The Polyamorous Misanthrope

Should you have a group marriage or multi-adult household?

No.

Surprised? Really, there’s no reason to be. I do not consider group living The Ideal Way to Live. Oh, yes, it can suit people and and there are many that love it, but that does not mean that I think for a second it would suggest that it is ideal for everyone. It isn’t.

Consider very carefully what it is you do want out of a relationship before you get started with this. For instance, you might decide, especially after careful consideration, that monogamy is the most fulfilling life path you can have. I am not anti-monogamy by any means. I am not in favor of monogamy being considered the only path, merely a path that might work well. One of the most respected members of a group marriage discussion group in which I participate is monogamous. He is deeply in love with his wife, does not want a romantic relationship with anyone else, but joined the list out of curiosity to see what we nutcases were up to. He knows in his heart that monogamy is the happiest and most fulfilling choice for him. What makes him unique is that he understands that while what makes him happiest is something society generally sanctions, it is not necessarily the One True Way.

When deciding if you want a group household, it’s probably a good idea to analyze why you want it.

So, what do you expect to get out of it?

Hot sex?

Reality check: Yes, the sex is nice. Don’t forget about real life! While people do have sex, they also have to wash dishes, take out the trash, rear children, do laundry, pay bills and earn a living. A group household will have just as much difficulty making time for each other as any married couple. Just like in a monogamous marriage, you’re going to get time alone with your love about as often as you can manage to make that time.

Unconditional love?

Reality check: Just because you live with someone, don’t expect it. Polyamorous households have about the same quality of love as monogamous marriages - it can range from wonderful to truly hideous.

Instant Support System?

Reality check: In a good poly household, yes, you’re going to have a somewhat wider “instant support system”. Depending on where you live and the attitude of the community to group marriage in general, though, you may be on your own outside of your household. This is not a way of life that people are used to. Many people disapprove of it pretty strongly. Many of these people will be your very own blood. Be prepared for that. You may wind up feeling a bit isolated. In fact, watch for this, because it can be a warning sign for other trouble. You know, one of the abuse warning signs: If you’re encouraged to drop most former associations, that’s a check mark about whether or not you’re in a terribly unhealthy relationship.

Okay, so you’ve decided this is really what you want.So how do you form such a relationship?

If you do not presently have a partner/spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend, you’re cool. Go date polyamorous people. Get to know them. Laugh, have water balloon fights, go play Frisbee in the park with them, heckle bad movies together and have a good time. Relationships of various sorts may form, and chances are good you’ll at least make some close friends. While not all polyamorous people want group marriages, some do. You might meet some people who you love deeply and with whom you want to form a marriage.

Oh? How do you find polyamorous people? That’s easy. Go on the Internet, and join every discussion group you see even vaguely related to group relationships. Be sure to explain how good you are in bed and how your life is unfulfilling because you have so much love to give people. Make sure discussions revolve around sex. Use the expression Hot Bi Babe a lot. This is sure to attract polyamorous people. Be sure to point out to anyone who has a discussion on the list about anything other than sex that they not sex positive. (Not really! This won’t make you any friends at all. It’s just a reality that you do see this from time to time).

In reality, meeting people who are polyamorous, much less people interested in polyamorous group households, can be difficult. They don’t not wear signs, and many keep mighty quiet about our lives. Even more of us have been burned so many times by people that we get suspicious. If you do want to meet poly people, the Internet is a good resource to start with. There are hundreds of polyamorous discussion groups out there - many of the specific to local areas. There are regular conventions, camping events, and get togethers in most urban areas. Rural living is somewhat more problematic for this. But, among these people might be people who are also interested in forming a group household.

The problem here is that just because someone is looking to form a multi-adult household does not necessarily mean that this person is going to be compatible with you. It’s one interest out of thousands possible. Someone who was into Country music and did not like children, thought Renaissance Faires were for idiots who never got over playing dress-up, and was a member of Greenpeace would be about as poor a match as is possible for me. I do not care how hot looking or intelligent the person was, this Just Wouldn’t Work.

Compatibility does make forming a group household somewhat more difficult. Finding two people who are compatible enough to be together to form a marriage can be hard enough. Trying to add to that and you can find yourself in a nightmare. Patience is a good idea if you don’t want to have your life blow up in your face.

So, what kind of things do you look for when looking for people that would be good spice for a group household?

That’s a hard question, really. You do want team players. You want people who can approach something without an agenda. You want to make sure YOU don’t have an agenda, or are bogged down by expectations. You want love and I am NOT talking New Relationship Energy here. That newly in love feeling rocks, dunnit? It also melts your damned brain, and that’s a bad basis for deciding to form a household. Don’t do it. The stupid, it BURNS.

When you do form a multi-adult household, you do want a plan. You want to outline things in the most unromantic fashion possible. You want to outline finances, you wanna talk kids. You want to talk about household duties. I know we poly people love to just go with the flow and there’s no-one so easy to trust as someone you’ve just fallen in love with. That’s your biology and procreative urge speaking, and our technological society is pretty removed from rearing infants in the jungle and trying to save them from saber toothed tigers. Check it out with your present reality.

A good way to do this is to look at the situation. If someone came to YOU and said that they were about to do what you are doing, what would you say? If you would whack said person upside the head with a newspaper, rethink.

I hope I’m not being a downer here, but any relationship blow up can be nasty, and even if you’re entering into things with great caution, you can get burned. Even so, it’s a good idea to unhook your heart from your brain long enough to examine what you’re doing.

You might even find that this has created a lovely and fulfilling part of your whole life.

One of the issues that often arise in poly situations — especially in group living is who decides what gets done.

Sure, sure, a consensus model works. But have you ever gotten more than two people to happily agree on more than 50% of decisions? (The “happily” part is important in the long run. Just going along without being happy means that you’re gonna have some resentment along the line).

When the consensus model won’t work, there’s another option: The Designated Control Freak.

I found out about the whole concept of the DCF from a good friend of mine, and thought it was funny and cute and a nifty way to solve decision issues. I told my roommate about it, who also thought it was cute, so we jokingly implemented it.

It was at least six months before we internalized the awesome power of the system.

Here’s the way it works. When the person becomes the Designated Control Freak (DCF) the dialog will be in italics.

Albert: Let’s go out to eat.

Betty: Great! Where shall we go?

Carl: I don’t want to go to a vegetarian restaurant.

Albert: Okay, where are we going then?

Carl: Let’s go to the Outback Steak House.

Betty: No, I hate chain restaurants.

Carl: Okay, Betty, where are we going?

Betty: There’s the new Thai place.

<silent pause>

Betty: Okay, I’ll call them and see if they take reservations.

The way the one becomes the DCF is to express a dissenting opinion when trying to come to a decision. If you have a dissenting opinion, you become responsible for the outcome and have to solve the problem. (i.e. what restaurant to go to for an outing). If you have a strong opinion about where to go and speak up, it’s up to you to organize it. Notice that in the course of a few sentances, the DCF changed several times. It wasn’t an argument (and usually when you agree to the DCF system there won’t be).

If you speak up, if you express an opinion, you’re the DCF until someone else speaks up with a different solution.

You’d think it would be a way for people to railroad through their decisions. But it isn’t. Sometimes you recognize that what you really want is not to be the leader, and shut up. Sometimes you want something badly enough to take the reigns.

Part of the beauty of this system is that it is impossible to be a Puppeteer and try to be the Hindmost¹. If you have an opinion, you’re in charge.

This model reduces fights in a lot of areas. You have a specific way you want the bathroom cleaned? Then you’re the Bathroom DCF. Go for it. It gets cleaned your way. You think the trash has to be emptied before you have to tamp trash down in the kitchen garbage bin, huzzah! You’re the DCF and get to do it.

Does this mean a lazy person could slack in the house and never have to do anything because he never speaks up? In theory, I suppose it could. In practice, I’ve noticed that even the most housework-phobic and disorganized have their own tweaks and twitches for which they will become the DCF and not so lazy as all that.

The thing is, this model really also works well because no-one is willing to work that hard to get his way about everything when he’s responsible for the outcome. You’ll usually find that if someone is trying to bully to get their way on everything, they’re seeing the other person as their “hands” to accomplish what they want. Puppeteering, if you will. This removes the strings nicely.

¹For those of you who are not science fiction geeks, in the Ringworld series, there is a culture of creatures who lead from behind — their morality is more-or-less based on cowardice: the ruling class is known as they-who-lead-from-behind, and the supreme leader is called the Hindmost. Their leader is called the Hindmost.

We talk about communication being important between polyamorous people all the time, and with good reason. It is important.

I got to thinking about ways to ensure good communication and came up with the following:

• Tell the truth

This seems really basic and you know, it isn’t. I’m not talking “Brutal Honesty” here. That’s usually more often an excuse for bullying than it is being genuinely honest. What I mean is that it’s a good idea to make sure that you’re first being honest with yourself, and knowing your motives, then being honest with the person you’re talking to. You can do this kindly.

When you’re communicating with a partner, make sure you’re letting him in on what you’re really thinking and feeling. Your partner has to have accurate information to work with. If you’re not comfortable telling your partner what you’re thinking or feeling, either you’ve got a problem being honest, or you’ve got a problem with your partner that goes a lot deeper than “communication”. A good way to know which it is is to check out how close you tend to play your cards to your chest with intimate friends. If you have a problem telling them the truth about what you’re thinking and feeling, too, take a look at your driver’s license. There will be a pic of the person at fault right there.

• If you have a choice, presume benevolent motives.

You and your partner(s) love each other, right? Of all the people in the world that want your good, surely this person or these people will be them. Sure, people can be thoughtless and hurt feelings, but you can say your feelings are hurt and give a person a chance to explain. “I statements” ¹ are great for this. If you say “I feel X”, you’re owning your own feelings without making the other person responsible for them. It’ll also give the person a chance to elaborate on what’s going on in his or her head, and you’ll have more information to work with. Sometimes you’ll get an “Oops, my bad” or “I didn’t mean X quite that way. Lemme ‘esplain”.

If your partner is actually out to get you (or at least if you have such a deep belief), chances are good you’ve got something more than communication going wrong. For the record, punishment doesn’t belong in any adult relationship outside of the fantasy of a BSDM scene, ‘kay?

• Avoid sarcasm.

I was discussing this article with a friend of mine and she wisely pointed out that the allure of sarcasm is rather like the allure of almost all humor. It’s about pain and the reaction to it. The thing is, while sarcasm may be a reaction to pain, far too often it is often an attempt to cause it as a punishment to someone for being wrong somehow². I don’t need to point out that good communication comes from benevolent motives. If you’re using sarcasm, maybe your motives aren’t as benevolent as all that and your partner(s) are right to feel as if they need to back off and defend themselves.

• Ask questions to try to understand. Then listen carefully to the answer!
  

When you don’t understand something, ask a question. Listen to the answer. It’s a simple, yet powerful technique. Far too often when people are talking, they’re just flapping their tongues. Don’t blow your partner off by asking a question and then wait to find something you can jump on to prove your point. Listen to what they’re saying.

These habits are relatively simple, yet very powerful in relationships. Though, like many good habits, do you practice them? Have you made it a priority to learn good communication skills?

If you haven’t, that’s okay. You really can change how you behave. Don’t expect people in your life to fall all over you accepting the change all at once, though. If you’ve made it a habit not to listen, to use a lot of sarcasm or presume malevolent motives, you may have to go through a trust building period — and I don’t mean just a couple of weeks here. People who’ve needed to protect themselves might be slow to open up. But just be patient and practice your good habits.

The results are really fun!
¹When used properly. I’ve seen some sneaky and passive aggressive uses of “i statements” that would curdle the blood of any person whose goal was actual communication.
²We who have the character flaw of being judgmental can be just awfully sarcastic!

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!

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.

For all that I often make cracks about couples looking for that bi-chick to move in with them for lives of Perfect Poly Bliss, sometimes you really do find someone who might really want to form a family with a couple.

When moving from a couple dynamic to a triad, you’ve kinda gotta be willing to let the coupledom go first. No, stop looking at me like that. I know you’ve been together for fifteen years, and have a house and kids. If the couple part is that damn important to you, do everyone a favor. Be poly, if you want. Form relationships and enjoy them. But stop bloody well looking for someone to “add” to your marriage to “make it complete”.

If you really want a triad let it be a new relationship. You’re really not going to be able to preserve the original couple with exactly the dynamic it had. The dynamics are all gonna change, anyway, and probably in ways you couldn’t have anticipated even if you thought you had all the facts. That’s okay. New relationships are new relationships.

I’d like to offer some helpful ideas to consider if you’re wanting to form a new triad.

· Move into a new home together. Move out of the house the couple shared.

I don’t blame you if this first one makes you squawk. Lemme esplain… No, that would take to long. Let me sum up.

If you have been living in a couple for any length of time, you have your own space. You’ve filled that house to make it “yours”. It’s very difficult to integrate a new family member into the old space. It can be done, but let me ask you a few questions:

Do you have unspoken rules about who gets to touch what and when around stuff?

Does the kitchen sort of “belong” to the primary cook, and is this person even slightly territorial? I was, and didn’t realize it. When OLQ moved in together, it was a very good thing, indeed, that we did move into a new house, as the kitchen wound up “belonging” to the cook of the night rather than have territorial issues between people in the household. Moving all of us into a new home was something we did right. (Yeah, we did things wrong, too, but that wasn’t one of them).

Is there a workbench or garage that is the primary “lab” of someone in the present household?

Do you have a method for filing books/papers/CDs/DVDs?

If you all create a new home together, it’s a good way to get around these issues. I promise you, they’re very real. Don’t think you’re exempt. It’ll bite you.

After observing poly households and listening to various living arrangements for a long time, I begin to think the Oneida Community had the right idea – give every adult member a small bedroom of his or her own.

If you have a “master” bedroom with a couple and then another bedroom for the new member, you’re screaming that there is a hierarchy to the relationship. Maybe you’re okay with that, but the sort of person who is independent enough to deal with a poly live-in relationship won’t be in the long run.

And the whole “all adults in one bedroom” thing? Just… Don’t. Not unless each person has another totally private space of his or her own. I don’t give a damn how extroverted and in love with having people around you all the time you are. Everyone needs some little space of their own. If they don’t get it physically, they’re gonna start creating it in their heads. Not a good thing if you’re looking to keep relationship bonds.

· Establish rules about parenting if there are children.

I’ve written more about poly parenting, I think, than any other subject. Just click on the parenting tag here in this blog and you’ll come up with most of what I have on the subject that I think is really useful. I’m not going to reinvent the damn wheel here.

· Expect individuals to have individual lives (and possibly loves)

Something OLQ did that was radically and horribly wrong was that we tried to be a single unit of four people rather than four individuals with lives who chose to live together. My God, we were so foolish. We did it with the best of intentions. One of us had come from some incredibly tightly-knit generational type family, so the joined at the hip type marriage was all that one knew. Others loved the idea of together, together, together.

Until it started to chafe.

A standard monogamous marriage can just barely stand doing all social things together, taking all vacations together and going to all events together. Even then, I’m not so sure that’s really the healthiest thing in the world to do.

When you’ve got more than two people?

Well, think about it: Even the most compatible of people are going to have their own individual tastes, goals, needs and desires. Make sure that you allow for those however you can. It’s actually good to do things as a family, but make sure that each individual adult has things that are Not Part of the Family that they’re doing as well.

· Don’t try to engineer everything

If your family rules start to look like a corporate merger, you might be stifling things a bit. While I’m all for having things out in the open, talking them out, and certainly writing a property sharing contract, allow for the serendipity that you’re going to find in any effective life. Just because you’ve been studying group dynamics for a long time, can quote all the mistakes you think the Oneida Community made, have elaborate theories on why the Nest system from Stranger in a Strange Land wouldn’t work, and have studied cult theory until you could write a thesis on it without checking any more references, don’t think that this theory is going to trump the infinite variety of human choice. Real people are cranky, cantankerous and gloriously unpredictable. It’s why sociology is more of an art than a science.

I’d actually encourage anyone who wanted to form a group poly household to take a few cues from some business models of relationships. No, no, don’t think I mean that it needs to be all cold and corporate. Believe it or not many large organizations these days are clueing in to the fact that the people are really the important part of any organization and that making sure that everyone’s needs are served is a good way to have a healthy, happy organization. I’ve recommended The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People more than once here, and I’ll beat the drum for it again.

But, don’t by whatever you hold holy, think you can make a triad some sort of “couple plus” relationship. It’s not “just like a monogamy, but with more people”. Let it be what it is and you’ve a better chance at the relationship working out happily.

I follow my intuition, go with my gut, all that. The times I haven’t? Well, things didn’t exactly have what I would call an optimum outcome.

Does this mean I think, “Well, I feel this way, so it must be true!” is the way to go.

Not. Even. Close.

We get a lot of pushing to follow our feelings, trust our intuition, go with our guts — as if digested waste can think. The problem comes in with the misunderstanding of what “gut feelings” are for and how they work.

It’s not mystical, really.

The human brain is set up to gather and integrate data very quickly — so quickly that we’re doing so without thinking of it consciously. Think of catching a frisbee. It’s physics, and you can write the equations by which you perform the actions, but you’re not consciously figuring vectors when you see the disc coming at you. You just catch it. Doesn’t make it magic.  But if you study the physics, you can describe the exact mechanism pretty clearly.

If you just go with your feelings without looking for facts, you’re running around with one eye poked out. You have no depth perception.¹ You’re missing the other viewpoint, and it’s an absolutely necessary one to make sure you have a clear 3D picture of what’s going on.

I wanna digress a little bit and talk about facts. It’s basic and simple and people get it wrong all the time. If it happened, it’s a fact. If it hasn’t happened, it’s a theory or a prediction. If you hold a kitten over a working blender and open your hand, the prediction that it will fall in is actually not a fact. It’s a theory. It’s a theory that has a whale of a lot of evidence to point to the probability of kitten puree², but it’s not a fact. We clear? Good.

So where does someone who finds her intuition a good tool get off lecturing about facts?

Simple. If you trust a feeling without digging for supporting facts, it will bite you. As Franklin Veaux wisely commented, “Just because I feel bad doesn’t mean someone else did something wrong.” If you feel bad, the fact is that you feel bad. Doesn’t prove a thing.

I’m gonna admit to a slight hypocrite moment here. Recently I made a business decision based on no facts I could find. I had taken a temp job that felt wrong — I mean, soul-suckingly, sleep-deprivingly bad. From a factual, logical point of view, the job was mostly positive. It got me a shot as some experience I would not have otherwise had, had more secure income than I’m used to as a freelancer, and several other good things. I decided to go on feelings and resign from that job. Yeah, it turned out quite well. I found other avenues to replace in the income and experience. But I cannot pretend for one second that I found appropriate backing facts before I made that decision. I tried, but at the time, the thoughts weren’t thinking. I can see now that taking a temp job with no specific end date or end to the project wasn’t going to work with my business plan, but that was hindsight in terms of my decision-making, and hindsight should be suspect because justification is easy at that stage.

What I didn’t do was fool myself. I didn’t pretend facts that I wasn’t seeing. I didn’t make anyone else responsible for how I felt.³ I didn’t fool myself that it was risky. The fact (it happened, so it’s a fact) of the positive outcome wasn’t some mystic anything. It was that I was not fooling myself about the risk and got my ass in gear in a big way to hustle and get the positive outcome I wanted.

This applies to relationships. If something happens where you feel bad or something feels “wrong”, you owe it to yourself to examine your feelings then look for facts.

Scared a Dear Love is gonna leave you?  Well, are you scared for a genuine reason or not?  What are the supporting facts?  What, specifically has happened that says that it’s in the Dear Love’s character?  Can you recall at least one (if not more) instance?  If there’s nothing, your feelings are coming from somewhere else.

Is a Dear Love late home for the umpteenth time?  Are you spinning out of control because you’re edgy about it?  What are the facts of the matter?  Not the supposition, not the extrapolation. What are the facts?   Don’t know them?

Give it up. Go take a hot bath.  Have a cup of tea.  Think about something else for awhile.

Wait till you can get the facts.

¹Which could lead to an interesting essay on ole Mr. Wednesday, but that’s not for a poly column.
² This image was shamelessly stolen from a friend of mine. Ten points if you can find the essay. It’s a favorite to which I often refer.
³ ‘Cause… well, they aren’t.

Raise your hand if you’ve developed a friendship or a relationship online.

Betcha a doughnut that just about everyone reading this has had one.

This means a fair whack of you have had that weird beast in your life — the Long-Distance Relationship (LDR).

Communications and networking being what they are, we simply do see a lot of interaction conducted online over long distances. When romance gets thrown in, it can be a lot of fun or a big mess, depending on how you conduct it.

To ensure that it’s fun, keep a few of these things in mind:

Texual communication has its limits.

Sure, you can feel close to someone through online communication. You can exchange your thoughts, feelings, secrets, inner desires, and all that. It’s great. But the physical component does make a difference. Studies show that over half of our communication is non-verbal, so that missing component can be significant.

I recall some years ago finding the writing of someone a pain in the butt to deal with. All I could see was the text. I wound up meeting the person and dating him for a few years. When I could tie his writing to what I knew to be his vocal mannerisms and body language, I wound up interpreting texual communication very differently.

I’ve found this in myself as well. People who’ve met me in person are considerably more likely to see humor in my casual texual communication because they know the facial expressions that go along with certain modes of expression.

It’s a human trait. Keep that in mind when you meet someone on the Internet.

Meetings are “vacation time”. Do not mistake how fun they are with what living together would be like.

When you get together in meatspace with your LDR, it’s a “special event”. You’re up, you’re on, you’re more likely to be glittering (or at least making an effort). This person does not get the dailyness of you.

There’s nothing in the world wrong with enjoying that specialness. I find my visits with my FWB delightful because of the break in routine. We have a good time together — which, to me, is kinda the point. But, that vacation, that fun, that sense of adventure even when things are going All Wrong? Unless that is your natural state of being,¹ it’s not going to stick in any relationship where you’re hanging out on a day to day basis. That sort of thing is more about who you are, not who you think you are in relation to someone else.

Don’t let the LDR keep you from living in the present.

“Now” is all you have. Yes, yes, yes, spend time communicating with your long-distance loves. Don’t drop the rest of your life in the face of it. The house still needs cleaning, you still need to make sure you’re paying attention to the kids. Oh, yeah, that partner you’re with… your local SO(s) needs attention, too. That life you had before the LDR? It’s still there. But it won’t be if you don’t live it.

If you are planning to move closer to each other, don’t put your life on hold until this becomes a reality. If you have goals and projects, for goodness’ sake keep working on them in the meantime! You could get hit by a truck. The world could explode. Do you want your life to have been lived “on hold” because you were waiting for something exciting?

Enjoy it for exactly what it is.

There’s a lot to be said for having a relationship where there are short bursts of intense fun. That’s a good, real and valid thing to do. Fun counts. It counts for a lot! So, don’t knock it or dismiss it as less “serious” or less “worthy”!

And remember everyone, the PolyWorks Fund Logo Contest is ending in a couple of weeks!  Click on the link to find out more.

¹And if it is, bless you for adding joy to the world!

I’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.

This guest column is by Jenny Ford.

Polyamory ain’t all beer and skittles. Like your hand, it has two sides, and they can’t be separated. For every wonderful advantage to being polyamorous, there is a corresponding down side, and some of them are mighty difficult to anticipate. Jealousy, time management, communication and boundaries are the obvious ones. This is a little guided tour of some of the more obscure pitfalls.

“I am polyamorous, therefore I must accommodate my partner’s other partners.”

We are people of goodwill. We are open to extended, loving networks of chosen family or whatever else we choose to call it.

There are people in this world who will take advantage of goodwill. They will do less than their share of the heavy lifting, whether that is financial, emotional, or physical.

Just because you are polyamorous, and you partner loves someone, that does not mean that you have to automatically extend to the new lover the same level of trust and support – physical, financial or emotional – that you extend to your partner.

“I am polyamorous, therefore I have no right to be unhappy about my partner’s partner.”

Some people do things which are truly unhappy-making.

In my years as an active member of the poly community, I have heard the following examples. In each case, the first reaction of the party who had been trespassed against was “I have to make this work. I have to get over my reaction for the good of all,” and in each case, it was actually quite reasonable for the person to be upset.

A childless-by-choice couple decide to venture into polyamory. The husband’s new girlfriend accidentally falls pregnant. Twice.

A poly couple invite a V partner to be their live-in child-carer. The carer is consistently late picking the kids up from school.

A partner in a fluid-bonded group has unsafe sex, and keeps it secret from the others.

Two couples decide to move in together. Two weeks before the big day, one person announces they aren’t going to move in, in fact, they have decided to move to another city 600 miles away.

Someone’s partner secretly starts a new relationship, and then introduces it as a fait accompli and expects the poly person to accept it.

“I am polyamorous, therefore I should support my partner in their new relationship.”

Sometimes, hormones and pheremones lead our loved ones up the garden path.

Healthy boundaries means we don’t rush after them yelling “stop, stop, you’re going to get hurt,” but that doesn’t mean we have to turn down the covers on the spare bed and put a chocolate on the pillow to welcome the drug-addicted psychopath of the moment into your family.

You are well within the bounds of reasonableness to say “I am not going to tell you want to do, but I don’t want to watch the train wreck. Keep it away from me.”

“You are polyamorous, so I don’t have to take this relationship seriously.”

Subtle pitfalls come from dating not-completely-poly people. They have subconscious attitudes about poly people which can show up in quite inconsiderate behaviour sometimes.

“You are polyamorous, so you can be my partner - while I am between monogamous relationships.”

This one has caused a mountain of heartbreak for several poly people I know.

“If I have more than one relationship, each one will be less intense.”

Ummm, no …

If anything, poly relationships are more intense, because the people involved are – on average – more willing to talk through issues and more in touch with how they feel.

“I am polyamorous, therefore my jealousy is my problem to deal with on my own.”

This is a big one.

Sometimes “jealous” feelings are a result of one’s own internal wobbles. Other times, the situation is actually violating a boundary or failing to meet your needs, and the emotion is a completely valid flag that something needs to change.

Don’t be too quick to take on 100% of the responsibility as though you are simply inventing a problem. (Consult the brilliant Brave-Little-Toaster post for elaboration on this point!)

Assuming that because you are polyamorous you should be OK with everything that goes on in multiple relationships is like assuming that because you are gay you should be OK with every sexual advance from any person of the same gender.

Whether or not you are in a sexual relationship with any given individual, you absolutely always have the right to say “no” to anything that doesn’t work for you, and without feeling guilty.

Jenny Ford has an Honours degree in Psychology and works as a business consultant and executive coach …. by day. In her other life, she is a polyamorous, bisexual community-builder and relationships coach. She has husband, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, three children (though the teenager could count as three all on her own), and two cats. She lives in Sydney, Australia with a subset of the above family members and is currently researching how to bend space and time so she can live with ll the people she loves in all the places they want to live without leaving Sydney.  She has a blog at raisingentrepreneurs.com. Expressions of appreciation for Jenny should take the form of Lindt chocolate balls. Bonus points if they are the black 60% cocoa ones.

Front of the hand, back of the hand …

© 2007, Jenny Ford

Used by permission, all rights reserved