thoughts?

Polyamory and Corsets OR My Saturday

 On Saturday we went to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire AND Dorian's Parlor! As always, both events were awesome!

Much to everyone's surprise, we actually got out of the house 15 minutes after our intended departure time, this is amazing because I am always late, and was running on very little sleep. We picked up my mom at the Globe and journeyed forth to Lancaster to enjoy the Queen's medieval festivities. Mom and I love the Loony & Ploppy Show so we saw that first, even though we couldn't really see from where we sat. We also saw three of the Rakish Rogues, Sultry Sirens of Sin, Rogue & Siren shows, all of which were hilarious! Giant turkey legs and hot cider were consumed. I got a lot of compliments on my costume (I wasn't green on Saturday), and Mom spotted a little girl in a witch outfit staring at me. It was a nice moment of reversal, when I was little I loved Ren Faire and wanted  to one day have a costume other people noticed. On Saturday, I was the witch a little girl wanted to be when she grew up. I almost won a place on the jury for the Trial and Dunk but we think the screaming match was "planted" because they ended up dunking the girl who won against me. We made fun of the final joust constantly as it gets more and more ridiculous over the years.

Photo by Hugh Casey

We made the long drive back to the Globe to drop off Mom, and got changed for Dorian's Parlor. October Dorian's is my other "anniversary" with Wes, because that is where we met for the first time in person. We actually met online on a popular dating site, it's amazingly accurate in telling you which weirdos, geeks, and perverts you are compatible with.
The picture on the side bar is the girl Wes met last Dorian's, I think it's safe to say what he saw is what he got. I wore the wings and the shoes again this year, but have since gotten a few new costume pieces, I'll add a picture from this year when Hugh Casey uploads them. It was an interesting "turn over" I suppose, Zac & Angela (previously known as Boyfriend Z & Girlfriend A) were there and we had a better time for it! The person cut out of the picture is my ex, who I was heavily involved with last year when I met Wes, but really it was falling apart more than I could have known at the time. He was there on Saturday with his girlfriend, and to some extent being poly changes the way you play with your exes. People talk about polyamory being a somewhat "incestuous" community, so even when you have an especially agonizing breakup it is highly likely you will still have lots of common social ties with your ex. I consider being a poly female as a more difficult challenge in civility than being monogamous, female socialization in general makes girls hate other girls, so much so that we can barely compliment someone's attire without wondering if there is an insult just below the surface. That's not who I am, so even though the ex's girlfriend was actually detrimental to the breakup (hell, it's safe to say we almost certainly loathe each other), I liked her dress and said so to her face. Awkward pleasantries aside, it was a wonderful event!

Our future sponsors for Busts and Trunks Burlesque were vending, so naturally I was extremely excited to see them! The fashion show was in latex, so I was not particularly interested in the clothes themselves, but liked the patterns for use in other fabrics, and was glad to see one of my favorite models there. Favorite is an understatement, she and her twin sister are two of the most beautiful people I have ever seen anywhere. I am talking about movies, TV, magazines, anywhere. So if you want to see me fall all over myself trying to talk to someone, get them to show up at an event. I met them while modeling corsets for Mayfaire Moon at Dorian's last I suppose this is a good time to get to the title theme of the post.

I think I have had a love of corsets from a young age. I grew up exposed to fabulous costumes in the media- Labyrinth, Legend, The NeverEnding Story series, Shirley Temple movies, Interview with a Vampire; but by the time I saw Ever After and Sleepy Hollow I had been attending PA Ren Faire for a few years. PA Ren Faire was my gateway event for many of the things I love now. Costuming, conventions, Shakespeare, D&D, roleplaying in general, but most of all corsets. Today, while responding to my inbox on OKCupid, I had a message from someone asking about the connection. He Said "I was talking to a person the other day who told me there was a lot of overlap between the steampunk and poly crowds in Philly, and that she "didn't know why, but it probably has something to do with corsets". That made me laugh, but do you have a more reasonable explanation?" It made me laugh too, but I had not thought about it before, the "easy" answer sort of comes down to the fact that most geeky events (Ren Faires, Comic Cons, Steampunk) have higher draws for alternative sexual preferences because they appeal to people who are already participating in alternative lifestyles. Wes had it right when I posed the question to Gina, "I think we have Gil to thank for that." "How do you mean" I ask. "Because Dorian's Parlor is like the Island of Misfit Toys."


Athletes, cheerleaders, prom/beauty queens, and whatever else "normal people" do puts them in a position to live mainstream lifestyles- monogamous trophy spouse, 2.5 kids, bachelor parties at strip clubs, football parties on Sunday (yeah, we do that too at the Playhouse), book clubs, Sunday school, soccer moms. Golf vests, khakis, blazers, high heels to go shopping. These "mainstream types" are still very nice, they care about being well rounded, their kids are well rounded, sometimes they're philanthropic humanitarians, they work in soup kitchens and join Boy/Girl Scouts (I was a member for 16 years!), but they live their lives in the center of the "American Dream" sometimes not having a clue what alternative lifestyles or the people living them look like. The alternative? Ren Faires; comic books; Sci-Fi; atheism, paganism, wicca; karaoke at gay bars with Fairies and Drag Queens; D&D; Steampunk; Burlesque, Doms/Subs, dominatrices, polyamorists, pansexuals, GBLT. We wear leather trench coats, corsets, combat boots, top hats, and have rainbow hair, tattoos, and piercings. These alternative groups, when we live in mainstream ones, are not pointed out to us with the instructions "go play" when we are children, so I have no idea how everyone found each other before the great and terrible INTERNET! I guess the options were at Ren Faires, conventions, comic book stores, the school basement, chess club, maybe we even put up flyers?

This was the answer I gave him (the OKC person), trying to be less vague than the broad assessment of social grouping rather than the personality type that would be drawn to corsets. "Hmm, poly and corsets? I can confidently say that the majority of poly women I know love corsets, but I don't know what the connection is actually. I might speculate two unrelated theories about it though. One being that many of the poly women I know are very comfortable with their bodies and their sexuality, for them corsets are not about contorting/forcing their bodies into an unnatural shape, but rather enhancing assets they are proud of. In the right corset, or a well made properly laced corset, women feel fabulously sexy- their posture is improved, there is a sort of kinetic motion that causes a higher rate of hip swaying while walking, proper bust support, and an audience of people giving you very positive feedback. The second possibility, that I am not as familiar with and therefore am guessing, is the submissive side of women in poly. I know very few women who are subs, it is more that I "know of" them and know people who are close to them as the dom in those relationships. This "sub" mentality may draw them to a corset because their partner is attracted to it; it may be a mutual turn on while lacing, or removing, that the dom is in total control of the garment; and also the idea of submitting to the garment itself."

Dorian's Parlor October 2011
Photo by Hugh Casey

People, usually women, ask all the time "Is that actually comfortable, I mean really, honestly?" when they see me wearing a corset. "Yes" I tell them, I would not want to waitress or care for children in a corset, but they are not keeping me from plenty of other damn fun things I like to do, if anything a corset helps.

Family Time Our Big Playhouse

For the past few weeks Wes, Gina, and I have proposed "Family Time", a night for the three of us to hang out, everyone sleeps at home that night. When I first started spending most of my time at the house, most nights were similar to our current "Family Night", Gina and I have gotten along with each other very well from the start so there was not a lot of "Jessie's coming over = Gina should not be here" happening, also Wes and Gina were not really dating anyone else at the time to cause big discussions about who would be spending time with who. If it was okay for me to sleep over, then sleeping over was what I'd be doing. Wes and Gina eventually started seeing people, people that Wes wanted to stay over (which interestingly enough led to Gina sleeping at my house sometimes) or Gina would want to go to her date's place. This system was relatively uncomplicated and easy to maintain with minimal communication among the three of us.

Somewhere around July there was a Big Bang of sorts! Wes was getting closer to Girlfriend G, who you will now know as Ginny; and Gina was starting to date Boyfriend S, who is Shaun. I suppose the communication became more necessary because I was not dating anyone at the time and wanted to know "who's sleeping in my bed?"

Eventually it got to a point when Gina had not seen Wes and I for a few days and we all realized we missed each other! Imagine, three people who see each other almost every day actually missing each other! I know we are soo weird! It's like we actually like each other or something! It's true, this phenomenon is , to some extent, actually what led Gina to decide she wanted me to move into what I refer to as the Bard's Playhouse, as opposed to my mom's house which is the Globe. One day Gina had to stop at home during her lunch, she was  very happy to find me sitting contently (probably with the dog) on the couch with my computer. She liked that moment, that feeling so much she decided to talk to Wes about deciding to "add a wonderful person to an already fabulous household" making their "little suburban house... a little bit bigger." Yes, those are direct quotes from Gina. In fact you can find the exact statement here on Gina's blog The Martinelli Variety Hour- My Big House . Many of our poly friends have really enjoyed that post, in addition to Wes' & Gina's family reading it and have been using it to better understand that we are all really happy together and that no one is being taken advantage of.

So on July 25 Gina and Wes took me to the Pop Shop and we indulged in a ridiculous meal (I got an ice cream soda with sprite, strawberry ice cream, and a forgotten flavor of syrup). As I recall, I had only recently had an anxiety attack brought on by jealousy (a personal problem in very irrational moments) and thought Wes & Gina were giving me a little TLC by treating me to dinner. They admitted their ulterior motives and asked me to move in, a few days later I said "Yes!" And there was much rejoicing! Huzzah! But I was talking about Family Night...

So yes, we all liked having each other around! But with relationships growing we were not seeing each other as often, thus leading to Family Night. On October 3, we had our first family night, we ate steak and watched Muppets Take Manhattan! We all have the entertainment requirements of children, you wish you were so lucky! Family Night part II was October 12, we watched Repo! The Genetic Opera which Wes and Gina had never seen before and they enjoyed it. Friday, October 21 was our third Family Night. We made masks for Halloween while watching Nightmare Before Christmas and The Addams Family, I can't tell you what the masks were for until after Boyfriend Z's (Zac) & Girlfriend A's (Angela) Halloween party because it's a surprise! Being silly natured, I skipped around the house singing "Kidnap the Santy Claws" and copying a lot of lines from the movies every time I got up from the table.

Family time is not about a mandatory night to spend quality time together, Wes and Gina actually have an agreement between them to take each other for granted, what it is about is taking time to appreciate the people we love. We are all really entertained by each other and laugh our asses off when we're together. And we all agree that we are always having a much better time with all three of us present than if one was not in attendance, even on Wes & Gina's honeymoon! I don't have a conventional sense of family, my nuclear family relationships are stressful depending on the relative, but the family in Our Big Playhouse is the family we chose for ourselves. This family likes sitting down for dinner together, watching movies, and making sure none of us sleeps alone, and sometimes we do our own things but Family Night is when we remember  that we are three of a kind, birds of a feather, now and (maybe) forever! La la la lalala...

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time... I will tell you everything that happened once upon a time, but it's a long story and not even today's story at that. So for a long time I wanted to start a blog, mostly about relationships because just over a year ago my relationships stopped being mainstream. This is roughly the one year anniversary of my deciding to be polyamorous. A lot has happened in the past year, starting with the boyfriend I'd been with for four years deciding to break up with me instead of buying an engagement ring, which led to dating my best friend, and then to a casual relationship. Everything seems to almost go in reverse order from there, casual relationship ends, I convert an engaged couple from their open relationship to a polyamorous one, my best friend breaks up with me, and that couple I just told you about, asks me to move in with them!


That is what this will be about, the impossible story that is actually my life. I kept thinking, "I want to write down all the awesome things that have been happening in my life since I became polyamorous" because the majority of people I was close to would never believe that this lifestyle would work, and as delusional as it sounds, I believe being polyamorous does work. You may be wondering "How do you figure? With all those people walking out on you in the past year?" Two reasons: In the real world those painful walk-outs still could have happened if I were monogamous, but for every walk-out that has come to pass something wonderful has happened shortly after and in fairy tales somebody's mother has to die in the beginning of the story for it all to be "happily ever after" in the end. 


I started writing this blog post a few months ago, July 28 to be exact it is now October 19, my writing process is scattered like that. It is however a perfect example, I don’t know where this post was really going. Maybe it was  just how surreal and seemingly magical this transition has been, how very much like a fairy tale. Of course I don’t know where this story goes, this story being my relationships and life in general, but that’s the fun part. Lots of times when I’m writing, I write the ending long before the middle has been written. I also read the end of books to find out what happens. But this is my life, I don’t know where its story is going, I can write it down as I go along, and I can work on character development. I can add new characters and never mention some of them ever again. I can choose my own adventures. 


The lesson I want everyone else to learn here is, you can choose your own adventures too.


There is more than one way to Grandma’s house, that gingerbread tile you just ate does not have to be your last meal if you just ask nicely before eating a woman’s dream house, and sometimes that guy swinging his sword around who talks about honor and seems so dashing- is really a coward.

Do you really want your life to be a cookie-cutter story? I know I don’t!


So no cheating on this one, writing the ending first or peeking.

Welcome to the life, to the story, of a modern Bard.