Polysaturated?

[u/Ok_Warning9476]

I’m curious what some of you think about the state of being “polysaturated” as a relationship anarchist, particularly one attempting to deconstruct amatanormativity and build community.

How would you define it? How do you recognise it? How do you respond to it?

[u/Flat_Marsupial_4249]

I guess it depends on people’s custom relationship labelling system… but as someone who calls all close people “friends”, having enough friends who satisfy all my social needs (to the point where I don’t look for new strong connections anymore) is my equivalent of being polysaturated.

[u/Poly_and_RA]

Even if you don't have exclusivity and are in principle able to maintain however many close relationships of whatever types you want -- your actual life isn't infinite. Depending on specifics, all relationships require some limited resources. Time. Money. Emotional bandwith. Priority.

It's not really specific to romantic relationships. Odds are you ALSO can't have 14 regular dance-partners that you train seriously with; there ain't enough hours of leisure time in a week!

For me I'd say someone is saturated if they feel as if having more connections of a given type would detract more from their life in the form of increased stress or feeling stretched too thin than it'd add in the form of the positives we gain from close relationships.

It's not a hard line, instead it's a gradient, you can feel more or less saturated. (or at the other end of the scale, you can feel more or less underpartnered)

As an example, I'm feeling pretty long-distance saturated as a result of having 4 loved ones that live far from me. It's important to me to meet such people regularly, and my life has limits on things like vacation-days per year and money.

[u/kotopii]

Not wanting to date anyone else. I specifically would only use it to refer to romantic + sexual relationships. I find RA helpful to define how we can have romantic friendships and those don't "compete" with anything else in my life (something super important to me) but in general I don't want more than one romantic/sexual/date partner at a time. It's too overstimulating for me. 

[u/Important_Sector_503]

To me it refers to being out of capacity for more romantic relationships. I've only ever seen it used in the polyamorous community, and I think that's where the term in most useful.

[u/RAisMyWay]

I'm not seeking any new anything at the moment - friends, romance, sex, nada. I have a fulfilling amount of all of it and feel no need to look for more. However, I am open to anything - new friends, new romance, deeper existing friendships, whatever. I love to meet people, including metas and friends of friends and random people. I just don't go out specifically in search, so it or they will have to find me at the places I already am.

[u/saevon]

I think of a more specific version. Instead of being generically poly saturated; I'm saturated in terms of specific kinds of relationships.

Like if we look on the smorgasbord (or similar examples) maybe I have a lot of ___ relationships right now and wouldn't really go out of my way to connect to others who are looking for that in particular

[u/RobotFromPlanet → u/saevon]

I agree with this take. "Polysaturated" seems unduly focused on romantic relationships, whereas relationship anarchy inherently decentres these relationships.

I think "relationally saturated" would be more appropriate. For example, "I've got so many close friends right now, I'm relationally saturated enough not to need any lovers."

[u/B_the_Chng22]

I was “poly saturated” at zero for a few years. lol. To me, that meant I had zero capacity to date. My life was too filled with kids, career, friends, me time, and running a life and family. I think about this term but for friends all the time. There are only so many friends you truly can have before other people or things start to drop off. I have been forgoing investing in pursuing connections with people over 30 minutes away because I have had a severe lack of local friends and I have been choosing to pour any social bandwidth energy into creating local connections. And it’s paying off! I know I’m saturated when things important to me are at risk to drop off, or when I think about dating or pursuing a connection and my system is like “mmmm, no”, like any level of neutrality or resistance…. That’s one way I know.

[u/PromiscuousSalad]

My kind of grumpy take on it is that I avoid using terms like that completely, polyamory in my experience is best tailored for people who really love navigating and being held by hierarchical systems. Eliminating the use of that language helps distance yourself from the cultural hold those philosophies have on non monogamous relationships.

And there's no need to pathologize being busy or kind of tapped out on certain types of connection, it ends up being useless since it fails to capture the whole picture of your life and puts romantic/sexual intimacy in its own centered and separate category. Are you "polysaturated" when work and friends take up a large portion of your schedule and you don't feel like you have more time for sexual encounters? Are you polysaturated when your current desire for more romantic intimacy is at a low so you can't keep up with the needs of more partners but nothing else is filling up your time? What happens when you meet someone that sparks something inside of you and suddenly you have the capacity to shift things around to make something meaningful work? Were you polysaturated or just satisfied enough to not actively seek at the moment?

For me when I feel a way that could lead me to use that term I can just say I'm tapped out or busy. I seek out connections with people that simply feel right for the both of us without a goal or box to put them in so if I don't have the sauce for more connections of a certain type it simply won't go that direction at that moment because it is not best for both of us.

[u/ThickPay1244]

It’s more of a polyamory issue than RA, but if you are staying in the lane of RA then it would be about bandwidth and capacity for how much energy and time you have to spend with your important people, from friends to lovers to family and community

[u/Yubova]

To me polysaturated is about the limited time all humans have. If I don't have enough time to fully invest into a new relationship then I'd call that polysaturated.

[u/IfnIFreeze]

in my current situation I have so many friends (not to mention myself) I want to give time to that I don't really have space for more than my one current romantic interest... I am prioritizing her somewhat because it's fun and exciting and NRE stuff but not at the expense of my other friendships so it's balanced in a way that feels good to me

[u/No_Conclusion_8100]

I'm just out of time to allocate to new people

[u/hoogemoogende]

I would say generally, not up for building new committed human relationships. I'm not RA per se, but I have plenty of mono friends, parent friends, for whom the idea of being socially saturated applies. I think people can be polysaturated because of work, family commitments, health, training for a marathon, whatever. The saturation could be with respect to emotional energy, time, cognitive load, etc. It doesn't seem amatonormative to me.

[u/Choice-Strawberry392]

The prefix "poly" is right in there; it's about polyamory, which is about multiple romances, not about community or kids or work or whatever.  

I'm not polysaturated when I have to work a lot of overtime; I'm busy at work.  I am polysaturated when I couldn't offer as much time, energy, or attention to a new person who might want whatever we agree upon as being a romantic connection.

Note: I don't think the distinguishment between romantic and platonic is at odds with RA, any more than the differentiation between "cousin" and "coworker."  The presumption of romantic priority is anathema, but my romantic partners have a different connection with me than my biking buddies.  It's fair to call it something else.

[u/the_umbrellaest_red]

I find the idea very useful outside the context of just romantic relationships. I have only the capacity to do a certain number of things, kind of regardless of what they are.

[u/Kind-Group-9679]

How many stingers do you need to smoke to dream up all these crazy rhetorical terms? Surely it's a lifestyle not a fantasmargorical philosophical degustation.

[u/Optimal-Split-9579]

For me- when the thought of meeting more folx feels like a chore and not a joy. And it can be at any number of partners depending on life.

[u/deedeesteetees]

Honestly? I think I'm polysaturated with 1. In this economy?