Stef's Poly Post Archive, Part 5 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [If I leave, I'll be a bit happier. If I stay, my partner will be devastated. What should I do?] If I were your partner in such a situation, I would want you to leave. I don't want anybody to stay with me in a relationship they don't want. I don't want that kind of condescension and pity. Even if I would be temporarily devastated by my partner's leaving, I would be better off in the long run. Granted, I might be really pissed at my former partner. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! --Lewis Carroll --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Do poly relationships such as triads really work?] Yes. I think you should clearly spell out to other people that you get involved with that they will be secondary to your relationship. As long as people know that, they can make their own decision about whether to get involved with you. Many people don't mind secondary relationships, or even prefer them, so you needn't assume that making it clear that someone is secondary is bad or hurtful. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me! -- Ma Ferguson, Governor of Texas --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it better to have nothing than to have part of what I want?] I think it's less a matter of having "nothing" than of having "something different from your ideal" -- the key is to find a "something different" that doesn't cause you a great deal of pain. In my own work with this (which will be different from yours) I learned: --Ideally I wanted to combine sex and romance in one relationship, but --I'd rather have no such relationship than have a too-intertwined relationship with someone I can't relate to --I'd rather not have such a relationship with someone who could not be in regular contact with me or who was emotionally inconsistent --If I didn't find a sexual/romantic relationship, I could make do with friendly non-romantic sex and romantic non-sexual friendships I'm not so sure that if someone fails to find a full-time partner, it means zie is sabotaging zirself. Sometimes it's just circumstance or location or chance. However, just in case, when I was working with this, I did magic and visualization to open up the parts of myself that I didn't have conscious access to. Other than suggest you learn to separate sex, friendship, and romance, which some people can't do, I am not sure what would work except to keep working on the balance that's right for you. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Go not to Usenet for counsel, for it will say both no, and yes, and no, and yes.... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Won't people just leave a relationship unless they've said they'll never leave?] It seems possible to me that in the situation you mention, she never gave a "never leave" promise because she knew on some level that she might have to leave. That's why I haven't given such promises. (I did something similar to what she did once, although no "never-leave" promises were made on either side.) However, I've promised to work on relationship problems and not run away from them, which will, I believe, prevent the situation that you described. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com In nature, there are no rewards or punishments, only consequences. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [If you let someone choose a relationship with you freely rather than trying to make promises, isn't the relationship better as a result?] I'm willing to put up with this up to a point, but I don't want someone choosing a different depth of involvement every two weeks, and in my experience, that's what happens when people insist on "no labels, no commitments" relationships. For me, depth of involvement is closely tied to trust. If I don't know what role I am going to play in someone's life next month, I cannot get deeply emotionally involved with zir. I also think that commitments should be multi-sided, not one-way, so I wouldn't accept someone's saying "I'm committing to thus-and-such relationship with you, but you are free to treat me any way you please: I want no such commitment from you." Lots of people feel this way, I understand. But I admit I Don't Get It. With friends, sure. But I couldn't go beyond a certain depth of friendship with someone who didn't want to make a commitment to treating me reasonably well and consistently. My beliefs are not so different from yours, except that I put a higher value on committing to the plans I make. It's easy for me to make plans and not follow through on them because I found something else interesting around the corner. I have to work on carrying through with my plans even if they are temporarily unpleasant. That's the kind of commitment I make and the kind that I expect from a primary partner. I guess the difference is that I wake up every day deciding "I *am* going to continue on this path, and I'm going to work to make this path the right one for me" rather than "Am I going to continue? Maybe that path over there is more interesting." Maybe it's just because I hate making decisions, and would prefer not to make major life decisions every day. Carol Gilligan did a good study many years ago showing that most models of ethics or maturation are based on men and ignore women's ways of thinking. Maybe I'm turned off by the idea of "continual re-evaluation as the highest level of maturity" because I know that if I were a parent with young children, I would not have the luxury to continually re-evaluate my commitments. I would be committed to those children whether I woke up in the morning liking it or woke up hating it. And I personally think that parents of young children must demonstrate much more maturity than anyone free of such responsibilities. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Must people who compartmentalize have multiple primary partners rather than primaries and secondaries?] I compartmentalize ("each person is a separate world"), but whether I concentrate on someone when I'm alone with zir has nothing to do with "primary/secondary" -- because I compartmentalize, I almost always concentrate on one person at a time, but they are certainly not all primary to me. To me, primary/secondary has to do with people's roles in your life, and especially with the amount of influence they can expect to have on your decisions and vice versa. I call someone primary if we treat each other's wants and needs as equivalent to our own almost all the time. If I sometimes put my wants and needs, or another person's, ahead of zirs, then zie is not primary to me. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you find the time to nurture several relationships?] My partners and I are busy enough that I don't see any of my secondary partners more than once every few weeks on average. I miss them when I don't get to see them, and there is sometimes a continuity problem. But more and more I find that longevity in a non-primary relationship can substitute to a degree for frequency -- that is, for me, it's not so much the frequency of interaction with someone but how much raw time I've spent with zir that make it possible to feel we know each other. (Within reason -- if I only see someone every six months or two years, I don't usually feel connected with zir.) Then again, I'm not much for intensity...I'd usually rather play and cuddle and talk with a lover than spend all my time with zir trying to reach the center of the known universe. So the decompression and chats come fairly soon in the relationship and help establish a sense of continuity, whereas if the main form of connection is sex, it's very hard to establish continuity except with frequent together-time. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Marching to a different kettle of fish -- Mixed metaphor hall of fame --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if the relationships you have aren't quite what you want?] Maybe you should go with your feeling of not wanting to put energy into them, rather than calling it "burnout," which implies that there is something wrong with it. Maybe there are other parts of your life that need your energy for a while. And putting energy into other things doesn't necessarily mean you won't find romance. Sometimes it creeps up when you're not looking. Maybe some people have found relationships that were 100% perfectly nourishing containers for all of their feelings and expectations and flowers, but I can't say I'm one of them. I have a wonderful partnership that gives me a great deal, but I still do sometimes have to curtail my feelings and expectations, and there are a few parts of me that don't bloom easily in this soil. The same is true for my primary partner. Of course, again, we're talking about different degrees. I know how cramped it can feel to box in a *large* portion of your feelings because a relationship doesn't have room for them; and I don't feel that way now. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com May the great galactic kitten always purr you to sleep. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it possible to have friendly sex?] I can choose to maintain a friendly bond or I can push it to something deeper/more intense. I tend to default to a friendly bond. Sharing intense feelings with someone else is scary for me; I like feeling them, but I prefer to keep them more or less to myself, except in relationships where I deeply trust the person. When I have sex with someone, I often have intense feelings, but I don't always share them fully. And I sometimes develop equally intense feelings about people with whom I don't have sex. Let's put it this way: I never had sex with the two people I wrote poetry for this year. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com There are two types of people--I'm not either of them. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you define a primary relationship?] For me, a primary relationship is one where --my needs/wants and my partner's needs/wants are equivalent. Neither of us gets automatic priority when we have conflicting needs/wants: we discuss it until we can determine the best way to proceed in the specific situation. --our needs/wants are automatically a little more important than other people's needs/wants, just because they are ours. This doesn't mean other people don't count. It means some energy is reserved for us, and we consult each other before attending to others. (I have a very hard time distinguishing needs and wants, so I use them interchangeably.) For me, a non-primary relationship is one where my needs/wants are more important than the other person's, simply because they are mine. Someone mentioned having a primary relationship with zirself. I always have a primary relationship with myself, and sometimes I have a co-primary -- another partner. It's theoretically possible that I could have more than one co-primary, but it doesn't seem to be the way I am wired. Because I have trouble distinguishing between needs and wants, I couldn't do a relationship style based simply on "anyone's needs are more important than anyone's wants". How do you determine which is which? Some people say they "need" something in a circumstance where some other people would say they "want" something. In my partnership, we discuss any conflict until it seems clear to us where we stand on it, and we either compromise so that each person feels more or less equally acknowledged, or one person lets the other person have zir way because zie clearly feels more strongly about it. If two needs are in conflict, we compromise or look for a way out of the box. I consider my partnership to be something that should meet my needs that have to do with partnership. I don't think it should meet all my needs, such as my need for financial stability or my need for creative expression, although it can and should help with those needs. I consider my partner and I to be developing a life that will meet both of our needs and be somewhere we want to stay, and something we want to keep developing. If I am in a relationship in which my needs are not equivalent to those of my partner, I tend to feel much less attached to the relationship; I tend to feel that I must not rely on the person. I want structure; my partner finds it somewhat less important. If my partner and I found ourselves in conflict over structure, that might be a point in our negotiation, but we'd try to talk about it until we found a situation that was comfortable for both of us, and my partner might be willing to impose some structure for my sake. I would also try to be flexible and not expect the same degree of structure that I usually expect. But I wouldn't tolerate simply being told "No structure for the next X time." Emotional comfort is more important to us than exact equivalence in action. If there is a breakdown in negotiation and compromise, we tend to put things on hold rather than each of us pursuing our own needs. We've found that the latter drives us apart too far, too fast for our comfort. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. -- Sartre --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Can you have more than one primary?] By my definition -- considering another person's needs/wants as equivalent to one's own -- you can have more than one. I've certainly been in power struggles that derived from one person's feeling zir needs were *more* important than another's, even if zie acknowledged the other had needs, too. The arguments tend to include a lot of "Yes but"s. Even in a primary relationship, each person is *responsible for* zir own needs (communicating them, standing up for them) because zie will see them better than another person will. But to me, that is somewhat different from viewing one's own needs as more important than another's. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com unlike any other Western democracy...this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of government. We are constituted not for efficient operation of government, but for minimizing the possibility of abuse of power. -- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy directory of Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Where do you meet people who are interested in poly relationships?] Some places where such people congragate: pagan groups, science-fiction fandom groups, society for creative anachronism (SCA), ren-faire, bisexual groups, sex-positive and kinky-sex groups, certain net newsgroups and mailing lists. I met one partner through paganism, a couple of others loosely through science-fiction fandom, one through a kinky-sex group. Starting a support group sometimes works. On personal ads newsgroups, there is a bad signal-to-noise ratio, but it's possible to screen people if you correspond with them for a while, and there are some decent people reading the groups. How to approach someone: For me the answer is Very Slowly. Get to know the person, zir philosophy of relationships, zir goals and dreams, your compatibility with zir. This has usually taken me six months to several years. Relationships I established in less time tended to blow up. Try not to feel desperate...focus on your goal and let the powers that be lead you to it at the pace that's right for you. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it. --George Bernard Shaw --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you're interested in someone who's poly, but you're jealous and afraid to trust?] Jealousy is a common result of living in a Western culture very focused on monogamy. It can be unlearned, with a lot of patience on the part of you and your partner. To be in any relationship you need to have trust. Having trust betrayed has happened to most of us....the key is not to trust someone until zie has proven zirself worthy of your trust. Takes practice and a modicum of paranoia... I'm not going to tell you that if you trust your partner, there is no jealousy. I trust my partner, but I do feel jealousy. But we do OK, because we have learned ways to manage the jealousy, and we have learned ways of being polyamorous that don't threaten our trust in each other. Note that it took me several years to begin to trust my partner as deeply as I do, and our trust in each other was shaken more than once. You may be able to make polyamory work even if you feel uncomfortable with it, but it may be difficult adjusting, and your relationship may need a lot of extra work as a result, especially at the beginning. It's not something to be undertaken lightly. Being dumped or betrayed has nothing specifically to do with monogamy or polyamory. It can happen in either kind of relationship. Don't focus so much on the kind of relationship you want, but focus on the kind of person whom you think is best for you. If you've frequently chosen the wrong sort of person in the past, try to find out why and what you can do to choose different people. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. -- E. M. Forster --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Does polyamory dilute passion?] For me, having multiple relationships tends somewhat to dilute intensity, primarily because I have less time to spend with each person. But that's OK with me because I'm not looking for intensity in particular. I'm looking for high-quality connections. I don't know what you're capable of. Your relationship structure and scheduling will probably affect how you feel about your partners, but maybe not the intensity part. As for honesty -- no, honesty does not provide a 100% weather-proof covering for a relationship. Compassion, respect, compromise, sacrifice, and patience, among other qualities, are also required to see relationships through storms. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com An honest god is the noblest work of man....God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power....Most of the gods were pleased with sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine perfume. -- Robert G. Ingersoll --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you're in a monogamous marriage but develop strong feelings for a friend?] Feelings are notoriously unclear and changeable. You like her a lot and you are sexually attracted to her -- let's just go with that. The more important thing to consider, IMO, is action. What should you *do* with the friendship? What you should do depends in part on how other people in your life feel. Does your wife mind your having a female friend? If you don't know, you should ask her -- it's not a good idea to keep other relationships, even friendships, a secret from your partner. If your wife doesn't mind, then you can find out what kinds of friendship or relationship she would accept your having with this other woman. If she says "Friendship but no sex or romance," for example, then that's your answer, *unless* your desire for sex/romance with the woman is so strong that you want to negotiate a polyamory agreement with your wife. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com WARNING: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe. -- Hewitt / Subitzky --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Can you negotiate from a position that someone else's wants/needs are equal to your own?] The need to make immediate choices hasn't happened particularly often to us. We're both terrible at making immediate choices and hate it, and we probably live a less spontaneous lifestyle than you do, by choice. We have negotiated agreements in advance about certain "immediate choice" situations (such as "what if a family member becomes sick"), but beyond that we tend to default to "no, unless I know it's OK with my partner" in non-negotiated situations that will affect each other. Yes, one's partner can rate one's needs highly without rating them as equal to zir own. And if I know how my partner is likely to behave in such situations, then I might be able to come to rely on zir. But in my experience, someone who makes a point of putting zir own wants/needs ahead of others' often does not really want to be relied on and prefers a less attached relationship. You're an exception in my experience. (No guesses on how many of each type there are in the universe, no theories promulgated, just anecdote. :) In my lexicon, in which pretty much everything is a "want" and not a "need," the case you described could be defined as a case of your want being stronger than his want in that particular circumstance, rather than a case of your want taking priority simply because it is yours. But you experienced it differently, so... I tend to feel that if emergency situations arise continually that require dropping important but non-pressing stuff, that means my lifestyle needs to be altered. I don't like living on the edge. You and I probably couldn't be close lovers, 'cos I wouldn't like living in close proximity to someone who enjoys that kind of lifestyle. I've lots of friends and some friendly lovers who live that way, but no close lovers. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Thou canst do anything thou wilt in Aleister's restaurant. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How painful is jealousy?] For me, sometimes it's the extremely painful, obsessive, and unbearable thing you mention. Sometimes it's an annoying and uncomfortable feeling. Replace "jealousy" in your post with "anger." In both cases, there are different degrees. The difference is that we have words for various degrees of anger: irritation, annoyance, anger, rage, fury... but we don't have words for various degrees of jealousy. So many people tend, when they think of jealousy, only to think of the high end of the scale. I think "most people" think of jealousy the way you do--as an extreme and unpleasant emotion. I think a few people who have for whatever reason chosen to or been forced to deal with jealousy on an ongoing basis have learned that there are different degrees of it. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Please do not annoy, torment, pester, plague, molest, worry, badger, harry,harass, heckle, persecute, irk, bullyrag, vex, disquiet, grate, beset, bother, tease, nettle, tantalize, or ruffle the animals. -- San Diego Zoo --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is jealousy proof of love?] I don't know if there is any single emotion or action that is "proof" of love. Sometimes jealousy accompanies love. Sometimes not. I consider it a proof neither of love, nor of *lack* of love (as some would have it). For me feelings that I am horrible often go together with jealousy, but not always. Sometimes I feel jealousy even if I know my partner is not going to leave. Sometimes I fear more that my partner will *stay* so that I'll continue being tormented with jealousy. You're on to something with your comment that jealousy is more about you than the other person, but I wouldn't take it too far. I would say that jealousy is part of one's reaction to a situation in which one's expectations or desires are not being met. The other people involved in the situation sometimes have a lot to do with your jealousy: perhaps they are treating you rudely (by your standards of etiquette). A solution to jealousy can involve changing your expectations, removing yourself from the situation, or changing the other people's behavior. (Or any combination thereof.) The person who feels jealous does not have to undertake the process of dealing with jealousy alone. The best way I've found to deal with jealousy is not to contain it, but to find appropriate ways to express it. They might involve writing about it, talking to a friend, talking to the people who triggered the jealousy about negotiating changes to the situations that trigger it, or just talking to them about how it feels. Once it's been expressed, it tends to lose a lot of its force; if it's bottled up it increases in strength pretty dramatically, at least for me. I think the majority of people will feel jealousy in *some* situation, but some people have a lot higher threshold than others. And hurts and insecurities don't always manifest as jealousy; sometimes they manifest as other things. To feel jealousy, one must feel at some level that one has a right to one's expectations; one has to be capable of feeling self-righteous. A lot of people feel so undeserving that they don't feel self-righteous; they might feel lost or sad where a self-righteous person would feel jealous. (Disclaimer: I'm not making a one-to-one correspondence here. There are a lot of other reasons for feeling self-righteous or not feeling it.) Some people seem to be able to deal with their jealousy by knowing that it comes from insecurities in childhood or some such. Well, I've traced mine back to all that, and it doesn't do a damned thing to resolve the jealousy. Many people are supportive of polyamorous relationships that include room for handling the entire range of feelings and not just the nice ones. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Rosa Parks did not start the civil rights movement by sitting in the back of the bus grumbling about how she'd rather sit in the front. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you handle anger?] There is a time for talking and a time for not talking, at least in my partnership. When we're both very angry, it's best for us not to talk; we aren't going to say anything useful and we are likely to say hurtful things. So when we're in the midst of the feeling, often we sit next to each other, touching each other and seething. Eventually the hormone surges die down and we can talk about it. Of course, some problems are more complex than "please don't do that." But if a problem has been discussed before, and someone forgets, and all parties trust that it was simple forgetting, then a hug is often all that's needed. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I am Boris of Borg. Moose and squirrel are irrelevent. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Does poly mean being allowed to take a new relationship as far as it can go?] I've heard others express their poly-feelings this way, and I want to use this as an opportunity to explore aspects of it that confuse me. This is meant with respect for your style and a desire to understand it. What confuses me about this position is that it seems to distinguish artificially between a need that involves other partner(s), on the one hand, and needs (that all of us have) that involve some other aspect of the outside world -- job, ailing parents, geographical constraints -- or personality. I don't understand how it feels to distinguish among needs in that way. I guess to me, if someone has a partner, that is part of who they are and part of their constellation of needs/personality, and part of the context in which I create a relationship with them -- same as if they are working 80 hours a week. This is all part of my "actions speak louder than words" philosophy. The only reason I can see for not creating a relationship with someone who is P/S is wanting no one else to be or become more important than me, and to me that translates as wanting to be primary. As I understand it, your partner does not share your model of poly, yet you have repeatedly spoken with high praise for your compatibility with him. I guess I'm confused about why you feel this possibility wouldn't exist with other people. Is he an exception? Are you playing the odds and figuring you only have time to look at non-P/S people? Yes, the primary/secondary model involves making agreements about future relationships, but I don't think it's accurate to call that "closed." (I like the phrase "slightly ajar" that I've heard some people use for their P/S relationships.) It seems to me that the model of polyamory you describe is incompatible with your agreeing to make a commitment to someone. A commitment involves agreeing to do certain things in the future; therefore it will affect future relationships that you might want to have. It might not involve a firm promise never to take relationships above this line, but it might still perhaps interfere with taking a new relationship "as far as it could go" if the new relationship were undertaken in a vacuum, without the existence of other relationships or time/energy demands. Since you don't seem allergic to commitment, I must be getting something wrong. What kinds of commitments are you willing to make that might affect future relationships, and what kinds are you unwilling to make (that make your relationship feel "closed" to you)? -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born. --Magister Ludi/Joseph Knecht --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [If you get involved with someone who does primary/secondary poly, will you at some point wish for a commitment they can't make?] For some, P/S is an acknowledgement that relationships which can't "find their highest level" because of unchangeable limitations of whatever sort are still worthwhile. Someone like that could probably accept that you'd never be primary with zir if you were forthright about your tendency from the beginning. (Zie might also persist in calling you secondary. :) It sounds as if your concern is not with people who prefer P/S, but with people who might prefer P/S and who are not in a primary relationship. What about people who are already in a primary relationship? BTW, trying to suck someone into a primary relationship if I don't have one is not how P/S works for me, although it does work that way for some people. If I know that someone doesn't want to be primary with me, zie is secondary automatically. Primary is something that happens only when both people want it. I might choose to maintain the person as secondary by limiting certain kinds of interactions -- for example, I probably wouldn't choose to live with a secondary. Something like your partner's experience of suddenly realizing he had monogamous feelings happened to me too. I ended up deciding that my feelings that seemed to be about monogamy were really feelings about commitment and control over my life and they could be served by having a P/S structure with the person I'd agreed to partner with. I don't see "I love you" as containing any commitments at all. In my life, it is a statement about the present moment only, and perhaps wishes or intentions for the future, but no commitments. So I think all commitments are structural. I'm not sure I know what you mean by a "partnership-level intimacy commitment." To me, a partnership is about the future, building a life together, action; and intimacy is about the present, sharing yourself with someone, feelings/communication. Intimacy is required for me to agree to partnership with someone, but partnership is not required for intimacy -- if it were, I wouldn't have any secondary relationships. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Let's not drag any more dead herrings across the garden path. --Mixed metaphor hall of fame --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Can you negotiate without distinguishing needs and wants?] The outside boundaries of the continuum are clear; what's not clear is the middle -- how much attention one can legitimately require is the subject of a good deal of debate in many relationships, and arguing over whether a certain amount is a want or a need can side-track such a discussion. By using "want" I don't mean to imply that the desires aren't important; it's more that I lack a word that's free of connotations. I'm just as likely to use "need" to describe them all, including the hot tub :-) -- what I don't do is say "That's a want, this is a need, therefore this wins." I say something more like "I respect all these desires, and I think this one is the most important right now" or I seek a way to accommodate them all as much as possible. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com A conservative, seeing a man drowning twenty feet from shore, will throw him a fifteen-foot rope and tell him to swim for it. A liberal, faced with the same situation, throws the man a twenty-foot rope, then lets go of his end so that he may go off and perform another good deed. -- Trygve --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How does polyamory affect children?] It's true that children will feel pressure if their parents are nontraditional. I might add from my childhood experience that even if you choose to be traditional, your kids will feel pressure. The differences between the parents' beliefs and culture and the kids' is always going to cause pressure and discomfort. If you're poly and other kids' parents aren't, I wonder whether that that would cause any more discomfort than if you're Democrats and other kids' parents aren't... I distinctly remember being taught not to tell other people how much money my parents made. Seems that kids can learn that sex lives / specifics of romantic liaisons can be handled similarly. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com "If we go back into the classroom, are you going to recite or are you going to continue to be sullen and stubborn?" "I'm going to be sullen and stubborn, I think, Mother." "Why, Sarah?" "I don't know, Mother, but I just bet that's what I'll do. -- Cartoon at Bread & Ink Cafe, Portland, Oregon --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Does primary/secondary poly restrict the development of relationships?] I don't understand why a P/S agreement restricts the development of a relationship any more than other commitments the person might have made or personality traits. Maybe you don't make that distinction: maybe you avoid getting involved with people who live elsewhere or who are highly committed to their work, as well as people who are in P/S relationships. If so, I can understand -- you want someone whose life is currently flexible enough to make a strong commitment of time/energy to zir relationship with you. Of course everyone has to draw the line somewhere, but I believe that too- rigid rules about who's within limits can cause one to miss out on wonderful relationships. You speak of wanting the option to take each relationship to a high level of development, but IMO if one makes rigid rules about whom to consider in the first place, one misses out on some relationships that might be taken to satisfying levels of development. (Uh, satisfying to me. Maybe such relationships wouldn't be satisfying to others.) The position against getting involved with people in P/S relationships seems to include an unwritten clause that a relationship isn't worthwhile unless it is capable of taking up a large portion of your time and energy. Some people who hold this position are quick to compare P/S with monogamy because of the agreements between the primary partners, and to me there is a subtle suggestion within that comparison, sometimes, that P/S is therefore "not as good" as non-P/S, that similarity to monogamy is bad. But to me, the position that a relationship isn't worth pursuing unless the person is free of other encumbrances is close to the traditional cultural model of relationships, in that one is expected to seek a person who is single and go through a period of intense bonding with zir and that relationships which develop more slowly don't have enough passion and are therefore doomed to failure or don't count. I guess part of my brand of poly is loving a variety of people at whatever depth happens to be possible in the relationship. One friend was 25 years older than me and didn't want to have a sexual relationship with someone so young, but we went to the beach every weekend, talked about everything under the stars. Another friend was a gay man; we didn't have sex in the traditional way, but we had a romantic relationship: we spent most of our time together, we had "sex" by looking at GQ and going cruising together. I have another friend with whom I would love to have a romantic/sexual relationship, but zie lives far away and has restrictions on our contact because of another relationship, so right now we can only exchange email. A few weeks ago I decided that I should shut down that relationship because of the restrictions. I tried and ended up crying all night and deciding that it was wrong of me to cut off something worthwhile just because it wasn't something else. Maybe some people would say "Well, you're not having sex with those people, so it's not poly; they're just friends." It doesn't feel that way to me. Hard to explain. If I felt I should only pursue relationships that could go to a certain depth, I would have avoided those people and my life would be poorer because of it. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com "I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then." -- Alice --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [A platonic poly friendship has caused problems with spouses] Are you sure that the friction came about because your spouses believed that you were having sex? It could also have come about because your spouses felt that you were spending too much energy on your friendship -- more than on your marriages There are many causes of jealousy; sex is only one of them. If you had become obsessed with football, that might also have caused friction. I think you're right not to separate physical sex from platonic love. It is not physical sex that drives most relationships, it is love (sexual or not). I think your spouses are reacting in part to the love between you and your friend -- they might find it threatening. There may be ways to make it less threatening if that is something you want to explore. I definitely think a relationship such as yours is polyamorous. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com YOU GAVE ME THE WRONG THINGS TO REBEL AGAINST. ... Your mindless monogamy made me vacillate in love, your compulsive industry made me a prisoner of sloth, your tidiness made me sloppy, your materialism made me wasteful. -- Garrison Keillor --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you change someone's monogamous mindset?] Styles and rationales aren't the important thing, IMO -- monoamorism is often surrounded by a lot of feelings, and therefore the best way to get someone to try polyamory is to engage other feelings. Rationales can't change feelings, but feelings can change feelings (sometimes). I was persuaded to try a poly primary partnership because I loved my partner, who was poly; because I had been vaguely poly in the past; because I liked sexual variety; and because I had had a tendency to include sexual forms in my healing work (my spiritual work). Important aspects of my decision: I decided to be poly for myself, not for my partner. My decision to be poly for myself allowed me to muster the energy to accept my partner's being poly. What also helped was knowing that my partner was poly and that he suffered trying to behave within the monogamy limits that I imposed (we were monogamous for a few months in the course of sorting out our polyamory issues), wanting my partner to be happy for a variety of reasons -- for our sanity, through love, and through a desire to maintain our relationship. Yet another thing that helped was knowing that my partner had made a great effort to understand me and my feelings surrounding poly. In the process of sorting this out, we used the exercises in a book called GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT by Harville Hendrix and we employed the services of a couples counselor. The short answer is that you don't persuade someone to be poly -- they have to decide for themselves. Another answer is that you can begin by getting to know a woman as a friend, discussing polyamory with her in the abstract, and seeing if there is any interest or recognition there. I find your request for persuasion techniques somewhat alien because to me the most important thing in my life is people, and not systems. I wouldn't start out with a system such as polyamory and try to shoehorn people into it. I would start out by meeting people that I wanted to keep in my life, and try to work out ways of keeping them in my life. It's been my experience that if a person feels cared about for zirself and not for whether zie'll let you fuck other people, zie is more likely to be accommodating to wishes you might have, out of love. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The dharma of the dharma is that there are no dharmas. But now that the no-dharma dharma has been transmitted, how can the dharma of the dharma be a dharma? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Defining sub-types of polyamory] Here are some kinds of poly I've identified so far: primary/secondary poly -- ranking of partners non-hierarchical poly -- no ranking of partners This doesn't seem to describe the differences we're talking about now, though -- you are in primary relationships, by some definitions of primary, just as we are. Now I think we are talking about another continuum: endpoint 1 - preferring to maintain relationship configurations endpoint 2 - preferring flexibility of relationship configuration I think that we fall nearer to Endpoint 1, and you fall nearer to Endpoint 2. My reading: you seem to object to an "a priori" point beyond which you aren't allowed to take the relationship -- limits on flexibility. You want to have an equal say in what that point is, you don't want it to be pre-determined, and you don't want to agree to a pre-determined configuration for yourself, either. You want to keep your options open. Is that close? So the question is: what will we call these endpoints? Solid Poly and Flexi Poly? :-) -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com ...to be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves. -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Can you negotiate without separating needs from wants?] (a) I personally prefer to avoid the possibility of setting the words "need/want" in the center of the ring to slug it out. I want conflicts to be resolved by talking it out, not based on whoever uses the word "need" first or last or loudest. Thinking it over, I believe that what I usually do is say "X is important to me." (b) Having a conflict automatically leads to polarization only if all parties are simultaneously fighting to be "the center of attention right now." I want to avoid conflicts that boil down to "My desire is more important than your desire." "Is not." "Is too." I can imagine a scenario in which I used the word "want" and the other person said "Well, you just WANT that. But I NEED this," and we began to argue about the definition of want and need, or I felt required to respond "No, I NEED that." I don't think that using the words "need" and "want" automatically leads to polarization. But I don't use those words much in resolving conflict. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Commitments and promises] To me, commitments and promises are the same thing if communicated to another person. If however you make an internal commitment without telling me, then I cannot rely on you. I can't see directly into your head to know that the commitment is there. If you make representations of your actions that you are unable to hold to, then I will think you're unreliable -- reliability includes knowing one's limits. If you said you would come and then didn't, and called me up to say "I learned something," I'd be amused and glad that you learned something, but I wouldn't be able to rely on you until you showed that you could reasonably accurately judge your abilities in the future. You seem to be thinking of a promise as always an entirely binary thing, a "do or die" thing. I don't think of a promise that way. I think a promise can include boundaries. "I promise that if I am not too sick on Sunday, I will come over." "I promise to work as hard as I can to make our relationship something we both want to stay in." If someone refuses to make any predictions about zir future actions, I find it difficult to establish the deepest levels of intimacy, because for me, such intimacy often requires trust that there will be ongoing contact. To some degree, I can substitute reliable action for verbal agreements. If we had a meeting once a week, and you never promised to be there but never missed a meeting for two years, I'd come to find you reliable. Trust doesn't have anything to do with "concern" or "recrimination" for me. Concern is internal to you, and the only way I can see it is if you show it in actions that mean "concern" to me. Recrimination is punishment, but it doesn't help me establish trust. For me, trust has to do with whether someone comes through when it's important to me, and whether someone knows zirself well enough to represent zirself accurately to me. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The best thing for being sad ... is to learn something.... Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. -- T.H. White --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What is commitment?] For me to develop deep intimacy with someone, I need to firmly believe that we have a relationship that will continue into the future and that is reasonably stable (by which I mean the relationship will not change suddenly). If I believe the relationship will end soon, or if I believe it is unstable and may change suddenly, then I am not able to develop deep intimacy with someone. I can develop a very satisfying level of intimacy, but not the deepest levels. There are two ways for me to develop this belief (let's call it trust). (1) A person can act consistently and reliably toward me over a long period of time. (2) A person can convincingly represent zirself as willing to continue our relationship into the future and willing to try zir best to make sure it remains reasonably stable. Note: (2) relies on (1), because in order for someone to convince me using words, zie must also demonstrate over time that zie acts on zir words. It works fastest for me if I get both (1) and (2). I accept that "I love you" sometimes includes a commitment or intention. However, I never assume that it includes a particular kind of commitment. Because it has meant so many different things in my life, I take it at face value until I get more information. If someone says "I love you" to me, I do not assume that zie is going to treat me in a way that I need for deep intimacy. A story that I've told here before: on our third date or so, a month after we had first met in person, my to-be-partner and I were fooling around on a mattress on the floor and during a pause in the proceedings, he said "I love you." Well, this surprised me a lot, because he had said when we first began communicating that he wasn't willing to get involved with someone of my spiritual persuasion, and we had agreed that we would be just friends. And I don't go around saying "I love you" to cuddle-buddies that I met a month ago. So I kind of froze and considered this. And after a pause, I said "Not to spoil a beautiful moment, but what do you mean by that?" He backpedaled a bit and explained that he kind of feels this way about all his friends [ah, if I had listened to that, it would have saved us some poly woes later ;-)]. I accepted that and I said "I feel the same way about you." I think the interchange did not create a feeling of commitment in either of us. It did increase our trust in each other a little bit, because we had both handled it in a thoughtful manner. I think that "I love you" *should* carry some commitment with it, and I usually don't initiate it unless I am prepared to make a commitment (and back it up with an explicit promise). But I would not claim that it means something specific in our culture. In my experience, the statement often does not imply much commitment. Another story: A couple of months before I met my partner, I cast a spell asking the Goddess to bring love into my life. For months afterward, people kept saying "I love you" to me and meaning very different things by it. One person meant "I think you're cool." Another person meant "I think you're a good friend." A third person meant "I'm glad that we can get together once every five years and have sex and catch up on old times." I think that first time, my to-be-partner meant "I have stronger warm-fuzzy feelings about you than I expected to -- hm, I wonder what that means." None of these people included a strong commitment or intention of any particular kind in their statements. The next time my partner said "I love you," after a few months had passed, I think he did include some kind of commitment (and I did when I said it back), but we didn't know quite what it was yet. Since then, the only person who said "I love you" a lot to me, except my parents (who are committed to me, yes), made a lot of noise about being committed to our relationship, but when I asked zir to agree to see me on a regular basis (meaning every six months or so), zie said zie couldn't do that, and since then zie has mostly dropped contact with me altogether. That's not any sort of "commitment to the relationship" that I recognize. The overarching promise between me and my partner is "We will endeavor to do what we can to help our relationship remain stronger and deeper and more important than other relationships. This may mean limiting intimacy or time with others." We believe the best way to do this is not directly to manipulate feelings, but to agree to behavior that will prevent other relationships from becoming more important (mostly this means limiting the amount of time we can spend with other partners in any particular period). I don't need a primary-level promise, but if a person refuses to make any promises, I tend to suspect that zie may be unreliable until I have seen a great deal of evidence for reliability. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Are secondary relationships less important than primary relationships?] >I don't consider Stef's description above very relevant to >primary/secondary as I practice it. I do not find myself >dwelling on the idea that secondary relations are less important, >and I certainly do not work to make them less important. If you don't think that secondary relationships are less important than primary relationships, how do you distinguish between your primary and your secondaries? Are there any ways that you treat your primary different from your secondaries? Or do you distinguish them simply 'cos you've been with your primary for longer and live with zir? I think that a primary relationship of many years' duration that was de facto monogamous for most of those years can build a lot of solidity/strength through all the time spent solely with that partner. When you begin pursuing secondary relationships, they are automatically secondary because there is so much history built up between you and your primary partner. However, a primary relationship of much shorter duration that has been actively polyamorous from the outset is in a more precarious position. There is not a lot of history built up; the partners don't know a lot about each other's tendencies and reactions to things. It's therefore trickier to distinguish between the primary relationship and the secondary relationships. Taking as a premise that in the latter kind of relationship, only actions count (because there's little history), I think the only way to meaningfully define the latter kind of relationship as primary is to limit the amount of time/energy spent on other relationships, either by making guidelines, or by simply behaving that way automatically. A lot of people squick at the concept of trying to rank importance, because they think if they define one relationship as less important than another, they are actually defining one person as less important than another, and that goes against their democratic principles. But I'm talking about actions. If you had to move in order to pursue your career, would you give your primary partner more of a say than you would give your secondary partners? If so your primary partner is, in a sense, more important to you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it really hard to go from monogamous to polyamorous?] M may have been having some feelings that zie felt uncomfortable describing to you until they became overwhelming, or that zie felt you didn't want to hear. Zie should have talked about the feelings, you should have encouraged zir to talk, zie should have checked in, you should have checked in, you both should have discussed the ways in which polyamory was turning out to be different from what you expected. But it's hard to know those things at the beginning, until stuff gets f*ked up. Even if you work out an agreement, feelings often come up that you didn't expect, and expectations can surface that you didn't realize you had, or didn't realize that your partner didn't share. If you want to try to work things out with M and stay in a relationship with zir, I think that you should talk to zir now, even if you feel uncomfortable. You both feel uncomfortable, and if you're going to try to stay together, you have to be able to talk about your discomfort to each other, IMO. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Should you share information about other relationships?] For some people, being on the receiving end of raw New Relationship Energy toward a new partner feels pretty gory. I like my partner to tell me about his other lovers, but with consideration for my feelings. If there is no understanding of my feelings and/or no consideration for them, it doesn't feel very "intimate" to me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it swinging or polyamory if you're looking for friendly sex but want to remain emotionally monogamous?] I could describe my relationship this way -- I have a primary partner and some friends with whom I have sex -- but I don't consider myself "emotionally monogamous." I care a lot about my friends/lovers, but I have a different kind of relationship with them than I have with my partner. I call this "primary/secondary polyamory." Once one of us has established an outside relationship, the other partner cannot end it --- zie can ask for restrictions on what is *done* (i.e., no sex), but cannot ask that communication be cut off. I think that it is pretty likely that *some* emotional involvement will occur if you're having sex with your friends. If you don't want the emotional involvement to become greater than that with your partner, you might say that you wouldn't want a person to become emotionally involved *to the point of wanting monogamy or a primary relationship*. Emotional involvement doesn't *have* to mean that the person wants to break up your relationship. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you don't get along with your partner's other partner?] Without much information, it sounds as if part of the problem is that your partner is trying to mediate between you. I can understand why -- the urge is very strong to try to fix things when your lovers are not getting along. I've fallen prey to it myself. But it's often the wrong thing to do. An uninvolved relationship counselor can sometimes do it, but a member of the family is sometimes too biased, or is perceived as having agendas. I think you and she might do better to try to work out your differences together, without him around. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if your partner doesn't want to know about your poly inclinations?] I can understand A's *feeling* -- she's essentially saying she wishes this part of you (the part that falls in love with others) didn't exist. But this part of you does exist, and therefore I think it's important to talk about it, even if she doesn't like it. However, there are good and bad ways of talking about it. Good ways involve exploration and revelation but don't involve pressure for something to be *done right now.* Bad ways involve pressure and judgement. I recommend GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT by Harville Hendrix. Not poly oriented, but good on the issue of getting couples un-polarized. You cannot stop your feelings. They exist. You love M. However, you *can* control your actions. You do not have to cheat on A. Even in ways you consider little, like "kissing and panting." If you want A eventually to accept polyamory (no guarantees), then I think cheating on A, even in little ways, is a bad idea. I've seen over and over again that an effective way to move toward polyamory in a relationship is to show your partner that you can control your actions -- to be honorable -- to give zir some control over this part of your relationship (because polyamory *does* change your relationship with zir). At the same time, without pressuring for a solution, continue to let zir know how you feel. Don't let zir sweep it entirely under the rug for a long time. The other aspect is that you need to know how *zie* feels. You need to hear -- *really hear* -- zir beliefs and thoughts and feelings and fears. Not just let zir talk, but really hear and try with all your heart to understand. This can take many months. It's not a quick fix that will let you fuck your new sweetie next week. But it might open up your relationship to new possibilities down the road. It can bring you a lot closer together. Good luck. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com two deceptively simple questions...will make her feel seen, heard, and known. The first question is this: "What do you want?"....But there is yet one more essential question, and that is: "What does your deeper self desire?" -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Hasn't poly already been tried in the past and found to fail?] Human emotions such as jealousy eat at the fringes of every relationship. So does the human dislike of feeling limited. There is no kind of relationship that feels one hundred percent comfortable. Despite your assertion that something in particular is "required by the human psyche" -- as if there is only one large human psyche out there controlling all of us -- there is no single kind of relationship that works for everybody. People therefore create different kinds of relationship, with different areas of security, different rules and guidelines, and different areas of freedom. Some people create relationships in which loving multiple people romantically/sexually is allowed -- because they strongly want that freedom; it's more important to them than avoiding jealousy; and/or they get more out of it than they put in, in terms of the effort of setting up a relationship style that's outside the meanstream. There are many ways of going about this kind of relationship. Some are more restrictive and some are less restrictive, depending on the preferences of the people involved. Some people don't want such relationships and prefer monogamy. Or no romantic relationships at all. As to the difference between polyamory and open marriage, swinging, and group marriage: All of these mean very different things to the people who practice them. But I would say that polyamory encompasses the others to a degree. Polyamory is simply "openly having multiple sexual and/or romantic relationships." That includes open marriages where primary partners have relationships outside the marriage. It can include swinging, where primary partners meet others mostly for the purpose of friendly sex. It includes group marriage, where several people decide to create a life together. You say those things are "tired relics" and didn't work. Not so -- I know many people who live all of those lifestyles and are quite happy with them. I am one of those people. So is my primary partner. Some of us have maintained long term relationships within those lifestyles. What *doesn't* work is when people try to proselytize polyamory, or any of its subtypes, or any other particular form of relationship, as the One True Way for people to do relationships. There is no One True Way. That also means there are fewer Truly Wrong Ways than you might think. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The resistance to changing your life when you're successful is incredible. It means giving up something known to take the chance of achieving something unknown that will provide greater satisfaction. This resistance is why most people only change their life as a result of failure. That's really unfortunate. Life is so short and offers such diversity that repeating anything for a lifetime, no matter how successful, is ultimately a failure in imagination. -- Phillip Moffitt ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is anyone secondary by choice? Isn't secondary only if you can't find someone to be primary with?] There are a lot of reasons to have a secondary relationship. Perhaps you are too busy to have something other than a secondary relationship. Perhaps you care for this person, but the two of you would never get along in the context of a primary relationship. Perhaps you prefer secondary relationships because they are less emotionally taxing. Secondary relationships are not "second-best" relationships. "Secondary" refers to the amount of time/energy/commitment (some combination thereof) one puts into the relationship, not to its value. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com "All great truths begin as blasphemies." -- G. B. Shaw "That doesn't mean that all blasphemies are great truths." -- SFJ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you meet people?] If you have any religious or spiritual inclinations or enjoy ritual there may be a religious group that works for you. A lot of people wind up with the Unitarians, for example. What do you do with your time when you're not working? If you want to meet people, and you tend to get to know people slowly, then it takes an investment of time. If you want to meet people, the best way to spend your time is to choose an activity that you find enjoyable or worthwhile that involves being with other people in a way that is conducive to getting to know them. Examples: volunteer work, political groups, interest groups, and to a lesser degree (because they end), classes. If you have knowledge that other people could use, you could also start your own group or class. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do when your SO becomes poly and then begins to drift away from you?] Note: this does not seem like polyamory to me. Polyamory is about loving several people at once. Not switching the lion's share of your romantic/ sexual love feelings from one person to another, without bothering to break up properly with the first person....that's called "overlapping serial monogamy." I know that it really hurts to think about leaving her, but you must include this in your list of options. You are an adult human being and you are ultimately responsible for taking care of yourself. Part of taking care of yourself means being willing to identify and get out of situations that are damaging to you. It is possible to love someone and still admit that the kind of relationship you want with zir is not possible. I know how it feels to think that you could never find anyone else and never get over it. But that is very unlikely. If you use the appropriate resources, you will be able to get over breaking up with her. I'm not telling you to break up with her. I'm telling you to believe, at least in some tiny portion of your mind, that you can, and that you will be OK if that happens. Because without that, you have no negotiating position for improving the relationship. A veto doesn't dictate feelings. It dictates actions. And you can veto actions without vetoing the whole relationship. If you said "hold," it could mean "Please don't carry on this romantic relationship right now. Please don't do certain things with this person, please avoid seeing him so often, at least until our relationship is back on track." I understand how hard it is to ask for something in a relationship, especially something your partner would be reluctant to give. But in a relationship, you *do* have an ethical right to ask for what you want and need. Otherwise, it's not a relationship, it's slavery. To me, breaking up with someone because they used a veto that you gave them is not ethical. One doesn't *have* to give one's partner a veto. But if one does, then one should honor the veto if it is used for a good reason. (And the destruction of your relationship sounds like a good reason.) It's worthwhile to develop a friendship with your partner's other partner. One thing I like about poly is when I know my partner's partners and believe that I could appeal to them if I had a problem with how the poly stuff was going. Another option is to ask strongly that your SO go to relationship counseling with you, with a poly-friendly counselor. It seems that there are problems that would be difficult to solve within the relationship, because they involve communication and relationship dynamics. A neutral third party can help. If she is committed to this as a *poly* relationship, not just overlapping serial monogamy, then I think she would be willing to work on the relationship with you and not just let it fade away. If she's not committed to it, then as much as it hurts, you are better off in the long run without her. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Honor: Do what you say. Say what you mean. Mean what you do. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you find a poly-friendly counselor for relationship counseling?] We called a counselor and told him that we were considering an open relationship and we had some issues to work out around that. We asked whether he was willing to work with us on that. He said that he helped couples make their own agreements and didn't impose his ideas on them. We knew he was good when, after the first session, I said to my partner: "Well, *I* like him, but I think he sided with me more than with you." And my partner said, "I thought he sided more with me." He has been a great help to us in working out our poly issues and other issues -- not so much because he addressed poly issues directly, because he didn't, but because he taught us how to really listen to each other, how to respect each other even when we disagreed about something, how to make room for each other's feelings, and how to make agreements about actions and not feelings. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What are the differences between monogamy and polyamory?] When I have felt jealousy, it has had nothing to do with "keeping my partner at all costs." On the contrary, when I feel it, I want to run away. In my experience, it's not only monogamous couples that can be confused about Fidelity and Faith, Infidelity and Betrayal. Poly relationships can also get caught up in these things. Furthermore, it is not only the person who is left behind for another who confuses those things; it can also be the person who is falling in love with someone new. As for the equation "the more you love, the more you can love," it is largely meaningless because it leaves out the question of how one *communicates* love. Love doesn't do much for a person unless they feel it is there. That requires action, and action requires time. So if one collects too many loves to spend adequate time communicating one's love to each one, then Love + Love = Less Love (communicated). *Some* people are unhappy at feeling the need to maintain fidelity. But in every relationship there are things which are less than ideal. Someone can still be happy even if they don't get absolutely everything they want. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com There are many ways to go home; many are mundane, some are divine. -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Isn't monogamous heterosexuality favored by evolution?] No. There are many forms of family other than "monogamous heterosexual dyad." You cannot deduce the entire history of the human race by examining late 20th century Western culture. In all cultures, people have sex for all sorts of reasons, in all sorts of arrangements, clandestine and open. No particular form can be enshrined as the primary evolutionarily sound one. You have to look at the whole, at what *is*, not just at what's promoted in various cultures as "the way it should be." -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Sociobiology might be interesting if the sociobiologists would just pay attention to the way people really behave. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Isn't monogamous heterosexuality the only truly mature relationship?] I think if you really could look at the eons during which human beings have been in existence, you would find that the vast majority of human beings did not live in lifelong heterosexual monogamous dyads. I'd say that the majority ended up in heterosexual dyads for some portion of their lives, but I doubt that most of those dyads were lifelong or monogamous through their whole existence. Most people have romantic relationships with people other than their primary partners -- either before the partnership came to be, or during, or after. The only difference between the way most Westerners live and the people who call themselves polyamorous is that the poly folks usually have multiple relationships with the knowledge of all the people involved, rather than secretly. I've been happy in monogamous relationships. But my partner and I feel that polyamory adds to our lives. People in poly relationships are not all that different from people in monogamous relationships: in a lot of cases, the only difference is that there are multiple romantic/sexual relationships, and they are conducted with the knowledge of those involved. Since there is not such a big difference between mono and poly, therefore, an argument based on "poly is evolutionarily unsound; only mono works" is, to use your word, spurious. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com As I grow old and older And totter towards the tomb I find that I care less and less Who goes to bed with whom. --Dorothy L. Sayers ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it harder to maintain a polyamorous relationship than a monogamous relationship? If so, is poly worth it?] The answers to those questions depend on the people involved. My take on it is that some aspects are harder, some are easier; and some people find the rewards worth it; others don't. You're talking about a specific form of poly -- a triad. I can't address how to get along within a triad because I don't live in a triad -- I have one primary relationship and several secondary relationships (which are similar to close friendships but include more physical contact than most friendships). But I think that much of what I do in a primary/secondary poly situation applies also to a triad. My primary partner and I got polyamory to work through trial and error, much much much discussion, some fighting, cussed stubbornness, strong belief in our relationship, and dedication to making poly work for us. Basically it all boils down to communication, respect, and honesty. Communicate what you want, listen carefully to what your partners want, respect and trust your partners, be worthy of respect and trust yourself, make room for feelings (yours and others), and be honest. If you can do all those things, then you can determine whether there are overlaps between what you want and what your partners want, and you can develop a lifestyle within those overlaps. Jealousy takes some special care. The key to dealing with jealousy is to learn to respect and make room for feelings in your relationship -- even unpleasant feelings. That doesn't mean to do whatever the jealous person wants all the time. It does mean to respect what the person wants, even if they want it because of jealousy. Infidelity is deliberately breaking a promise you agreed to keep. If you agreed not to have sex with people outside the relationship and then you did, it would be infidelity. If you agreed not to spend the household money on certain things, and then you did, it would be infidelity of another sort. To get over the rough spots, deliberately try to remember the good times and talk about them. Deliberately put the fights aside as much as possible in order to have good times too. Commit to working out problems to the best of your ability, including seeing a relationship counselor if necessary. (Yes, there are poly friendly relationship counselors.) -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Be sure to evaluate the bird-hand/bush ratio. -- unknown ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is jealousy produced by fear of loss?] In some cases. In other cases I think it is a product of something's actually going wrong, right now, in a relationship: "You are ignoring me in favor of that other person; you have changed your behavior toward me while expecting me to behave the same way toward you, and I don't like it." In other words, sometimes it's a response to "insecurity"; sometimes it's a response to "accurate perception." Sometimes it's a combination. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly, "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked. (Unknown) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [When should you leave someone? What are the resources you need in order to do so?] Plenty of us have been in situations where a person would not say "leave" but was abusing us, emotionally or physically, to the point where we had to take the steps to leave on our own. I consider that a very important option in a relationship. If someone is consistently not treating you in a way appropriate to the kind of relationship you are supposed to have and the kind of relationship you want, then I think it's a misapplication of "pride" to stay in the relationship. Yes, I'm sure you can take all sorts of pain and abuse, but what do you gain by doing so? (Some people do agree never to leave, but the key is *agree*, and it presumably includes some understandings of how one should be treated. Do you have such agreements with your partner?) Appropriate resources: To live on one's own, one needs to be financially independent or to have some way of getting the income one needs; one needs a support network of friends and/or professional helpers; one needs a source of pride in oneself such as a job. To break up with someone, one needs to feel that one has the ability to put together those resources quickly enough so that one will not be in psychological or physical danger. I don't leave people easily. I wait for many months before giving up on a situation that I've committed myself to. However, I *do* retain the option to leave. And love has little to do with it. I can love someone and still see that they are abusing me or that our relationship is not right for us, and choose to leave. Love does not require any particular action. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [If you use a veto once, won't you use it every time you get uncomfortable?] In my experience with transitioning to a poly relationship, I did not continue to use a veto indefinitely. I placed certain limits on relationships until I became more comfortable with the way my partner was getting to know other people and he became more aware of my comfort levels. At that point, there was less need to place limits on relationships. The veto remains as a last ditch way of asserting control in a very uncomfortable situation. But I am not feeling the need to use it at the moment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What is an appropriate level of control in a relationship?] When I go to a potential secondary partner and say "I can offer this degree of involvement," it can be seen as control. There is some room for maneuvering but there are pretty firm outside boundaries. I'm not going to force the person to do anything, but if we do decide to be secondary partners, then there are certain parameters. If the parameters can't be met, then I consider the person something other than "secondary partner" and behave accordingly. It's kind of like quantum chemistry...there are certain orbits that a person can inhabit but it's a lot more difficult to inhabit the spots in between those orbits. I just don't think there is a "line" between control and negotiation...I think negotiation is one way of exercising control. I guess you're using "control" as short for "absolute control, demanding that a particular need be met in a particular way by a particular person" and I'm using it as shrt for "adequate control, finding ways to get my needs met and to avoid situations that make me unhappy." -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Better Living Through Scheduling -- SFJ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Doesn't jealousy happen more often in polyamorous relationships than in monogamous relationships?] I have been in both mono and poly relationships, and I haven't noticed this to be true. In fact, since good poly relationships usually deal with jealousy as just another emotion, rather than as something Truly Evil to be Avoided at All Costs, I would say that in the long run, poly relationships include less jealousy, and less destructive jealousy, than mono relationships. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com "Can you imagine how life could be improved if we could do away with jealousy, greed, hate...." "It can also be improved by eliminating love, tenderness, sentiment -- the other side of the coin." -- "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What is an appropriate level of control in a relationship? Asking someone to change *is* exercising control, more so than not communicating a desire for zir to change. However, in some cases it is a better sort of controlling behavior than manipulating indirectly. If you say "either change behavior X or I'll leave," it's sometimes manipulation/threat. Sometimes it's just true. In an ideal situation, behavior X would be discussed before it got to this make-or-break place. But that doesn't always happen. There are some other ways of saying this that might not seem so threatening. "I have reaction Y to behavior X. If you don't like reaction Y, let's talk about ways we can change things so that this doesn't happen." Just leaving without communicating what it is that made one leave is also a form of control. And sometimes discussions about boundaries and conditions lead to compromises and "thinking outside the box" solutions, not parting. I think that emotional comfort levels should balance out in a relationship. I think if one person is doing all the changing, it can breed resentment. If both people are trying and changing and both are reasonably content, then it's got the potential to be a good relationship. Saying "I will not stand certain behavior" is always a threat if it is intended as one or if it makes the other person anxious. However, it can *also* be a true statement of "action causes consequence." I don't think it's a good idea to make idle threats, but if you are serious, I think it's reasonable to state your position. It can be hard to get the other person to realize you're being serious. One time I made a "make or break" statement in a relationship, and the other person believed I was making an idle threat and bullied me into "taking it back." But it wasn't an idle threat, it was a true statement, and so even though I seemed to have taken it back, when the behavior occurred again, I left. He was taken by surprise. Accept that control is part of any relationship. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What's "fair" in a poly relationship? Do you have to have the same number of lovers?] I think scheduling and maintaining relationships can get very complicated if people have that notion of fairness. There should be some kind of balance in a relationship among adults, but different people work out very different ways of balancing. Sometimes there's close balance in every area ("you take out the garbage this week and I'll take it out next week"; "you have two lovers and I have two lovers") and sometimes the balance is more complex ("You have one lover and I have two cats, so I'll take out the garbage every third week.") __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Cartoon Law IV: The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Isn't polyamory too much work given the society's emphasis on monogamy?] I don't consider myself a big social revolutionary and I do poly anyway. It's just how I conduct my relationships. Jealousy, keeping score, and insecurity do not prevent having a successful poly relationship. I'm jealous and competitive, and I'm a tad insecure at times. But in spite of all that, I have good poly relationships. The qualities that allow one to have a successful poly relationship are pretty much the same as those that allow one to have a successful monogamous relationship, imo. Jealousy, competitiveness, and insecurity can damage either kind of relationship, or you can work around them with caring, communication, and stubbornness. :-) If you think you have to be 100% "emotionally evolved" in order to have a poly relationship, then of course you'll feel generically incompatible with poly. But superhuman evolution isn't really necessary. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. -- unknown -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do when you're uncomfortable with the way your partner is handling poly?] When I was trying to become more comfortable with my partner's way of doing poly, I learned that the key to my becoming more comfortable was to have a certain amount of control over how things were done. No surprises and some control over the amount of pressure that was put on me. Gradually as I felt that I truly did have this control, I needed to exercise it less, and he also learned more about what I wanted. We gained trust in each other. We're not perfect, but we're in a good place compared to where we were a couple of years ago. We had a "looming third party" situation at a couple of crucial points in our poly negotiations. What worked for us was to see a poly-friendly relationship counselor and to decide to be 100% monogamous (no sex, no kissing, no snuggling) indefinitely, until we could come up with an agreement that we both felt we could live with. We ended up being monogamous for three months. It took trust to agree to this: we had to trust each other to keep the monogamy agreement, and he had to trust me not to attempt to maintain monogamy forever as a way of avoiding the issue. I hope that you and your fiance work through it successfully. It is possible. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Just as there are laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other. --Spider Robinson -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is polyamory incompatible with hierarchy?] Some people have poly situations without hierarchy. There is still some "excluding" of people, though, because such people must exclude relationships with people who do want hierarchy, or risk those relationships' being uncomfortable for someone. As for where hierarchy and exclusivity lie on the good/evil spectrum: that depends on the person. I happen to like them and find that they help me make the most of the relationships that I do have time for, and help me to avoid emotional confusion in those relationships. However, some people hate preplanned structure. The key is to know where you lie, so you can accurately represent your preferences to others. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Better Living Through Scheduling -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is polyamory an orientation or a behavior or a kind of relationship?] Some people believe polyamory is an orientation and you are polyamorous if you want to be involved with more than one person at a time. Some people believe that people are not polyamorous, only relationships are -- you're in a polyamorous relationship if you have more than one lover. It seems your partner is combining these and claiming that if you want to be involved with more than one person at a time, that means your *relationship* is polyamorous. I would disagree. I think you *may* be polyamorous as an orientation, but you are in a monogamous relationship right now. By the way, being poly as an orientation doesn't mean you're compelled to be in a poly relationship. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Being a woman is of special interest to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is simply a good excuse not to play football. -- Fran Lebowitz -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if your partner expresses emotions in a way that's overwhelming to you?] IMO, telling you that you should be "over it" is not legitimate, any more than telling you you shouldn't feel jealous or shouldn't feel angry or shouldn't feel happy. However, a partner does, IMO, have a right to ask that emotion be expressed in forms that don't cause zir extreme discomfort. If I'm angry, I need to express it, but I don't *have* to express it by throwing plates or hitting people, and my partner has a right to expect me to express it in other ways. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if your partner says zie is OK with poly and then turns out not to be OK with it?] A lot of people say they are OK with something like poly and truly believe it, then turn out not to be OK with it when it comes down to brass tacks. I think that's because it's easier to convince oneself of something intellectually than emotionally, especially if one hasn't been in the situation before. I could convince myself that I could jump out of a plane with a parachute on my back, but when it came to actually doing it, I might be more frightened than I expected. It's possible that your girlfriend said nasty things because she was hurting a lot. I went through a similar situation -- thinking I was OK with poly and then turning out to feel very Not OK with a certain incident -- and I said and felt a lot of nasty things when I was very upset about it. Partly because I felt my partner "should have known" that I wouldn't like what happened (but actually it was a difference in the way we thought of poly, not something that he should automatically have known). Partly because I was angry with myself at not keeping my word (saying I was OK with it and then not being OK with it). Something like this happens in many relationships that try to transition to poly. Many relationships do survive it. KEEP TALKING! Slow down on enacting the poly stuff, but don't hide or stuff your desire for it. Keep talking. Allow a lot of time for the transition -- months or even years. If you really think your partner is someone you want to stay with for a long time, it's worth spending the time to do the transition slowly and maintain the relationship. Consider different ways of doing poly. Sleeping with someone your gf doesn't know, on a trip, can be stressful in ways that other forms of poly (such as sharing someone, or starting a relationship with someone your gf knows and likes) might not be. Something that works for some people is to give the less comfortable person a time-limited right of control over polyamorous activities: say something like "I can't promise to be monogamous for ever, but for now I will give you control: you can tell me what you're comfortable with." Many people respond to this by giving the control back (perhaps slowly over a period of time). It is easier to say "yes" to someone, when you know that you have the right to say yes and no, than it is to say "don't" to someone all the time, if zie is constantly pushing you to allow something you don't feel comfortable with. Please continue talking to her and consider the possibility that she may have genuinely believed that she was OK with poly, she may not have expected her negative reaction, and when she said she kept the truth from you, it might have been because she was upset. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef A millihelen is the amount of beauty required to launch a single ship. (Unknown) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do when you love someone who's in a monogamous relationship?] The best way to accept her husband is to get to know him, get to have your own friendship with him. Of course, if you are involved with this woman secretly without her husband's knowledge, then developing a friendship with her husband would require that the secrecy end (you can't have a friendship based on deception)... Polyamory is mostly based on the premise that multiple relationships can work well if they are done openly and honestly. Getting there can be a struggle, but it can be worth it. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef At the heart of science is an essential tension between two... contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive...and...skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. -- Carl Sagan, 1987 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you achieve symmetry in a polyamorous relationship?] My partner and I work toward relative symmetry in emotional comfort. Sometimes that looks asymmetrical in terms of action. For example, when we wrote a poly agreement, there were more 'rules' about his behavior than about mine, for various historical and emotional reasons. But we both *felt* the agreement was fair. We also wrote a 'renegotiation' clause into the agreement, and over time we have adjusted the agreement somewhat as our feelings have changed. The question is not whether something is asymmetrical, but whether it feels unfair? And if so, to whom? If two members of a relationship own a house and the other two rent, is it unfair on the owners to have to go through all the hassles of house ownership? Or is it unfair on the renters because they don't have equity? Whether it's wrong for a relationship to interfere with another relationship depends on the value of 'interfere'. A relationship will no doubt change somewhat as a result of moving in with one's sweeties. But change can be managed so that everyone is reasonably satisfied with it. It doesn't sound delusional to me to be more or less content with your current arrangement. I would be thinking something like: "my relationship is relatively new and I don't want to rely on my partner financially because I need to be able to support myself and because it's dangerous to entangle money issues in a relationship until the relationship is proven stable. I also don't want to make waves in the other relationships. Maybe after living together for several years and seeing that the family is becoming more close-knit, we can move toward an arrangement that might allow me to take some time off work." I'm biased because I think it's very important for a person to be able to support zirself. If I were unhappy with work, I would look into arrangements that might help me get into a line of work I wanted to do. It is possible to do that without financial support from family members. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef A desert is a place where life is very condensed. The roots of living things hold on to that last tear of water and the flower hoards its moisture by only appearing in the early morning and late afternoon. Life in the desert is small but brilliant and most of what occurs goes on underground. This is like the lives of many women. --Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is manipulation and abuse a warning sign in a relationship?] I agree that the behavior described can be seen as manipulation/blame and probably felt abusive, but before I call something abuse, it has to repeat itself after an attempt to deal with the problem that brought the behavior out. I do not consider one outburst in a very trying situation to be abuse of the kind that becomes habitual. I behaved much as the woman in question did when I had a poly crisis with my partner. I can say that tantrums do *not* necessarily get worse and more frequent over time, that an angry hurt person *does* sometimes stop when zie feels zir needs are being addressed. I behaved in ways that might be considered "abusive" because my feelings were unexpected and scaring me half to death. I didn't want to behave that way, and when the problems (some mine, some his, some ours) were addressed, I stopped. I don't think such behavior should be coddled or excused. But do consider the source and frequency of the behavior before assuming it's abuse. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Worse, many abandon the pearl which exists in the present in favor of a caravan of dreams which always recedes across the desert. -- Mixed Metaphor Hall of Fame -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you deal with parents who disapprove of your lifestyle?] I think Miss Manners would say that the people who extend an invitation have a right to specify the attendees, and a person who is invited has a right to accept the invitation or decline with the excuse that they have another engagement. That would mean that if the parents invite you and him but not her, you and he have a right to say "we'd love to, but we have already planned to spend that time with her." And you-all can invite the parents to spend time with you-all -- in which case if the parents can't handle it, it would be up to them to decline. If you're consistent and polite about this, I expect the parents may eventually come around, because they'd probably rather see their son than not. If you do all spend time with the parents, I think you should expect them to be polite, but warmth should be extra credit. Give them time to develop comfort with the situation at their own pace, as long as they aren't rude. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef America's not about liking each other. Our history doesn't have much of that. America is about TOLERATING each other.... It's easier to do. And it's black and white. You either do it or you don't. Loving each other is something you can LIE ABOUT. -- Joe Bob Briggs -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it ethical to be polyamorous but tell potential new partners that you are cheating? Could you find more casual sex this way than by being openly polyamorous] I think it probably would be more effective at finding casual sex. I would be more inclined to consider the human nature issues -- when I've had a partner who didn't want to deal with even the existence my other partners, it has put a barrier between us, and a barrier between my other partners and that person. The barrier prevents some kinds of intimacy from developing. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. -- G. B. Shaw -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you want to share in your partner's other sexual relationships but your partner wants to have private relationships?] I don't think you're being unfair to want that. Some people really do want to be there even if they're not participating and feel connected to the whole thing. However, your wife and her lover may not feel comfortable with your watching -- in which case you might have to negotiate some other kind of arrangement: getting to know her lover better so that her lover feels comfortable with you; being told the details later; being in another part of the house. Negotiate with sensitivity to the feelings of all involved and you should in time be able to come to an accommodation. __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want. -- Irving Kristol -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is a poly relationship more difficult than a mono one?] Making the transition from mono to poly can be very complicated and stressful. For my partner and me, it went on for a couple of years. However, at this point, having come to an arrangement that works for us, I can say that it really doesn't seem much more complicated than monogamy right now. And once we began to develop some comfort with poly, the primary complication was a logical one -- scheduling -- which is hardly a problem specific to poly folks. Good luck with the transition! __ Stef __ rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty __ stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef The resistance to changing your life when you're successful is incredible. It means giving up something known to take the chance of achieving something unknown that will provide greater satisfaction. This resistance is why most people only change their life as a result of failure. That's really unfortunate. Life is so short and offers such diversity that repeating anything for a lifetime, no matter how successful, is ultimately a failure in imagination. -- Phillip Moffitt -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you're monogamous but you're in love with someone who's polyamorous?] My partner and I went through something like that when we were trying to sort out poly....it took a couple of years to get to a point where we were comfortable. Monogamy is just as valid as polyamory. Monogamy is not codependent. However, sacrificing what you really, truly want because you think you need a *particular* person in your life -- that is codependence. In your attempt to try polyamory for yourself, is there something wrong with your being secretive about searching for other partners? You say that your partner doesn't like limits such as "one weekend a month." What if you don't like limits such as "You must tell me the status of your interest in other people at all times"? Isn't that just as legitimate as his dislike of limits? One way around this might be to agree that you will disclose your pursuit of other people only when the relationship reaches a certain point. It would be based on your partner's comfort with such behavior, of course. But if he wants you to give him freedom, then he will have to give you some room to maneuver, too. There does not have to be exact parity in a poly relationship, but it's helpful when there is a feeling of emotional parity -- that one person isn't taking the brunt of the difficulty. Poly isn't about replacing one partner with another, but if you truly aren't happy with what you have, then I think it's better to look for someone/something better than to succumb. The "better" might be a better relationship with your partner, or a better way of doing poly for you, or a better relationship with someone else, or an interest in something different. It sounds as if you tried poly by having sex with other people relatively quickly. Another way of doing it, which is better for some people, is to get to know people over a long period of time. At some point, you may feel trusting enough to go to a deeper level of intimacy with another person, which may or may not include sex. This kind of poly merely says "I am not going to limit myself to emotional and physical intimacy with one partner, but I am not going to push any other relationships either. If they happen, they happen." I suppose you could call it "potential poly." If your partner and you can't agree on how often he spends time with other partners, perhaps another way to look at it is not "how often can he be away from you" but "how much time do you need with him." Then he would need only to spend the time with you that you asked, and how he spent his other time, when you were busy with school/work or other friends, would be up to him. My partner and I had a problem along these lines, and we developed an agreement about how we would spend free time. We focused not on how much time we could spend with other partners (we've addressed that in a separate agreement) but on how much time we preferred to spend together. With that settled, we could choose to allocate our other time as we pleased. (We spend three nights a week and at least one full day a weekend together, and we spend at least one full weekend a month together. Often it's more, but this is the minimum. Also, we sleep together every night.) My partner and I came to an agreement that we'd not talk about exactly what we do in bed with other partners, and we'd not talk about the depths of our feelings (well, he wouldn't do those things, because they make me anxious), but we'd talk about everything else -- who we see and when, and what we said and did other than in bed. Limits and choices are part of life. You make choices about how to spend your time either consciously or unconsciously. Some people don't mind explicit limits and rules and guidelines. SOme people dislike them; they feel chafed and having to work within rules shuts them down emotionally. Some people are somewhere in between -- they don't mind a framework of guidelines, but they want freedom within that framework. This can be solved the same way other relationship problems can be solved: Each of you should talk about what you most want, and what you most hate, and what you can put up with. Without judgement. Descriptive only. Then see if there is any overlap in which you can both exist comfortably. Then put yourselves in the part of the overlap in which you both feel that there would be some emotional equality. Neither of you has to put up with a lot more emotional angst than the other. Make it re-negotiable in about three to six months. Give it time to work (there will be resistance at first) but don't carve it in stone. Then try it and see what happens. Expect resistance and discomfort at first. Talk about it. Allow yourselves to feel it. Give room to each other to feel it. But stick to the agreement despite it for a few months. Sometimes it will fade. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef It is because of your disillusionments that you fly.... Here then is the dragonfly with its four wings, full of confidence and joy, and I am at the double junction of the wings. -- Esther Rochon/ Henry Polard -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How can one sustain two primary relationships?] Good news: it can work logistically in many forms -- living together or not. The most important thing is that you all remain clear on what you want and honestly communicate with each other. I would also advise going slowly on bringing another primary into the relationship and especially into the house. With regard to time-crunch, it's a matter of sorting your priorities. If your husband and W will be equal priorities for you, then you can schedule time with them accordingly. Other things, such as movies, nights out with friends, high powered careers, etc., might take lower priority so that you can get the time you need with your partners. This also works with regard to insecurities. If your partners each know that they will be getting a certain amount of time with you, often that reduces insecurity. I'd say that if you are going to have two primaries, then it's very important that they like one another. It makes scheduling easier, and more important, it makes it easier to deal with crunches where both want your time and energy at once -- because you can simply all three get together and comfort each other. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen. -- Unknown -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you determine ethics in a relationship?] I don't think the larger cultural context is the sole determinant of whether behavior is ethical. The larger cultural context is important because of people's expectations. However, and this is where polyamory comes in, one cannot determine whether something is ethical *solely* by looking at the cultural context. One must look at both the cultural context and the individual context. So a poly relationship in which the participants have thought about how their situation differs from the norm and have agreed that's OK is ethical. However, in the cultural context, polyamory is wrong, and so to assume that someone would be open to it is wrong. Let's say that you were polyamorous and got involved with someone, but didn't tell zir. Then you got into another relationship, and when zie found out about it, zie got upset. You couldn't claim ethical behavior by saying "But we never agreed on monogamy so I thought it was OK to be poly." The cultural context is that monogamy is the norm, and it is up to the poly person, who has an ethical system that differs from the norm, to be aware of the difference and inform the people zie interacts with if it's relevant to them. I start at the cultural level in determining ethics of behavior because I think that most people "default" to the cultural norm. They create special codes of ethics of their own in some parts of their lives (rejecting the cultural norm because they disagree with it) and in other cases they create special codes because of the idiosyncracies of the specific situation. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef The water in a vessel is sparkling; / the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence. -- Tagore -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it OK to ask children to keep secrets?] If you think secrets are inherently creepy, I suppose it's creepy to ask children to keep secrets...but I for example never had a problem keeping my family income secret when told that it was conventional to do so. I don't think children make wild leaps from "Please don't talk to your teacher about how Aunt Jane sleeps with mommy and daddy, because that's private" to "truth and goodness ought to be hidden." There are reasons for keeping things secret other than being ashamed of them. Can you teach a child that people disagree? Can you teach a child the difference between "Things we do but some others may be offended so we don't go parading them about" and "Things that cause harm and are therefore wrong no matter where they are done?" I think so. For example, I know a number of families that sometimes don't wear clothes in the house or in public baths, but the children do seem to learn that there are some places it's OK not to wear clothes and some places where they should wear clothes. I don't notice people brought up under those circumstances having a problem telling right from wrong. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef I feed upon the flesh of the living ... and I vote. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if your partner is uncomfortable with the idea of polyamory?] My partner and I went through a period where we had agreed to be poly, but I was feeling pretty insecure about it and felt that I might go out of control if/when he did start pursuing other relationships. I did have a very hard time the first few times he had dates with other women, even though those dates didn't amount to much. During the period where I was waiting for him to develop a relationship, sometimes both of us wished that he would just go *do* one and get it over with. To my surprise, I began worrying about it less over time, as I saw that he was giving me a lot of room for my feelings. I guess what I was really afraid of was that I would have a very strong reaction and it would frighten or anger him and we'd end up in an escalating fight. That didn't happen, and I found once I'd had a strong reaction to something, and he accepted it, the reaction tended mostly not to occur again. There have been certain exceptions to this, but they are few enough that we've been able to make agreements about how to avoid them. As for explaining that poly doesn't mean your partner "isn't giving you something" -- well, in a way, she isn't giving you something. She isn't giving you the experience of knowing many people, because she is only one person and she simply can't give you that. Maybe it would be better to be honest about that instead of trying to insist that she is giving you everything you want. (To be sure, she may be giving you everything you want and expect from *her*, and be sure to make that clear.) -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef There is no greater blessing a mother can give her daughter than a reliable sense of the veracity of her own intuition. Intuition is handed >from parent to child in the simplest ways: "You have good judgment. What do you think lies hidden behind all this?" -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [In what ways do you express your important relationships to others? What language do you use?] Primary partner A person with whom I have agreed to share and plan a future. This person gets a lot of say in my day-to-day life and I get a lot of say in zirs. My lovers, friends, relatives, and acquaintances know that I have a primary partner and most of them know who zie is. My partner also discloses zir relationship with me similarly. Secondary partner, lover, sweetie A person with whom I have a strong, ongoing relationship, usually with romantic and sexual aspects. Someone whom I make an effort to see regularly*. However, these people do not have a lot of say in my day-to-day life, other than being able to expect a regular share of my time/energy, and I don't have a say in their lives. My close friends, lovers, and partner know that I have secondary partners and know who most of those people are. (My primary partner knows all of them.) Acquaintances and relatives don't know the exact nature of these relationships -- to them, I describe these people as friends. * "regularly" means "at approximately regular intervals", e.g., once every couple of weeks. Friend A person with whom I have a mutual relationship based on respect and affection. There may be sexual/romantic aspects. We do not expect to see each other regularly and we do not have any say in each other's lives. My partner knows who most of my friends are. My lovers and close friends know who some of my friends are. My relatives and acquaintances may know a few of my friends. When we're in public together, my partner and I tend to describe ourselves as partners, tend to spend a lot of time sitting or standing next to each other, and tend to touch, cuddle, and kiss a lot. We usually spend more time with each other than with other people, or we interact with people together. We feel free to walk in on each other's interactions with other people. When I am in public with a lover, I tend to touch zir frequently and spend more time with zir than with other people. I may periodically walk into zir interactions with others, but first I gauge whether the interaction looks open to visitors or not. This behavior is subject to approval by the lover and zir partners, if any. Some of my lovers ask me not to touch them in public. When I'm in public with a friend, I may behave similarly as with a lover, but I will probably be somewhat more reserved about approaching zir interactions with others and touching zir. If I encounter a friend in public, I often hug zir hello and goodbye. If I encounter a lover in public, I may engage in some more physical activities, such as sensual hugging or caressing, depending on whether zie seems open to such behavior, and depending on my agreements with my primary partner. With my primary partner -- this behavior doesn't change if there are onlookers. With lovers -- I tend to be somewhat more reserved about touching them in public than in private. With friends -- my behavior doesn't change. I simultaneously express multiple relationships by: (1) Informing the people I am involved with, or I am considering becoming involved with, of the fact that I have a primary partner and other lovers. Having a conversation about what behaviors are comfortable for zir and what our expectations might be. (2) Informing the people I am involved with what they can expect from me in terms of time/energy/behavior, and informing them of other priorities in my life. Negotiating if there are disagreements. Sticking to agreements we've made. (3) Honoring my relationship with someone by scheduling regular time with zir and focusing on zir during that time (unless there's an emergency or my primary partner asks for my attention, which zie wouldn't do unless there were a very good reason). Not letting myself get distracted by other people or things. (4) If I am with multiple lovers at one time, making sure to spend approximately equal amounts of energy on each one, either separately or together (except that I may spend more energy on my primary partner). If spending time with several people at once, making sure that the energy among us feels good. Jealousy/insecurity have arisen in situations where my primary partner and I spent time together in public. We dealt with that by agreeing that we could interrupt each other at any time and that we would be very reserved about physical contact with other people when we are together in public. (What seems to work best, if physical contact is involved, is for us both to be touching the same person(s) at the same time.) No jealousy/insecurity seems to have arisen with any of my other partners. I'm not sure why this is. Either we're doing something right, or my partners aren't telling me when they feel jealous, or they aren't jealous types, or something. I tend to express those things in private conversation with a person I might be interested in. I also tend to meet people in contexts where it is easier to express my non-standard relationship arrangement (i.e., poly groups, science fiction groups, pagan groups, BDSM groups, the net). If part of what you are asking is "How do I pick up someone at a party if I am supposed to be at the party with someone else": I don't tend to do that, because it goes against my desire to honor someone by focusing on zir during the time we've agreed to spend together. I might spend a few minutes chatting with a new person and might express an interest in getting to know zir better, but I probably wouldn't spend significant time with zir right then. In public, I want my primary partner to be available to me and to spend more of zir time interacting with me, or including me in zir interactions with others, than interacting with any single other person. I've had problems when a primary partner went off in a corner with someone else for most of the evening. I have also had problems if a primary partner seemed to be touching someone else more than me. To me, spending most of one's time touching a specific person signifies "This is my partner," or "this is the person here who is most important to me." Sometimes my partner and I go to parties separately if we want to be free to spend time with others as we please. I expect friends and lovers to be available to me a reasonable amount of the time if we have agreed that we are going to a public function "together." I would consider it rude if a friend or lover went into a corner with someone else after making such an agreement. If a lover happens to be at the function and we aren't there together, then I expect zir to acknowledge me, but I don't expect zir to spend substantial time with me or be available to me. So my expectations have a little bit to do with labels for the relationship, but more to do with labels for the kind of interaction we are "doing" at this function -- are we doing the function "together"? Or are we on our own? I rank my primary relationship "higher" than my secondary relationships (meaning that my primary relationship gets the lion's share of my time/energy and gets priority if there is a conflict). But among my secondary relationships, I perceive no ranking. I try to treat my lovers with approximate equality -- spend more-or-less equal amounts of time/energy with each of them (especially if I am with several of them at once). None of my lovers has complained about how I've handled this, for whatever reasons. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Anyone whose god is "something higher" must expect someday to suffer vertigo. Vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us; it is the desire to fall. --Milan Kundera -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you distinguish different kinds of relationships and communicate your intentions?] Perhaps one way to explain your position to your partners is to say that you are, in a sense, your own primary partner. If I have no primary, then I automatically assign a higher value to my own needs/wants than to others' (in a sense, I am my own primary). If I decide that someone is no longer primary, I tend to state that very clearly. So let's say I have no ranked relationships. Each person gets a certain amount of my time and understands that I rank my needs/wants somewhat more important than zirs. Now I decide that one of these people is my primary. What changes is that I rank this person's needs/wants equal to mine. The rules about others would change if my primary and I agreed that they should change. Otherwise not. In reality what would probably change is that I might have somewhat less flexibility in scheduling time with my other partners. Let's say I have a primary and some other relationships. I decide I no longer want the person to be a primary. I tell the person I no longer consider zir a primary, and I go back to having no ranked relationships. Again, the only change is that I no longer rank one person's needs/wants equal to mine. I tend to make the actual transition from one "label" to another rather decisively. If I want to make a transition, I tend to think about it a lot first, and I tend to hold off on behaving in ways that don't fit the label, because I believe such behavior causes additional stress in the relationship. If someone is repeatedly behaving "outside the label," I will tend to say that I want to change the label until further evidence has been gathered. Let's say I have a secondary partner who is not able to schedule regular get-togethers. I will tell zir "let's call ourselves friends rather than secondary partners" because I have different expectations for friends and I won't be upset at the mismatch. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in the proper order then why can't he? -- /fortune -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it codependent if you consider another person's wants/needs alongside your own?] "Codependency" implies mental illness to me. Do you really believe that people who choose to assign equal weight to another's needs are ill? I think that it is very important for parents to assign equal weight to their children's needs, and I think it can be a legitimate choice to assign equal weight to other adults' needs as long as it doe. I do not think it indicates mental illness. One can assign equal weight to another person's needs and still retain freedom of choice. In the case of my primary partner, I make the decisions based on what I need/want, what zie needs/wants, and what our relationship needs/wants, weighing all those factors equally. In other relationships, my needs/wants get some extra priority points when I am weighing my choices. Note that although I consider my partner's needs/wants as equal to mine, I still assess the needs/wants and rank them. If I have a want I consider a high priority, and my partner has a want that seems to be a lower priority, my want gets priority. But it gets priority on its own merits, not just because it is mine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you explain your interest in polyamory to someone who's monogamous?] I've *never* been successful explaining poly using the parents/children analogy. Some poly folks seem to understand it, but others apparently don't at all. Marriage is a life partnership. Not all relationships are life partnerships. Does a Christian marriage allow one to have friends? If so, then I see no reason, using *that* argument, why a Christian marriage would not allow one to be poly -- to love one's friends, to have loving non-marriage relationships with other people. I'm not Christian, but I was raised as one, and I found myself thinking the other day about Jesus' words "And the greatest of these is love" in a poly context. Poly has helped show me that underneath all the different names for love and the different ways it feels in different relationships, love is just love. One of the thorniest arguments my partner and I had early on in our relationship concerned our different understandings of love. I urge you both to persist in sorting yours out, because when you can understand each other's views of love, you have really gotten somewhere. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. --T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you explain polyamory to someone who's monogamous?] People seem to accept the "friends" analogy: "You have more than one friend, right? You care about your friends, right? Your friends all know that you have more than one friend, right? You don't have big trouble juggling several friends, right? You find time to spend with each of them? OK, well, polyamory is like having several friends that you love and have sex with." That's a start, anyway. People can say "Well, *I* couldn't do that with lovers," but at least they have an example from their own lives that they can start from. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Soon anyone who's not on the World Wide Web will qualify for a government subsidy for the home-pageless. -- Scott Adams ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you label yourself?] Once I took a class on writing on-line documentation, and I had to write error messages for three levels of help: concise (8 characters), intermediate (20 characters), and verbose (50 characters). That's how I see labels. You start out with the simplest, most concise definition: "polyamorous" or "bisexual." Then if relevant you qualify it: "primary/secondary poly" or "slightly het-leaning bisexual." Then if relevant you explain it still more: "I have one primary partner and have several lovers who are like friends" or "My primary partner is a man, but I do all other kinds of relationships with people of either sex." -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef The Water Pollution Control Federation's executive committee voted to accept "biosolids" as the new name for sewage sludge, rejecting such other terms as "bioslurp," "prenutri," "humanure," and "black gold." --Seattle Times, reported in Quarterly Review of Doublespeak ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you're monogamous and your partner is pressuring you to be poly?] Pressure to be polyamorous, when making a transition, may not *really* come from person A. It may come from person B, who feels one or more of: --"I have to be poly too so I won't be lonely" --"I have to be poly too so I can understand this part of person A" But person B may not realize where the feeling is coming from, and may believe that person A is pressuring zir to be poly. I suppose there are a few reasons why person A might want person B to be poly: --Person A might feel guilty for leaving person B alone. --Person A might worry that unless person B is poly, zie is going to demand more time/energy than A wants to give. --Person A might believe that poly works best when all parties are poly. --Person A might believe that poly only works when everybody is getting something for zirself out of it. These are not very well thought out reasons, but they are likely to occur in the heat of the moment. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you arrange things when more than one partner of yours wants to go to a party with you?] I think I would probably try to solve this by suggesting some combination of: "I'll go with B to this one and C to the next one." (If C goes to this one, it is as a free agent, or C can find another date.) "I'll spend time with B from ten to midnight and C from midnight to two." (B and C now know when they can and cannot rely on A's attention.) -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want. -- Irving Kristol ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you consider someone else's needs alongside your own?] Considering someone else's needs alongside my own is very different from muddling my needs and someone else's, or considering someone else's needs as more important. I do not see how one could turn into the other, even if habit were involved. My anecdotal evidence suggests that if one regularly practices considering another's needs alongside one's own, one becomes better at solving problems in ways that work for everyone (rather than becoming ever more self-sacrificing). There is no shortcut of "Well, these needs are more important 'cos they're mine, so it's not necessary to work to find a solution that works for everybody"; I think that shortcut can be employed in both codependent relationships (where one considers another's needs more important) or relationships where one considers one's own needs more important. Why is it important to keep track of whose needs are whose? Are you worried that if you don't carefully assign this need to that person and that need to this person, harmful fusion will set in? If you believed that fusion wouldn't happen, would it still be important to you to clarify whose needs are whose? If you're building a relationship with someone, then IMO it's good to make some guesses at or otherwise explore what their priorities might be. Even if you are wrong, the act of exploring can be pleasing to the other person. As for responsibility: Yes, it is zir responsibility to see that zir priorities are addressed. If you address another's possible expectations/priorities, that doesn't mean you've taken over responsibility for zir needs. It's expressing an interest, that's all. And possibly avoiding some problems. When I talk about considering another's needs alongside my own, I am talking about what happens after the point where the needs are defined and communicated (obviously not perfectly, but as well as can be expected at the moment). *Then* I look at the needs, wherever they have come from, and if they conflict, I try to find a solution that addresses all of them, and if no solution addresses all of them, I try to make a decision based on which one I believe to be most important or strongest right now. (Sometimes I do this with help from the other people involved; sometimes on my own.) In some cases, following through on this shows me that my assessment or our communication was off. If so I make adjustments. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is a secondary relationship of lesser value than a primary relationship?] I believe you implied that a secondary relationship had no spiritual aspects and was of lesser value than a primary relationship. I think secondary does not imply anything about the spiritual aspects of a relationship. I also think that secondary does not imply anything about the spiritual or emotional value of a relationship. It only implies something about how I will behave if the relationship conflicts with a primary relationship. If your definition of "value" is behavior-based, then you might consider my secondary relationships to be of lesser value because I spend less time on them than on my primary relationship. However, if your definition of "value" is based in spiritual or emotional aspects, then my secondary relationships may be of equal or greater value than my primary relationship -- they may teach me more things, or be more emotionally intense, or whatever else might be implied in a definition of spiritual or emotional value. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if a partner won't follow through on plans with you because of the discomfort of another partner?] I think you may be losing out because you're not successfully communicating how important some things are to you and standing up for what you want/need. You can do those things in a rational and non-dramatic way. But it works best if you do it firmly and show you mean it. There are several approaches to solving a problem like this. (1) Strengthen your relationship with her. If you get her on your side, she may be more willing to make room for your relationship with the man, and you may come to understand and empathize with her better, and you may be able to talk about problems together. If she keeps getting upset, then there may be a mismatch between what she really wants and what she feels she *should* do/want. Addressing this issue may help improve the relationship(s). (2) Avoid blaming her for his behavior. His behavior is his responsibility. You don't have to get dramatic about it, but you do have to make it clear to him that you expect him to follow through, and that there will be consequences if he doesn't (such as losing your trust). You may need to be willing to give up the relationship if he doesn't change his behavior. That might seem hard, and it's up to you to decide if it's worth it. For me, it's worth it to have lovers I can rely on. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef ------------------------------------------------------------ For you the world is weird because if you're not bored with it, you're at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable....You must accept responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time....since you are going to be here for only a short while, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it. --Carlos Castaneda ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is polyamory an orientation? Can it be changed?] Some people do feel that poly is an "imperative" for them, just as some people feel that they can only have sexual/romantic relationships with members of a particular sex. On alt.poly, we sometimes call people who can happily do either poly or mono relationships "mono/poly switch." Some people who believe that they need monogamy can change. Some people who believe that they need polyamory can change. Changing with your partner, IMO, goes part and parcel with love. The idea of "putting partner's happiness foremost" is sweet and important in specific instances, but it doesn't work so well when it comes to a strong mono/poly disagreement -- because which partner is supposed to put the other partner's happiness foremost? The poly partner? Or the mono partner? Better to work out an agreement that addresses the needs of both partners. OTOH, if you're a mono/poly switch, and your partner is strongly monogamous, then your needs are addressed by being monogamous and monogamy makes sense. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy. -- Bertrand Russell ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you started dating a couple and now you only like one of them?] The way I see it, you have several choices: (1) Talk to her about how you feel about her husband. If she indicates a desire to leave him, you might say exactly what you said here: you care for her and would be willing to help her out temporarily if she wants to leave him, but you could not offer a permanent "replacement" relationship. (2) Decide that it's none of your business and you don't want to disrupt their relationship further, and break off the relationship with both of them now. I agree that if you proceed further you'll continue to affect their relationship. That would likely be messy for all of you, and you need to decide if your relationship and your life is equipped to handle the mess. (3) Decide to break off the sexual aspect of your relationship with them, because her husband disapproves, but offer her friendship and support if she wants it. (This might also affect their relationship, because of the feelings between you and her husband, but without the sexual aspect, it might be less messy.) -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef "Polyamory is annoying sometimes." "Yeah. Why can't I just have bad times with *one* person?" -- GT/SFJ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Why do some poly people "look" for other relationships?] One of the angst-ridden thoughts I had when I was struggling to accept poly was: "Damn! I already spent twenty years of my life fretting over not being able to find a partner. Now that I've found someone I want to stay with and vice versa, I want to *quit* worrying that for a change, and if we're poly, I won't be able to!" I decided that I would not give in to that if I could help it. Most of my life I felt that one partner would be sufficient, and why should it be different now? If I have more than one partner, great; if not, I have plenty of other interests to pursue. I have to periodically "re-decide" this when my life gets disrupted. And I doubt it would suffice if I really did lose all my secondary partners. But I think it's saved me from a lot of self-competitive unhappiness. I also haven't had any problems finding partners. I don't know if that's related to my attitude or whether it's because of other factors. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions: Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn't life under the sun just a dream? -- WINGS OF DESIRE ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you're starting a relationship and you're worried whether your partner will accept poly?] Falling in love with someone and agreeing to share your life with zir is about change and growing together. Yes, you cannot predict whether he will really want the kind of family you want. You also can't predict whether *you* will want it after developing the relationship with him further. Realizing that you're making a commitment that you can't back out of unchanged, whether it turns out good or bad, is very scary. In a way it is kind of a death or an end to a part of your life. It's important to acknowledge that and to make the choice actively -- I choose to go into this relationship and see where it leads us -- and to acknowledge that you may lose some things that are important to you. In choosing the kind of person to do that with, I think more important than whether zie shares your exact model of a family right now is whether you and zie can work together to solve problems and whether you can trust zir to be resourceful and respectful of you when big changes occur. Sharing specifics does make things easier, but there are always going to be some specifics, including some big ones, you don't share. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Without death...there is no dark for the diamond to shine from. -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you blend poly households?] This reminds me of the stuff that a lot of couples go through when they move in together. Although they have a strong relationship, there are a lot of things they don't know about living together, and they have to sort them out. My partner and I anticipated and talked through a number of potential differences, but there were several differences that we didn't anticipate and that jumped up and bit us. I guess my advice would be to try to anticipate whatever difficulties you can, have a weekly meeting to air problems, have probationary periods for any arrangements you make, and don't carve them in stone until you see how they work out. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef And if He closes before you / all passes and all ways He'll show you a hidden pathway / which no one yet has known -- Maulana Rumi ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Are threesomes more stable than foursomes?] Two couples might well create a stable arrangement based on caring for each other and sharing financial and work arrangements, even if not everyone had an equally intense romantic relationship with everyone else. In a threesome, however, some sort of perceived equality in the romantic relationships is, I imagine, a lot more necessary for stability. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef The Devil's strategy...is to make trivial human existence and to isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands, or economic anxieties. --C. S. Lewis ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do you nurture several separate relationships?] I get around this by challenging the assumptions about how much time you have to spend with a partner. Except for my primary partner, rather than time-per-day or time-per-week, I think of total-time. So I see each of my secondary partners once every week or two, and keep in touch via email and phone in the meantime. When I'm starting a relationship this sometimes doesn't feel like enough. But as the relationship continues over time, I begin to feel comfortable in that relationship, as I would in a relationship where I was spending more time-per-week, because of the long shared history. This probably only works for people who feel OK about having secondary partners, of course, and doesn't exactly fit the subject line. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. -- Mark Twain, "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling" ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if a new partner would prefer you not tell your existing partner about the relationship?] I think that most people grow up with the models of monogamy and of official-relationship + clandestine-relationships, and I think one of the biggest difficulties in polyamory is shifting to a model of several known relationships with knowledge and communication among all partners. I also think, as someone who had a lot of difficulty with it, that the shift is well worthwhile. I feel much safer being able to talk to my partner's other partners. But being forced into it isn't the greatest idea. Proceed slowly, say that you and your wife would prefer more open communication (if that's true of your wife), but that you aren't going to rush things and you'll proceed that way only if and when she says she's ready. I would put one exception in there: Insist that if your relationship with her were to deepen or change in a way you didn't anticipate, you reserve the right to tell your wife. A great many severe poly problems have developed because someone fell in love and began wanting changes in the kind of relationship zie had with the new love, and didn't tell zir other partner(s) until it was already quite far along. That can feel like a betrayal. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef/ "Can you imagine how life could be improved if we could do away with jealousy, greed, hate...." "It can also be improved by eliminating love, tenderness, sentiment -- the other side of the coin." -- "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is polyamory a male drive?] Males of most primate species don't simply mate with any female who's available, and females of most primate species are not generally monogamous before, during, or after procreation. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef/ Sociobiology might be interesting if the sociobiologists would just pay attention to the way people really behave. -- SFJ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if a friend strongly disapproves of your polyamorous lifestyle?] I'm a believer in the Miss Manners school of etiquette, and my suggestions are based on the idea that when others breach your ideas of etiquette, you assume innocence until proven guilty, and the best response is to gently remind the person of your preferences rather than expressing anger. If there is no question in your mind that the action was deliberately intended to be rude, then anger may be appropriate. Based on this philosophy, I would say something like "I'm sorry, but C and I can't come by ourselves -- we make a point of doing things together with the rest of our family on Halloween. Let me know when you are having a party that can include all of us." My reasoning: People can invite whomever they like to a party. The invitees get to choose whether they want to come in the configuration that is invited. It is rude for a guest to ask if zie can bring more people, unless the invitation says that it's OK to bring others. There is a convention that says one is supposed to invite spouses and partners, but I believe that the freedom to invite whom one likes takes precedence over that. Of course, one is welcome to hint that one wants one's partner(s) to be invited and not to attend if the invitation is not forthcoming. To me, the issue of whether zie accepts your family style is somewhat separate, and if I were wanting to try to talk sense into zir about that issue, I would probably do it in a letter not directly related to the party invitation. I also would probably take a more "sad and disappointed" tone: "Your exclusive invitation seems to suggest that you still disapprove of the kind of family I have. If so, I'm disappointed -- I thought that you didn't approve because you were afraid it wouldn't work. But I feel it is working for all of us and has worked for a respectable length of time. It's disappointing to me to feel that nevertheless, you don't respect or trust my choices." -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef/ Dear Miss Manners -- Is it proper for a gentleman to compliment a lady on her tattoo? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it polyamory to date more than one person secretly?] Dating two people at once without telling is not exactly cheating, unless the people involved believe you are being monogamous. If someone does, then it is cheating if you do not correct this belief. There is a gray area in casual dating that some people take advantage of -- on the one hand, casual dating is not a formal commitment and one can say "But I never SAID I was being monogamous." On the other hand, many people assume monogamy once the interactions get to a certain point. In a situation that's gone on for six months, many people would assume monogamy if you never mentioned other lovers. The ethical thing to do in this situation, IMO, is to say "By the way, I reserve the right to date other people unless we agree otherwise." How would your girlfriends feel if they knew you were seeing and sleeping with other women? I believe if you know something that would matter to a friend or lover, and you are not bound by a promise not to tell, it's ethically appropriate to tell, and inappropriate not to tell. Another issue (non-ethical) is intimacy -- certain kinds of intimacy are not possible if you keep big secrets from someone. However, you may not value the kind of intimacy that comes from sharing everything you are, and that's OK. A third issue concerns practicality: if your girlfriends believe you're being monogamous and they find out otherwise, they are likely to feel betrayed and that would make your life difficult. You might lose one or both of them. If you don't care whether you lose them, then of course this is not your concern, but it's something to think about. If the part that you enjoy is leading two separate lives at once, then consider that it is possible to do so without lying by omission. You just let the people that you date know that you are or may be dating other people and that you are not willing to give any further details about your dating. That is ethical because it allows them to make their own decisions concerning their involvement with you, knowing that there are things they may not know about you. It's not cheating unless you're caught? Sorry, but that's not any definition of cheating I agree with. To me, if you have an agreement or an understanding, and you don't abide by it, that's cheating, whether you get caught or not. Not disclosing parts of your lives is fine as long as you *agree* to do so. But if you do it without agreeing, and there is a likelihood that someone thinks you're being monogamous, then it's cheating, and it's unethical, IMO. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef/ In Hell, there is no 'n' key. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it polyamorous and ethical to date two people without their knowledge?] It's true that the relationships would probably change if you told the people about each other. And I'm not surprised you want to keep things the way they are, since you enjoy it. But do keep in mind that (1) Your behavior is unethical by many people's systems of ethics. What is your system of ethics based on? How do you justify your behavior in your system? (2) At some point one or both of your girlfriends will probably find out, and the relationships will change anyway. But if they find out without your telling them, they may have a stronger sense of betrayal and that may make it worse for you and them. I'm sure you feel that you care about them. But to me, caring about someone is not just a feeling. It also means doing your best not to hurt the person. In this case, you are setting your girlfriends up for a very big disappointment down the road, when they discover you've been hiding the existence of other relationships. I don't think that's very caring at all. I think it's downright mean and nasty. When you say you care about them, don't you really mean that you enjoy being around them? But you aren't really looking out for their long-term interests, or even your own. You're only looking out for your short-term interests -- you don't want to have to change the relationships. You prefer to hide your head in the sand and wait until the situation blows up and the relationships change on their own, possibly more painfully. You have two ethical choices, the way I see it: 1. End your relationship with one or both of them. 2. Tell them both you're involved with someone else and you don't intend to give up either relationship. Then work with them on whatever feelings might come up. Most people who do polyamory believe that it is about having multiple relationships *openly and honestly*, not simply about having multiple relationships. Lots of people cheat. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef/ I've been sentenced to life on Earth. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Are primates naturally polyamorous?] Primates have a variety of sexual behavior patterns, but having one mate for life (monogamy) is one of the rarer patterns. Mating with more than one other, openly or secretly, is more common. If you look at homo sapiens behavior, you see that a frequent behavior pattern is having one or more "official" mates (most often one), with the "official" cultural position that monogamy is appropriate, while a number of secret sexual and/or love affairs take place on the side (among both men and women). This is not polyamory. I'm not sure what to name it. This pattern also occurs in various other primate species. A great many other behavior patterns are also represented, including polyamory. I don't think there is any one single "natural" behavior pattern for humans, or for males, or for females. Humans learn most of their behavior rather than acting from instinct. -- Stef ** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty ** stef@netcom.com ** http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef/ ...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations. -- Steven Jay Gould