lifeinpoly – life in poly

Coming out, again

My father recently celebrated his birthday. Well, “celebrated” might not be the correct word, but it sure happened.

He’s had a tough few years, for various reasons I don’t feel like getting into now, but let it suffice to say that a few people who were very important and influential in his life have passed away in the last couple of years, under less than ideal circumstances, and he has been stuck holding too much grief. He’s a sensitive sort and can be violently emotional and defensive. He and I don’t have an easy relationship, but we love each other fiercely. He has remained the only truly important person in my life with whom I have remained purposefully “closeted” for the last couple of years.

So, he had a birthday. It occasioned his speaking to me about things like end of life wishes, wills and trusts and other family matters. He asked me, formally, in writing, if I would consent to take over management of certain family affairs, should he and my mother no longer be able to do so. He asked if he could give me power of attorney in various cases.

My sole reason for not discussing polyamory with him since college (when he did not react very well) has been that I feared rejection, being disowned, something like that. My mother has urged me to “give him a little more credit” – give him a chance to accept me. But, I have been, honestly, afraid. I have not wanted to discuss it with him simply because I have not been ready to face the consequences, should he decide that I am no longer part of the family.

Maybe it’s silly, but plenty of parents have rejected their children this way. It was too painful for me to think about.

Yet, it seemed like a wrong and harmful deception, to allow him to assign such responsibilities to me if he did not fully know and acknowledge who I am, and choose to assign those responsibilities anyway. Which means, logically, that in order to accept that power of attorney, I needed to come out, clearly, and with no more hesitation.

The outcome would be either that he chose to keep me in his life, as his daughter with all that entails, or not.

I thought, better to disown a daughter before spending all that money and time on lawyers and paperwork.

So I sent the email. It said essentially, Dad, I will of course accept these responsibilities and do my best when and if the time ever comes. But, first, I want to make sure you know who I am, and still want me to.

The following day, he cc’d me on some correspondence with his lawyer, indicating how we were moving forward with various paperwork. So, I thought, I guess I’m not disowned.

It was extremely anticlimactic. Which is wonderful.

I wish there were something more profound for me to say but that’s what it was: anticlimactic. Yet, completely in line with how my family usually is with difficult things.

The other day, I was saying hello to my mother on the phone, and my dad broke in (he’d clearly had a drink or two) to say, emphatically, that he loved me, about six times.

He said something else, too:

I am always here, I will always be there for you, so don’t be afraid. Take every risk.

Coming out in pieces

I grew up in a very liberal town. Since I was very young, I was aware of the experience many gay kids have with coming out to their loved ones. It always seemed difficult but necessary, something you just had to do one day as you became an adult. Why would you ever deny who you were? It seemed silly to do that.

My adult reality has been a little more complicated.

I identified as bisexual for a long time, though I did not date many women. I had some experiences with and attractions to women, some strong and meaningful. However, the bulk of my dating and relationship experiences have been with men.

I’ve mentioned the idea of “passing” before and I think my mostly hetero-leaning bisexuality allowed me to mostly pass as a straight person in any cases where it might matter or be difficult. I’ve never considered it something to hide, but there is the reality there that I can, if I want to. Since I’ve never fallen deeply in love with a woman and the issue of declaring my sexuality has never really forced itself to the foreground, I’ve sort of been spared having to really deal with the issue of “coming out” in a meaningful way. In my social groups, or when the topic comes up, I have no problem saying that I’m bisexual and sharing my point of view from that side.

So what?

What I’m trying to explain is this: I’m very much aware of the privilege of my options.

When it comes to polyamory, I’ve always taken an open, “make no assumptions” approach to romance and dating, and never thought to hide that from anyone. It seemed a silly thing to hide, it did’t occur to me to hide it. In my early 20s, when I was dating a lot, I wasn’t keen on the words “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” because it implied commitment to one person, and I didn’t like that one bit. It felt wrong, untrue, and I didn’t use these words if I could help it. I lost out on some opportunities to date really nice people because they couldn’t (or did not want to) deal with my refusal to forsake all others, even in an abstract way, when there technically were no others at the time.

With Husband, we were technically open, and very liberal, anything-goes people in general, but we were not actively dating others. This made us effectively monogamous for years, in our own eyes and in those of our friends and family. Since there were no others in our lives, why correct them? Why even think about it? We were lulled into a comfortable social status and had no reason to question or disrupt it, until we decided to start dating. One thing leads to another, and we have Boyfriend in our lives now, for which we are grateful and happy.

So it happened that, even though I never made an effort to hide anything from anyone, I have felt pretty closeted in some situations, and that sucks.

I’ve come to understand from personal experience how there might be many levels of closet and out-ness. How you could be out to your friends, your social group, even coworkers if you socialize with them, but not your family.

There are levels of out-ness.

I tend to see the following levels of out-ness with things like sexuality and polyamory:

Totally closeted and dating or having sexual encounters on the side, in secret, probably using the internet.
Out to a very small group of people, such as one social circle but not another.
Out to friends and most social circles but not all.
Seemingly totally out, but actually, only selectively. This is where it gets really tricky, the tipping point. A person can seem to be out, can even be an activist for gay or kinky or poly rights, for example, yet be totally closeted when it comes to coworkers or family or certain friends.

And then there was me for an unplanned long time – totally out except for certain family members. I don’t think any of these are good places to be, but it’s a gradual journey, and I do not really fault anyone at any stage in this journey.

Coming out, at any stage, requires vulnerability and potential risks, from being misunderstood or patronized to being disowned and rejected by loved ones. I do think it is worth it, though, knowing that the more people who do come out, the more good examples there will be, and the easier it will be for the next generation, and the next.

I feel this journey is a responsibility we have to those that come next. And I feel strangely in the middle of making it, though it may be slowly, at my own pace.

Advice to a new polyamorist: Everything changes

I’d been talking to a friend off and on about polyamory, and she got in touch again a little while ago. We no longer live in the same city since I’ve moved to SF, but I think we’ll keep in touch. We have a lot in common. She’s married, too. Now she has a young child. She and her husband are young and going through a lot of life changes.

About a year ago, we had lunch and she confessed to being interested in, and perhaps even jealous of, my open marriage. This was almost funny to me because I always admired her and thought she had everything in her life so well put together, that it hadn’t occurred to me that she might think anything similar of me. (Sidenote: Everyone has a wish list and a list of questions and worries, everyone, always.) We talked about marriage and relationships in general, the level of commitment that being open requires, the difference between “open” vs “swinging” vs “polyamory” vs “polyfidelity” etc. There are a lot of definitions to play around with and learn about. It was a lively lunch discussion. It seemed like she was yearning for more freedom and more time to explore, but with her young family, it was just a wish, put on the back burner for a while.

So, when she reached out to me again to ask me more about this topic, I was not surprised. She had just asked her husband to consider an open marriage, to give his consent to her dating. She seemed relieved and pleased that he had given that consent, but also worried because of the way that he gave it. It also worried me.

He said, basically, “Do what you have to do, but I don’t want to hear about it.”

What does that really mean? she wondered. Does that mean he doesn’t feel he has a choice, that he feels forced in to something he doesn’t want? That would be the opposite of her intention, which she said was to expand their relationship within the bounds of honesty, love and mutual respect. And, polyamory is what she wanted, not just a special dispensation to hook up with people at parties. She sought the ability to explore additional relationships, build more connections, and allow for the possibility of multiple loves.

What if she found someone else who was special? What if she fell in love? How would he react to this possibility? she asked him.

His response was, again, not what she hoped to hear. He’d be unhappy but he would find a way to “move on.”

Hardly the response of a person open to the idea of “multiple loves” existing simultaneously.

My advice to her was very basic, but the best I could come up with (and still is): Don’t rush. Give him time. Don’t rush. Communicate a lot. Check in with him a lot and ask a lot of questions and take an interest in his feelings and fears. If he’s anything like my husband (and it sounds like he is), he won’t be the most forthcoming with his vulnerabilities and emotions, so sometimes one must really work to discover them.

I thought about this a lot over the next few days, as it turned out that, she and Boyfriend, both back in the city I left, discovered a connection between…themselves.

Boyfriend then came to discuss it with me and, essentially, make sure he had my permission to see her.

Interesting!

I was taken completely by surprise. It’s been a while since I’ve been so surprised. I’d had no idea. Neither had they, he insisted. I had some very hard days as I obsessively wrestled with a cold wave of emotions and questions.

Over and over, I asked myself: Had she asked me for advice but hidden her real motive? Why would she do such a thing when she could just talk to me honestly? This just didn’t sound like her. I couldn’t see a reason for her to do this and I couldn’t see her, the person I knew, doing such a weird thing. It was a creeping suspicion, the fear of betrayal, yet I couldn’t square it with reality. I also briefly touched, but nearly immediately rejected, the idea that they were already involved, and were coming forward now to mend the mistake. Knowing them both, I knew this just didn’t make any sense.

Then, there are all the fears lurking just below the surface of my life, things like, What if he doesn’t come to join us here? Our plan had been that he would also move and we would continue to plan our future together. Was he seeking a new relationship as a way of anchoring himself there, seeking reasons not to move? This really scared me; the thought of Boyfriend calling me one day to say he’d changed his mind and wouldn’t be moving really shook me and my whole concept of what the next few years would be. It scared me even more because I hadn’t really considered it – I’d started to take for granted that he’d come, and now I was forced to admit I wasn’t sure of anything. This uncertainty was monumental in my mind.

Finally, there was the battle in my heart over the concept of poly itself. I reasoned with myself that there was nothing to fear, that I knew both of them and could trust them. That the beauty of poly was the ability to pursue surprises and romantic experiences just like this. But I was afraid.

Fear takes lots of forms. My fear was jealous, worried and deeply vulnerable and raw.

After a few emotional emails and a long phone call, Boyfriend and I came to a place of understanding, and I was able to make a step that was very hard for me.

My epiphany came, as they often do, while I was in the shower. I wondered, What would happen if I accepted that I may not be able to perfectly trust anyone, and that is ok? What if I accepted that, yet decided to act with perfect trust anyway? Would that allow me to open my heart more? If the real problem in this situation is not whether he dates someone new (because that’s never been a problem in the past), or who he dates (in this case, someone I really like) – the problem is my fear that he will not move, that he somehow does not want our own relationship to continue.

In the end, I wrote my friend a short letter, telling her that at first I felt foolish for not knowing, but realized she would never do anything to hurt me. I told her that whatever happened next, I was her friend, and they had my blessings.

I’d never written a letter like that before. Sending it felt a little like jumping off a cliff. All of the voices of a dominant culture of monogamy whispered to me that perhaps she’d laugh at me, perhaps I was wrong to trust her, or Boyfriend, or anyone, ever.

What happened instead was that she wrote back a longer, heartfelt letter, expressing her gratitude and reaffirming friendship. We talked again that day and I felt as though I could breathe for the first time in days. Of course, who knows what will happen; first she needs to work more with her husband, to see if this will work for him at all, surely a way more formidable task than talking to me! Just shows that humans are so good at building huge towers in our minds, no matter what has actually happened or will happen. We torture ourselves with not knowing, trying to know.

The real source of my epiphany about trust, of course, is Husband. He has been patient and trusting through everything between us for over a decade. Lots of it has been, frankly, ugly and difficult. My own experience has proven to me that falling in love with a new person won’t take away my love for him. I would be far less successful in learning to grow beyond my own immediate reactions of fear and jealousy without his example.

So, back to advice for new polyamorists.

Today, I’d give this advice to new polyamorists. It’s not just for polyamorists; it’s some of what I have learned from polyamory that applies to everyone in every relationship:

Respect and value what you have. Never take anyone for granted.

The person you’ve been with for years still has things to teach you, if you are able to pay the right kind of attention.

Do not torment yourself by assigning negative intentions to people in your mind – ask them and trust them. When in doubt, try to choose the good intention, the positive solution.

Everything can change in a moment, so live fully in each moment. Be real. Don’t lie. Face up. And move ahead.

Invite love. When given the choice, even if it’s complicated, say yes to life.

It won’t be simple or worry-free. But it will be interesting and, probably, completely worth the trouble.

How not to behave when you meet your husband’s girlfriend

Meeting your husband’s new girlfriend is hard. I don’t care how open minded or liberated or positive you are, it’s going to make you anxious and nervous and worried. What if we don’t get along? What if she isn’t really ready to meet the wife? What if she seems nice but actually is going to try to break up our marriage or something? What if I am a failure as a poly person because I even have these thoughts and worries?

Yeah. I had all of these thoughts and many more like them before I first met my husbands’ first post-marriage girlfriend, a few years ago.

I made a lot of mistakes when I met her. Now, though, my totally botched experience will (I hope) help someone else before they mishandle this situation like I did.

I was inexperienced, it was new, and I was, to be honest, feeling really insecure and afraid. Husband had been hit hard with NRE, and I didn’t feel great about it at the time. I was trying to stay positive, trying to remind myself that everything would be ok and that he should be allowed to feel what he felt and celebrate it. I wanted to be able to celebrate it as well, but I was having a really rough time doing that while on the roller coaster of new-poly-experiences-insecurity.

I also knew that I had suggested we meet and all hang out several times and there was always some reason why not. In other words, I was feeling weirdly…avoided. I worried that she was avoiding meeting me because she didn’t care about forming a respectful relationship with him – with us – but rather that she was hiding something, had some bad motives, and would not bat an eye at hurting him or causing collateral damage to me or our marriage. I was also fiercely protective of him, worried about him being hurt by someone else, because I knew, from his side anyway, there were genuine and deep feelings forming already.

So. These things happen, and until I met her, I wasn’t going to feel comfortable about her place in our lives, whatever it would be. Things felt fragile.

Oh, and I was freaked out because I thought we looked kind of alike and that seemed weird and hit some of my insecurity buttons. Weird, maybe. (Is it?)

Nowhere is it written that if you’re dating a person who is already in a committed relationship, you HAVE to engage with or even meet your metamours (aka, your partners’ partners). However, I think it’s a best practice. It shows openness, interest, respect for the life they have beyond you, and hey, you can meet great new friends. It just seems like the logical and respectful thing to do. You don’t all need to become lovers or best friends or even good friends, but being friendly will make everything way more pleasant. Your mileage may vary but I think it’s good for all the individuals involved and good for the health of the various relationships.

When Husband finally was able to set up a time when we could all get together after work for a drink, I was quite nervous. The occasion has been strangely built up in my mind and I didn’t know what to expect. I am a pretty shy person, and I also sort of unconsciously took the attitude that she ought to be trying to impress me. As a non-poly friend (quite unhelpfully) told me, “She should be trying to prove that she is good enough and belongs there.”

Now, I recognize this attitude for what it is: Sensible in the context that it was coming from a monogamous person who views poly as a problem or something to “deal with” rather than a conscious choice and opportunity to make new connections. And worse: Poisonous to the fostering of those hoped-for new connections.

So what did I do?

I walked in to the bar and saw the two of them there, sitting side by side. They looked nice together. I had a difficult physical reaction – nervous tightness in my chest and throat, pounding heart. She and I hugged hello and looked at each other. We ordered drinks and I realized that I had not prepared anything to say or any questions to ask or anything at all, because I had assumed that they were running the show – that this meeting was about her being presented for my inspection. Again, pretty poisonous attitude, created mostly subconsciously by years of training by a monogamy-centric world.

There were some awkward silences amid the small talk about who we were and what we did. In retrospect, her attitude was a bit standoffish and condescending, which I picked up on and felt quite hurt by. In a less vulnerable state I may have seen it for what it probably was – uncertainty, insecurity perhaps, something I could relate to and empathize with. But, I was not in a place yet for empathy. I was absorbed with my own emotional self-preservation. At one point I even said: “This is not about me, this is about you two.”

How’s that for a passive-aggressive emotional distancing strategy.

I was wrong, of course. It was about all of us, together. It was not about the new girlfriend being “presented for approval” to the wife. It was not about the new couple seeking approval in any way from me. It was also not, as I irrationally felt in the moment, about me being presented for inspection by the new girlfriend, either.

What I wish it was and what it ideally should have been was an honest and open minded meeting of people with good intentions in common. While years have now passed, and I feel in retrospect that she and I would not have ever really been good friends or seen eye to eye on many things, I know I did not really allow for that from the beginning. I began the meeting with so much doubt in my heart, I did not really leave enough room for friendship to grow.

I felt so lost and vulnerable at the time that all I could do was try to avoid the situation when I should have faced it and asked myself what good intentions everyone might have, and how I would behave differently if I believed in everyone’s best intentions.

What would I have done differently?

I would have been welcoming and inquisitive. I would have come prepared with some actual things to ask her about herself and her life. I would have been more forthcoming about myself and not sat back waiting to be asked and approached. I would have made more of an effort instead of reasoning that she should be the one to make the effort since she was the one entering “my” relationship. And if she was still less than kind or unresponsive to me, I would not have locked myself away in a huff – I would have asked Husband sooner and with more vulnerability, less anger, to support me, show me care, and give me some more time, which is all I needed, and which I am sure he would have gladly given me.

How should you behave with you meet your partners’ new partner?

Remember that you have the opportunity to be the welcoming committee. You’re in an open relationship and one of the benefits is fun new people. Here’s one now!

Assume the best intentions until proven otherwise. Your partner (who you love and trust, right?) thinks this new person is great. Maybe they are!

Treat the new person as though they might be the nervous one and you wish to put them at ease. You do, right?

You know – behave the same way you’d behave with any new friend coming in to your world…rather than the way you’d approach an invading army. I wish I had.

Hierarchy is just an assumption

Hierarchy is something that gets mentioned a lot when introducing people to polyamorous relationships. I remember very clearly speaking with one non-poly friend, telling her when I had met Boyfriend, and telling her that I thought he was really special. She got very serious and wanted to know, “That’s great, but Husband is still the most important, right?”

The answer to that is always, “It’s complicated.”

I understood her to mean she cared about me, about Husband, about our marriage and our life together, and for that reason she didn’t want to see me screw it all up because of some crush. She was operating within a framework where interests outside the marriage = threats, and her comment was intended to bring me back to safe ground.

Maybe the answer was more like: Of course, yes Husband is the most important. But he’s the most important for all kinds of reasons beyond his socially acceptable title of Husband. And that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for others to also be as important, regardless of title.

Hierarchy is deeply problematic, yet it is assumed in many poly relationships, especially when some of the people involved are married. Even though it is a relationship style practiced by those looking to break free of social expectations and remove themselves from the norm, there is a tendency to fall back on accepted modes of organizing their lives.

Hierarchy can resolve issues in advance by dictating things like “the marriage partner’s wishes always come first” – sure it can – but this type of solution can only be unsatisfying over time, even insulting. Is there really a reason to make sure a rule, rather than just communicate on a case by case situation and see what makes the most sense in order to get the most needs and desires met, regardless of title? If both Husband and Boyfriend want me to do something at the same time, shouldn’t I get to choose based on the situation which thing I want to do, whether I want to fill either need at all? If the rule was, Husband always comes first no matter what, wouldn’t Boyfriend end up feeling like a second class citizen in the relationship? I can’t imagine that ever feeling fair or right.

There are plenty of people who are fine with applying labels such as “primary” and “secondary” partner to their relationship roles, and I have no issue with that, so long as it’s conscious and voluntary. What I have a problem with is the assumption. It’s hard to describe or even explain in polite conversation, but sometimes I feel something unnamably wrong when someone refers to Boyfriend as my “secondary” partner – as though they are belittling the relationship because we aren’t married, something that always upset me before Husband and I were married and someone referred to him as “just” a boyfriend. Our relationship isn’t any less real, I want to say. Words either inflate or trivialize, and I wish they would just describe without doing either of those other things. But it seems awkward to correct people or go down this rabbit hole, so I usually don’t. Maybe I should.

How do you gently correct a well meaning person when they speak this way? Is it even my place or job to do so? Sometimes it’s better to just sigh and smile and move on, is this one of those times?

How do others handle the idea of hierarchy in their poly relationships?

Husband, and the relationship escalator

When I met Husband, I fell in love with him rather quickly. He was so patient, kind, caring, thoughtful and brilliant! He was unlike many of the other people I had dated, and I really didn’t have any desire to date other people during the beginning of that relationship. I think we were both consumed with NRE to the point where our friends wanted to all barf whenever we showed up together. I can’t really remember a lot about that year, other than we went everywhere, did everything together, and it wasn’t suffocating – it was wonderful. We spent all that time together because we chose to and we enjoyed it. We positioned ourselves as being up for anything, and open to anything. Nothing was forbidden between us. But, like many in the beginnings of an intense young relationship, we found ourselves on the Relationship Escalator.

For those unfamiliar with this term: The relationship escalator refers to the socially acceptable, expected escalation of a relationship, through ordered stages such as: meet-cute, casual dating, have sex, “going steady” and monogamous commitment (usually the point where you “claim” and label each other and start using terms like “boyfriend” and doing annoying stuff like assuming you should bring them with you wherever you go), moving in together and marriage, being a lifelong commitment. Some people consider buying a home and having children the end “goal” of the relationship, the end of the escalator, at which point you devote your lives to your kids, brainwash and indoctrinate them into whatever values you were raised with, and forget what fun sex was like.

If you do these steps out of order, you are officially “off the escalator” and there are usually real social consequences. If there aren’t, you will still be questioned about your choices. This social conditioning is deep. It covers everything from whether it’s ok to have sex on the first date (or whether it’s ok to wait a year before having sex!) to when you “should” move in with a partner, to whether you should freak out because you’ve been dating someone for a couple years and he/she hasn’t proposed yet.

I am sad to say that I found myself caught on the relationship escalator. I got really existential about what it “meant” if we moved in together before we got engaged. I got bent out of shape because we hadn’t decided whether to get married within a certain number of years together. I wondered if I had done something wrong, if I had somehow been the wrong kind of woman and broken too many rules and therefore would never get married and never have a family and and and

Christ.

I want to cry when I think about how much pain and confusion I could have saved myself if I had been more familiar with the concept of the escalator – and had accepted that it is completely voluntary and needn’t apply to me. My marriage isn’t doomed because it took us several years to decide to do it, just as it isn’t doomed because we had sex on the first date!

All these rules are there because we’re afraid, I guess. And the escalator I’ve outlined above works really really well, for lots of people. Many happy marriages, happy homes and happy kids are produced. But I could never stand the idea that all these things, in this order, must be destiny, and I would be a failure of a human being if I didn’t hit all the steps at the right time.

I could also never stand the idea that any relationship that doesn’t end in marriage, kids and mortgage is a failure. Say I spent 6 months dating an awesome, interesting person, and it turned out we didn’t want the same things, so we hugged and said goodbye, but they taught me a lot about human nature and I had tons of fun with them – this is a failure? I don’t buy it. I’m just too logical. It all depends on what your goals are in any given interaction.

Back to Husband. We were on that escalator, without really questioning it. We married and lived together and were mostly happy. Somewhere, though, I felt like I had given up a lot of things about myself and my life that I missed. I missed dating a lot. I missed meeting new people and the excitement of that. I missed the romance that brings with it. And at some point I realized, I was kind of letting myself go. I wasn’t trying so hard. I wasn’t dressing as nice, I wasn’t going out of my way to be romantic myself, even as I grumped that he wasn’t as thoughtful or romantic for me anymore. Typical complaints of a marriage, or any LTR, maybe, but they felt huge to me. I had been pondering if I wanted children, but something inside me rebelled, said, you aren’t done here yet, you haven’t really explored everything yet.

I was reading a little about polyamory back then. This was several years ago. As I read I recognized a lot about these other relationship styles that reminded me of my own philosophies to dating in the past. I realized there was another way to be married and be happy. And I realized that there was this relationship escalator thing, and I had a choice. I was on it, but I could get back off. I could step back and think about what direction to take. I wouldn’t be the first or last to do it. And to my relief, I realized it didn’t mean I had to break up a wonderful marriage or destroy anything I loved – I could build new things right beside what I already had.

Studying the concept of the escalator and really thinking about it, examining my own steps along the way – this really saved me. It saved my marriage, saved me from making big choices for the wrong reasons.

There is more written now, more blogs, more books, that there was a few years ago when I was seeking answers, and I am so truly happy about that. And very much enjoying our loving, meandering path away from the escalator.

A big part of curbing the tyranny of the escalator is simply to acknowledge that it exists, that it is a matter of choice, and that there are other valid choices. Ultimately substance, not structure, should be what determines the success or value of any intimate relationship.

— solopoly, “Riding the relationship escalator (or not)”

What is polyamory?

Here’s a dictionary definition, from Wikipedia:
“Polyamory (from Greek πολύ poly, “many, several”, and Latin amor, “love”) is the practice, desire, or acceptance of intimate relationships that are not exclusive with respect to other sexual or intimate relationships, with knowledge and consent of everyone involved. It may or may not include polysexuality (attraction towards multiple genders and/or sexes).”

For me, the definition that resonates most is this one: “Consensual, ethical, responsible non-monogamy.”

Seems simple and to the point, but within that definition is contained a lot of rules, effort and work for anyone involved.

For something to be ethical, it must be consensual. For something to be ethical and consensual, it must be discussed, honestly, openly and among equals. Those involved must know what they are getting into, agree to it freely, without coercion of any kind, without emotional blackmail or fear of reprisals.

Polyamory is something I’ve always felt made logical sense, since before I ever heard the term. When I was young, I recall being confused by television plots that hinged on someone getting suicidally or homicidally upset by their boyfriend or girlfriend dating someone else behind their back. Why not just talk about it? I wondered.

In college, I always dated multiple people. I would go on dates and quite early on (like maybe before the main course arrived but after the salad?) I’d ask, So, how many people are you dating right now? It seemed to me a matter of basic respect that I would not assume they didn’t have other stuff going on, just as it was a matter of basic respect that they should tell me honestly if I asked. Often, this question seemed to take people back. Some friends applauded my blunt approach and others cautioned me not to ask questions like that because it would “send the wrong message” but it always worked for me. I believed (and still do) that it sends the accurate message that I value blunt honestly above pretty much all else; that I wouldn’t make assumptions but that you shouldn’t, either.

I can’t recall when I first learned the term “polyamory” but it was probably some time in college. I was involved in BDSM, sex education, assorted sex-positive clubs, parties, communities etc. Still, I didn’t start really identifying as such for some time, because it was so hard for me to understand why a “poly” life needed identifying, why most people wouldn’t just admit that they had emotional needs that went beyond whatever one person they were dating, why so many insist on denying that about themselves and their partners, and why so few people seem to take the time to have open discussions with their partners about what they want, what boundaries they will agree to, what they want out of their relationships.

To me, “poly” is a kind of shorthand for a type of highly conscious relationship-building. It indicates a high standard of honestly, forthrightness, a willingness to communicate a lot, and an ability to look at oneself in relation to others with an occasionally cold, analytical gaze.

It is also, despite several years of semi-incidental monogamy in my past, pretty much the only way I understand how to have relationships.

(How two highly conservative, monogamous, married, straight hetero parents produced me, I have no idea. It probably has something to do with all the fantasy and sci-fi books they left all over the house.)

Not always available

One giant annoyance that comes with being a relatively out poly person is the Nice Guys Laying In Wait. You think you have a friend, or even just friendly casual acquaintance, but you’re wrong. As soon as he hears you are poly, and therefore might possibly be sexually available, even though you’re married, and he morphs in to Mr. Hitting-on-you-super-inappropriately.

That’s obnoxious, because I’d always like to think my male friends were really my friends, not just laying in wait for the time when maybe they will convince me to have sex with them. But it is even worse when they decide that because I’m married, I must want to have sex with everything that moves. The assumption made by some that because my marriage is open, I must be theoretically available, all the time, to anyone, really turns my stomach.

I want to yell at these men – You were perfectly respectful when you thought that I was another man’s property and therefore totally off-limits. The minute you find out I might have independent sexual agency, you dispense with the layer of respect and hit on me, make sexual advances, touch me, etc. in ways you never did previously. It is fucked up to treat women with different levels of respect depending on whether or not you believe them to be owned by another man. FUCKED UP.

I know any out poly married lady reading this will recognize the experience. Gross. Men: When you learn a lady is in an open relationship, don’t do this. Don’t earn this Nice Guy (TM) merit badge. Please. Don’t.

Community, writing, belonging

Even if you like to write, even if you are not worried about the actual process of writing, blogs are scary. They are scary because you’re talking to the world at large. Blogging about something like polyamory is scary because there is such a particular community around the topic, and I don’t really feel like I belong to that community. Not really. And, maybe the scariest part: I don’t really know if I want to belong to it.

I’ll explain that.

I’ve belonged to a lot of communities and chosen families and subcultures in my life. Goths, club kids. Sex positive people. I’ve led sex ed workshops and consent classes. I’ve been a very involved Burningman person many years, off and on. I’ve put lots of work, time, effort and love in to many times of social endeavors including Burningman camps and other subculture explorations and events. And I’ve also attended my share of sex-positive and poly-community events, parties, talks, happy hours and readings.

Still, I never felt a particular ownership or allegiance to a certain community. I’ve always wondered about people who get really into one thing and seem to define themselves by that thing, whether that is being part of the fetish or BDSM “scene”, the Burner “scene” or being gay, lesbian, poly.

I know that in many ways my refusal to latch on to a group and make that my identity is because I am independent and stubborn and I always seem to have to be different, even when presented with a wonderful community of “freaks.” There’s part of me that has held court in my heart since I was in grade school – that part that thinks, You’ll never fit in anywhere so don’t even try – just be you, don’t look for a community, and you’ll never be rejected from one.

I also know that this refusal is an expression of my extraordinary privilege. I can “pass” as a “normal” person whenever I want to. I never made the kind of commitment that would prevent me from “passing” as whatever I feel like being that day. I am reasonably well off and employed and cared for, and I’ve always lived in liberal, accepting urban areas like NYC or SF, where I live now. I’ve never lived in a place where your sexual (preferences or orientation or fluidity) could get you beat up or killed. I’ve had relatively little to put with, other than being a female (which has plenty of its own problems but I’ll try to stick to my point).

So, perhaps I didn’t cleave too strongly to any community because nothing pushed me. I wonder, if I write about poly, do I have an obligation to read a billion poly blogs and engage with them, or codify some rule set, or use particular buzzwords and accepted terms? Some are useful but some don’t apply to me. This is part of what is scary about blogging (about anything). There are always others who went through what you have, who know more than you, who disagree. That’s ok. And maybe I should read more. I kind of miss personal blogs. Remember LiveJournal? I miss the hell out of that. Partly, I think this blog is my hail mary attempt to see if that sort of personal blogging thing that I had back in the LJ days even really still exists.

Does it?

Beginning

When I was young, I would write every day, for an hour or more. I’d come home from school and whatever else I was doing – theater or dance practice, seeing friends, etc. – and I’d sit at the computer and do a big brain-dump. I’d write about anything I wanted. Sometimes it was poetry and stories, but most of the time it was pure journal, stream of consciousness or well-crafted sentences depending on the day, but it was my emotional and creative outlet. I’d get everything down about the day that I needed to vent about or wanted to preserve for later. Good and bad.

Now, I thank my younger self for all of that writing. I can go back and look at the thousands of words I wrote and remember exactly what it was like to be 14, or 15, or 18. Most people don’t have this. My memory isn’t the best, so it’s especially delightful to be able to relive happy moments in extreme detail. Thanks, former self, for thinking of me like that.

I work in marketing now. I write a lot of words every day, in the form of emails, notes, research, blogs, longer articles and social media postings. I do it for myself, to keep in touch with people, but mostly I do it for my job, because content marketing is a cruel mistress and she demands to be fed all the time. Sometimes I feel supremely lucky that I get to do things I like and get paid: I research things that are interesting and I write and photoshop and tweet around them. And of course, sometimes I lie around consumed by depression and ennui and obsessing about how my career may have “taken” from me the things that were personal and dear to me – writing and making art.

I’m sure most creative marketing types who got in to the field because they were “creative” an “good at that sort of thing” have days like this.

Anyhow like many before me, I begin this blog by introducing myself and my desire to write again/more/better/differently. I’ve tried before, but this time is different.

This time I’m beginning a blog because I’d like a place to discuss polyamory. It seemed like a great idea when I was registering the domain, but now it actually feels a little bit scary. Still, I’d like to try, and I think I could use the space to do it. So, hello! And here is a new blog about my life, sort of, but mostly life and thoughts as they relate to poly. I make no promises about staying strictly on topic or posting on a schedule, because the one thing this blog will not be is a soulless content-marketing machine. For that, I get paid. This will just be for me, for fun, for now.

Cheers!