The Polyamorous Misanthrope

Should you have a group marriage or multi-adult household?

No.

Surprised? Really, there’s no reason to be. I do not consider group living The Ideal Way to Live. Oh, yes, it can suit people and and there are many that love it, but that does not mean that I think for a second it would suggest that it is ideal for everyone. It isn’t.

Consider very carefully what it is you do want out of a relationship before you get started with this. For instance, you might decide, especially after careful consideration, that monogamy is the most fulfilling life path you can have. I am not anti-monogamy by any means. I am not in favor of monogamy being considered the only path, merely a path that might work well. One of the most respected members of a group marriage discussion group in which I participate is monogamous. He is deeply in love with his wife, does not want a romantic relationship with anyone else, but joined the list out of curiosity to see what we nutcases were up to. He knows in his heart that monogamy is the happiest and most fulfilling choice for him. What makes him unique is that he understands that while what makes him happiest is something society generally sanctions, it is not necessarily the One True Way.

When deciding if you want a group household, it’s probably a good idea to analyze why you want it.

So, what do you expect to get out of it?

Hot sex?

Reality check: Yes, the sex is nice. Don’t forget about real life! While people do have sex, they also have to wash dishes, take out the trash, rear children, do laundry, pay bills and earn a living. A group household will have just as much difficulty making time for each other as any married couple. Just like in a monogamous marriage, you’re going to get time alone with your love about as often as you can manage to make that time.

Unconditional love?

Reality check: Just because you live with someone, don’t expect it. Polyamorous households have about the same quality of love as monogamous marriages - it can range from wonderful to truly hideous.

Instant Support System?

Reality check: In a good poly household, yes, you’re going to have a somewhat wider “instant support system”. Depending on where you live and the attitude of the community to group marriage in general, though, you may be on your own outside of your household. This is not a way of life that people are used to. Many people disapprove of it pretty strongly. Many of these people will be your very own blood. Be prepared for that. You may wind up feeling a bit isolated. In fact, watch for this, because it can be a warning sign for other trouble. You know, one of the abuse warning signs: If you’re encouraged to drop most former associations, that’s a check mark about whether or not you’re in a terribly unhealthy relationship.

Okay, so you’ve decided this is really what you want.So how do you form such a relationship?

If you do not presently have a partner/spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend, you’re cool. Go date polyamorous people. Get to know them. Laugh, have water balloon fights, go play Frisbee in the park with them, heckle bad movies together and have a good time. Relationships of various sorts may form, and chances are good you’ll at least make some close friends. While not all polyamorous people want group marriages, some do. You might meet some people who you love deeply and with whom you want to form a marriage.

Oh? How do you find polyamorous people? That’s easy. Go on the Internet, and join every discussion group you see even vaguely related to group relationships. Be sure to explain how good you are in bed and how your life is unfulfilling because you have so much love to give people. Make sure discussions revolve around sex. Use the expression Hot Bi Babe a lot. This is sure to attract polyamorous people. Be sure to point out to anyone who has a discussion on the list about anything other than sex that they not sex positive. (Not really! This won’t make you any friends at all. It’s just a reality that you do see this from time to time).

In reality, meeting people who are polyamorous, much less people interested in polyamorous group households, can be difficult. They don’t not wear signs, and many keep mighty quiet about our lives. Even more of us have been burned so many times by people that we get suspicious. If you do want to meet poly people, the Internet is a good resource to start with. There are hundreds of polyamorous discussion groups out there - many of the specific to local areas. There are regular conventions, camping events, and get togethers in most urban areas. Rural living is somewhat more problematic for this. But, among these people might be people who are also interested in forming a group household.

The problem here is that just because someone is looking to form a multi-adult household does not necessarily mean that this person is going to be compatible with you. It’s one interest out of thousands possible. Someone who was into Country music and did not like children, thought Renaissance Faires were for idiots who never got over playing dress-up, and was a member of Greenpeace would be about as poor a match as is possible for me. I do not care how hot looking or intelligent the person was, this Just Wouldn’t Work.

Compatibility does make forming a group household somewhat more difficult. Finding two people who are compatible enough to be together to form a marriage can be hard enough. Trying to add to that and you can find yourself in a nightmare. Patience is a good idea if you don’t want to have your life blow up in your face.

So, what kind of things do you look for when looking for people that would be good spice for a group household?

That’s a hard question, really. You do want team players. You want people who can approach something without an agenda. You want to make sure YOU don’t have an agenda, or are bogged down by expectations. You want love and I am NOT talking New Relationship Energy here. That newly in love feeling rocks, dunnit? It also melts your damned brain, and that’s a bad basis for deciding to form a household. Don’t do it. The stupid, it BURNS.

When you do form a multi-adult household, you do want a plan. You want to outline things in the most unromantic fashion possible. You want to outline finances, you wanna talk kids. You want to talk about household duties. I know we poly people love to just go with the flow and there’s no-one so easy to trust as someone you’ve just fallen in love with. That’s your biology and procreative urge speaking, and our technological society is pretty removed from rearing infants in the jungle and trying to save them from saber toothed tigers. Check it out with your present reality.

A good way to do this is to look at the situation. If someone came to YOU and said that they were about to do what you are doing, what would you say? If you would whack said person upside the head with a newspaper, rethink.

I hope I’m not being a downer here, but any relationship blow up can be nasty, and even if you’re entering into things with great caution, you can get burned. Even so, it’s a good idea to unhook your heart from your brain long enough to examine what you’re doing.

You might even find that this has created a lovely and fulfilling part of your whole life.

Even though I’m not a parent in a group marriage any more, I still co-parent with my ex-spice.

On a trip to visit my family in Virginia, I was discussing child-rearing with my own parents and we were talking about the different experiences my kids had[1] as a result of being reared by four people. My parents asked what the kids did with the various parents and I told them of SCA events they’d be taken to, hikes they went on, museums they liked, and oh… anything you’d take a kid to do. My parents comment that the kids were lucky that all their parents were willing to share their diverse tastes with the kids.

In fact, I’m writing this on a train. The choice of the train trip was simply for fun - to give the children the experience of a long-distance train trip. I could have flown just about as easily and cheaply, but hey. Experiencing a range of travel is fun, right?

A poly family (even a divorced one), has an opportunity to enrich the lives of the children involved in wonderful ways. Because there are lots of people with different tastes, take that potential source of conflict and try to make it a strength. Abigail and Betty hate museums, but Carlos and David love them? Carlos and David can take the kids around to count dinosaur bones and enjoy the museum experience of the city boy while Abby and Betty plan for a nice camping trip that causes Carlos and David’s pavement-loving souls to shudder.

Thing is, it’s more than just taking the kids on outings[2]. It’s about who and what you are as a person and what you have to teach the child. Are you a musician? Is one of your spice an artist, a good cook or a skilled potter? Do you have a passion for creating geeky gadgetry, or gardening or… God the list goes on forever. What you love and have a passion about is often something you teach a child to give her new opportunities.

Anyone who has been in a large, extended family has experienced this. Like most things poly writers go on about, it’s not entirely poly-specific. Interested, involved adults who care about the children are good for the kids. The variety of experience a child can get from people who care deeply about them is a fantastic benefit to any child growing up.

Besides, for those of us who enjoy the company of kids… Well, it’s fun for us, too!

[2] But make no mistake, the outings are actually important, even if it’s a trip to the park.

One of the issues that often arise in poly situations — especially in group living is who decides what gets done.

Sure, sure, a consensus model works. But have you ever gotten more than two people to happily agree on more than 50% of decisions? (The “happily” part is important in the long run. Just going along without being happy means that you’re gonna have some resentment along the line).

When the consensus model won’t work, there’s another option: The Designated Control Freak.

I found out about the whole concept of the DCF from a good friend of mine, and thought it was funny and cute and a nifty way to solve decision issues. I told my roommate about it, who also thought it was cute, so we jokingly implemented it.

It was at least six months before we internalized the awesome power of the system.

Here’s the way it works. When the person becomes the Designated Control Freak (DCF) the dialog will be in italics.

Albert: Let’s go out to eat.

Betty: Great! Where shall we go?

Carl: I don’t want to go to a vegetarian restaurant.

Albert: Okay, where are we going then?

Carl: Let’s go to the Outback Steak House.

Betty: No, I hate chain restaurants.

Carl: Okay, Betty, where are we going?

Betty: There’s the new Thai place.

<silent pause>

Betty: Okay, I’ll call them and see if they take reservations.

The way the one becomes the DCF is to express a dissenting opinion when trying to come to a decision. If you have a dissenting opinion, you become responsible for the outcome and have to solve the problem. (i.e. what restaurant to go to for an outing). If you have a strong opinion about where to go and speak up, it’s up to you to organize it. Notice that in the course of a few sentances, the DCF changed several times. It wasn’t an argument (and usually when you agree to the DCF system there won’t be).

If you speak up, if you express an opinion, you’re the DCF until someone else speaks up with a different solution.

You’d think it would be a way for people to railroad through their decisions. But it isn’t. Sometimes you recognize that what you really want is not to be the leader, and shut up. Sometimes you want something badly enough to take the reigns.

Part of the beauty of this system is that it is impossible to be a Puppeteer and try to be the Hindmost¹. If you have an opinion, you’re in charge.

This model reduces fights in a lot of areas. You have a specific way you want the bathroom cleaned? Then you’re the Bathroom DCF. Go for it. It gets cleaned your way. You think the trash has to be emptied before you have to tamp trash down in the kitchen garbage bin, huzzah! You’re the DCF and get to do it.

Does this mean a lazy person could slack in the house and never have to do anything because he never speaks up? In theory, I suppose it could. In practice, I’ve noticed that even the most housework-phobic and disorganized have their own tweaks and twitches for which they will become the DCF and not so lazy as all that.

The thing is, this model really also works well because no-one is willing to work that hard to get his way about everything when he’s responsible for the outcome. You’ll usually find that if someone is trying to bully to get their way on everything, they’re seeing the other person as their “hands” to accomplish what they want. Puppeteering, if you will. This removes the strings nicely.

¹For those of you who are not science fiction geeks, in the Ringworld series, there is a culture of creatures who lead from behind — their morality is more-or-less based on cowardice: the ruling class is known as they-who-lead-from-behind, and the supreme leader is called the Hindmost. Their leader is called the Hindmost.

We talk about communication being important between polyamorous people all the time, and with good reason. It is important.

I got to thinking about ways to ensure good communication and came up with the following:

• Tell the truth

This seems really basic and you know, it isn’t. I’m not talking “Brutal Honesty” here. That’s usually more often an excuse for bullying than it is being genuinely honest. What I mean is that it’s a good idea to make sure that you’re first being honest with yourself, and knowing your motives, then being honest with the person you’re talking to. You can do this kindly.

When you’re communicating with a partner, make sure you’re letting him in on what you’re really thinking and feeling. Your partner has to have accurate information to work with. If you’re not comfortable telling your partner what you’re thinking or feeling, either you’ve got a problem being honest, or you’ve got a problem with your partner that goes a lot deeper than “communication”. A good way to know which it is is to check out how close you tend to play your cards to your chest with intimate friends. If you have a problem telling them the truth about what you’re thinking and feeling, too, take a look at your driver’s license. There will be a pic of the person at fault right there.

• If you have a choice, presume benevolent motives.

You and your partner(s) love each other, right? Of all the people in the world that want your good, surely this person or these people will be them. Sure, people can be thoughtless and hurt feelings, but you can say your feelings are hurt and give a person a chance to explain. “I statements” ¹ are great for this. If you say “I feel X”, you’re owning your own feelings without making the other person responsible for them. It’ll also give the person a chance to elaborate on what’s going on in his or her head, and you’ll have more information to work with. Sometimes you’ll get an “Oops, my bad” or “I didn’t mean X quite that way. Lemme ‘esplain”.

If your partner is actually out to get you (or at least if you have such a deep belief), chances are good you’ve got something more than communication going wrong. For the record, punishment doesn’t belong in any adult relationship outside of the fantasy of a BSDM scene, ‘kay?

• Avoid sarcasm.

I was discussing this article with a friend of mine and she wisely pointed out that the allure of sarcasm is rather like the allure of almost all humor. It’s about pain and the reaction to it. The thing is, while sarcasm may be a reaction to pain, far too often it is often an attempt to cause it as a punishment to someone for being wrong somehow². I don’t need to point out that good communication comes from benevolent motives. If you’re using sarcasm, maybe your motives aren’t as benevolent as all that and your partner(s) are right to feel as if they need to back off and defend themselves.

• Ask questions to try to understand. Then listen carefully to the answer!
  

When you don’t understand something, ask a question. Listen to the answer. It’s a simple, yet powerful technique. Far too often when people are talking, they’re just flapping their tongues. Don’t blow your partner off by asking a question and then wait to find something you can jump on to prove your point. Listen to what they’re saying.

These habits are relatively simple, yet very powerful in relationships. Though, like many good habits, do you practice them? Have you made it a priority to learn good communication skills?

If you haven’t, that’s okay. You really can change how you behave. Don’t expect people in your life to fall all over you accepting the change all at once, though. If you’ve made it a habit not to listen, to use a lot of sarcasm or presume malevolent motives, you may have to go through a trust building period — and I don’t mean just a couple of weeks here. People who’ve needed to protect themselves might be slow to open up. But just be patient and practice your good habits.

The results are really fun!
¹When used properly. I’ve seen some sneaky and passive aggressive uses of “i statements” that would curdle the blood of any person whose goal was actual communication.
²We who have the character flaw of being judgmental can be just awfully sarcastic!

Polyamorous literature is full of touching stories of how opening a marriage rekindled a deep and abiding love between the original couple and deepen their relationship.

You think I’m gonna sneer, ain’tcha?

Nope. I’m not. I think many of those stories are quite true and are wonderful tales to tell. I do want to point out a serious problem with these stories. People mistakenly think that opening the relationship was the solution rather than a side effect to other things that couple probably did before opening the relationship.

Plenty of poly people have been guilty of this one. I’ve seen it once or twice among people who were very proud of their emotional maturity, too.

But if you’re bored, if things are tepid between you and your mate, if you’re feeling stifled…

Adding more people is not magically going to help your original relationship.

Oh, polyamory may be the way to go, it really might. But you want to settle the issues between yourself and your mate first! If you don’t want to do it for yourselves, dear Lord, at least think of the people you’ll be getting involved with! Presumably you’re thinking that if you open your relationship you might actually love the people you’re getting involved with. Do you want to drop them in the middle of an unpleasant mess?

Worse, are you really okay with using a person as a band-aid for your original relationship? (I’ll pay you the compliment of assuming not).

So, how’s those communication skills? How are you guys connecting? Do you feel okay with being vulnerable with your mate?

If things are a little blah between you, and you’re willing to do this work first, yes yes yes, you’re going to find a wonderful re-connection and rekindling. It won’t be polyamory that did it, though, but a mutual willingness to open up, communicate and be vulnerable.

And yes, that’ll help the poly part, too.

Just, make sure you get these things in the right order!

It’s been a busy week and I have the flu, so this is a re-run of a personal fave.

Peeve time, and this is a big one.

I get sucked into drama really easily. I’m an intense person and all the gods know that I am a sucker for almost any type of intensity - good and bad.

A personal Poly Drama got me talking to one of my spice recently. As we were talking, he sighed and said, “I don’t really consider myself poly.”

At this point, I looked at him like he had three heads. I mean, he lives in a group marriage, for goodness sake!

“I don’t get it. You’re in love with two women. I know you are,” I said. After all, one of those women was me and I know he’s in love with our wife.

He shrugged. “Yes, I am. But I’m not poly. Polyamory isn’t about love that I’ve been able to see. It’s all about playacting and drama.”

This cut me up short and hard. God, I soo wanted to protest… “No! No! No! Darling, it is too about the love. It’s all about the love. You’re just not seeing it because you’re isolated from the community, you won’t hang out with poly people enough. You’re just getting the bitching at home!”

However, there something about this husband that makes it really hard to bullshit yourself when you’re talking to him. Oh you can scream and rail and call him names and call him a blind idiot, but it’s a waste of time. It’s better to shut up and think a minute. ‘Cause no, he’s not always right. You do have to think. However, he is a damned intuitive man. So, I shut up and thought about what I was feeling in the moment of my own Personal Poly Drama. The whole situation on all parts was not coming from a place of love, I can tell you, and this particular poly situation is so common that if someone posted it to a discussion list it would get an eyeroll for being boring. I’ve seen it and its various permutations at least once a week for the past eight years.

I realized something.

Polyamory is supposed to be about love, but my husband was right. Tragically, far more often than not, it is not. In my watching the poly community over the last eight years or so, I see a truly appalling lack of love . In my own life… God, oh God, it is worse. There are days when I marvel at the complete gall I am showing in having anything to do with the poly community, much less write any articles about relationships. I make so many foolish, blind, unloving mistakes in my relationships it’s not even funny. Oh, the NRE crap? Got that down pat. Sure do. It’s fun and I’m not running it down. It has its place, honest.

Don’t leave out the real thing.

If it ain’t about the love of all your relationships at the core of it, it’s not worth it. Really, it isn’t.

So what do I mean by love?

While I am not a Christian, but when speaking on the nature and power of love, I really think this passage is simply brilliant:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

I’m not about fluffybunny here. The cosmic muffin nonsense that some people pass off as this universal love crap without following through gets to me. It cheapens the work, worth and power of what love really is. Don’t listen to words. Watch actions. Okay, just for the record though, I don’t want any of you guys quoting this article and saying, “See, see, I got hurt, so that’s proof you don’t love me!” Mama Java, she don’t like it when people twist her words. People can fuck up, be blind, be human, be faulty and still be loving. It’s whether or not you keep on trying, ‘kay? That’s the essence of a lot of what I am talking about. Do you get back up and keep trying when you fall short of your own ideals? Do you accept that your loves are going to fall short of their own ideals, and give them the opportunity to keep trying? So many poly people get on their high horses about love. Frankly, the general run of us win no damned prizes in the demonstration of love department. We’re about on par with monogamous folks. That’s okay, mind. We’re human. But let’s step down off the damned high horse, ‘kay? We look like bloody hypocrites, and it’s got to stop.

I wanna go over in detail a bit of this Bible passage (any of you former Southern Baptists out there havin’ flashbacks yet? LOL). I want it very clear that I do not claim for one second, by the way, to fulfill all these goals. They’re goals in becoming a more loving human being. I am not there by a long shot.

• Love is patient. Patience isn’t just the ability to wait without fidgeting. Can you hold your tongue and listen fully when discussing something with a loved one? More to the point, do you? If you want an issue resolved right now can you still bring yourself to wait and give a loved one time to think?Do not confuse patience with putting things off, though. They’re not the same thing. Avoidance isn’t patience.
• Love is kind Kindness is one of those odd things. It’s not quite just being “nice”, though that can be and usually is a component. Kindness has to do with genuinely having the welfare of the other (or self if you’re discussing love of self) at heart.Here’s where the issue comes in, though. You’re not wise enough to make choices for other adults. No, you’re not special here. I know you wanna help, but that kind of nonsense ain’t kind, so if the goal is being loving, don’t be doing it.
• Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude Kinda hard to be loving when you’re wanting something the other person is/has, are bragging, or being caught up in your own ego. That’s really the essence of it. Don’t be so damned ego driven if being loving is your goal.
• It does not insist on its own way If you’re into Me! Me! Me! exclusively, you’re not being loving. Loving yourself does mean taking care of yourself, but balance here. Balance is important.
• It is not irritable or resentful Are you holding on to past pains, shortcomings or things like that? Not loving. This means purging resentments - the ones held against yourself included. Remember what I said, you cannot be honest to goodness loving to someone else until you are doing the same with yourself. In fact, it makes it easier. Trust me on this one.
• It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth “Yeah, she got what was coming to her…” Not a loving thought. “Hey, she learned from that. Cool!” Loving thought… It’s a pretty simple concept.Rejoicing in the truth means that you’re not going to want to pretend that things are other than they are, either. You’re going to want the honest facts, rather than fool yourself. This can be hard, if you want to ignore things that you don’t like.
• It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things This boils down to one essential concept - forgiveness. If you’re dedicated to being loving, you’re dedicated to forgiving. You’re dedicated to forgiving yourself and everyone around you for being flawed and human. This is not an easy thing to do. Worth it, but not easy.

I’ve been doing a lot of ranting on this subject among some of my intimates lately, and one of them brought up an interesting point as well, commenting that he saw a lot of relationship problems as being matters of not seeing things clearly, and laboring under misconceptions. While do not entirely share the full world view (I think that you can still see things clearly and choose to be unloving. He has a somewhat more positive view of humans than I), he does have a point. It’s hard to be genuinely loving when looking “though a glass darkly”. You cannot make the loving choice when laboring under misinformation, self-deception or assumptions. Truth is Love’s most precious companion. Keep that in mind as you look at your own life, your own loves and your own choices in life.

Back many moons ago when I used to write for PolyFamilies, my spice at the time and I used to muse over the fact that the site would be useful to almost anyone. It was mostly about running a household, with the quirkiness of being a multi-adult marriage thrown in. The principles, however, could be applied to almost anything. I still use versions of them in my much smaller, not-a-group marriage household now!

Relationships are similar, you know. The principles of conducting good relationships don’t only apply to the ones you have with people you’re doinking!

There’s an excellent article on the Polyamory Society site by Brian Frederick that lists a series of relationship skills crucial to the polyamorous person. At the very end, Frederick comments that his article could apply to any relationship — business, family or otherwise, and he’s right.

What good personal interaction really boils down to is approaching people with respect and insisting on being respected — on drawing good boundaries around what’s good and what’s not. It’s about communicating honestly.

While I’d be the last person to say that Polyamory Makes Us Better People, I will say that if you are going to dedicate yourself to the skills necessary to maintain good multiple relationships, yeah, it’s gonna have a self-improvement effect in general.

Back about a year ago, when I rejoined the PolyFamilies Community, I was still working in an office and had some slack time. Being bored, I proposed creating a PolyFamilies drinking game based on some common things that happened on the particular list. Some of ‘em are peculiar to the PolyFamilies “subculture”, and some are very much common to Polyamory online discussion groups in general. My apologies for a post that’s insular to one small group, but they begged and pleaded. With tears even. Honest.

So, I’m formally declaring this iteration to be the Official Rules for the PolyFamilies Drinking Game. (And if there’s no more Misanthrope columns, it’s because they filleted me for my presumption. *grin*)

Take one drink if:

• Someone falls for the “Is Swinging Poly” debate gambit.
• Someone starts a pot of Troll Stew[1].
• Anyone asks how they can change a mate’s feelings about something.
• Anyone asks how one gets involved in poly relationships.
• Anyone starts an etymological debate.
• Anyone asks “how do I tell my spouse about my lover so we can all be poly and happy.”
• Someone apologizes for being “off-topic”[2].
• Take a drink if anyone claims to have psychic powers, such as telepathy, empathy, stupokinesis, whatever.
• Whenever someone gets all defensive about not being treated they way they EXPECTED to be treated (for example: “I thought I’d get a little support at least!”) — take a drink!
• Anytime someone asks for a commitment ceremony.
• Anyone who has been dating three weeks, lives on opposite sides of the country and use spousal titles for each other
• Any time someone mentions Heinlein.

Take Two Drinks if:

• Anyone posts looking for a nice female third who doesn’t mind helping
  with the kids and likes three-ways.
• Anyone declares themselves in love with The Monkey for something clever he said.
• Every time Ron or Franklin and Kit disagree.
• Every time someone thinks that Stranger in a Strange Land would work outside of fiction.

Take Three Drinks if:

• Someone tries to explain to the List at Large the Real Intention of the List is to Love Each Other.

• If anyone person unsubscribes in a huff because they did not get the response they wanted.

A lot of people think that there’s some definition of polyamory that’s the final word on the subject. I’d like to address that a little. Technically, this article should be about three words long:

“There isn’t one.”

Once you get past the concept of “willing to have more than one sexual/romantic partner”, you start getting into a lot of debates about what polyamory is or isn’t. All of us do tend to quote our favorite literature on the subject, and that’s okay.

Back when there were one or two writers on the subject you still got a level of disagreement. Now?

There’s a lot of poly writers out there. A whole bunch. Off the top of my head¹ and in no particular order, lemme name some poly writers:

• Debrah Anapol
• Catherine Liszt and Dossie Easton
• Ryam Nearing
• Morning Glory Ravenheart-Zell
• Franklin Veaux
• Anita Wagner
• Noel Figart

This list is hardly even a sample, and many of my readers will probably slap their foreheads, say, “She missed Book X and Blog Y. My God, how could she have neglected to mention that writer!”

You’ll find that these people all have their own views and are unlikely to agree on everything, or even a majority of ideas. That’s okay. Multiple points of view are really useful when exploring a complex topic like polyamory and the more literature we have on the subject, the better. Every one of these writers probably has had readers at some point or another think they’re total whackjobs who have no business contaminating the purity of poly literature with their ill-thought-out and foolish ideas as well.

That’s okay, too.

When you’re going to read about polyamory, I really encourage you to read widely. Don’t take your whole philosophy from a single writer. Hell, don’t take your own point of view from literature only in any case. Test ‘em against your life. What works, what doesn’t? Why?

And don’t say that “The Polyamory Community thinks X”. Defining what the polyamory community is would be hard enough. I assure you that other than the fact we mostly think non-monogamy is okay, you’re going to find such a range of opinions. I often wonder if part of the reason polyamory is unlikely to “catch on” is merely because marketing to the “polyamory community” would be a non-trivial problem at best. You can’t break it down to a useful consumer demographic. My bet is that the media will likely ignore us except as a curiosity for for the fun of scandal.

But the real point here is that there isn’t a final word on polyamory. There can’t be. Oh sure, I’d love to think that my writing is the ultimate in what practical, sensible polyamory life and living is.

But it’s not, and I know it.

And neither is anyone else’s.

¹If I left you out, please understand that this is a list off the top of my head with no real thinking involved, not because I think your work doesn’t count. Do feel free to add yourself and a link to your work in the comments. I hope you will, as I need to work on my blogroll.

For all that I often make cracks about couples looking for that bi-chick to move in with them for lives of Perfect Poly Bliss, sometimes you really do find someone who might really want to form a family with a couple.

When moving from a couple dynamic to a triad, you’ve kinda gotta be willing to let the coupledom go first. No, stop looking at me like that. I know you’ve been together for fifteen years, and have a house and kids. If the couple part is that damn important to you, do everyone a favor. Be poly, if you want. Form relationships and enjoy them. But stop bloody well looking for someone to “add” to your marriage to “make it complete”.

If you really want a triad let it be a new relationship. You’re really not going to be able to preserve the original couple with exactly the dynamic it had. The dynamics are all gonna change, anyway, and probably in ways you couldn’t have anticipated even if you thought you had all the facts. That’s okay. New relationships are new relationships.

I’d like to offer some helpful ideas to consider if you’re wanting to form a new triad.

· Move into a new home together. Move out of the house the couple shared.

I don’t blame you if this first one makes you squawk. Lemme esplain… No, that would take to long. Let me sum up.

If you have been living in a couple for any length of time, you have your own space. You’ve filled that house to make it “yours”. It’s very difficult to integrate a new family member into the old space. It can be done, but let me ask you a few questions:

Do you have unspoken rules about who gets to touch what and when around stuff?

Does the kitchen sort of “belong” to the primary cook, and is this person even slightly territorial? I was, and didn’t realize it. When OLQ moved in together, it was a very good thing, indeed, that we did move into a new house, as the kitchen wound up “belonging” to the cook of the night rather than have territorial issues between people in the household. Moving all of us into a new home was something we did right. (Yeah, we did things wrong, too, but that wasn’t one of them).

Is there a workbench or garage that is the primary “lab” of someone in the present household?

Do you have a method for filing books/papers/CDs/DVDs?

If you all create a new home together, it’s a good way to get around these issues. I promise you, they’re very real. Don’t think you’re exempt. It’ll bite you.

After observing poly households and listening to various living arrangements for a long time, I begin to think the Oneida Community had the right idea – give every adult member a small bedroom of his or her own.

If you have a “master” bedroom with a couple and then another bedroom for the new member, you’re screaming that there is a hierarchy to the relationship. Maybe you’re okay with that, but the sort of person who is independent enough to deal with a poly live-in relationship won’t be in the long run.

And the whole “all adults in one bedroom” thing? Just… Don’t. Not unless each person has another totally private space of his or her own. I don’t give a damn how extroverted and in love with having people around you all the time you are. Everyone needs some little space of their own. If they don’t get it physically, they’re gonna start creating it in their heads. Not a good thing if you’re looking to keep relationship bonds.

· Establish rules about parenting if there are children.

I’ve written more about poly parenting, I think, than any other subject. Just click on the parenting tag here in this blog and you’ll come up with most of what I have on the subject that I think is really useful. I’m not going to reinvent the damn wheel here.

· Expect individuals to have individual lives (and possibly loves)

Something OLQ did that was radically and horribly wrong was that we tried to be a single unit of four people rather than four individuals with lives who chose to live together. My God, we were so foolish. We did it with the best of intentions. One of us had come from some incredibly tightly-knit generational type family, so the joined at the hip type marriage was all that one knew. Others loved the idea of together, together, together.

Until it started to chafe.

A standard monogamous marriage can just barely stand doing all social things together, taking all vacations together and going to all events together. Even then, I’m not so sure that’s really the healthiest thing in the world to do.

When you’ve got more than two people?

Well, think about it: Even the most compatible of people are going to have their own individual tastes, goals, needs and desires. Make sure that you allow for those however you can. It’s actually good to do things as a family, but make sure that each individual adult has things that are Not Part of the Family that they’re doing as well.

· Don’t try to engineer everything

If your family rules start to look like a corporate merger, you might be stifling things a bit. While I’m all for having things out in the open, talking them out, and certainly writing a property sharing contract, allow for the serendipity that you’re going to find in any effective life. Just because you’ve been studying group dynamics for a long time, can quote all the mistakes you think the Oneida Community made, have elaborate theories on why the Nest system from Stranger in a Strange Land wouldn’t work, and have studied cult theory until you could write a thesis on it without checking any more references, don’t think that this theory is going to trump the infinite variety of human choice. Real people are cranky, cantankerous and gloriously unpredictable. It’s why sociology is more of an art than a science.

I’d actually encourage anyone who wanted to form a group poly household to take a few cues from some business models of relationships. No, no, don’t think I mean that it needs to be all cold and corporate. Believe it or not many large organizations these days are clueing in to the fact that the people are really the important part of any organization and that making sure that everyone’s needs are served is a good way to have a healthy, happy organization. I’ve recommended The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People more than once here, and I’ll beat the drum for it again.

But, don’t by whatever you hold holy, think you can make a triad some sort of “couple plus” relationship. It’s not “just like a monogamy, but with more people”. Let it be what it is and you’ve a better chance at the relationship working out happily.