The Polyamorous Misanthrope

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.