The Polyamorous Misanthrope

This is my top ten things you can do for great multiple relationships.

1. Don’t try to be a “good” poly person.

If you’ve been reading online material a lot, you may have developed an idea of what a good polyamorous person should be doing, and you may be trying to tie yourself into knots trying to do that.

Stoppit.  You’re allowed to work out between yourself and your loves what you all want your unique relationships to look like.  They don’t even have to be Polyamorous Misanthrope Approved¹ as long as all of you are happy in it.

2. Get over yourself.

Sure you want the world to be about you.  It ain’t.  Being ego-centric is a lousy way to have good relationships.   A little humility goes a long way.

3.  Believe your partners.

One of the biggest relationship monkey wrenches I ever encounter is the terrible habit of trying to interpret what a partner is thinking instead of paying attention to the actual words used.   If you act on what your partner actually says, you’re doing two things.  You’re not trying to mind-read (always a bad move, because you can get it badly wrong), and you’re training your partner to speak up and say what they genuinely mean.

4. Say what you mean as best you can.

Of course the flip side to #3 is that you need to say what you mean, too.  Yes, that means sometimes you’ll have to think before you speak and act.

5. Have fun.

Many people have this idea that relationships are deadly serious.  They’re not.  Important?  Sure.  But enjoy your partners.  Laugh.  Play.  Be silly.

6. Be willing to be vulnerable.

This can be really hard, ‘specially if you’ve been hurt a lot.  Just be careful not to use that vulnerability as a club to beat someone with.   That’s not being genuinely vulnerable, anyway.  There’s another name for it and it’s Not Nice.

7. Be willing to be flexible.

Sure, there are some rigid dealbreakers in anyone’s life.  If you have more than three or four, I invite you to examine the joys of serendipity.  Relationships grow, change and evolve all the time — even monogamous ones.  Don’t be too tied into the One Right Way to Be in Love.

8. Roll with it, baby.

There are times when emotions or events can blindside you.  It happens and that’s okay.   Accepting that you will get zinged by things sometimes is a good way to be prepared not to react in an unloving way when you are.  If something smacks you in the expectation, getting indignant isn’t as helpful as calming down and thinking.

9. Remember your loves are separate from you.

Your loves are separate people with different thoughts, feelings and expectations than you have.  Get to know them.  Get to understand them down into their bones.

10. Is it about love?

It’s a good idea to ask yourself from time to time, “Am I behaving in a loving manner?”  Love’s important.  I know I’m a cranky old bat and all, but when you get down to it, love is probably the most important force in the world.  Love your partners, for pity’s sake.  It’s what makes the whole thing worthwhile.

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¹ And stop pretending to have a heart attack. That joke’s ancient.

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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.

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I was recently asked if I’d consent to an interview, but the questions were pretty good and basic, so I’m posting them here:

1. What are common misconceptions you have found with polyamory?

Probably the most common is that partners are disposable or interchangeable on some level.  The culture that surrounds the monogamy paradigm also has a subtext of One True Love.  We see it in movies, books and what have you all the time.  In this context, if you’re going to have more than one partner, those partners aren’t quite as valuable.

The thing is, people are unique individuals.   Your individual relationship with any human being is unique just by virtue of that fact.

Besides which, polyamory or not, seeing a human being as disposable or a commodity is just nasty.

2. What do you gain from this lifestyle?¹

I’m not poly because I necessarily hope to gain anything.  I’m poly because the logic I’m usually given behind reasons for sexual exclusivity don’t scan for me.  I don’t have a religion, so the religious reasons don’t make sense, I don’t believe in One True Love, so that reason makes no sense.  As far as sex itself?  I believe that sex is moral or immoral by the same standards that any other act is.  For the life of me, I cannot separate that particular activity off as being somehow “different” than any other human activity.  In that context, sexual exclusivity makes no sense.

I feel no particular responsibility to run out and have bunches of relationships to hold up the side, mind.  Relationships take time and energy, and I like to have time to write, knit, swim and lift weights, too!

3. Whats the main differences between swinging and polyamory?

One activity gives a certain subset of the polyamory community an opportunity to feel smug and self-righteous!

Sorry, my snark-o-matic was left on last night.  Seriously, the usual answer given is something along the lines of, “Swinging is about sex and poly is about relationships.”  I don’t agree with that, entirely.  It is my opinion that this debate is usually engaged in by people who feel guilty about having more than one sexual relationship and need some context where it’s okay somehow.   It reminds me of the girls in my high school who would sneer at other girls having sex, but were okay with doing it themselves because they were “Really in love.”

4. Are there any other resources that you would recommend?

My blogroll and recommended reading  have most of what I’d say are good.   Believe it or not, the best books on relationships are usually about business relationships.

5. What do you want people to know most about polyamory?

Keep it about love.  I’m not very fluffy, and Ceiling Cat knows I’m a bit on the stern side, but if it ain’t about love, you’re probably doing it wrong.

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¹I’m answering this as an individual because there’s just no way in the world to answer it for the whole polyamory community. I can think of a dozen answers other people might give, and maybe can work that into a column. But I wanted to give my own here.

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In studying the alternative lifestyles and communities of the US in the past 200-odd years, there has been an attempt to judge whether or not these communities are good.   That’s fine in the context of a rigid social system or system of morality against which it present a background or framework.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view, the United States of 2009 simply doesn’t have a single, unified code by which to judge the goodness or badness of a lifestyle.  Oh, we agree that child molestation is wrong and revile the more excessive behaviors of a Warren Jeffs of the FLDS church, or a David Koresh.   But for things less extreme than rape and murder, the line between “good” and “bad” becomes far more fuzzy.

Social traditionalists might bemoan the fuzzy line, cry “declining family values” or even “lack of faith in God”.   This is a difficult point of view for a thoughtful student of social history to take seriously.  Even as recently as the 1950s, the Leave it to Beaver snapshot of a household wasn’t exactly the real world that people were living.  The author’s own grandfather worked three jobs during that time-period to support a family of six, and when the children were in school, his wife also went to work to be able to pay the expanded expenses of a household with four pre-teen and teenagers.

If people can idealize and romanticize times they actually lived through, how much easier it is to romanticize times of more than a century ago.   We remember the family solidarity of Little House on the Prairie, but fail to internalize the desperate poverty of a family that could only afford two dresses for each child, that counted on fish from a creek three times a day to get through a summer, and a rearing that caused one of the children to feel she must go to work to pay her parents back for the expense of rearing her.

In the face of this romanticism, it is easy to cry “Traditional Family Values!” when confronted with a new problem of living such as Polyamory.  However, that sort of answer, when faced with the realities of our changing society and its mores is worse than useless, as Traditional Family Values hearken back to an age that never actually existed.  If it didn’t exist and work then, how could it be possible to make it exist and work now?

Polyamory is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary thus:

The fact of having simultaneous close emotional relationships with two or more other individuals, viewed as an alternative to monogamy, esp. in regard to matters of sexual fidelity; the custom or practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the knowledge and consent of all partners concerned.

This definition isn’t entirely accepted by everyone in the polyamory community, but as a writer in the polyamory community herself, the author personally considers it good enough to be going on with.

Polyamory, then, can just be considered an open alternative to sexual exclusivity.  This is practiced in many ways by different people.   Many married couples who are polyamorous might have their marriage, household, dog, kids and white picket fence, but also engage in romantic/sexual relationships outside of the marriage relationships.  Others take it in a different direction – eschewing pair bonding and forming non-formal relationships.   Yet others form group marriage.  This relationship is often called a PolyFamily, and is probably the least common form of polyamorous relationship practiced.

So, does it work?

One could answer “yes and no”, but it would hardly be conclusive.  Sometimes not.  Margaret Hollenbach (Hollenbach)  did not find her life in the Family in New Mexico very workable.   Hollenbach had to be just about the classical “hippie”.  College kid, white, from a relatively well-to-do background though with divorced parents – somewhat less common in the late 1960s and early 1970s than now.  She joined the Family in Taos, New Mexico and found that the lifestyle and therapy sessions[1] reminiscent of the brainwashing techniques used by the Chinese government (Hollenbach 166).  She also comments that her own experience did not include coercion in the classical sense.  One was free to get up and walk away and there were no physical attempts at restraint.

However, one of the serious problems with any long-term live-in relationship that may or may not be workable is the fact that while one might not be physically restrained from leaving if it becomes unpleasant, unworkable or difficult, there are matters of social isolation, inertia and the simple financial ties anyone has in a household that one must contend with.   Historically, some communes, in a deep desire not to be coercive when it came to group membership have had a way to pay out members that wished to leave so that they would not feel financially tied to a group that they did not want to be with.  The Shakers would allow a member who left to take any property that he had brought with him upon joining away, or give a monetary allowance to those who joined empty-handed.   Few modern communes, poly or otherwise, have had such a forward-thinking view.

There is also the social isolation.  If one lives in a group where the internal culture is “different”, there is an increased tendency towards Groupthink.  Groupthink is generally characterized by premature concurrence seeking – high conformity pressures, self-censorship of dissenting ideas, mindguards and the maintenance of the image of unanimity (Forsyth 370).  The ideals of marriage say that the happy, effective couple presents a united front.  However good or bad this idea is, it becomes problematic in a group marriage situation.

At first, it might not seem so. That united front can be useful.  Imagine being a car salesman and negotiating a loan among four people who can play off of each other and come together with the precision of watch gears while you have to answer each and every one of them all by yourself[2].  To be a member of such an effective team can be pretty heady.

But there’s a dark side.  That groupthink?  It’s very real.  In the interests of the unified front, one can suppress one’s own dissenting opinions, find oneself weary of discussion and abdicate opinion in the interests of quiet.  This is an example of something that doesn’t work for long.

The social isolation is often a problem as well.  If one lives in a group marriage or other alternative relationship, one often finds that the internal frame of reference of the group is the one that’s turned to for a “reality check”.  Choosing the left-hand path means that one occasional faces outside disapproval.  The “us against them” view that one can develop within such a context, while entirely human and natural,[3] can be counter-productive for the individual health of individual members of a group.

In observing group relationships that work out well, a primary characteristic of any of them seems to hinge around personal privacy and, oddly enough, a high value placed on individuality.  “The two (or three or four) shall become one” does not wear well in a polyamorous situation.  The relationship and personal dynamic must be very different for it to work.

The Oneida Community had an inkling of this when it built its group home.  Each adult member had his own small room.  While they professed to value the group over anything, and diaries of the time talk of struggles with selfishness (Herrick 62), there was an understanding that a certain level of personal privacy and personal choice are very necessary to the happiness of a person within a group.  Within the Oneida Community, there were people with varying interests and these interests were encouraged.  Children were sent off to school away from the O.C., people often made trips to visit the “Outside”, as they called it, and there was a tacit understanding that one would choose for oneself how much to participate in the “social life[4]” of the Community.  While it ultimately dissolved, keep in mind that the Oneida Community lasted for thirty years – a Methuselah among communes.

Modern marriage counselors now talk about this more and more often.  In modern mental health literature, there is a strong theme of taking responsibility for one’s own needs instead of depending on another to meet them.  This isn’t to say that we must blow off others’ needs and desires, nor that we have no responsibility to the people with whom we’ve formed relationships.

Each human being has freedom of choice over his or her own actions; all of us are accountable for our choices and their consequences.  No other person can be responsible for the feelings that result from our choices, be they happy or sad. (Paul and Paul 212).

Recognition of this individual responsibility seems to be the key to happy interpersonal relationships of all sorts.  While it might seem that it means that one could callously assert that if someone else is unhappy in the face of what’s going on that it’s his own problem, that extreme isn’t quite the way accepting personal responsibility for one’s own feelings and actions work.   While it’s impossible actually to be responsible for another’s feelings, it’s also impossible to have a good relationship without caring about the other’s feelings as well.  It’s an important balance.

Also required for good balance is the “what’s in it for me?” factor.  There has to be some incentive for people to devote time/energy/money to almost anything, and they have to feel like they’re getting a good trade out of it.  A housewife, putting in long hours to create a beautiful and comfortable home, might be compensated by a spouse with more free time to earn a higher salary.  That spouse might be glad to have a well-run home and be relieved of housekeeping responsibilities.  While a very “traditional” view, it’s one that works out in practice as well[5].   In communal situations larger than a family, a credit system where work means something tangible tends to work out better than an “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” situation.  The founder of Twin Oaks in Louisa, VA commented, “Nowadays, I think you need some personal incentive to put out your best in the work scene.” (Kuhlmann 126)

The poly families that work out the best do seem to be families where there is a high regard for individualism and privacy, as well as a strong vested interest in each member of the group finding the relationship a fulfilling, perhaps even profitable, one.

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Works Cited

Forsyth, Donelson R. Group Dynamics. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2005.

Herrick, Tirzah Miller. Desire and Duty at Oneida : Tirzah Miller’s Intimate Memoir. Ed. Robert S. Fogarty. New York: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Hollenbach, Margarget. Lost and Found : My Life in a Group Marriage Commune. New York: University of New Mexico Press, 2004.

Kuhlmann, Hilke. Living Walden Two : B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorist Utopia and Experimental Communities. New York: Univeristy of Illinois Press, 2005.

Paul, Jordan and Margaret Paul. Do I Have to Give up Me to Be Loved by You? Grand Rapids: Hazelden & Educational Services, 2002.

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[1] They used a form of Gestalt therapy as a means of social cohesion.

[2] This actually happened in my own quad.  One of the former members still owns and drives that car!

[3] There are few things better for group cohesion than a common “enemy”, as history has proven more than once.

[4] The expression “social life” in the Oneida Community was a euphemism for sexual relationships.

[5] When I worked full time, while I did do housework at home, having a housewife there for primary childcare duties was a great boon to my ability to focus on my job!

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Okay, either you’re single or you’ve got your primary relationship solid.  You’re centered in loving each other, you’re communicating great.  Now, you’d like to meet poly people and form some more fantastic relationships.

SCREECH!

How?

That’s going to depend on a lot of things.   Where you do you live?  Off the top of my head, if you live in Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, or Tampa, you’re in luck.  All of these places have well-established polyamory communities, and I can vouch at least one or two of  the people in each city are moderately sane and have been poly long enough to have grown a grain of sense ¹.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t live in any of those cities.   In fact, I live in a little town that has considerably fewer than 15,000 people.    Believe it or not, one can still meet poly people in such circumstances. I can, do and have.

The Internet is a big boon here.  Sure, there are dating sites.  I’m not even going to discourage them.  OkCupid and PolyMatchmaker are both poly friendly and in the interests of disclosure, I’ve met someone on a dating site before. It worked out nicely.

Even so, don’t be so damn goal-oriented all the bloody time!  I understand being goal oriented.  You want to try this new and wonderful lifestyle, and let’s be frank, some hot sex would be just awfully cool.  Not running it down.  Sex is great.  New partners are all kinds of shiny and relationships are fun, goodness knows.

But, mostly you’re not going to find good relationships playing the numbers game on poly online boards with a relationship scattershot.   You’ll probably get laid with this strategy, but if that’s mostly what you’re looking for, a sex club might be better.  Again, not running that down!   I’m not of the “Swinger is superior to poly” school of thought by any means.  I am concerned with making sure you know what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for sex, yeah, a sex club is a dandy idea.  Go for it, enjoy.

If you’re looking for relationships, then you’re looking for things in addition to the sex.  That means you’re looking, I hope, for people to do stuff with.   I think what really works better in the long run is the most banal and obvious advice you’ll ever hear.  Go outside and make friends.  Oh sure, use the Internet as a tool to meet people of similar interests!  But after that, go out to lunch with people, host parties, go to parties, organize discussions groups, get involved with stuff you like to do.  Yeah, you’ll have to take some initiative and get your butt away from the computer and facing the scawwy outside, but trust me, it can be fun!

Yahoogroups has many local polyamory discussion groups where people meet up in real life.  Meetup is another option.  If no local poly group exists in your area, you might want to consider starting one.  There are a lot of groups and resources that exist today because someone was looking for one, but didn’t find anything.

In addition to this, if you’re going to go to online discussion groups to look for partners, be careful.  Many of them are communities  where people know each other, share expereinces and hang out (virtually and otherwise).  Going in and announcing who you are and what sort of partner(s) you’re looking for would be about as well-received and effective as going to a neighborhood party and doing the same thing in meatspace.  You’ll look uncouth and probably are not going to find what you’re looking for.   A good way to find out the timbre of a group is to read through the archieve for awhile if the group has them or to lurk for a week or two to see what you’re dealing with.

But, when it comes down to it, the way to find partners is to meet people.  So, quit reading this and go meet people!

Be good until next week,

Mama Java

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¹ And in most cases, saner than me, too.

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Have you been considering polyamory?  Wondering where you want to go with your relationships?  Do you wonder if you’re really ready to take the leap?

If you’re wondering, that’s good.  It means you’re thinking.  Mama Java approves of thinking about things clearly.  When you get to thinking, you’ll need to start asking yourself some searching questions.  Nope, these aren’t questions you want to ask a partner, if you have one.  Though I really, really hope your partners will ask these questions of themselves.

1. Am I willing to acknowledge I am not a mind-reader?

One of the distressing things I often notice in relationships is that we’re often just sure we know what the other person is thinking.  Whenever you catch yourself thinking you can read minds, stop.  Put it aside until you can ask.  Then act on what you’re told.

This has a twofold benefit.  The first is that you’re training yourself to stop putting your own thoughts and feelings on other people.  The second is that if you act on what you’re told, you’ll find that you’ll be told the truth more often.  If you act on “mindreading” you’ll find that you often won’t encourage people to communicate with you because it’ll feel pointless.  If what one says doesn’t matter, often one becomes disinclined to speak.

2. Am I willing to speak up about my wants?

I’ve talked a lot about asking for what you want.  This is different from insisting on having your way, mind.  Yes, sometimes you will be told “no”.  But I promise not always.  Give your partners the opportunity to say “yes”.

In the past year, I’ve been making my living as a freelancer.  One of the more interesting things about the profession is that I’ve learned not to take “no” all that damn personally.  To make money when you’re marketing yourself, you’re kind of playing the numbers.  The attitude that “no” isn’t really a big hairy deal has spilled over into relationships.  I know it sounds goofy, but I’ve found that my ego just isn’t tied into whether or not someone wants to do what I want.  Sometimes, it’s something I can blow off with no big deal, and yeah, sometimes it’s as much of a dealbreaker as someone not wanting to pay me what my time is worth professionally.  But in either case, I don’t take it personally.  I’m allowed to ask, and the other person is allowed to say “no”.

3. Am I willing to admit my crystal ball is really just a lump of silicon?

If you ever find yourself getting into fortunetelling, STOPPIT.  This is a relationship-killer, I don’t give a damn if you’re talking about a romantic relationship, your relationship with your kids, your friends or your boss.  Just… don’t go there.

4. Do I feel if whatever activity going on isn’t the “best” then it’s really worthless?

Falling into the comparison trap is a real, real bad idea.  Whether it’s that you’re seeking perfection for yourself or thinking you have to be the Perfect One for someone else, it’s not conducive to a good poly relationship either way.

If you can’t get away from that just yet, you’re not really in a position where polyamory is going to be making you very happy.

5. Do I pull out my driver’s license or look in the mirror when asking myself, “Now just who got me into this mess?”

Thou Art God, friends.  If you’re not willing to accept that your choices are your responsibility, you’re not ready for romantic relationships at all.   Wrap your mind around that first.

A dear friend of mine recently commented, “There’s nothing quite so cathartic or educational as screaming “What’s your fucking problem, anyway?!” at the mirror.

Seems to solve most of my problems, anyway.”

He’s quite right.  The blame game ain’ta gonna cut it in a poly relationship.  Monogamous relationships can sometimes just barely stand up to it.  Poly?   Forget it.  Won’t work.

If you think that this list isn’t polyamory specific, you’re right.  I reiterate until I feel like a stalled MP3 that there’s very little in this world that’s polyamory specific.  Anything that’ll make you a more effective, loving, happier person is probably going to be good for poly relationships as well.

If you find this site useful, consider buying the Goddess of Java a libation of that greatest of elixirs. The Goddess of Java disdains latte heresy and only imbibes the Java purity, so it's a mere $1.50.

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We all like to do things that make our partners happy. It’s part of the fun of a relationship.

A friend of mine is dating a new person. That person’s spouse had kept a file for many years on things that she liked, her underwear size and how she liked her massage. He passed this on to the new partner, which my friend referred to as the “Keys to the Kingdom”.

While you might not necessarily be all that cool on handing around dossiers on each other, it does make sense to keep careful tracks of likes and dislikes. Me? I’m prone to dive into whatever project takes my fancy with an obsession and forget important stuff. You know, like partners.

I like the idea of keeping a data file so much that I’m putting out a template here of things you might wanna keep track of with partners.

Stuff I Wanna Remember About My Partner

Clothing sizes
Favorite Author (s)
Favorite Color (s)
Food Allergies
Food Dislikes
Food Likes
Coffee Preferences
Stuff that really turns him/her on in bed
Favorite Movie Genre (s)
Special Hobbies
Music preferences
Things that’ll immediately bring out a smile
Triggers that make him/her uncomfortable
Cherished Dreams

Obviously this is really incomplete. You’ll add to it as you get more information. One person on the PolyFamilies list keeps this in an Excel file with a separate tab for each partner. Not a bad idea, I think.

I’ve talked before about how knowing a partner down into his bones is always a good idea. This is a good start and overview.

But, I’d recommend you negotiate before handing this list out to other partners. Just sayin’.

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A good friend of mine and I were discussing the new Dr. Who series and some of the socio-political issues, when we had an interesting and rather telling conversation. Now, we’re both poly. That becomes important to the conversation.

I asked, “So, which Doctor do you like better, nine or ten?”

“Both,” he replied. “Each is different.”

If that isn’t illustrative of both an ingrained idea in our culture as well as the general polyamory viewpoint, I don’t know what is.

Here I was, a total product of my upbringing and environment. General culture tells us, “You have to have a favorite, like something best — be it having a ‘best friend’, a favorite Doctor, a favorite food, or a favorite football team. You must create a hierarchy of value based on those favorites. What isn’t your favorite isn’t as good — yep even people. In fact, if it’s not your favorite, it might even kinda suck. Teach your children to have a best friend, so they can get the idea early. “

Then there was my friend on the side of polyamory saying, “Individual uniquenesses are such that you don’t have to have favorites or rank desires if you don’t want to. Good can be good without the better and best getting in the way of the idea. In fact, those individual uniquenesses might mean that comparison is silly. They’re different.“

Thing is, even in our culture we recognize that “best” or “favorite” when it comes to people can be damaging. It’s one thing to have a favorite flavor of ice cream, but what loving parent would ever say, “Why yes, your sister is my favorite child, Alphonse.”

I remember many years ago having someone try to argue with me about polyamory, and having the person insist that we all absolutely have to rank our love and relationships. He chose a silly example, not being a parent. If there were a fire in the house, he asked, which child would I save? I remember thinking, “What the hell kind of question is that? I’d die trying to save both!”

Some people would say that the parenting analogy doesn’t work because you don’t have a romantic relationship with your kids. I say that romance doesn’t change the core of what love is, but is merely another flavor of it, and that ranking and favorites and needing to be the favorite all the time is something you need to grow out of if you want to make polyamory work well.

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There’s been a few discussions going around various polyamory communities talking about relationship rules, tastes in physiques, and a lot of other things.

Part of the discussion will invariably involve why some standard or another is wrong. When you dig a little deeper, it is often because that particular person doesn’t meet said standard.

I have an answer to that.

So fucking what? Get over yourselves. What is this idea that you must be universal relationship material? Do you think that you’ll have a higher status if more people wanna fuck you? Do you think it’s personal?

First off, it’s probably not personal. Take “I don’t do LDRs”. If you live on the other side of a continent from someone and they say that, it’s hardly an insult. It’s not personal. That person just doesn’t want to do long distance relationships. Fine. They don’t have to, and it’s not a reflection on you.

What about “I’m not attracted to people who are heavy?” Guess what, friends. Still not personal. That person is allowed her own criteria. To take it personally isn’t useful or even realistic. It’d be a damn stupid reason to run out and diet¹, cause there might be other reasons that the person isn’t attracted to you.

What about “I’m not attracted to people with long black hair?” Should you run out and chop off your raven locks? Friends, you’d be an idiot to do so.

What about “Do not wake me up because you’re having serious emotional issues?” Ahh… interesting. Well, if you need to be able to call someone at three in the morning to cry on them on a regular basis maybe that person isn’t right for you! How ’bout that? See, it works both ways, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean the person who is protective of her sleep is a horrible person, nor does it mean you are. It means you have severely incompatible needs. It’s not a personal affront.

I’m all for change if you think it’ll benefit you. Don’t get me wrong. If running around punching people in the nose isn’t working for you, sure, stopping that and trying other behavior might be useful.

But it’s not a personal affront if a majority of the world doesn’t find you relationship material, nor should you necessarily “make yourself over” to gain sex or romantic relationships. It’s not a contest, no matter how many people seem to think the more people you want to fuck you, the more you win at life.

The relationships that are worth having are the ones that work for you. And let’s face it, even as poly people, we only have 168 hours a week. We all have interests other than romantic relationships. We’ve got our careers, our hobbies, our families, and our individual lives.

Get over yourselves!

¹Not saying that you shouldn’t take care of your health, but body mod to increase fuckability becomes a zero sum game. For the extremes of this, check out honest accounts of any industry where fitting a specific body image becomes a major part of the job.

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Polyamorous people, while we’re supposed to be smarter, more loving, more together and all that nonsense….

Well, we’re not.

I wanted to compile a list of Stupid Poly Tricks. You know, dumb shit I’ve seen people do in the name of polyamory. This is in no particular order and it’s only stuff that flutters into my mind.

1. Expecting Polyamory to solve all your relationship problems

If you haven’t heard the snarky comment, “Relationship Broken, Add More People”, it’s a comment on the fact that adding someone to a relationship isn’t going to help the issues in your old one. In fact, chances are good, it’ll make the relationship problems worse. Please, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, please fix your current relationship problems before you start adding people. It’ll make your karma all shiny and sweet-smelling. Promise.

2. Expecting lovers to be in love with each other because they’re in love with you.

“If someone lurves me for real and for true, they’ll be head over heels for anyone I happen to have the hots for.” I do not know for the life of me where this nonsense came from. But you see it from time to time.

People have different tastes. You know that, right? Just because you have the total hots for someone, your partner doesn’t owe you a damn sex show. Get over it. Let them develop whatever ever friendship/relationship/cordial interaction they want to and stay out of it.

3. Expecting lovers to be at each other’s throats.

The flip side of the last one is even more absurd. “I’m bringing my new love home to meet my husband. How do I make sure they don’t start beating their chests at each other?”

I’m gonna assume you only get involved with grown-ups. (If you don’t, go back to square one. You only want to be involved with grown-ups. This isn’t a joke). Grown-ups don’t start chest beating the minute they meet each other. They smile, greet and just hang out. It’s not a big deal, nor should it be.

While it’s true that your partner may or may not think your new love is the all-wonderful that you do, chances are good that you’re going to be looking at least at a cordial relationship. Hell, they may even become friends!

4. Posting a confession of infidelity to an online forum.

I actually saw this happen. I wish I could think of something gentle to say about it. I can’t. Being online is the equivalent of going into the middle of town square with a megaphone. This is a mind-boggling depth of stupidity that I cannot begin to comprehend. Polyamorous communities, by their very nature, are rather interconnected. Stuff gets back to people. Solve the problem entirely. Don’t go against agreements. See? Simple. Problem solved. You are now free to broadcast whatever you like.

5. Making agreements you don’t intend to keep.

If you’re not okay with a partner having a veto and resent it, don’t agree to it, More than one person I’ve met has used resentment or the feeling of coercion to excuse some pretty reprehensible behavior. STOPPIT! Only agree to what you intend to follow through on.

6. Allowing yourself to be financially supported by someone who disapproves of your lifestyle.

This gets the Stupid Award with the Diamond Cluster.

When I say financially support, I mean reduced rent because you live on their property, large gifts of cash, personal loans at reduced to no interest, large amounts of free child care (this last is probably the worst in stupidity, as it gives the person who is providing the child care way too much leverage in case they decide to Think of the Children and take you to court to get custody of your kids). I am not talking about property you get through a will or something like that. That’s yours.

If someone disapproves that strongly of your life, don’t give them that kind of leverage.

I welcome any other comments of Stupid Poly Tricks, but these are the ones that leapt to mind most immediately when I sat down with my nice espresso to write this.

As an addendum, what the heck do you guys really wanna see Mama Java rantin’ about this summer? Or what do you want to rant about that you think will amuse/instruct me enough to post here as a guest column? My own life is drama free enough that I don’t have much column fodder these days.

No, if you love me, don’t wish column fodder on me. Please. It doesn’t taste so nice.

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