Polyamory

xp don't think "routine" was the point, the point I got in the context of the discussion was that you don't have to make a special appointment

I think the thing that is the most salient to me (and what struck me as traditionalism) is the consistency of "waiting for one another" -- when plenty of couples I know don't have those routines. The other person will have things come up, make spontaneous plans with other people, etc.

you've heard of figurative language, right?

well that's you then, no need to project so much onto what was a completely innocuous comment xp

xp - the phrase "fuck off douchebag" rings a few bells for me, so yes

so glad we're discussing this

xp j - it was innocuous! I am not saying that there's anything wrong with it! I am just saying it is traditional and a bit boring "to me" -- not that there is anything wrong with it.

polyanomie

xp, oh does it really? Good then. Fuck off, douchebag.

That it doesn't jibe with my experience or that of most of my friends. However, I imagine it is probably how the vast majority of people are.

the less fun people

That must feel nice and comfy and smug to think

not you or your friends, though

got it

it doesn't seem that wise to be calling out people's relationships or lives for being boring in the middle of an actual decent discussion of polyamory, but now that we know you're a bold risk-taker couldn't you just let it lie and stop trying to own your overstep? xxxxxp

To be perfectly honest though, yeah my life is more routine now with a child. But having a two-year-old run up to you like a maniac when you walk in the door and say a new completely ridiculous thing every night has not gotten boring yet.

xp - not really, conventional and boring is nicer and more comfortable.

But back to polyamory (sorry for the derail -- really) - and what I was saying is somewhat related to my take on it:

Jealousy is mostly unhealthy (hell, maybe entirely), but there is jealousy in relationships over many things that aren't just your partner having sex with another person. There is jealousy over time spent with family, children, friends, at work, doing creative pursuits. I think the key issue is to isolate the "sexual" aspect from the equation.

Jesus folks

And the comment about making a "special appointment"! I mean, "date night" is a real thing! Monogamous couples have to make special plans to have time alone together!

I wish, I've to give ten weeks notice for pints

i think it's established (out there) that polyamorists must often deal with time-jealousy that is not strictly sexual

maybe even time-jealousy over things that would not be paid as much attention between monogamous partners, who do still have their own time-sharing problems

I think a lot of people also find that sexual involvement with a second person can interfere with your emotional connection with the first person. I'm not saying there aren't people for whom this isn't true, I'm just saying I think that's another reason most people aren't comfortable with polyamory. It's a fair point that people get jealous of other pursuits too, for sure, but I don't feel like, idk, getting together with friends and jamming gets in the way of my connection with my wife -- if anything it makes it stronger when I come back. Whereas spending a lot of one-on-one time with a woman I'm attracted to will tend to get in the way of things with my wife.

If that's boring, so be it. Everyone gives up some things to gain others. Sometimes I feel like polyamory is presented as having your cake and eating it too.

I think a lot of people also find that sexual involvement with a second person can interfere with your emotional connection with the first person.

This is totally true! When my now-ex and I were first getting together, he was dating another woman (who had a primary partner), and it was problematic for me. And when we talked about it, it came down to, "I have trouble getting in the mood because you are seeing someone else." And then he stopped seeing her, and that part of our relationship was fine.

His previous relationship was an on-again/off-again poly thing (his gf's desires). He was fine either way.

if it's not too personal to ask, did you get any psychological insight into why that would be (the getting in the mood thing)? you can imagine a sorta no-nonsense pro-poly saying 'why should that matter right now, let's just be together' etc

well, in our case, sex was a key part of "being together," and the fact that I had trouble getting off, basically made sex "not good" -- as far as what caused it? Anxiety and insecurity. Envisioning him with this other woman. Worrying that she was a better lay than I was. Normal stuff.

i had a fairly normal monogamous relationship with a woman with some non-sexual… entanglements when i first met her, she wasn't poly, just had kind of a very jealous eye on her own social/relationship freedom, and i didn't think i felt much sex-related anxiety, but the plain not-knowing involved in her maintaining some of her privacy really tended to eat at me especially when we were precluded from spending time together. it was kind of impenetrable to me at the time.

i am not too prone to thinking in terms of 'is someone else better?' in many kinds of relationships, it seems like an interesting thing to keep in mind when considering the emotional aspects of polyamory. a much more poly-inclined woman i was involved with made some offhand remark about how easily someone else in her life made her laugh and that was waaaay worse than the fact that she slept with him sometimes.

maybe aside from all the other junk one reason people feel secure with monogamy is that it tends to quiet the question (in whatever form), 'is someone else better?'.

as if 'they're with you' -> 'no one else is better'

Many of my friends are musicians in bands that tour for weeks/months at a time, and a lot of them are in monogamous relationships that have "special" rules for when the musician is on tour, which is a bit different from standard polyamory, but it is related in terms of rules, sex, and communication. One friend of mine who is poly, let's call him, Jeff, seems to suffer from chronic sleep deprivation, that some of us (friends of his) joke is due to the large amount of time spent processing with all of his polyamorous partners.

I hate monogamy and I hate polyamory. For me, the perfect relationship would be the old-fashioned marriage with well-managed affairs. I imagine that's still understood to be the norm among certain types. Certainly, I never expect to be totally faithful but what I can promise is that they'll never find out. And that's what I want in return. People doing things with other people can really hurt me, but just be clever and don't let me know! (this is difficult, though, and has been for thousands of years.) Anyone who said to me with a straight face 'I want you and nobody else till I die' I could never respect the opinion of.

Your predilections are on record, though, Mr de Sade: The 'Incest Laws': What's The Point?

;)

maybe aside from all the other junk one reason people feel secure with monogamy is that it tends to quiet the question (in whatever form), 'is someone else better?'.

as if 'they're with you' -> 'no one else is better'

― j., Wednesday, June 4, 2014 7:09 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See, this is where I do think all the forced "You must change yourself and destroy your jealousy!" stuff isn't totally off the mark, just because these are unpleasant, sad feelings to have that aren't really driven by something the other person's doing, right? I mean it gets at issues of self esteem, being able to believe other people when they say they love you, being happy being who you are and not needing to be Superperson, etc. I'm not articulating this well I think, but there's an area here where when questions like that need to be quieted, it might be interesting to face down why we're asking them of ourselves.

I think sometimes "self-esteem" means knowing what won't make you feel good and not accepting it.

I mean it gets at issues of self esteem, being able to believe other people when they say they love you, being happy being who you are and not needing to be Superperson, etc. I'm not articulating this well I think, but there's an area here where when questions like that need to be quieted, it might be interesting to face down why we're asking them of ourselves.

No, I think you are articulating it well! I feel like it comes down to whether working on quieting these questions, depending on how much work it entails, is worth having the relationship with the other person/people? For me, I couldn't imagine getting to a point where I was okay with it, and I gave my partner an ultimatum (her or me). I think the most important thing is to stand up for yourself and communicate in an honest and respectful way: whether you are poly - ok, or poly - not ok.

xpost Sure, totally agreed! Again, I'm definitely not campaigning for everybody to go this route. But, just to throw another straw man in the ring, just as it would be kind of fucked to be deeply disturbed if you come home one day after work and find that your partner is bowling with friends, similarly it would be kind of fucked if you're spending every waking minute fighting back the desperate fear is someone else better??.

Like the thing to "accept" is that your needs and your partner's needs mean the relationship is over.

Like basically I am suggesting that there are some monogamy-wired people who might lead potentially happier lives in the long run from going through some of this jealousy self-analysis stuff - not from dabbling in polyamory as such, just by forcing themselves to ask questions like, why does it make me unhappy to think x or y?

not from dabbling in polyamory as such, just by forcing themselves to ask questions like, why does it make me unhappy to think x or y

oh definitely! I think I tried to say the same thing upthread about codependency and self-esteem issues.

Sure, but having thought through that stuff quite a lot, I came to the conclusion that I am flawed, that I am as sure to get jealous if my partner sleeps with someone else as I am to get hungry if I don't eat, that secondary sexual relationships interfere in ways we can't completely control, and that the best compromise for me is monogamy. I don't believe I can completely rebuild myself like some kind of polyamorous bionic man.

xxp yeah, it's a good idea to work out those issues if you're going to be in a relationship with someone. years ago i almost slept with a married woman, and i think about what it'd be like to be the husband in that position. before i commit myself to a relationship i'd really like to have my shit sorted out because if i was married i know there's plenty of young dudes out there like me, and a lot more of them who are way more carpe diem and less riddled with doubt, and i know women like sex and having fun, too. it's hard to blame people when temptation calls, especially since we only have one life which can be seriously boring and shitty sometimes.

i almost feel guilty if i'd ask someone to deny themselves all the fun and adventure out there just to be with me, because sometimes i regret not sleeping with certain people when i was in a committed relationship. this is a tough issue.

biomorphous polyonic mannnnnn

See, this is where I do think all the forced "You must change yourself and destroy your jealousy!" stuff isn't totally off the mark, just because these are unpleasant, sad feelings to have that aren't really driven by something the other person's doing, right? I mean it gets at issues of self esteem, being able to believe other people when they say they love you, being happy being who you are and not needing to be Superperson, etc. I'm not articulating this well I think, but there's an area here where when questions like that need to be quieted, it might be interesting to face down why we're asking them of ourselves.

i don't disagree, doc, but my thought was that

1) wondering whether there is someone else better (than us) is natural for us

2) there literally are only very constrained reasons for raising the question when someone evidently continues to 'choose' (however you want to frame that) you over every other person, so it's a natural stop on (1)

The reason I don't wonder very often "is there someone else better for me" is because I realize that there might be. There probably is. There always could be. There are billions of women on the planet, what are the odds that there isn't? So I don't stay up at night worrying whether I could have found someone better at all, because to me that's not the point, a quest to find the absolute best person possible. That's a quest that would never end.

Best to concentrate on better hair.

nonono, i'm not talking about you wondering about someone better for you, i'm talking about wondering whether there's someone better THAN you, which might cause you to be anxious or insecure about your relationship

in an actually poly arrangement, you have a prima facie reason to be wondering about that - maybe your partner does or will come to like another of their partners better

there are of course other reasons to wonder about it in a monogamous relationship, but they're not prima facie reasons

so uh long post

I was militantly poly for many years, basically from 18 to 40. Lots and lots of long talks w/primaries and others. I was not very into the free-for-all atmosphere that The Ethical Slut imo celebrates, I was basically coming from a place like Crass' "Smother Love" song, more haughty and politicized. Pat Califia has an even more uncompromising piece against monogamy in the Public Sex anthology, I was a big fan of that & her/his writing in general. Not being super into anonymous/casual, I preferred having primaries along with other occasional partners who were friends or in our circles. Although it might seem like "having your cake and eating it too", there's work involved. One thing that I remember really clearly is my partner at the time saying "just because I'm having issues with it doesn't mean I'm not OK with it" when I was headed out on a charged date w/another person.

I also remember w/sadness how it hurt my primary when my lover called once and she (the primary) could hear the pitch and sweetness change in my voice as I talked, please nobody itt do that (primary and I are still friends 20 years later).

Then I fell in love with, and eventually married, a woman who is not poly at all. We explored the whole "dating other people" thing during the time we were together b4 marriage (almost 4 years, not co-habiting). I am not a very jealous person sexually (see fidelity vs. commitment comment above). When she was w/somebody else, she felt awful about it, and even though it was OK with me, that didn't make her feel better. When I was w/other people, she was unhappy & it was very hard for her. Eventually, a few things became obvious.

- I realized that some of the time I sought out poly adventures in the past was because it created drama in my primary relationship, and I used to be addicted to drama.

- the reason it was hard for her wasn't because of anything personal she needed to deal with, or any kind of uptight control freak scene (see jealousy again). It's just not the way she's wired. If her inability to accept it had been less honest, we wouldn't have gotten married (there were obviously some very long discussions here). figuring out this whole thing kinda defused my political/theoretical objections to a monogamous relationship, at least w/her (cuz she's awesome).

- post-marriage, I'm actually fine with just one person sexually, and it doesn't feel weird. At first it was harder, and it still comes up sometimes for us & results in conversations. But I don't feel like I'm making any greater of a sacrifice than she did during the years she genuinely tried to understand & live w/it.

so that's my journey from militant poly to complicated mono. In general, I think people should cut their partners more slack around these issues, both ways. One good Califia quote is something like "don't blame the other woman for your divorce, blame the screaming and china-throwing you did when you found out about her."

also, this is really OTM:

The reason I don't wonder very often "is there someone else better for me" is because I realize that there might be. There probably is. There always could be. There are billions of women on the planet, what are the odds that there isn't? So I don't stay up at night worrying whether I could have found someone better at all, because to me that's not the point, a quest to find the absolute best person possible. That's a quest that would never end.

― ₴HABΔZZ ¶IZZΔ (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 4, 2014 6:16 PM

xp oh ok, well I think "is there someone better than me" in a poly relationship seems like a pretty rational fear, no? I mean it seems like there'd obviously be a decent chance that your partner, spending intimate time and having sex with someone else, would get attached to that other person and decide they'd rather spend more time with that person and less with you. I mean to me it just feels like inviting that to happen, because that's kind of how hormones seem to work. It seems to me like to be truly ok with that, you have to be ok with a looser, more tenuous form of attachment that's more likely to dissipate. Although it would be interesting to see data, if there is any, on, say, the rate of divorce in poly marriages, but it's probably a small sample size with unusual characteristics. I mean maybe for some people that's just it: your relationship may be more likely to end some day, but what's so bad about that? I see that side of it.

great post, sleeve.

and hurting u have been making some great posts.

i would obviously be a different person were i able to have an appropriately close human connection with more than one partner. honestly i can't even fathom it. to find one person i love enough to actively miss them when they're not around is a tiny miracle to me.