The Polyamorous Misanthrope

“I’m in a mid-life crisis, I guess.  The passion is out of my life and I’m looking for something more.   My wife doesn’t understand me.”

Any polyamorous person on a dating site is almost sure to get a message like this from time to time.  No, it’s not exclusive to men.  Women do a serious version of it, too.  So get off your high horse.

But male or female, if you’ve been in a long-term relationship that’s gotten blah, you might find  yourself saying, “Oh, it would be so much better if I had a partner that understood me.”

While I’m not saying that your relationship problem isn’t that you’re misunderstood, do you really think something so commonplace and cliché is really because partners of decades don’t understand each other?  Really?  After decades together.

You people aren’t paying attention, are you?

And you know what?  That’s rather the point.  Now, you know ole Mama Java.  She’ll never advise you to try to get someone else to behave the way you want to fix your problem.  But honestly, this kind of intimacy problem is a genuine big deal.  More than that, it’s often pretty tragic.

I want to offer a possible solution, and it’s a good one.  If you’re feeling like your partner doesn’t understand you, do something a little counterintuitive:

Put all your energy into understanding your partner.

Now, I’m not suggesting long, drawn-out conversations where you’re prying like a parent with a non-communitive teenager.  It doesn’t work then and it certainly isn’t going to work isn’t going to work in an adult relationship.  When I say put your energy into understanding your partner, it means understanding the lack of communication, too.  Sometimes, it can be as easy as, “Baby, we haven’t been talking much.  Is there a reason you’d like to tell me about?” and find a floodgate opens.  Sometimes, it’s a courting process.

Don’t confuse “understanding your partner” with “getting the information you need to have a good lever with your partner”.  Understanding means exactly that.  If you don’t love and care about and want to know your partner down into his bones, my dear, you have a far worse problem that your partner not understanding you.  Got that?

If you think this is sounding a bit like Stephen Covey’s Habit Five[1] of the Seven Habits o Highly Effective People, there’s a lot to that.  If you’re having trouble connecting, if you’re having a hard time communicating, seeking to understand and understand deeply does two things.  The first thing it does is give you a clearer grokking of the issues involved.  It is never a bad idea to seek to understand a partner deeply.  Prying and being invasive is something else entirely.  If you’re seeking to truly understand, you’ll avoid being invasive because you’re developing the empathy and compassion to understand how your partner is feeling.

The second thing that seeking to understand does is build trust.  ‘Member how you were all upset and had your kickers in a bunch because your partner didn’t understand you?  We all want to be loved and understood by our partners.  You partner(s) want you to understand them, too!  It’s much easier to make that connection with someone you have seen demonstrate on a consistent basis that s/he wants to understand you!

Remember to take it slow.  If you’ve gotten to the “My wife doesn’t understand me” phase, your relationship has been sliding for a long time.  This isn’t something you can gloss over for a couple of months and expect everything to be all lovey-dovey and dandy.  It’s going to take time and patience.  Me?  I think good intimate relationships are worth it.

This won’t solve every single relationship problem you have.  Sorry, there’s no shortcuts.  But this is a fantastic first step to repair and expand relationships.

I’ve been seeing more than the usual amount of discussion about jealousy on various poly boards lately, so I figure this might be a little topical to people.   I have pulled out of the air the Definitive[1] Five-Point List of Ways to Fuck Up Handling Jealousy.  I am sharing this because I am wise and all knowing about polyamory and I will deign to share my knowledge with you, puny mortal.[2]

1. Blame your partner

“Hey, I wouldn’t be feeling jealous if my partner were doing things right, right?  If only she weren’t making me feel insecure, everything would be dandy!”

Making your partner responsible for your feelings is a sure way to mess up a relationship.  There is a significant difference in, “I don’t like X behavior” and “You’re making me feel jealous.”  If you don’t grok this difference down in your bones, learning about emotional boundaries is a really productive thing you can do for yourself and your relationships.   It is not unusual for jealousy to be about personal insecurity.

As Franklin Veaux once commented, “Just because I feel bad doesn’t mean you did something wrong.”  Don’t assume that your feelings prove anything but that you’re feeling something.

2. Blame the partner’s partner

“If only my partner’s partner would not make me feel insecure, I wouldn’t be so uncomfortable, right?”  (See a pattern?)

Again, feeling bad on your part doesn’t necessarily mean malfeasance on the other person’s part.  People aren’t saints, but assumptions don’t help.

3. Blame yourself

“If only I were more secure/better looking/better in bed/more evolved I wouldn’t feel so upset.”

Feelings might be uncomfortable sometimes, but they’re not necessarily because you did something bad, either.  Jealousy isn’t always about personal insecurity.  Sometimes there really is, no kidding, a problem among the partners.

I break with some of the more New Age polyamorous writers, in that I do not feel that jealousy is always some sort of weird emotional aberration of the spiritually unevolved.   It can and often is a personal security issue, but sometimes partners do take us for granted, or are not giving us what we all agreed upon.  It’s okay to talk about that.

4. Lie about it

“What’s the matter, honey?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Don’t do this.  In a good relationship, it’s okay to say, “Actually, I’m feeling kinda jealous right now.  I want to: examine this by myself and get back to you/talk with you about how I’m feeling/have a backrub so I can relax.”

Notice this isn’t making your partner responsible for how you feel.  But it is communicating.  I mean, you want an accurate picture of what your partner is thinking and feeling, right?  What makes you think your partner is any different?  When people love each other, they do care how the other feels even if it’s hardly healthy to take responsibility for it.

5. Ignore it

Like physical pain, emotional pain is a sign that something needs attention.   There are dozens of reasons why you might be feeling jealous – some of them internal, some to do with externals.  Unless and until you sit down and examine them with an open mind and without preconceptions, you can’t know.  But if you don’t take a good look at what you’re feeling and why, it is going to fester and infect your relationships.

[2] <grinning at one of my Guest Columnists> I should be ashamed of myself.  But I’m not.

Mama Java is lounging on the beach right now.  Well, okay RIGHT NOW, I’m probably getting sunscreen on squirming little children, collecting beach chairs and making sure everyone has their towels, but I am at the beach this week.  Here’s a column from Rain Hannah.  Enjoy!

It can be easy, when you’ve been doing this poly thing for a while, to get complacent and fool yourself into thinking you’ve got it nailed. I guarandamntee you that you don’t have it nailed. Not a one of us does.

I’d like to get “Mind the Gap” tattooed on my forehead so that the next time I start feeling all like Saint Griselda, Patient Patroness Of Good Poly, I remember that I’m about to fall onto the third rail and get roasted with my own hubris.

You see… there will be times in any relationship, mono or poly, where the shit hits the fan. Where, because of work, conflicts, new relationships or ghost spiders from Mars, things may not be as harmonious as you would like. Perhaps, in that event, you assure yourself that things will get better when the ghost spiders from Mars have been removed from the equation. That if you are just patient and deal with it bravely, it will all be okay in the morning and everything will get back to “normal.”

Allow me to venture a few thoughts, to elaborate upon the theme of patience. It is fine to be patient. It is good to be patient. It is noble, wonderful, kind, gentle and all manner of good things. It is important, in life, to acknowledge that shit happens (constantly), and behave like an adult when it does. Sometimes it isn’t all about you and you just need to sit on your hands for a while until things get sorted, because other people really need your patience and good sense to win out or things won’t work.  Here is where it gets tricky: you have to be on your guard about letting patience turn into something less healthy. Ask yourself… “Why am I doing this?”

Seriously. Ask yourself. Take a little extra time to examine your motives. That, ultimately, is the point of this wee essay.

I fell into this pitfall recently. Shit happened, like it does, and my partners needed some space to work things out. I, wanting them to be okay, happily gave them the space and time that they needed.  I was patient. I behaved like an adult. I was being Generous to my partners and here is the rub. I realized later that I wasn’t really being generous. I was being selfish as all get out.   I, very temporarily, stuck my needs on the back burner, because other people’s needs were more pressing. Let me say up front, that was okay. What wasn’t okay was the extent to which I took it or why I was doing it. What wasn’t okay – and I didn’t figure this out until later – was that somehow, deep down, I thought that there would be some kind of a reward in it for me. Some emotional reward, a special cookie, something I hadn’t really asked for but felt I’d earned with my patience and self-sacrifice.

Hey does that last line sound familiar? Oh my GOD it totally does!  It was the whole Brave Little Toaster thing, only in the short term, looking very different, and there was no bad guy!  That attitude? That was not so grown up. It was not so generous or patient. It was… I don’t know what it was, but absolutely the opposite of what I was aiming for.  That attitude stinks.

“They got special cookies,” my subconscious said. “That means I get equal special cookies because I’ve been so patient and good. I’ve been Super Nice and a Good Poly Partner and now I am going to be rewarded with extra love and attention!”

Yeah, not so much with that.

I was rewarded with plenty of loving appreciation, but I did not get the special cookies I wanted. My cookie jar pretty much stayed about the same. There was no magical sparkle pony moment with ice cream and a parade, either. When these things failed to materialize, I might have behaved badly. I was resentful and angry because I didn’t get what I thought I deserved, in return for being so awesome.

The glitch in my mental scenario was easy to identify once I sat down and thought about it. My partners did not agree to give me special cookies in return for being so awesome. That was not part of the arrangement we made. That was something I filled in by myself, an expectation I penciled into the margins after they’d signed off.  I got actively pissed off at my partners because they’d taken me up on what I’d freely offered and then I didn’t even get a cookie.

It gets worse.  I used the situation to justify acting like some saintly, long suffering martyr. I got off on feeling really sorry for myself. I caught myself behaving in ways that were subtly guaranteed to make my partners feel guilty for taking me up on my offer in the first place.  That was when I realized that I had my head up my ass and needed to remove it, stat.

It would be easy for me to wallow in shame about all this, but I’m considering it to be another level of a lesson I will probably spend the rest of my life learning.  I’m grateful for the opportunity. Embarrassed, sure. Publicly so, if this gets published[1]. But I think it is important enough to risk that.

It isn’t always the big things. It isn’t always the long term things, the huge life issues. Sometimes it is the simple things, the small things, that trip us up and make us act in ways that are not so cool. Our partners take us at our word, and so it is important to make sure that our word and the agreements that we make are coming from an honest place, not from a place of unspoken expectation. Sometimes our motivations aren’t as altruistic as we think they are and sometimes everyone isn’t on board the cookie train because they didn’t know there was an agreement. Getting that stuff straight is important. Patience in the face of overwhelming trouble is good. Knowing why you are being patient and being upfront with yourself and your loves about what (if anything) you expect in return is better.  It’s okay to ask for something in return. But you gotta ask.

Mind the gap, kids. It’s there.

Patient Griselda, or, Minding the Gap

© 2010, Rain Hannah

Used by permission

Rainy Hannah is a polyamorous woman living in Southern California with way too much yarn, too many cats, a couple of kids, and a Very Good Dog. She has been there, done that.

I need advice.

My girl and I began exploring the “lifestyle” about 2 years ago.  At some point mid way, I discovered that I was having nervousness block my performance, in my opinion because many encounters seemed rushed.  I talked with my partner about doing solo dates, and she was very much against it.  So I let go of it.

Meanwhile, my partner gets involved (solo) with a popular social club, and from her explanation it has really helped her in areas of being social, something she had been struggling with.  She attended a larger event, held at a campground, and calls me to say she drank too much, and had been offered a spot to spend the night.  She was approached by a male member of the group sexually, somehow he gets the opportunity to explain to her the group is full of swingers, and apparently sparks fly between the two of them.  She asks me if she could have my blessing to have sex with him, and I agree to it.

I attend their next event to meet this gentleman, nice guy, apparently the woman seem to love him, and all of the sudden I start noticing that he and my girl are doing things like hugging/light kissing/and at one point hand-holding.  That night she tells me they are going to sneak out into the woods, and tell her to have fun.  After several hours they got back, and my mind had started getting restless.

Somehow I overlooked the fact this person had the potential of being a very frequent potential dating partner for her, so the next day I kindly explained how I felt to her, and that turned very nasty very fast, and she began threatening to end the relationship, but we reach some sort of simple agreement to lay it to rest until we are clear enough to deal with it in the future.  Now I have not ever had a solo playmate, and I am not sure that it’s in my genes to be able to eventually achieve this.

I am starting to feel anxiety from this situation, I fear it’s going to spin out of control, will be left with over-exaggerated tokens of affection from her, and much less of her time, while feeling inadequate because I don’t believe I have what it takes to even find someone who would be interested in doing the same with me.  I tried explaining this to her, but the results we the same.  She feels I should have no problems what so ever, but I am just not in that space right now, and confusion had taken over in this relationship.

Thanks for reading, any advice or comments are greatly appreciated.

Shouldn’t have a problem, huh?  Well, maybe it’d be better all around for everyone if you didn’t, but let’s accept for the moment that you do. Problems can be solved, so this is hardly a hopeless situation, but don’t let “should” get in the way for now.  Don’t let anyone tell you how you should feel either.

It does sound like you’re feeling pretty insecure about your own attractiveness.  That sucks.  It’s beyond the scope of a single blog post to give you really useful, solid advice about how to overcome insecurity about oneself or one’s attractiveness, but I will give you a tiny, minor piece of advice that might be useful:

Be yourself just as hard as you can.

As a unique human being, what you really have to bring to the table in terms of a relationship is the unique human being that you are.  Be that to the hilt.

You did not give a lot of detail about the conversation between the two of you “getting nasty fast” and your girlfriend threatening to leave the relationship, so unfortunately I can’t give much clear advice about that.   I can think of a dozen reasons why it might have, but without more facts on hand, I can only give you some general advice.

• Always tell the truth about how you feel
• Don’t put up with emotional blackmail
• Never agree to what you don’t want, but understand that sometimes these things can be dealbreakers.  Ideally, it’s best to accept that outright.
• You are allowed your feelings, but clinging to insecurity isn’t really helpful.  If you feel insecure, work on that. (You might want to start with Franklin Veaux’s excellent article Becoming Secure.)
• You don’t have to accept inequitable agreements.
• Be your own primary.

I really do think that in your specific case, working on valuing yourself is really the key log that’ll unblock a lot of problems.

Good Luck.  I bet you’ll do great.

About seven or eight years ago, I was unemployed over a summer.  Well, not so much unemployed as I was looking for “Real Jobs” through a temp agency and being what’s now called Virtual Assistant[1] intermittently, and cleaning  up the code on websites for clients.  This left me time to kibbitz with my then-wife in OLQ’s office, work on the PolyFamilies site and noodle around on polyamory discussion groups.

I forget off the top of my head exactly what sort of idiocy was going on at the time.  Whatever it was, it was redundant even though I’d not spent even a decade on polyamory forum.  In a fit of frustration, I shouted, “Goddammit, I’m starting a column on PolyFamilies called, ‘You’re all fucking idiots!’”

The Goddess of Giggle didn’t stop typing on what she was doing, but just asked, “So, when is your period due?”

“Sunday, why?” I snapped before I mentally switched gears.  “Okay, but even so, it’d be a great title for a column.”

The rest of OLQ really didn’t agree with the idea of You’re All Fucking Idiots as a title for a column.  I suppose they thought it wouldn’t scan or some such.  But I never really let go of the idea.

When I finally did launch a biweekly column, I called it The Polyamorous Misanthrope.  It was a nod to a writer I both admire and am terrified of.  Her name is Florence King, and she lives in my hometown of Fredericksburg, VA.  She used to do a column for the National Review called The Misanthrope’s Corner. Pistol?  Yep, that lady is something else.

But in the spirit of the column title I hold in my heart, I want to reiterate that the Polyamorous Misanthrope is dedicated to the idea that you can be polyamorous, make good choices for your life and not let being poly mean you’re cutting a swath of chaos and destruction into the world around you.  Being “in love” is not an excuse for being a jerk, you have no business sacrificing the care of your kids to NRE and you can live consciously and build the good life that you want with the people you choose to have in your life.

Far too often, people do use being in love as an excuse for terrible behavior.  What I’d love to see is the polyamorous community setting an example to the world for what good relationships and conscious lives can look like.  Many do, and you know what?

You’re not fucking idiots.  You’re awesome.  Thank you.

Dear Polyamorous Misanthrope,

I recently started a relationship with a person who has never been poly before. We’ve been dating for a little over a month and things have gotten really emotionally intimate, really fast. It’s wonderful and we’re both really happy being with each other. The complicated part for him is that I’m very poly. I have long-standing primary and secondary relationships.

The take home point here is that he’s not going to be my primary and if he wants a primary he’s going to have to keep dating other people and find one (hopefully someone ok with him still seeing me, but I don’t want to be selfish about this point). When we first started dating I met some of his non-poly friends and it wasn’t a big deal. He introduced me as a friend, we kept the PDAs minimal, and if they assumed anything they assumed we were casually dating.

But now that intense emotions are involved he’s starting to wonder what, if anything, he should tell his friends. He’s afraid to come out, afraid they’ll judge, but he really cares about me and is considering biting the bullet if being in the closet is likely to harm our relationship. My general rule for my non-primary relationships is that I don’t introduce them to or introduce them as platonic friends to people I’m not out to as poly (I’m out to my close friends, but not out at work, and not out to family). Trouble is with him that ship has sailed.

I feel weird about the idea of having to lie to people about our relationship. Not saying is one thing, but if they ask??? At the same time I don’t want to push him into making any major life changes just because I’m this big, bright, shiny new person in his life. Got any advice?

Signed,

Cramping His Mono Style

While it is many people’s strong preference to have relationships acknowledged socially, sometimes it’s awkward.  Our society does have a monogamous paradigm with perceived rights and obligations towards couples as a unit.  This can make things kind of weird.  When I lived in a group marriage, I preferred that my spice be acknowledged as exactly that.  In retrospect?  I think I was expecting the world to conform to me, rather than just moving through the world on my own terms and not trying to mold other people.

I’m not sure, though, that I understand.  Is your boyfriend asking you to lie about your relationship, or does he just not want to bring it up?  I do tend to tell the truth when asked a direct question — sometimes with a note of horrified surprise if I feel it is too direct or intrusive.

A friend of mine tends to introduce his friends and lovers by name only.  He doesn’t use relationship titles.  If someone wants to get nosy about it, it’s on the other person.  I rather like this approach as it works from a presumption of personal privacy about things that don’t matter.  The idea that we’d treat someone differently that we’ve been introduced to because those friends’ binkies have touched is really weird, when you give it some thought.  After all, what other people do privately between themselves is hardly our business nor does it affect us.

Of course, the real point is that couples are often treated as units with certain socially-perceived rights and privileges simply because that couple is an acknowledged unit.   My thought is that if you’re poly, you might want to re-think that convention as you’ve rethought many others.  I don’t have a full answer on how to handle it, because it’s an individual thing.  For the record, I’m married, but don’t tend to do all the proper social “married couple” things.  The Prince and I have worked out what works for us and it’s hardly conventional, but hey, that’s par for the course for poly people.  There are people who know The Prince and his girlfriend and have socialized with them, but not me.  I expect they’d be a bit surprised to know he has a wife.  Shoot, even people who have socialized with all of us might very well think that The Prince and I are divorced but on good terms.[1] We choose not to volunteer, though if directly asked, we tell the truth.

We’re rarely asked.

Not giving full disclosure about your relationship to your partners would be deception, yes.  They expect that information.[2] I’m not sure in a social context that you owe anyone a detailed explanation of the exact nature of the relationship.  If people are that close to you, they can ask, I would think.  If they’re not that close, they’re just being nosy.

Miss Manners, of all people, actually has encouraged the same thing… twice.  She’s amazingly tactful about the concept of polyamory and other socially non-mainstream issues.  She’s my hero and if I ever grow up, I hope I show that level of grace.

[2] I’m assuming… Maybe you don’t have such an agreement, and that’s okay, too.  But many poly people do

This letter is an edited highlights version – just for clarity’s sake:

I am attracted to the idea of polyamory for the spiritual implications, perhaps even more so than the physical ones. I feel it can help us to grow more as people, and can elevate and expand our love and oneness to new heights.

All that being said… I am confused and I need help!!

So, first thing is… I have tried to break up with my boyfriend, we’ll call him “Steve”, a few times throughout the course of our relationship, mostly from feeling smothered, wanting independence space and freedom– not for any lack of love towards him. (More clues to my natural poly tendency…) Most recently, about… 3 weeks ago, I was feeling stunted, claustrophobic, and like I needed to regain my wholeness. Basically, I kicked him out of my place. He was paying a little more than a quarter of the rent, and I felt I had a right to, since I was the original renter and paying the greater portion of the rent. This threw him for quite a loop, understandably. I may have acted a little rashly… When the move was over, and I had finally collected myself– I came out with what I really wanted: openness. It was a very natural discussion, and he very naturally agreed that it would be a fun and interesting thing to try out. Great! Exciting! Only thing is… he was still pretty pissed at me for kicking him out.

Next matter is… I’m really into his best friend, we’ll call him “Bob”. Bob and I actually dated for a little while before I even met Steve. I know he likes me, but I think he is unsure of whether “going there” with me would create a lot of drama. Bob HATES drama!

As far as I know, in my circle of friends I am the first to state that I am “open”. What if I scare everyone away?

I would greatly appreciate your help and support for a young, budding polyamorist! Thank you!

*gently lays the Stick of Grandmotherly Kindness slightly out of impulsive reach*

Cupcake,  you need to sit down and get your head on straight before you have a hope in the world of any relationship working out.  You’re zipping around making impulsive decisions that affect people around  you in really basic and profound ways.

Knowing what you really want is great.  You want openness and can ask for it.  That’s all cool.  Thing is, now you’ve got a problem with Steve, and it’s huge.  See, in kicking him out of his home, you’ve hit him at a deep and basic level – a need for physical security.  He’s naturally going to find trusting you hard at this point.  If you want a relationship with him you’re going to need to rebuild trust.  This is going to take more than holding hands in a circle and getting your Kum-ba-ya-yas out.

As far as being interested in his friend, I’ve seen this go a few ways.  When I was (probably) younger than you are, I did get involved with a close friend of my then fiancé (now husband).  We were romantically involved for a few years, and know what?  Twenty years on , we’re still friends and deeply value each other.  But I sure as hell didn’t start that relationship before I’d established a pretty decent and strong relationship with my other partner.[1] I mean, we were gettin’ married and all.  You ain’t there yet, m’dear.  Steve’s  still reeling from being tossed out on his ear.  Being poly and involved with a couple of close friends needs a major amount of trust building, and as far as the emotional bank account is concerned, you’re in the hole.

Is rebuilding trust possible?  Yes.  Thankfully.  But it takes time, patience and a hearty whack of humility and self-examination.

As far as not scaring people away for being poly?  You won’t.   If you’re scaring people away, it’ll be about being crazy, not about being poly.  Sane, stable people are remarkably chill about sane, stable polys.   If you and your friends aren’t sane and stable, ya’ll need to be working on that first, anyway.

As far as the spiritual aspects?  I’m afraid you have probably come knocking on the wrong door with that one.  I don’t think polyamory makes you more loving.  I’ve seen about the same percentage of selfish, insensitive jerks and the same percentage of kindly, tender loving people in the poly community as the monogamous community.  I expect people just act like people, and that’s really what it boils down to.

I hope this isn’t too much of a downer or anything, but as a takeaway, trust can be built by being consistently trustworthy, Poly relationships can and do work best if the people in them know themselves and are honest with themselves and their partners, and it really can be awesome if you can be the best person you can be.

Good luck!

Mama Java

Let’s talk about relationship conversations for a moment.  When you’re polyamorous, you’re going to have them more often just because you have more of them[1].  There are different conversations you will often want to have and they’re used for different purposes.  I’ve chosen a basic breakdown of three, just because lists are easy and popular on blogs.  Snigger as it suits you.

1. Checking In

The checking in conversation, while usually the shortest, is the most important in any relationship.  I find it analogous to doing the dishes immediately after a meal when nothing’s crusty and it’s easy to clean up.

These conversations tend to be under five minutes, and tend to be along the lines of:  I love you.  How are things going with you.  Do you think there’s anything serious we need to talk about?  Nope? Did I tell you that I’ll be out next weekend?  Oh, I put it on the calendar. Good.  *hugs/kisses*

They’re so important because they keep you in touch with your partner without making a heavy deal of the situation.  They seem light and trivial – perhaps hardly worthy of attention.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  If you take these conversations seriously and to heart, you’re building a lot of trust and intimacy within the relationship.  Your partners will rely on that gentle flow of information, and will often be more likely to offer you the same opportunities.

2. The Hour-Long Conversation

Sometimes long conversations need to happen.  Maybe you’ve neglected checking in often.  Maybe something really complex has just come up in your life.   That happens and is a standard part of life.

You should have a very clear idea what you want to talk about, and leave lots of listening time when you have these.  You’ll notice I put a time limit of an hour.  It’s not that I think a stopwatch is important.  I do think a limited time is important.  If you’re finding that you’re not sticking to the subject and rambling a lot, it might be you’re thinking aloud rather than having a conversation.  Thinking aloud is okay, but it’s important to be clear about what you’re doing.

You can’t go far wrong if you read and take On Civilized Discourse to heart!

3. The All-Nighter

With this one, be afraid.  Be very afraid.  We’ve all stayed up into the wee, small hours talking.  When it’s a bottle of vodka, and a political or philosophical discussion, it can be a lot of fun.  If it’s the third time this year for a Serious Relationship Discussion and the snow hasn’t even melted yet, maybe there’s a big problem in the relationship.

While I’d hesitate to issue a blanket condemnation of all-nighters, approach them with caution, fear and trembling.  Plenty of people just aren’t at their best when they’re sleep deprived, and agreements made then might be hard to take seriously[2] in the cold light of day.

The place for these discussions are rare and sparing.  Certainly and long and deep conversation can be transformative, but if they’re happening frequent, ain’t no transformation happening.  I can’t encourage going with options one and two most often.

[2] Sleep dep is an incredibly useful technique to encourage conformity.   See the prayer schedule for the stricter monasteries, interrogation techniques, and the sleep schedule of your average boot in Basic Training.

Many moons ago, I ran across a term that just tickled the hell out of me, both for its succinctness and its applicability to many polyamorous situations. I wish I’d come up with it, because it’s just that good.

It’s called the One Penis Policy, and it tends to run something like this:

Male:  Hey, I was thinking about maybe you and I opening up our relationship and being non-monogamous.  You’d mentioned you thought Miss Brainy was pretty hot, didn’t you?

Female:  Yep, she is.  And I think maybe having a more open relationship would be really cool.  Miss Brainy is hot, but I’ve kind of had my eye on Mr. Genius[1], too.

Male: No, I don’t think that would work.  I mean, you’re bi, and I’m interested in women, so it’s fair that we can both have a girlfriend if we want.

While it’s certainly okay not to want a million relationships and maybe your dance card is full at two, and it just happens to occur that there’s only one penis going around[2], making it a rule is obnoxious and pretty damned sexist.

To put it bluntly, why is it the woman’s responsibility to face culturally-programmed insecurities and not the man’s?

[2] Guys, if this is your situation and you’re proud of being so much of a man your woman doesn’t want any more men, don’t be too damn proud of yourself.  You may be implementing a stealth One Penis Policy without realizing it.

A New Reader Asks:

I have been seeing a guy,living and working with him for about 4 months. He introduced me to the idea of polyamory. I had honestly never heard of it, but the more I learned the more I wanted of it. Secretly I had been bisexual and interested in women for some time, and finally I met a guy that wasn’t just interested in having a threesome, not jealous of my relationships with my girl friends, but promoted it. I was in awe. Now suddenly something has changed. Since finding this love inside of me, I have felt insanely happy, giving, loving, and learning more about plolyamory and yoga each day. We run a yoga center with two of my old roommates (how i met him), doing massage, etc.

The thing is this, we have had some good times with girls we’ve met, and some good times with friends of mine, and it all goes cool. About 2 weeks before he met me he was seeing another girl, and then me and we are on a much deeper level with one another, and see eye to eye on many things. Not that it really matters, this guy loves everyone and I know thats the way it should be. The thing is, this girl wants nothing to do with me. She isn’t interested in group sex and it really makes me feel left out and alone when she is around. He has agreed to not be with her alone, but this girl won’t even hug me for a picture. What to do? When she’s around he completely drops me, doesn’t even pay attention to me at all, rarely talks to me. It’s like I’m put on the back burner. When I ask why I’m being treated as if I don’t exist, or I’m just the back up babe, he tells me it’s my fault for not involving myself, but I try…I just know this girl doesn’t want anything. He has told me int he past that she says, lets get alone and we’ll do anything you want together. I mean, what the hell!! I live with him, can she not respect that and try to include me? This morning we were all in bed together and he asked how we both slept, we both said fine. Then they started talking to eachother in spanish, I’m in Panama if I didn’t mention that and am still trying to learn spanish. They continued for a very long time and the next thing I knew, I realized no one was talking to me at all. Instead of trying to butt in their conversation and be rude, I just got up and left. I find myself crying and unhappy and I just feel like I want out. I don’t know how to handle myself,but how can this be? I believe all that he has taught me, yet he seems to act like a different person when she is around. He says she needs more attention than me because I’m stronger, yet I am the one here crying. Please help Goddess of Java, give me some helpful advice.

Okay, first of all, just because you’re poly doesn’t necessarily mean that all loves will sleep with all other loves. The woman you’re discussing doesn’t owe you physical contact just because she’s sleeping with your boyfriend. If the girl isn’t into group sex, she isn’t. Not every polyamorous person is, I assure you.  I wouldn’t be very pleased with anyone who felt I owed them hugs and would be pretty unlikely to have much incentive to cultivate their acquaintance, much less a friendship.

Since you’re trying to learn the language, I don’t think it’s inappropriate to ask for the occasional translation when you don’t understand it when they’re speaking Spanish.  Since you live in a Spanish-speaking country, I can’t imagine they’d be foolish enough to think they were speaking in a private code in front of you (which would be pretty rude).   Learning a language is pretty intense, but if they’re bilingual, they know that.   It might be that they think they’re including you and don’t realize how much you’re feeling confused and left out.

I do sometimes discuss letters with partners, and mentioned this one to The Prince.   He frowned and said that the idea that your boyfriend has tried to turn this around and put it all on you doesn’t have him feeling very confident about how well the two of you are communicating.

He’s right, as it happens.  Relationship problems just aren’t on one person, any more than wonderful relationship interactions are.   While it’s certainly possible you’re holding yourself aloof (and God knows that North Americans can seem damn emotionally reserved in the face of some Latin American cultures), it is also possible there’s an expectation that you should be “convenient”.

I suspect that there’s some cross-purposes are going on here, and something that might help is to think clearly about what it is that you want.  I don’t mean the band-aids that you think will make you feel better (i.e. your boyfriend never being alone with another woman), but what it is you really want.  Maybe it’s more focus when you’re together.  Maybe it’s clearer communication.  Maybe it’s a backrub.  (Hey, wants aren’t always complex!)  But do think hard.  Because in good relationships, you’re totally responsible for figuring out what it is what you want, and then communicating that.

Here’s the scary part.  Sometimes, when you ask, you don’t get a “yes”.   Getting a no sucks.   The thing is, sometimes it’s something you can suck up, and sometimes it’s something you can’t.

Sane polyamory is damned near impossible without a certain degree of not only self-knowledge, but a deep understanding of what’s acceptable to you and what is not.

Probably the best thing for you at this point is to find a way to think uninterrupted about what it is you really want out of life and a relationship so that you can ask for that.  What are your dreams?  Your goals?  Things you love to have happen?  What are your dealbreakers?  When you know all of that, you’ll be in a better position to know where you want to go with this.

Good luck!