My father died It has been a rough year.

Everyone shits on younger people (say 14-22). But the younger people I interact with have a lot of great ideas and good perspectives. I am always happy to have a chance to learn from them. Why so much hate? 

The coronavirus response has been so bad I no longer doubt many Sci-Fi premises. Before I often said to myself "you have tech that can do X and you still have problem Y. Ridiculous!". But apparently, we can make a coronavirus vaccine in two days. But we still had over a year of lockdowns and millions of deaths. One in six hundred people in the USA have died of the virus but we blocked a vaccine because one in a million people who take it MIGHT develop treatable blood clots. 

My standards for 'realistic' dysfunction have gotten a lot lower.

Serious advice: Your close friends and partners should actively admire you and how you live your life. Don't settle for less. You can have less close relations across the divide. But your closest circle should see you as a hero.

Weight maintenance system I use and recommend: 

1 - Weigh yourself daily right in the morning 

2 - Have a narrow target band. IE 140-142 inclusive. 

3 - If you are below the band eat something decadent. Maybe cake or ice cream! 

4 - If below eat super low cal but have fun! Only fresh fruit day is dope!!!

FOUR ORIENTATIONS TOWARD LOVE

There is an emotion. It is something like 'the joy of connection'. Its the emotion that can make just sitting near a friend fun. Or hearing about their day. People definitely vary in how much they feel this emotion by default.

lets call this emotionC

Honestly emotionC + 'sexual interest' explains most of what almost everyone means by romance. But this has been, for various reasons, logical and historical, to have gotten quite confused.

There are really FOUR main ways people orient toward this situation:

1) TRAD solution: More or less everyone is assumed straight in the uhhh ways that 'matter'. Of course we have something like enforced monogamy. But you are totally permitted to feel emotionC as strongly as you want toward same sex friends. 'Strongly as you want' is meant quite literally, many things modern people would consider literal love poetry are allowed. Arbitrary amounts of loyalty toward your bros is allowed too. In some contexts you are allowed to fuck same sex friends. Bans on fucking same sex people are not really a breach of mono so much as 'may or may not be considered too icky to be allowed'. By definition same sex stuff is not romantic. EmotionC towards your wife/husband is considered great but supergatory. Married partners have different obligations toward each other and their children but emotionC surely isn't mandatory.
This was hugely dominant for most of history and is basically where a lot of ideas on romance actually come from. In some ways it actually works fine. but of course its part of a very harmful overall trad memeplex. And its extremely homophobic and stuff. But it actually genuinely does have its appeals. Its certainly not dead.

More or less in reaction to the TRAD SOLUTION you get the LIB SOLUTION. Im trying to be supportive of everyone but of course I have the least affinity for the one I named lib.

2) The LIB SOLUTION more or less accepts most of the logic of the trad solution. But it gets rid of the homophobia and blatant sexism and stuff. On net this is probably fine but uhh it really causes some insane neurosis. The truest of trad boys think women are idiots anyway so there aren't gonna really 'fall in emotionC' with a girl anyway. Besides under true trad men and women have very different lives and social spheres. Well under libdom they don't have very separate lives so your partner is gonna meet lots of opposite sex people they might be interested in. Situation is even worse if people are queer. This again has its charms but its where you get stuff like 'emotional infidelity' memes. Its definitely a cause of LOTS of people only actually being friends with their marriage partner as they age. Its also worth noting that if you add a little 'LIB' to the TRAD solution you arguably make the trad solution worse. This is why the reactionary boys get so mad about 'gays make boys holding hands unacceptable' or whatever.  

3) well after lib you get to LEFTY SOLUTION

The LEFTY SOLUTION is to basically insist on 'you can only have totally unrestricted sex and emotionC with one person'. Definitely cannot openly date others. But we are going to be fairly flexible. Exactly one person gets very storng commitment, relationship escalator, strong (but not infinite or lexical) prioritization. Conditional on the prior rules, other people can get extremely high amounts of emotionC. And some amount of sexual flexibility is often involved (varies).

the LEFTY sOLUTION more or less works but like many lefty solutions its not exactly the most autism friendly. Lots of stuff is sort of handled indirectly. At some point its gets ridiculous to not call some relationships romantic, and they are tolerated, but only if not too overt. One can be like mega autist and do this more blatantly but it gets harder to do this the less idk 'tact' you add.  This is basically what I would recommend most people tbh. But follow the system and dont be too overt and blatant about everything. Use some tact and emotional intelligence if you are gonna go with this tech.

4) Well COMMUNISM, as always, is simple and pure. Just allow totally unrestricted intimacy and sex.

Well that works great for some people and it is SIMPLE LOGICAL PURE and MAXIMUM LOVE. It does have a bit of a problem though. Most people like stability. Under communist norms there is no possible way to prevent, or even discourage, your 'life partner' from deciding they actually prefer to spend more or their time with someone else. Or they want to live with someone else. In truly hellish cases maybe they move away from you! Its especially funny to call this communism because a true believer in communism would say 'well maybe people cannot tolerate this now, but that's just because they live in a toxic society that indoctrinated them with shitty memes. If they just read enough theory and live under better conditions they will love communism'. Well Im a true believer in my heart but if you aren't already a NEW SOVIET MAN/GIRL/ENBY this might be a bridge too far.

Note I did not know this when I decided to be poly. I chose purely based on 'idk communist solutions sounds like MAX LOVE' and im a believer in love.

Note one can try to patch communism by insisting on idk primary/secondary and stuff. But this destroys the logic and empirically is very unpleasant. Its EXTREMELY important not to end up doing de facto LEFTY as a compromise between communism and LIB. Total nightmare.