You Don’t Have to Do It
Posted by: Goddess of Java in Communication, Love, boundaries, relationshipsI’ve been watching on several polyamory boards to see people trying to make themselves okay with being in polyamorous relationships. I’ve seen descriptions of people feeling like their hearts are being ripped out. I’ve seen descriptions of people wanting to curl into a ball and cry while their partners are with other people. I’ve even had communication with people who wanted me to help them be okay with having sex with people they didn’t want to sleep with, but partners wanted them to because they thought that was “how you did poly”1.
I find these posts heartbreaking.
Poly is not martyrdom, and taking pride in being a martyr isn’t going to help you live to the fullest. If you hate it, if it feels wrong, if you feel dirty or betrayed or like you have to force yourself into something:
Maybe poly isn’t for you.
It’s not an enlightened way to be. It’s just a choice that works for some people. It’s a preference that has no more to do with goodness, enlightenment or value than preferring linguine to rice.
There are dozens of reasons why people make themselves try to be okay with poly. Maybe she don’t want to lose a beloved partner. Maybe her partner tried monogamy for her and was unhappy. Maybe they saw it as a way to try to stay together. These things all look so loving and noble. I’m all for love, I really am. I just don’t think that going through pain and suffering is somehow the hallmark of a “worthy relationship”. I don’t find choosing suffering necessarily noble. It’s too close to the mindset of the woman who is proud of herself for her endurance when it comes to accepting an abusive mate.
I’m not saying polyamorous/monogamous pairing are bad2. Not at all! But in the good ones, the monogamous member isn’t curling up in a ball when his polyamorous partner is out with another love, either. In a healthy poly/mono pairing, the monogamous partner has his own full life, ya know. She’s not curled into a ball weeping when her partner isn’t with her. He’s got friends and projects and family and is living a busy, happy life — when his partner is around and when he’s alone.
I’m also not saying that twinges of discomfort are reasons to drop a relationship. There’s an enormous difference between, “Dammit, I feel lonely and at a loose end and wish I were out having fun, too” and curling up in a little ball and crying your eyes out because you feel so abandoned, alone and unloved. The healthiest of people have down times and the best relationships do, too.
So what do you do when you’re really not okay with poly and your partner is unhappy monogamous?
That’s a rough one. I’ve been accused, since reviving the Polyamorous Misanthrope column, of seeing relationships as disposable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Commodities are disposable. People and relationships are not commodities. Relationships are forever and always about individuals humans and the different ways we merge and change and bump against each other.
I do not believe that there is any great value in white-knuckling it through a romantic relationship. Suck it up and deal to make sure the kids are properly taken care of and nurtured? Sure. I will point out that doesn’t require a romantic relationship3.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the only good ways to conduct a relationship are going for the “win-win” or the “no deal”. If you can find a way to be happy and fulfilled with one partner poly and the other not, that’s wonderful! Go for it and enjoy. It can and does happen. It doesn’t happen by making yourself do or be what you are not. At that point, I strongly encourage the “no deal”. When I say “no deal” I don’t mean anger, bitterness or hostility. Just, with a blessing let ‘em go. It’s probably gonna hurt. But it is a good way to happiness in the long run, no kidding. Some people, no matter how much they love each other, aren’t compatible in the long run. Believe it or not, you can and do get over it and into creating a life for yourself where you’re not curled into a ball weeping several nights a month.
1 That’s not “how you do poly”. It comes very, very close to (and sometimes is) “how you do abuse”.
2 It’s rarely the relationship form, but how you conduct the relationship that’s the issue.
3 Of all the bills of goods we get sold, the one about parents having to stay in love until the kids are grown to rear children properly is one of the more obnoxious and destructive ones.
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January 7th, 2008 at 12:37 am
If both partners want to remain involved romantically, but are not suited to long-term primary relationships, sometimes secondary-style situations work better. A beloved I’ve been with for 5 years now and I are completely unsuited to living together or being primary partners to each other. We fight, we argue, we butt heads on everything. But as a secondary level relationship? We have great success. We tried living together once, and it was a disaster after 2 weeks - but as long as we aren’t living together or trying to be a much larger part of each others’ lives, we have a happy, fulfilling relationship.
Of course, we’re both poly, so this works for us. I can’t image how hard it must be for a monogamous person to try to make it work, being in a relationship with a poly person. It must be similar to a gay/straight couple, or a sexual/asexual I’d imagine, but possibly with more feelings of abandonment because of the poly partner’s other relationships. Mixed orientation relationships can work, but that a lot of work on the emotional state of things.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I’m currently in a dating relationship with a woman who is new to poly - but not to nonmonogamy. She has a history of the “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” kind of thing, which in my own view is only slightly beyond cheating (and which is why, as we date, she is getting used to the whole full-disclosure thing). Recently, though, when some friends of hers asked if she was poly (since she was talking about two men she was seeing) her response was “Well, no…I just really like to fuck…” Which I find hilarious, in a lot of ways, especially as it makes her sound like a shallow hedonist when in fact she’s a very deep hedonist.
But I’m entirely with you on this. I tell people often that if monogamy works for you , DO IT - all other considerations aside, it’s easier just in terms of scheduling. I didn’t choose to be poly; there are times I really wish I wasn’t; but I know that it is the most successful relationship model for me.
Really like your writing style, btw - glad I’ve found your blog. Keep it up!
January 7th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Whether a couple is practicing polyamory or monogamy, there’s always going to be crying, and there’s always going to be pain. In my view, there isn’t such a thing as a “win-win” relationship, because we all have needs that evolve over time. We’re not robots, we can’t just find the compatible unit with the right operating system and dock with it for life, our desires, plans, practices, and emotions all shift through time.
I have had some of those “White knuckled” periods in the relationship I’m in with my poly partner, in fact we just got out of one. It was the period during which we shifted from swinger to poly, and I had to change my whole mental model to accommodate for an emotional system of expression I hadn’t before been used to.
Polyamory, moreso (I feel) than monogamy, is about experimentation and negotiation. Those processes aren’t easy, for everyone involved to get what they want sometimes you have to let something go that you don’t want to. I think that it’s kind of a shame to throw away a perfectly good partner who’s willing to negotiate and experiment with you simply because making changes in your life to make room for their needs can sometimes hurt.
Life hurts. Relationships hurt. It’s those factors that create the contrast in which we are able to observe what feels good and what doesn’t. If everything went swimmingly in life and relationships, there probably wouldn’t be a whole lot to talk about on the subject.
-Sean
January 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
(Cross-posted from LJ)
Well, to be contrarian and prove the rule that no rule is always true, I know someone on another board who went through a transition-into-poly thing that was like surgery without anesthesia — with the screams posted on the board all the way through — because she personally wanted to get to the other side. Not because the others were making her (as far as it looked online, anyway). And she did. She seems at ease, thrilled to be in the triad she wished for, and talks like what didn’t kill her made her stronger.
Heck, I once went through an unexpected crying-in-the-pillow stage myself. There are times cut your losses and times to persevere.
Not that I’d recommend this to anyone. In fact, a good test might be whether they decide to go ahead and do it even after everyone says they shouldn’t.
I bet that being pressured toward polyamory will become an increasing problem in the future — because right now, practically everyone in the world throws up their hands and says you’re insane if you even talk about trying it… which means you have to be pretty damn motivated and self-confident to go against this cultural wisdom.
As poly becomes widely known as potentially workable, there will be less of this automatic screening against people who are not really motivated and committed. Moreover, unwilling people will be more subject to pressure when they can’t fall back on the “That’s just crazy and everyone knows it!!” defense.
So I think it’s really important that warnings and advice like yours stay front and center.
The real solution will be for people to think up front about whether they want polyamory or exclusivity, and ask for it, when deciding whether to get into a serious relationship with someone. Like the “do you want children?” question for people who really do or don’t want children. Right now monogamy is as much the unspoken assumption as marrying and having children was to people starting a romance in our grandparents’ time (our grandmothers anyway; often the grandfathers had other plans they kept unspoken).
January 7th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Oh dear sweet zombie Jesus, yes. What you said.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Poly can enlightening if it is right for you. Read enlightenment here as it should read in most contexts as ‘what I think has highest value in life’. Inner freedom which is a part of my understanding enlightenment is the ability to know and to enact with joy what is right for yourself. This may entail going against societal norms, which is often the case with poly. However, going against societal norms doesn’t automatically make you more enlightened. It only does if you are doing it out of inner freedom.
Non-possessiveness and compersion I believe are expressions of enlightenment. That is that I believe it enlightened to allow others their freedom (and you are deluding yourself if you think you can take it away) and take joy in that freedom. These I believe are things to be explored in ANY relationship poly or mono. Even without other romantic or sexually partners monogamous partners may struggle with jealousy and subsequent needs to control due to their partners attention to and joy in their passions and friends.
For me the path to greater inner freedom and enlightenment often involves pain. Even in the misted of excruciating pain it still feels right!
If it feels wrong I try (very hard) not to do it. I’m far from my ideal but I believe I’m moving toward it.
A far better index of enlightenment I think is that a person accept other peoples relationship structures whatever they are as long as the relationships promote the flourishing of those involved. It is also enlightened to apply the same to yourself and build relationships that promote your flourishing.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
The most dangerous thing in an abusive relationship is hope. Noel, I’m with you.
January 18th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Added a link to this to the mono_poly community profile on LJ.