The Starvation Economy

Resurrecting this piece from the back of the library of my thoughts aka my Notes app. I wrote this in Italy while walking the Cinque Terre in September.

Polyamory has been the most intense seven year journey of unwinding romantic capitalism from my nervous system. I have finally landed that my securest attachment has to be to god before anyone. Humans are fleeting, everything around us is never for certain. People leave, turn on us, and die. But god never does.

This is the first of many pieces I hope to do about love and polyamory.   See other blog posts for content related to love and Emotional Intelligence and Relational Skills.

The Starvation Economy 

Starvation Economy is a term from ‘The Ethical Slut’ a book about the ethics and integrity of consensual non-monogamy. The term describes the intense fear that there isn’t enough love to go around, leading us to hoard it from our partners.

This fear of not having enough shows up in relationship and love just as it does in business and money.

If we believe there is enough money for us and everyone else - we have an easier time making it, spending it, and letting money flow like the river of life.

But if we believe there isn’t enough money for us and everyone else, we struggle to earn, feel anxious about spending, and cling to resources—saving excessively, hoarding (billionairs), operating from fear.

In a similar vain, if we believe love and attention are scarce resources, we try to control our partners, feel anxious and obsess over having enough quality time.

For many of us, love was a scare resource, and so was money. And, as I’ve grown up, I’ve learned more and more that we live in the most abundant universe. And all realities are available to us.

If we trust and rewire our subconscious to know, see and believe that there is enough to go around, we can move through the world, our life, and our relationships with a wide-open heart free from the fear of clinging to love.

We can rejoice in our partners’ connections, rejoice in what our connection with our partner truly is (without overlaying narratives of who we want them to be to us), enjoy our own presence and alone time, and most importantly, ask for what we want—not from scarcity, but from the deep knowing that we deserve it and trusting that what we want will come.

With this flowing heart and foundational tust, we also recognize our own capacity to pursue other connections with the understanding that our needs and desires are meant to be fulfilled.

This awareness and trust only comes from a deep somatic understanding that the universe is inherently abundant.

It takes time to build this trust in our bodies with god, but it can be done.