The Polyamorous Misanthrope

“I’m in a mid-life crisis, I guess.  The passion is out of my life and I’m looking for something more.   My wife doesn’t understand me.”

Any polyamorous person on a dating site is almost sure to get a message like this from time to time.  No, it’s not exclusive to men.  Women do a serious version of it, too.  So get off your high horse.

But male or female, if you’ve been in a long-term relationship that’s gotten blah, you might find  yourself saying, “Oh, it would be so much better if I had a partner that understood me.”

While I’m not saying that your relationship problem isn’t that you’re misunderstood, do you really think something so commonplace and cliché is really because partners of decades don’t understand each other?  Really?  After decades together.

You people aren’t paying attention, are you?

And you know what?  That’s rather the point.  Now, you know ole Mama Java.  She’ll never advise you to try to get someone else to behave the way you want to fix your problem.  But honestly, this kind of intimacy problem is a genuine big deal.  More than that, it’s often pretty tragic.

I want to offer a possible solution, and it’s a good one.  If you’re feeling like your partner doesn’t understand you, do something a little counterintuitive:

Put all your energy into understanding your partner.

Now, I’m not suggesting long, drawn-out conversations where you’re prying like a parent with a non-communitive teenager.  It doesn’t work then and it certainly isn’t going to work isn’t going to work in an adult relationship.  When I say put your energy into understanding your partner, it means understanding the lack of communication, too.  Sometimes, it can be as easy as, “Baby, we haven’t been talking much.  Is there a reason you’d like to tell me about?” and find a floodgate opens.  Sometimes, it’s a courting process.

Don’t confuse “understanding your partner” with “getting the information you need to have a good lever with your partner”.  Understanding means exactly that.  If you don’t love and care about and want to know your partner down into his bones, my dear, you have a far worse problem that your partner not understanding you.  Got that?

If you think this is sounding a bit like Stephen Covey’s Habit Five[1] of the Seven Habits o Highly Effective People, there’s a lot to that.  If you’re having trouble connecting, if you’re having a hard time communicating, seeking to understand and understand deeply does two things.  The first thing it does is give you a clearer grokking of the issues involved.  It is never a bad idea to seek to understand a partner deeply.  Prying and being invasive is something else entirely.  If you’re seeking to truly understand, you’ll avoid being invasive because you’re developing the empathy and compassion to understand how your partner is feeling.

The second thing that seeking to understand does is build trust.  ‘Member how you were all upset and had your kickers in a bunch because your partner didn’t understand you?  We all want to be loved and understood by our partners.  You partner(s) want you to understand them, too!  It’s much easier to make that connection with someone you have seen demonstrate on a consistent basis that s/he wants to understand you!

Remember to take it slow.  If you’ve gotten to the “My wife doesn’t understand me” phase, your relationship has been sliding for a long time.  This isn’t something you can gloss over for a couple of months and expect everything to be all lovey-dovey and dandy.  It’s going to take time and patience.  Me?  I think good intimate relationships are worth it.

This won’t solve every single relationship problem you have.  Sorry, there’s no shortcuts.  But this is a fantastic first step to repair and expand relationships.

I need advice.

My girl and I began exploring the “lifestyle” about 2 years ago.  At some point mid way, I discovered that I was having nervousness block my performance, in my opinion because many encounters seemed rushed.  I talked with my partner about doing solo dates, and she was very much against it.  So I let go of it.

Meanwhile, my partner gets involved (solo) with a popular social club, and from her explanation it has really helped her in areas of being social, something she had been struggling with.  She attended a larger event, held at a campground, and calls me to say she drank too much, and had been offered a spot to spend the night.  She was approached by a male member of the group sexually, somehow he gets the opportunity to explain to her the group is full of swingers, and apparently sparks fly between the two of them.  She asks me if she could have my blessing to have sex with him, and I agree to it.

I attend their next event to meet this gentleman, nice guy, apparently the woman seem to love him, and all of the sudden I start noticing that he and my girl are doing things like hugging/light kissing/and at one point hand-holding.  That night she tells me they are going to sneak out into the woods, and tell her to have fun.  After several hours they got back, and my mind had started getting restless.

Somehow I overlooked the fact this person had the potential of being a very frequent potential dating partner for her, so the next day I kindly explained how I felt to her, and that turned very nasty very fast, and she began threatening to end the relationship, but we reach some sort of simple agreement to lay it to rest until we are clear enough to deal with it in the future.  Now I have not ever had a solo playmate, and I am not sure that it’s in my genes to be able to eventually achieve this.

I am starting to feel anxiety from this situation, I fear it’s going to spin out of control, will be left with over-exaggerated tokens of affection from her, and much less of her time, while feeling inadequate because I don’t believe I have what it takes to even find someone who would be interested in doing the same with me.  I tried explaining this to her, but the results we the same.  She feels I should have no problems what so ever, but I am just not in that space right now, and confusion had taken over in this relationship.

Thanks for reading, any advice or comments are greatly appreciated.

Shouldn’t have a problem, huh?  Well, maybe it’d be better all around for everyone if you didn’t, but let’s accept for the moment that you do. Problems can be solved, so this is hardly a hopeless situation, but don’t let “should” get in the way for now.  Don’t let anyone tell you how you should feel either.

It does sound like you’re feeling pretty insecure about your own attractiveness.  That sucks.  It’s beyond the scope of a single blog post to give you really useful, solid advice about how to overcome insecurity about oneself or one’s attractiveness, but I will give you a tiny, minor piece of advice that might be useful:

Be yourself just as hard as you can.

As a unique human being, what you really have to bring to the table in terms of a relationship is the unique human being that you are.  Be that to the hilt.

You did not give a lot of detail about the conversation between the two of you “getting nasty fast” and your girlfriend threatening to leave the relationship, so unfortunately I can’t give much clear advice about that.   I can think of a dozen reasons why it might have, but without more facts on hand, I can only give you some general advice.

• Always tell the truth about how you feel
• Don’t put up with emotional blackmail
• Never agree to what you don’t want, but understand that sometimes these things can be dealbreakers.  Ideally, it’s best to accept that outright.
• You are allowed your feelings, but clinging to insecurity isn’t really helpful.  If you feel insecure, work on that. (You might want to start with Franklin Veaux’s excellent article Becoming Secure.)
• You don’t have to accept inequitable agreements.
• Be your own primary.

I really do think that in your specific case, working on valuing yourself is really the key log that’ll unblock a lot of problems.

Good Luck.  I bet you’ll do great.

A Faithful Reader Asks:

My husband and I have been discussing polyamory over the past couple months. I feel comfortable with the idea, and I know we communicate very well with each other. I am actually concerned about how my reactions could possibly hurt his relationships. I know I have had jealousy issues in the past, which I think come from fears of abandonment or neglect. I believe I am past that point, and I trust the relationship with my husband, but nothing has happened that I think would have provoked that ‘jealous’ reaction. I don’t want my husband to find someone he can have a good relationship with, and end up having to break it off and potentially hurt another person’s feelings because I become upset or jealous. Is this a normal concern for people in polyamorous relationships?

Yes, it’s quite a normal concern. How the two of you handle your relationships between you is definitely a matter you need to settle between yourselves.  I cannot discourage enough, however, from mapping “I feel jealous” to “you have to break it off with the other partner”.

Yes, you need to be able to say if you’re lonely, and trust that you’ll be able to be listened to.  I’m not saying to suck it up or suffer in silence.  I’m saying bring things up to your partner.  The theory is that you guys love each other, right?  A very good thing to do in a poly relationship is for everyone on all sides to do their best to concentrate on that part.  It really helps nudge everyone into treating each other well.

In my own relationships “I feel jealous” (and yes, of course it has happened) does not map to “you must break it off”. It leads to discussion. Sometimes it’s that I am feeling insecure. Sometimes it really is because a partner is ignoring our own relationship for the new and shiny.   Sometimes it can be an indication of another relationship issue that’s serious.  It can be from many roots, some of them internal, and some not.   It would be a bad idea to assume either way.

But make no mistake. Polyamory is most certainly a risk. (Not that monogamy isn’t, it’s just that the risk is more obvious in a poly relationship). I encourage you to look into yourself and think about where you feel good and secure, where you don’t and where you feel your strengths and joys lie.

Good luck!

There’s a popular situation in sitcoms and romantic comedies.  There’ll be this couple — one of them[1] being presented as having their life a bit out of order.  The couple sleeps together, and then the more together partner starts getting the other person’s life in order for them.

I’ve never been too happy with this one.  The implication is that sleeping with someone means you’ve rights over them.  I don’t care if you’re monogamous or polyamorous, this one is obnoxious!

Just because you’re sleeping with someone doesn’t mean you can:

1. Try to become their band manager.

When I speak of trying to become their band manager, I mean that as a kind of blanket euphemism for trying to manage any point in their professional lives.  It’s just that the classic example of this is the girl starting to date a musician and then wanting to manage the guy’s band.

Yes, when you get into relationships, you do want to entwine your lives.  I get that.  But wait to be asked.

2. Manage old, long-term relationships for them.

This part may seem poly-specific, but it’s not.  For monogamous examples, think of dating someone and then trying to help them manage their relationships with their parents – either trying to reconcile or defending the person against them.

In polyamorous situations, for goodness sakes, don’t try to help someone with his problems with long-term relationships!  I’m not encouraging you to be heartless, but if you haven’t known someone for more than five years, chances are slim that you have the whole picture.  If you’re dealing with new and shiny, you can’t possibly have all the facts to give good enough advice.

3. Get them to make a Life Change.

It’s one thing to want someone you love to Be All That They Can Be.  It’s quite another to immediately start encouraging them to go back to school, make a career change, blah, blah, blah.  This is especially true when you start offering to help with applications, business forms or whatever.  Don’t.  Just don’t.  It’s fine to listen and find out what the other person wants, but sleeping with them doesn’t give you a right to manage that sort of thing for them.

I get that you might think they’re in a Relationship That’s Bad for Them.  Might even be true.  Even so, wait to be asked.  Seriously.

When you are in a relationship, you have these rights:

1. You may ask for what you want.

No, you don’t get rights over another person’s time.  You do get to ask for what you want, and in fact if you want a good relationship, you’ll do exactly that.

2. You may set boundaries.

I’m not going to go into a big lecture about boundaries.  A lot of my columns talk about them.  Click here for a series.  The basic takeaway is that a boundary is about what behavior you’ll accept to be in a relationship.  But, it doesn’t tell the other person how to behave.  Yes, that’s subtle, and I spend thousands of words analyzing the difference in other columns.

The point here is that I think that translating some very, very wrong monogamous norms into polyamorous situations really has the potential for a lot of wacky hijinks that might be fun to watch on a comedy of errors.

But, dear oh Lord, you wouldn’t wanna live ‘em.

This column may come across as slightly sexist.  I’m sorry for that, but it’s a thread I’ve been pulling that I’m having a hard time getting out of my mind.  You probably could apply this to other dynamics, but I’ve not yet analyzed them to the point where I feel comfortable talking about them.  I bow in the dust.

FWB, Button and I got together this weekend.  *chuckles* I need to see them more often, as it seems that a visit from them is sure to inspire a poly column.  I suppose it’s the cross germination of ideas.  The Prince and I have been together[1] for twenty years and have been poly the whole time, so it’s not like polyamory is something we discuss or analyze as often as other subjects.

FWB is pretty successful at “getting the ladies”, if you want to look at it that way, and one of the men he knows was admiring this fact and wondering how he did it. No, it’s not about movie star good looks, nor is it all being about Mr. Cool.

FWB simply enjoys the company of women. This is significantly different from liking getting laid[2].  He enjoys the conversation, the hanging out, just enjoys interacting with women as people.

I know men, men that are as strictly heterosexual as FWB, that really don’t like hanging out with women all that much.  Pussy?  My God yes, they love that.  But to get it, it’s almost as if they’re diving into this strange and uncomfortable world that they tolerate to get a drug or something.  Myself, I think it’s a little tragic they’re not sexually attracted to men.  They’d be happier.

I’ve noticed this almost across the board.  The men I’ve known who are quite successful at multiple relationships with women are invariably interested in women in and out of bed.  They tended to find the woman’s mind as fascinating as her body.  None of the men I am thinking of would fit the “Sensitive New Age Guy” stereotype, either.  They’re all intelligent, dynamic, opinionated people.  Some are courtly, others aren’t.   Some are laid back, others have a bit of a temper.  Some have really “alpha” personalities, others don’t.  The one characteristic they seem to have in common is that simple enjoyment of female company.

The holiday season is fast approaching and many people often wonder how to handle alternative lifestyles such as polyamory and holidays.    I’d like to offer a list of Useful Tips that will help with the Cool Kids/Backward Family interface.

1. If you’re thinking of coming out at a family gathering…. DON’T.

Good grief, have a heart!  I’m all in favor of being out, yes.  Yes, I think being truthful with one’s family is a great idea.  But you know what?  There’s a time and a place for emotionally charged conversations and it’s not when Dad’s got the knife and is carving the Thanksgiving turkey, ‘kay? If you’re going to come out before the holidays and all the gatherings, you’ve really only got a couple of weeks to do so to give ‘em time to adjust to the shock. Otherwise, go ahead and wait until after the New Year.

2. Having a heart doesn’t mean being a doormat.

In all things, moderation and balance are important.  You know those boundaries I keep pushing?  You don’t have to accept being called names, threats or anything of the like.  Have plans for a graceful retreat if things get hairy.

3. Be careful with assumptions.

It can be hard to predict how family will react. Give ‘em a chance to react well to you being poly. Who knows? You may find you were unnecessarily edgy.

4. Those communication techniques you learned for good poly relationships can apply to your birth family.

Good communication, good boundaries, a willingness to truly love? All those things are important outside of the fun romantic relationships, you know. You’ve spent a lot of time using and practicing them. Here’s a chance to practice even more. Love’s love, for pity’s sake, and the world needs loving people.  All relationships take work, care and focus.  Be willing to do the work.

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.

The Polyamorous Misanthrope was supposed to be a weekly column.

It was for awhile and then I started drying up for topics.  Why?  Well, as I study polyamory, I see more and more that the advice I give, the lessons I’ve learned and the observations I make are less about having good multiple relationships and more about having good relationships in general.  Believe it or not, how people interact has less to do with the slippery bits and considerably more to do with what goes on between the ears.

I’ve said for years that there’s very little about being polyamorous that’s truly poly-specific.  The website about poly families was a lot more about household management, and my advice here is a lot more about maintaining good relationship boundaries than almost anything else.

I think the reason for this is because we often give sex and romance an inappropriate focus.  Please note I’m not calling sex and romance unimportant.  It’s not.  But we do give it a weird place in our lives and I think it causes a lot of trouble.  We might use romantic relationships as a ranking system.  We often use sex or romance as a proxy for something else — usually actual intimacy.   And again when I look at this to analyze it, I can’t say that it’s polyamory-specific.

It makes being topic-specific difficult.  The same communication principles that make my romantic life joyful interaction rather than unpleasant drama are principles that help my parenting, for goodness sake!   They’re the same principles that let me have a decent relationship with my own parents.

That being the case, yes, I can write about a topic and hook it onto a romantic situation, but it’s just as likely to float through my mind because of the way my son responded to a request to empty the dishwasher, or how I’m encouraging him to speak up when he feels uncomfortable with something.

I want the columns I write to be useful in relationships, but useful relationship examples are hardly ever unique to polyamory.

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

It’s not unusual for polyamorous people to start pondering about scheduling.

It’s a valid concern, as if you’re poly, you might very well have a lot of people in your life who are important to you and that you want to hang out with.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find that many of your loves like to hang out together in groups.  This cuts down on the scheduling issues, but let’s face it, plenty of people do enjoy more one-on-one time with loves.  (Not only sex, mind.  Oh, that too, but not only sex!)

What do you do?

The first thing that’s useful is to be realistic about how much time you actually have.  Everyone in the world gets 168 hours in the week.  You’re going to use some of that for sleeping.  Chances are good you have a job.  Some people spend some of that time working out.  You probably have families and other relationships. You might have school, or charity work you do.  This is all important, too.  If you’re taking that time to hang out with loves, it’s got to come from somewhere and you certainly don’t want to slack on your other commitments.

As unromantic as it seems, it might be helpful to print out a time management chart¹ and fill in what your real schedule looks like.    Be honest   How much are you really sleeping?  WoW?  Fill in the real time you’re spendin’ on  that, cupcake, and stop looking at me like that!  Fill in commuting time, fill in meal times.  Fill in the time you’re spending reading to your kids, working on projects… Don’t neglect any of it!

Then, you can encourage your loves to do this, too.  After you’ve got it down realistically, you’ll be able to decide between yourselves how much time you really do have for loves.   This only works if you’ve done your best to be honest and accurate when you fill out the time management chart, by the way.  If it’s really only a couple of hours a month that you really have, don’t try to pretend it’s otherwise.  You’ll find fudging expectations and juggling commitments is only going to cause problems.  Be up front.  Be strict with yourself about the new and shiny, too!

For you geeks, there’s plenty of group calendaring software/websites out there.  Start using them.  Yahoo and Google both have options to share their calendars with people and those calendars can sync with many software packages on the market so that you’re all good with your desktop.  PDAs and smartphones are becoming cheaper and you can easily transfer calendaring info from one to the other.

But even if you’re not a geek, come on, you can get a big, cheap paper calendar or whiteboard!²

I know this sounds unromantic and against the whole “go with the flow” preference many have.  However, if you want to be loving, a great way to do it is to be up front about what kind of time commitment you can make to a relationship.  The only way to do that is to know for yourself what kind of time you have to give.

Then you can give without worrying, ’cause you know it’s there and available.  And that makes love more fun.

²I got in the habit of using one back when OLQ was still together and it’s a boon to my busy and ever changing household!