The Polyamorous Misanthrope

Polyamory is about love and intimacy, right?  So poly people are the lovingest, mostest intimate cuddlemuffins out there.  If you find someone wants to keep the slightest bit of themselves to themselves, they’re not really poly.  People that need space cannot possibly be polyamorous.  They’re sneaky monsters with an agenda to torture the poor loving cuddlemuffins.

Okay, I can’t go on with this without laughing so hard I burn my sinuses with hot coffee.

Love certainly does have an intimate component.  You’re not going to be able to have a loving relationship without a strong degree of intimate communication and interaction.  Cranky misanthrope I might be, but even I know you can’t love in a box.  It’s a two-way street, and you really do have to open yourself up to give and receive love.  But sometimes you’ll object to a behavior only to hear, “But I thought we were poly!”

The problem comes in when people confuse loving intimacy with stomping on personal boundaries.   Intimacy is closeness, but look out for some warning signs that say that what you’re experiencing is a boundary violation rather than intimacy:

• Emotional Blackmail

Emotional blackmail is use of negative emotions, especially guilt, to control behavior.

You probably won’t notice it the first time you experience it.

You’ll be approached, possibly hesitantly, and your love will say that something you did or didn’t do hurt.  You’ll feel bad and try to correct your behavior.  Now, ya know, in good relationships, sometimes you do screw up.  It happens!  You get called on it, and will get an explanation about how to avoid it in the future.  That’s not emotional blackmail.  That’s human.  Don’t chalk every single time someone doesn’t like your behavior up to emotional blackmail.  We’re none of us perfect.

It’ll be the second or third time within a relatively short period when you notice that it’s emotional blackmail.  You’ll experience strong attempts to make you feel guilty.  They might even work, if you don’t have a clear vision of good boundaries in place.

Luckily, you are in control of this.  Take the time to make sure you have a good sense of what you’re okay with, how you want to behave and the person you want to be.  When you’re solid and grounded in yourself and your own sense of who you want to be, it’s a lot harder to use guilt to manipulate you.

• Creeping Concessions

You know old canard that if you put a frog in a pan of cool water, then gradually heat it, the frog will not notice when the temperature rises to a dangerous degree and will boil to death?

While the literal story is false, the moral of the story has a point.  You can agree to one small concession, right?  That’s okay.  Now if that small concession is treated as a precedent rather than a single exception,[1] someone who is ignoring boundaries is likely to ask for another oh, so small concession that’ll become a precedent, until you’ve found you conceded way the devil more than you ever intended.

You can’t blame this one on the other person, though.  You’re responsible for your own boundaries.  You’re in control of this one.  If you give a concession, be clear whether it’s a precedent or a one-time deal!  You’re responsible for communicating your intention, so you can handle this pretty easily when you get into the habit.

• Confusing intimacy with intrusiveness

Intimacy is voluntary.  Intrusiveness involves a demand, sometimes combined with emotional blackmail.  You get to decide what you’re okay with sharing or not.  The other person doesn’t.  Sure certain sorts of info can be dealbreakers,[2] but the person who owns the info is the person who gets to make the final call on this.

Do you get frequent calls at work?  Do you find when you are not in the person’s physical presence that you get contacted more than you want?  If you’re on vacation, are you called more often than you’d like, interrupting your free time[3]?

If you object to these things, do you get a tearful reproach about love and poly?  Remember, even poly people are allowed to set boundaries about how they want to spend their time.

• Attempts to tell you how you are allowed to live

If you’re poly, ever had a new love tell you that you needed to change how you associate with an old love?  Big time boundary violation.   There are many others to choose from, but keep in mind that just because you have a romantic relationship with someone doesn’t mean you’re allowed to tell them what to do[4].

Good relationships require good boundaries, no matter what the relationship form.   Far from separating loves from each other, a respect for a person’s individuality and free choice is a wonderful way to promote loving relationships –even with yourself.   You’ll find that a careful respect of the other person’s free choice causes you to treasure the unique individuality of that person, allowing for even greater opportunities for love.

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[1] But you agreed you had to bow to the North in respect for our relationship before you got in bed with your other partner, last time!

[2] Not wishing to share STD history leaps to mind.

[3] Notice the “more than you want to” caveat.  You wanna spend your life on the phone with a love who isn’t physically present, enjoy.  Free choice and all.  This is about what you WANT.

[4] As an aside and slightly off topic, I’ve often found it amusing and confusing that sleeping with someone is perceived in our culture as granting the other person rights over you.  You see it in sitcoms, where once a girl is sleeping with her love, she gets to “straighten him out” and reorder his life.  The plot usually presents this as a good thing.  I think it stinks.

Not too long ago, I was in the living room working idly on some material.   The Prince was in his room on a teleconference with a client.  Our son was wandering through the house as he often does, waving a blue-painted wooden sword and speaking dialog that will be turned into his latest movie.

He wandered into The Prince’s room already speaking to him.  The Prince, who was otherwise engaged, said, “I’m on a teleconference right now.  Could we talk later?”

Muscle Boy apologized and The Prince said, “Don’t sweat it.  You didn’t know.”

So, how does this relate to poly?

Well, it’s not poly-specific, but it’s a great relationship tool.  It’s a great example of good, respectful communication on both sides.   Muscle Boy often goes into his father’s room to speak to him, so the expectation that he could just start talking had already been set up.  But, when he learned he was wrong, he apologized.  Fortunately, he got an understanding response that made that apology an easy and natural thing to do.  There are plenty of households where a the busy person would speak sharply,  “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” or worse.   It’s easy to do in the heat of the moment, especially if we’re concentrating on something else involving business or money.

But it’s also easy to do in the heat of the moment when our tender and vulnerable emotions are engaged.  I think all of us have been irritated when someone close to us has not automagically known to perform an action, avoid a subject, bring up a subject or whatever.  We often want to be interacted with without exerting ourselves, or making ourselves vulnerable by asking for what we want or how we want to be treated.  Worse, romantic literature praises the lover who instinctively knows what and how to give.  Pick up any woman’s romance you can lay hands on, and you’ll not find one with a partner who asks directly for anything.

Looking at it, it’s a terrible way to treat someone you love.   People can’t read minds.¹ Sure, sometimes we get lucky and guess right. That’s cool and it’s fun to get a neat surprise from a love who does. I’m not running that down. But while delighting in the surprise, for goodness sake don’t punish it when someone gets it wrong.

Here are some keys to good, respectful communication:

• In the future, I would like it if you would…

This is one of the first and best ways to ask for something, especially on the heels of inadvertently getting something you didn’t want.  You can’t “shoulda” anything.  The past is done and you can’t change it.  If you preface your request as something in the future, you’re letting go of the past and looking to the possibilities of the future.

• If you’re willing, I’d like it if you would…

I admit this one looks wimpy as hell in print. Here’s the funny part. It’s not. Respecting freedom of choice is an amazingly powerful act of love and respect. While I’ve been told “no” in the face of it, I do not get bad behavior or disrespect back when I do so.

I often re-iterate that there’s little about poly that’s really all that polyamory specific. The reason it’s not is because communication, respect and relationships all have basic principles that are not rooted in romance. Rooted in love? Sure. I’ll buy that. When you hold on to the deep love and respect that you have for the people in your life, you’ll find you’ll be behaving in ways that really promote deep bonds and intimacy. It works for family members and community as well as lovers, so it’s something you can practice almost constantly.

And the payoffs in your romantic relationships are amazing. So keep practicing, mah little poly chillun.  Mama Java wants you to be happy.

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¹Yeah, I know, there are some special snowflakes who claim they can. Unless they have a track record of great, long-term, harmonious relationships, and most I know who claim this do not, I’m disinclined to believe them.

This guest column is by Edward Martin, III

This is something I don’t understand.

If I say “There’s no such thing as a white pigeon” and someone shows me a white pigeon, I have to admit I’m wrong, right? I mean, there’s the pigeon. It’s white.

And there’s no harm in BEING wrong, near as I can tell. Maybe I had never SEEN white pigeons before, or had been told by someone claiming to be a zoologist that no pigeon can be white, but once I’m looking at a white pigeon, you would think the gig is pretty much up, right? I mean, it doesn’t get more complicated than “Well, I guess I was wrong — there ARE white pigeons.”

So, I readjust that part of my head. You won’t catch me telling people “There are no white pigeons” because, well, that would just be stupid of me.

So, there’s that.

Now, on the other hand, think of all the divorces going on. Think of all the breakups, the miserable marriages ended even more miserably.

Think of all the violence done upon someone by their own partner. It’s so popular that there’s a special NAME for it: “domestic violence.”

What the fuck kind of situation could be so screwed up it would provide a phrase such as “domestic violence”? Man!

Yet, at no point in time do people in general say “See, marriage doesn’t work. Partnering with someone else just doesn’t work.” They don’t! They might say “Well, of COURSE it can work, but both folks have to want it to, and they have to be somewhat compatible.” (or some nice variation).

These are two examples of some really dingleberry perspective.

Let’s look at the first one.

You can’t throw a rock on a poly board or thread without hitting someone who is convinced it just can’t work. Definitely OUTSIDE of such an environment, you’ll find all sorts of people insisting there are no white pigeons — er, I mean, insisting that relationships with multiple partners can’t work.

This is, of course, odd to hear if you happen to be a part of a relationship that IS, in fact, working quite well, thank-you-very-much. There are lots of them out there, in fact, all defying the odds and exhibiting their audacious streak by, well, by WORKING.

So, they can work. Quite well, in fact.

Now let’s look at the second thing above.

Everybody has relationship troubles here and there. It’s natural. It’s fine. It’s expected. But it’s not necessarily a result of the structure. Multiple partners is not a system that is that much more difficult than any other relationship situation.

So, on those occasions when a relationship falls apart, it just doesn’t make one whit of sense why people would blame the shatter on the fact that there are more than two adults involved. It’s a complete red herring! The problem is with one or more of the people involved, or their personal issues, or some incompatibility between two or more members of a group.

It has nothing to do with having multiple partners — in fact, the folks I know who seem most convinced that multiple partners just can’t work are usually the folks who wind up cheating on their partners and causing all sorts of dramatic fuss.

This is not to say ALL of ’em are like this. Just every single one I’ve ever seen.

And I’ve been watching for a long time.

So, I think it’s about time those two chunks of nitwittery were finally laid to rest. Multiple partner relationships CAN work because for many people, it simply DOES. Also, as a corollary, if a relationship fails, breaks down, or goes ’splody, it probably has NOTHING to do with the fact that it’s multiple partners — just the people involved.

Okay, I think that’s about enough for tonight.

Perspective: Grab Some — it’s FREE! © 2009, Edward Martin, III

Used by permission

All Rights Reserved

Edward Martin III’s a writer and filmmaker living in the Pacific Northwest. Other essays and reflections of his can be found at http://www.petting-zoo.org/NonFiction.html and his movies can be found at http://www.guerrilla-productions.org/ he also does these animations: http://www.petting-zoo.org/Hardcore.html

I’d like to see a column on “secondary” relationships and/or on the concept of how setting boundaries in a multi-adult relationship works in a relationship that actually works.

The quotes there on secondary are because I know the whole concept of hierarchical relationships is a hot topic, but in this case I specifically mean something like two people, who are each married to others, who have a relationship, and they both fully acknowledge that their marriages (and the related children, bills, etc) must be their first loyalty.

I ran into a situation a couple years back where boundaries were negotiated, and the wife of the person I was dating thought that the appropriate way to address things that weren’t working for her was to tell him as he walked out the door for a date that there were new rules. Rules frequently got more lax when she had a new person to date, and were more stringent again when those relationships ended.

Eventually my relationship with her husband ended because the wife came to the conclusion that poly wasn’t for her – which was all well and good, really, since it became obvious to us all that things weren’t going to work for her no matter what happened or what was agreed to.

Lesson number one for me from the whole situation is to ask, “when you say you have a veto rule, what do you mean by that? How often has it been used? What were the circumstances surrounding its use?”

So, what do you think? Is it controlling to expect people to follow rules they’ve agreed to or negotiate new ones? Appropriate to change the rules without discussing first? Do “secondary” partners give up any and all rights to have input on the boundaries in their relationships? Inquiring minds want to know :)

No, secondary partners most certainly do not give up rights.  My word!  So as not to reinvent the wheel, please allow me to point to what I consider one of the best pieces on secondary rights in polyamory writing: Successful Secondaries.  The proposed Secondary’s Bill of Rights is well thought-out and sensitive to both sides of the equation.

What you describe is probably a textbook example of why I not only would be reluctant to date someone new to poly, but date a member of a couple where vetoes exist.  I know that my opinion isn’t all that popular in the poly community, but I am not a fan of vetoes at all!  However, if you’re willing to be involved in relationships where they exist (and many polys are, you’re hardly alone in that), yes, getting a solid definition of exactly what that entails is a great idea.  The more information you have, the better!

Expecting people to follow through on agreed-upon rules is hardly controlling.  However, I wanna get to boundaries for a minute.  People mis-use that word a whole bunch.  I’m not saying you are, but I want to be incredibly clear about what they really mean.  “You must…” isn’t a boundary.  It’s an order. “I will…” or “I will not…” is a boundary.  It’s all about understanding whose behavior you control.  (You know it’s just yours, right?)  The difference is subtle, but once you’ve wrapped your mind around it, interpersonal relationship drama of all sorts (not just the romantic ones) is cut to about a tenth of what it was.

So, with that in mind, “You can’t change the rules at the last minute” isn’t a boundary.

“I choose not to remain in relationships with arbitrary rule changes,” is a boundary.  In fact, it’s a good one!

Human beings are allowed boundaries, so of course you’re allowed them in a secondary relationship as much as in a primary one.  It’s merely a matter of understanding what you want, what you will do, what you’re happy to have in a relationship and what you choose to walk away from.  I’m not trying to put relationships out there as disposable.  They’re not.  But no relationship is worth being badly-treated to have.  If being treated as an object is a condition of the relationship, you don’t need it.