******************************** Stef's Poly Post Archive, Part 6 ********************************* Index: coming out, parents, activism, negotiation, queer, kinky sex The "Montana Requires Homosexuals to Register" story that was bouncing around the net yesterday (apparently they backed down) prompted a conversation between me and my partner about the issue of coming out to our parents as poly/queer/kinky/what have you. My partner's parents live about 25 miles from us. My parents live about 2000 miles away. Politically, both sets of parents are mixtures of socially tolerant and personally conservative. Both sets of parents are sometimes open minded and sometimes easily shocked. His parents seem somewhat more comfortable with the issue of sex and alternative lifestyles than mine. Both sets of parents know we do "pagan" things and neither set seems particularly to mind. So far we've worked with the parameters that we won't come out to either set of parents because I don't want to come out to my parents and it would feel weird to me for his parents to know something that mine don't know. The Montana thing scared him, reminding him of pre-Nazi Germany, and he argued that he wanted to be out in his community and family as poly and kinky so that he engage in queer rights activities openly and could get support if it should be needed. He also pointed out that because his parents live nearby, as well as lots of people who know them and him, he has to be constantly vigilant when he's with his other sweeties, so that no one who knows his parents could carry news back to them. He thinks that to allow them to find out from someone other than him would be rudeness of the highest order. My feeling is that his family's/community's reception to this news might be colder than he expects and might disrupt our lives rather than helping. As for my parents -- my tendency is to engage in "don't ask, don't tell" -- I don't hide whom I know and whom I spend time with, but I don't tell them anything about my sex life. And so far, my relationships with people other than my partner can reasonably be described as friendships, so to come out to my parents as poly/kinky/bi would mean, basically, discussing my sex life with them. I believe that revealing this information would hurt and confuse my parents and harm my relationship with them, which for the first time in years is pretty damn good, and I'd like it to stay that way. It still makes me uncomfortable to have his parents know things about us that my parents don't, but if he feels strongly about coming out to his parents, my preferred solution would be to let him do so and still not come out to mine. But it worries me because it risks the beans getting spilled at some point in the future. The other issue concerns what things to bring "out." I can understand most of all bringing polyamory out, because it affects many parts of our lives, and because it's a concept that's important to promote. I can sort of understand bringing out my bisexuality, although it makes me more uncomfortable because it's mine and not ours, so I don't know why he would particularly want to tell his parents about it. I pretty strongly dislike the idea of discussing BDSM with his parents or mine, because it is so easy to misunderstand as violence, and it could conceivably, in this political climate, lead to arrests for abuse or severe lack of trust and possible interference with children in the future (we don't have any but we plan to). But I think he wants to come out about all of it. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: living together, housekeeping, negotiation, understanding Have you ever thought about how much time you spend on housekeeping, and have you ever asked yourself whether that level of cleanliness is really important to your life? Our sink can hold at least three days' worth of dishes. We vacuum once every two or three months, dust less often, hire someone to clean the kitchen and bathroom floors once a month, and haven't cleaned the windows in two years (we can still see out of 'em). I fold and sort my laundry once every month or two when it begins taking over half of the bedroom. I have never in my life touched an iron, and don't intend to start now. I prefer a tidy place to an untidy one, but I often place a higher priority on other projects (maybe this is why I have more time to pursue relationships than some other people), so there is usually a degree of untidiness in my house. I think cleaning is primarily for the purpose of keeping things sanitary enough to prevent disease. When I am feeling good about myself, I don't care especially about the state of the house as long as it's sanitary and the public rooms are within an hour of being tidy. When I am feeling insecure, I need my environment to be "just so" and I beat myself up over dirt and clutter and feel resentful of others I live with for showing evidence of their existence. Many relationships break up because someone concludes that someone else's attitude is wrong. In a case of differing attitudes or standards, one solution is to do things as one's partner wants them, sometimes even if one doesn't understand why, but to consider them gifts. Doing the cleaning should be seen as a gift, not an expectation. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, feelings What is jealousy? For me, jealousy is based a bit on fear and a lot on righteous anger combined with pain. Some people say ÒWhat kind of love is it that asks a partner to cease doing something that is fun for zir?Ó My answer: it's one that considers what's best for the relationship, and it works pretty well for us. Some people claim that if you analyze jealousy and look at its components, it will go away. That is sometimes true and sometimes not. I think it's good to see the components of jealousy. But for me, seeing its components does not always make it go away. Actually, seeing its components combined with hearing a voice in my head telling me that I shouldn't be feeling it because it's irrational and selfish makes it a *lot* stronger. Deciding that my feelings are natural is my best first step toward dealing constructively with them. Therefore, I avoid thinking that feelings, even negative ones, are "failures." When I am feeling something, I refuse to consider whether it is "appropriate to the circumstances"; arguing with my negative feelings only makes them stronger. After the feelings have passed, I can consider their components and consider ways of changing things that will prevent excessive negative feelings. For me this always involves both working with my environment and working with myself. If I'm told that a feeling is "my problem" I will work with the environment by removing myself from it. Finding that my jealousy involves an irrational fear does not make it magically disappear. However, over time, one can work with some irrational fears to make them go away. Then again, sometimes jealousy is pointing out a real fear. (Quote from CARE OF THE SOUL.) Let's say I find the belief that my partner is treating me badly. I may examine this fear and discover that I do indeed think my partner is treating me badly. Then I have several choices: try to ignore it (wrong), try to change my belief (possible but takes a long time and involves a lot of effort), ask my partner to avoid some of the behavior that bothers me (depending on the partner and the behavior, may be easy or hard. May be combined with step 2.) --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: LDRs, net relationships OK. Let's get our terms straight. We are not talking about net.relationships by themselves, or RL.relationships by themselves, but relationships that *move* from one to the other. They don't work very well because they are entirely different beasts, and loving someone on the net is very different from being with them in RL. There are certain things you cannot know about someone you're meeting only via the net. If you fall in love, you tend to fill in those things via imagination. The imagination is often wrong. The reality is often something you really don't like and can't overcome. On the net, there are certain traits that you simply *cannot* see. It's not a matter of refusing to see them. Transferring the relationship to RL means it's the luck of the draw whether there are any of those traits you can't live with. Now--it has worked well for me to use the net as a medium for meeting people I *might* be interested in, and setting up an in-person meeting to see what's there in RL. I met my partner that way. But for me anyway, falling in love via the net before meeting someone in RL, while it has provided many pleasant hours of fantasies and fodder for a book I'll write someday :-), never has worked out into a good RL romantic relationship. it can be a great shock to meet someone in person whom you've already fallen in love with over the net. Some relationships don't withstand the shock. Here's what usually happened to me Scenario 1. We met and we just really didn't like each other's chemistry in person. It was like meeting my lover in the body of a friend of my parents. Scenario 2. We met and jumped into bed because all the fantasizing we'd done for weeks had made us wildly horny. It was good. It was great. We parted in tears. We vowed to keep things going. Gradually they began to fizzle because once we'd been together in reality, ASCII was not a high enough bandwidth. Fantasizing made us frustrated instead of more connected. We began to look around locally. We found someone locally and got more involved with them. The relationship faded, or exploded, or turned into a friendship. Scenario 3. Begins like Scenario 2. But we spend some more time together and gradually begin to feel uncomfortable. The intensity isn't there the way it was on the net and we feel oddly cheated and disappointed. There are things we didn't anticipate about the other person, and they bug us more than we expected them to.... --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: changing feelings/beliefs, giving feelings room, sharing feelings In my experience, making the cognitive shift from mono to poly takes a year or two (and some parts of it take more -- there are some parts I don't 'get' yet and don't know if I ever will). And it can't be made in the abstract -- it has to be experiential. So give yourself a break. It's OK to be confused and scared at first. And for many months to come, actually. The important thing is to keep talking about it with your partner (and ideally with others who understand that you're trying to accept polyamory). The fear of being replaced: Why is it juvenile? Are adults supposed to be big and strong -- and so emotionally numb that they don't care whether they have a primary partner or not? I hadn't reached a comfort level when we began implementing our poly agreement. But we were both willing to go with my being somewhat uncomfortable in the hopes that it would change. I was willing to go with it because I believed that polyamory was right for me in the long run, not just because I wnted to make my partner happy. The key was this: separating actions from feelings. I could not change my feelings. But I could say: "I will allow you to go ahead and do X, if you allow me to be uncomfortable about it." And my partner was willing, if he could do X, to let me rant about X a bit. It wasn't easy for him, but he hung in there. And slowly that helped my feelings of discomfort to shrink. What did *not* work was when we believed that if I showed uncomfortable feelings that meant I was manipulating my partner into not doing X. And it did not work to believe that, not only did I have to put up with my partner's doing X, but I had to smile and cheer about it. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, etiquette (Being ignored in favor of another lover) This particular issue has to do with etiquette for me. I think an effort should be made to include people who are together. If I'm with other people and can't get away and do my own thing, and they exclude me for a long time in action or conversation, I feel angry -- it doesn't matter whether they're making out or talking about weather patterns in Antarctica, and it doesn't matter whether they're lovers or friends. The standard idea seems to be that when this happens, one can only act like a big old dog and lie in the corner until summoned again. (Sometime I am going to actually go lie in the corner when this happens. :-) Consider another idea: what if being excluded meant you were an entirely free agent, the party was over, you were in the house with no one else around. What would you do? Read a book? Get on the net using your lap top? Put on some sex videos and masturbate in the living room? --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: wants and needs You're very good at accommodating other people's wants. But what do *you* want? Not what can you tolerate, not what do you think you can get, but what do you really want? Be extravagant. And if you can't get it from Ginger and Fred, can you consider getting it in some other way? --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: polarizing, healing, fairness, understanding, negotiation OK. Things went wrong. Things went wrong because some people were not comfortable with the way things went and because some people tried to exercise inappropriate control over the way things went and because some people were deceptive and because some people decided that the rules didn't apply to them. Now you are left with a mess, and you get to decide what to do with what you have. You can continue to blame each other and put words in each other's mouths and try to force your points of view on each other and be polarized and defensive. You can continue to each act out of your own view of what's right with little consideration of the other person's preferences and views. These will probably result in your partnership's breaking up or dissolving into bitterness. OR You can stop all this right now and take a break from arguments about polyamory to rebuild your relationship and focus on each other and on healing the wounds. Read a book on healing a marriage after infidelity. It can take a long time, so be patient. If you work at it you have a good chance of bringing your partnership back together again. THEN, when things are better, You can begin to talk about whether you ever want to do polyamory again and what would be a good way to do it that does not cause discomfort to anyone and that everyone thinks is fair. If you do this right, you have a good chance of developing a better model of poly, one that is OK for both of you (because you both like being with others, so you both get something out of being poly). When you do that, keep in mind the following: It helps very much to deeply understand the *other* person's position before you negotiate or argue with them. If you merely push your position on them over and over again, the negotiations will get nowhere. Put your energy into seeing their position, not plugging yours. (Read GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT by Harville Hendrix.) A poly arrangement must be based on mutual comfort or at least agreement. Basing it on guilt and principles does not work well. That means the person who wants to go the slowest and be the most conservative should get to set the pace. If that makes you think "But she'll control everything then," you don't trust each other enough to be poly. Go back to step one. Fairness should be based on whether both people are getting what they want, and avoiding what they hate. Not necessarily on whether each person gets to do exactly what zie wants, or whether each person gets to do exactly what the other person gets to do. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: wants and needs, scheduling For the two years we've lived together, I've secretly felt like a wimp for needing my partner's dates with others to coincide with mine (or at least to coincide with a period of time when I am very busy and won't get a chance to brood). I believed in what I was doing, but I also felt out of step with the poly folks I know (most of 'em) who don't seem to care about this or even think it would be an unreasonable imposition. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, connection Jealousy vs. envy example: my partner and I are at a con, both of us in a puppy pile, and then my partner goes and cuddles with someone in a corner. I am cuddling with someone on the bed. Zie is having some fun and I am having the same kind of fun, so it's not envy. But I can't seem to enjoy myself because I want to feel connected to my partner and zie is not available. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: negotiation, wants and needs Negotiation style: My partner has repeatedly told me "I'm really glad you like my family; that's very important to me." I'm sure that if I didn't like his family or acted nasty to them, I wouldn't do as his partner. However, he has never told me in so many words, "I absolutely need you to act friendly toward my family." If he did, I'd feel he was making a demand that I feel a certain way or that I hide my feelings if I didn't feel a certain way, and I'd resent it. I'd feel self conscious about how I was acting around his family and it might actually cause me to like his family less. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, etiquette Jealousy arises when someone perceives another's behaviors as inappropriate. But the other may have no clue that those behaviors are perceived as inappropriate. For example, I found it inappropriate when my partner cuddled with someone else for an extended period of time at a public gathering where I was present. But he came from a social milieu where that happened all the time and had no idea I considered it inappropriate. The problem arises when there are pre-judgements either of the jealousy itself ("how dare you try to control my behavior; that behavior is perfectly acceptable and if it bothers you, there is something wrong with you") or of the behavior ("how could you do such a thing to me? Everyone knows that behavior is unacceptable."). --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: models vs. people You can integrate people by concentrating on meeting people and developing real relationships with them, and then figuring out how to integrate those relationships into your lives. Or you can advertise your model of family and look for others who want to do a family along that model, and then hope you're compatible with them. I prefer the former method, since to me, people are somewhat more important than models. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: envy, jealousy, negotiation To me, envy is "I want what you have." Jealousy is "Get away from that." Envy has overtones of longing. Envy is not self-righteous. Jealousy is. For me, it was pretty simple to come up with the avoidance model of dealing with jealousy; what was tricky was learning when to apply it and when to try something else. I still use it, but I use it in specific negotiated instances, not across the board. If I hadn't learned that such negotiation was possible, the jealousy would have turned much of my relationship into an uncomfortable, not particularly intimate standoff. In one case where we couldn't find a negotiated solution, this did happen. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, feelings, negotiation I consider jealousy harmful -- if not to me directly, at least to my relationship with the person whose behavior is causing the jealousy. If my jealousy causes me to withdraw for several days in private hurt, that tends to negatively affect my relationships. This has nothing to do with whether the partner meant to cause the harm -- just as if my partner accidentally drops a knife on my foot. To deal with the jealousy I need either to withdraw from that person ("they can't understand that I get cut when a knife is dropped on my foot, so I'd better stay out of the kitchen when they make dinner") or tell them what the behavior is that causes my feelings ("I get cut when a knife is dropped on my foot"). It's a given that considering where the jealousy comes from is important; no one is suggesting that we "just" deal with the jealousy. OTOH, if I try to analyze myself when I am upset, I get nowhere, so I must first try to deal with the jealousy as a feeling, just as I need to punch pillows when I'm angry. Once I begin my analysis, I find that the jealousy always comes from an interaction between internal and external, not simply one or the other. Then I (and my partner if zie's available) need to decide how to juggle things. Maybe my partner doesn't care a lot about the behavior that causes my jealousy and is willing to forgo it. Maybe I choose to stay away from situations where that behavior occurs. Maybe we talk a lot about it and over time that calms the jealousy. We've done all those things. I've traced my jealousy back to some root causes that I can't eliminate. In some situations, I feel left out, and that causes jealousy. I haven't figured out a way to prevent this or talk myself out of it, so I think of it as a feature of who I am. I can deal with it by removing myself from the situation, but I prefer to use that only as a last resort, because I don't like to feel that I'm running away from things. I have a filter that stops jealous behavior too -- one of the problems early on in my partnership was that my partner had no idea I was feeling jealous. But the filter affects my intimacy with my partner. I wouldn't *expect* it either, and I was ready to leave my partnership rather than expect any changes (because it came down to that choice). But my partner let me know that zie'd rather change some of zir actions than lose or compromise our partnership. If I had not let zir see any of the jealousy or if I had not let zir in on any of my process of dealing with and thinking about the jealousy, I might never have known that zie was willing to change some of zir actions. What turns me off most about jealousy assumptions is the "either/or" mentality. People seem to think that either one person has to change zir behavior or the other person has to change zir feelings, never anything in between. It seems very rare that people are willing to address jealousy in the spirit of negotiation. I think if they did, it would not be so scary and threatening. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: negotiation, wants and needs, communication, gift giving I would react to the tone of an ultimatum and its lack of specific content. If I'm given an ultimatum when I'm already behaving reasonably by my lights, I would feel that I'd done something wrong and I'd be confused as to what. Also, if I'm given an ultimatum, I'm going to worry more about fucking up, so then I really need to know *exactly* what the ultimatum applies to. What does "absolute need to be friendly toward kids" mean? If I snap at them once will I be thrown out? Does it mean smiling at them? engaging them in conversation? taking them to the park once a week? always interacting with them when they're present, even if I'd rather read the paper? --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: handling problems, jealousy, feelings, etiquette All relationships have glitches. It's how you handle them that's important. It's not "natural" to feel jealousy when one is excluded -- that is, not "everybody feels that way." But it's natural for *some* people (as in, even if they are self-aware and demonstrate reasonable level of competence in all areas of their lives, they still feel this). I don't expect my partner and I to share all our partners exactly equally. However, if I am physically present, I expect to be included in whatever goes on. If my partner goes to bed with someone who doesn't want me to participate, and I am expected to stay in the bedroom during the proceedings, I would feel excluded. If zie goes to bed with someone elsewhere, and I am not included, that's acceptable, although I expect zir lovers to acknowledge me (as you mentioned). We don't consider these preferences to represent unreasonable levels of insecurity. We consider it a matter of etiquette that if a small number of people are together in one place, everyone should be included in the activities unless it's specifically agreed otherwise. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, negotiation, understanding Negotiation -- within the framework of trying to understand why partner does X and partner showing understanding, respect, and empathy -- works really well for us. We like negotiation. Actually, part of what we call negotiation one might call "knowing why partner does X." Often if we know why partner does X, we find it easy and natural to do some combination of behavior modification and not minding so much. For the first nine months I didn't discuss my feelings of jealousy with my partner. Unfortunately, my partner took that to mean that I had no problems with what was going on, and it escalated to the point where I had big problems with what was going on, and I had to tell my partner, and my partner felt that I was suddenly dropping a bomb on him. So now we go perhaps overboard in the other direction and signal each other whenever feelings of jealousy start. Slowly the feelings occur less often, less intensely, and in fewer situations, although there are still some that set off alarm bells. I also expect not to be subjected to situations that cause me major anxiety, if it is humanly possible to avoid them. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: wants and needs, partnership as entity there is a time and place for focusing on what I need and contrasting it with my partner's needs. But once I have made a commitment to a relationship, the needs of the partnership become very important, and one of the needs of a partnership (for me) is for all people involved to feel they're building something together. I don't think focusing a lot on personal ultimata is a good way to do that -- IME, it tends to polarize the partners. This obviously assumes that the partnership is a good one and both parties are committed to a similar vision. For me it is an important need to feel that a partnership involves shared creative problem solving. I don't know if it is an "ultimatum" in that I could never be in a partnership without that. I tend to focus less on ultimata and more on preferences, because pretty much every time I've had an "ultimatum" about what kind of relationship I want, the goddess has seen fit to challenge it. :-) I can see how someone in different circumstances would be different, of course. I think some people are wired to be stubborn and some people are wired to be malleable. Someone who has gone way too far in the malleable direction to the point of being harmed by people taking advantage of zir needs to focus more on ultimata. I'm always over to the stubborn side and so I try to focus less on ultimata. :-) --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, understanding I think that it's very important for me to act on my jealousy under certain controlled circumstances, because it helps my partner to understand the strength of what I feel, which helps zir to more easily internalize the new patterns of behavior we've agreed upon. The best way we've come up with for doing this is that I say I want to express some feelings and ask my partner to act as a "container" for those feelings (the terminology comes from GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT by Harville Hendrix). That tells zir that I am not asking zir to fix my feelings but just hear them and honor them. We find that a combination of sharing feelings and negotiating behavioral solutions to the jealousy-making phenomena works best -- better than one or the other by itself. And this also avoids the problem of jealous fits in public or out of the blue. We don't always succeed but we come close. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: contracts Index: wants and needs, polarizing, handling problems From: stef@netcom.com (Stef Maruch) Subject: Re: More ultimata (was Re: PDA) Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 16:36:59 GMT I think usually someone who issues an ultimatum perceives zirself in one of two positions: 1. Having tried other avenues unsuccessfully and feeling unable to affect the situation any other way. 2. Needing to take a stand now lest zie slide into a situation that requires zir to give up things that are important to zir. I don't particularly see ultimata as good negotiation tools. a lot of people reach the ultimatum point too quickly. It is easy in an argument to get polarized and that can lead to ultimata where they don't need to exist. If the parties see the issue as a joint problem to be solved rather than a situation in which they have to force the other person to do what they want, it is more possible to avoid ultimata. But I think ultimata must still be reserved in case joint problem solving doesn't take. if I care a lot about a relationship, I usually try multiple ways of getting to agreement before resorting to an ultimatum. Both "fair" and "need" are rhetorical positions. Discard all rhetorical positions and discuss what each partner wants and how each partner feels. I think it's possible to describe the seriousness of an issue without threatening to end the relationship. And I do think that many people see any discussion of ending the relationship, especially in an argument, as primarily a threat rather than a description. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: healing, communication, negotiation Betrayals take some people a very long time to get over-- as long as a couple of years -- especially if they are trying to maintain the relationship in which the perceived betrayal occurred. have a talk and agree that J gets to set the pace -- she gets to decide when and how much you and B can spend time together, and/or she gets to decide what it's OK for you and B to do together when you're alone. I.e., perhaps she wouldn't mind your talking or doing some project together without any physical contact. Security takes time to grow. You have a right to feel jealous, of course, because you have a right to your feelings. And you have a right to seek a triad relationship rather than a primary/secondary relationship -- but you may not be able to get that with them. Patience may help, or it may not. I guess you need to ask yourself whether you're contented enough with the situation now that you're willing to go with it for a while, or if you're truly uncomfortable with it. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, changing feelings/beliefs, negotiation part of handling jealousy often involves examining the situations in which it is invoked and the various beliefs that accompany it. If you call it jealousy and *stop* there, then it doesn't work very well. If you say "This is jealousy, therefore it must be obeyed," it doesn't work very well. It also doesn't work well if you expect to be obeyed because you say "I'm angry" and pound your fist on the table and yell. But if as *part* of your working with the jealousy, you acknowledge that it is "jealousy" -- there is nothing in that that's a recipe for disaster. Some of us do not use the word jealousy to avoid examining our feelings. We use the word as part of a way of *more fully addressing* the feelings, beliefs, and situations that surround the jealousy. Here's an example taken more or less from experience (months of experience condensed into 12 lines, but the basic gist is there): P1 "I feel jealous." P2 "I'm sorry that you feel jealous. I didn't mean to do something that caused you jealousy." P1 "Thanks. I hate feeling jealous. I feel evil." P2 "It's not evil to feel jealous. It's OK. Is there anything I could do to help you?" P1 "I seemed to feel the most jealous when you spent most of your time at the party cuddling with another person." P2 "I want to be able to do that sometimes, but would it help if I spent more time with you during parties?" P1 "Maybe, but I think I'd still feel jealous if I saw you with someone else. I think what would work better is for you to go to the party by yourself if you want to cuddle with other people." P2 "That wouldn't bother you?" P1 "Not on an occasional basis -- I'm not that big of a party goer anyway." "Jealousy" can be a loaded word. But it doesn't have to be. And I think that denying it as a feeling also has the potential to seem loaded and manipulative. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: ending a relationship If the relationship really isn't what you want, and if you have put some energy into trying to explain what you want, and you haven't made enough progress, then I think you need to consider ending the relationship. If you think more effort on your part might bring the relationship closer to what you want, and you're willing to put in that effort, and you want to keep the relationship, then I think you should put in the effort. One pretty much always feels like a bad guy when one ends a relationship, at least for a while. But sometimes it's necessary. The relationship, over the long run, must offer the possibility of giving you what you really want and need, or else you are better off without it. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: commitment, models In the form of poly I practice, I am committed to my primary partner very deeply, in that I put a lot of energy into making sure this relationship is working for us, and making sure it will last. We are committed to planning a future together. I am committed to my other partners in ways similar to my commitments to close friends -- I make time to see them on a regular or semi-regular basis when we are living in reasonable proximity; when we are not, I try to stay in contact via email or phone. All my secondary partnerships and friendships flow easily. I'm not willing to put a lot of energy into maintaining the flow of those friendships; if they become persistently rocky and uncomfortable, I tend to withdraw. Sometimes there is schedule juggling, to be sure, but even that I try to keep to a minimum by setting up regular dates with people I want to see regularly (once every two weeks, once a month). --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: wants and needs, ending a relationship theory: Your partner says "If this doesn't improve, I'm going to leave," and hopefully you hear that as the important statement it is, sit up and pay attention. But in my experience, the practice sometimes doesn't look like the theory. Sometimes when I've left someone, zie's been very surprised, as if I hadn't mentioned there was a problem. But I do usually give an ultimatum before leaving. I think some people either don't hear ultimatums because it doesn't fit in with their understanding of what's going on, or because they think an ultimatum is merely an angry threat. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: kids I shudder at the idea of staying with someone solely for the sake of the kids. I think kids know what's going on in a family. I think kids need as role models adults who make choices that are good for themselves and don't sacrifice themselves. If you really are deeply unhappy with the situation, and are determined to stay because of the kids, then I still think you should persist in trying to communicate your complaints to your wife. You say that you work well together -- that must mean you have good communication about some things. I know how scary it is to open a dialog about something unpleasant, and I know that it's doubly difficult when one's attempts to open such a dialog have been brushed off. But in the long run, no matter how scary, it is a lot better to be communicating than not. And I think this is also true for the kids. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, understanding Why I choose to call my feelings jealousy: because based on my definition of the word jealousy, that is the word that best fits how the feelings feel to me. What I gain: knowledge about myself -- that I feel jealousy in certain situations. This knowledge can be given to my partners. I believe that intimacy between partners is served by knowing each other as well and as completely as possible. Therefore, by using a word that accurately describes my feelings, I gain intimacy with my partners. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: negotiation, wants and needs At one point in time, my partner and I had strongly different needs and beliefs around polyamory/monogamy. I wanted us to be monogamous because I was experiencing a very uncomfortable level of emotional distress around polyamory. He wanted us to be polyamorous because he had a strong desire to be able to touch and cuddle with other people, and my definition of monogamy did not include that. We agreed to be monogamous temporarily. My partner said to me "It's up to you whether we return to polyamory. But I should tell you that I am not sure I can tolerate a strict monogamous relationship forever." I said, "I know I cannot tolerate a polyamorous relationship that was causing me the level of distress I was experiencing. If we re-open the relationship it will have to be using some formula that causes me less distress." To my mind, in this discussion both I and my partner issued sort of ultimatums -- we admitted that this was a serious problem that could lead to a break-up, but in a way they weren't strict ultimatums, because both of us held open the possibility that our needs might change or that the situation might be negotiated to our satisfaction. As it turned out, we did develop a formula that I decided might cause me less distress. So we re-opened the relationship with the agreement that we could negotiate a return to monogamy if it were needed. It has turned out so far not to be needed. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: commitment, connection, models I have a definition of commitment I use for friendships -- the willingness to be in regular contact with a person. That might not take "substantial energy" but it takes a regular infusion of energy. My definition of a primary partnership is a relationship in which I consider another's needs alongside my own. Some people are capable of having only one such commitment (or none), but they are still poly. They may for example have a primary partner and treat their other lovers as friends with whom they have the friendship-version of commitment -- seeing each other regularly. Or they may treat all their lovers as friends. I seem to be wired for partnership, which is to say that I put a lot of energy into one relationship at a time, while maintaining other relationships at a lower level. So I have one primary partnership (see above definitions) and my other relationships I consider friendships that include sex and romance. This also means that I want the person I am partnering with to put a lot of energy into zir relationship with me, and maintain other relationships at a lower level. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: wants and needs, gifts I am uncomfortable with a need under these conditions: --if I don't know what it entails; --if I think I might not be able to fulfill it; --if I don't understand it; --if I disapprove of it. Most of these can usually be resolved by discussion and negotiation. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: envy, jealousy Here are my definitions: Envy is desire to have the equivalent of something that someone else has. If my neighbor has a Jaguar, I may be envious, but not if I get a Jaguar too. Jealousy is realizing that you don't have something you thought you had, and wanting to exterminate that thing as a result. If I feel jealousy over my partner's behavior with someone else, I want to scream NO and fling them to opposite sides of the room. (In this case, the "thing" is "romantic behavior.") --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: control, jealousy, negotiation I think it is very important for many people to establish a *degree* of control in their relationships with others. Insofar as a partner can affects a lot of your life, I think establishing some kind of understanding about how that person will behave is important to feeling that you have some control over your own life. For example, my partner and I have a written agreement that specifies how we can and can't pursue other relationships. This was done specifically because we needed some form of control over our situation so that we didn't keep surprising each other with unpredictable behavior. In my case, jealousy is a feeling that I get when I have already lost something that is important to me, or I realize that I never had it to begin with. It's not fear, it's reality. However, the "something" is not a person but a particular kind of relationship with a person. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: other partners, negotiation, wants and needs the other man is not particularly comfortable with polyamory, especially the "open" part; and that she can be swayed by his demands into spending more time with him than she might otherwise (I call this "squeaky wheel poly"). You might begin by pointing out that she spends more energy on him than on you and ask her to answer honestly whether it is because he is more important to her (not necessarily "primary"), or whether it is because he simply makes more demands. After that, it would seems that the only recourse you have is to negotiate with her by describing your basic needs in the relationship -- i.e., that when she plans time with you, she follows through unless it's an emergency; that she not spend all her time with you discussing problems with him -- making it clear that you'll enforce them (by withdrawing from the relationship if necessary), and asking what she needs to give you what you need. If she really wants a relationship with *you* and is not just using you as a haven from the other man, she will probably come through. If she is with you primarily because you don't make demands on her, then you're probably better off without her unless you don't mind the way things are. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: changing beliefs/feelings, healing Many relationships take months and years to develop into what they are. If one tries to rush them, one runs the risk of losing the whole thing. Granted, if the situation as it stands is definitely something that one does not want, one should discuss it and be prepared to leave if it doesn't change. But if one can muster some patience, it might be rewarded. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: feelings, healing it's a bad idea to justify harmful actions on the basis of the feeling underlying them. I think that whatever one is feeling, one has an obligation to express those feelings in ways that are not abusive or harmful. one can choose not to act on a weak feeling, or one can choose to magnify it. one should be very careful about suppressing feelings, because if one gets into the habit of doing this, they tend to magnify *themselves* and become very strong feelings that one must act on in one way or another. And if one's primary way of dealing with feelings is to suppress them, then one does not usually have tools for dealing with feelings that one must act on; in that case, one is more likely to act them out in harmful or abusive ways. Case in point: For the first few months I was with my partner, I experienced relatively mild feelings of jealousy whenever we were at parties and he spent time cuddling with other women. I suppressed those feelings. He had no idea I felt them. But I began to get obsessed with them and began to act anxious. I was not magnifying the feelings purposely, since I thought jealousy was bad and pointless. They were magnifying themselves, because I had been ignoring them for too long. Then I hit a breaking point and no longer could contain my feelings. I tentatively expressed them. But since I'd never expressed them before, they caught him by surprise and he reacted defensively. Then they began flooding out full force, and the resulting tangle caused a lot of damage to our relationship. I wound up feeling ultra-sensitive to certain behavior and I had to ask him not to do those things in my presence, even though they are things that most people would consider harmless. And if I had brought up my feelings at the beginning, maybe it would have been more easily resolved. Now that most of the damage done by suppressing and erupting jealousy is resolved in our relationship, dealing with blips as they appear is working well for us. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: negotiation, wants and needs Avoid becoming a squeaky wheel if "squeaky wheel" means whining a lot and making unreasonable demands. OTOH, I think it is very important to communicate your *needs*. If you are always making room for your partner to run off to someone else who is squeaking loudly, your needs may not get met, and that may destroy the relationship -- your partner has a right to know that, and may not be aware of your needs. If another relationship isnÕt going right, the goal is not to communicate a *concern* ("is this guy good for you?") -- that's her business -- but to communicate a *need* ("I need to know where I stand, so I can make my own decisions about this relationship, and I need you not to flake out of our plans, so I can make my own decisions about my social life."). --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: models, commitment I prefer a moderate level of commitment or a definite end-point to the relationship. I don't like not knowing where I stand. I am committed at *some* level to my friends, but it's not the same level of commitment that I give to my partner (of which I tend to have only one at a time). --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: commitment, promises, etiquette I don't "know" anything about anyone's future capabilities (I can only make educated guesses based on the past) so if I follow your commandment, that means I must refuse anyone's promises. I don't work that way. I used to, and it was very lonely for me. I accept promises that someone will do their best, and I trust based on how the person has behaved in the past, and my educated guess about how they'll behave in the future. Planning for disappointment, for me, does not mean denying myself the right to be disappointed and upset if someone turns out not to be reliable in a way that I want; nor does it mean denying myself an opportunity to fix the situation. I think the world would be a better place and would run more smoothly if people were more personally content and didn't feel that they needed to sacrifice their happiness in order to squeeze into a lifestyle that's not right for them. I agree that feelings *in the moment* are not all that important -- they come and go. But the ones that persist need to be dealt with through some kind of lifestyle change, not suppressed or ignored. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: other partners, changing feelings/beliefs, negotiation You seem to be making a number of assumptions that are causing you angst. Assumption 1. Other people's feelings and self-development are your business. Your partners' feelings are your business, if they affect you. However, in general it's best if you primarily listen to those feelings, rather than trying to fix them yourself -- unless you can fix them by changing your behavior. It's almost impossible to fix someone's feelings by trying to change *other* people's behavior. Assumption 2. You're the innocent victim. There were several reiterations in your post of "So and so is causing difficulties because of something that's wrong with them." I didn't see any similar self-analysis of how your behavior might be, in part, causing some of these difficulties. But most relationship problems are not generated in a vacuum. When you say "they were not making any effort to grow, and we were," it seems to me a rhetorical way of saying "They aren't doing what we want." If you can't work with your partners to come up with a situation that everyone accepts, then you might be forced to end relationships. But that work involves seeing and making room for all sides of the situation, not trying to force your idea of growth onto others. I don't think trying to control D through M will work to gain you D's friendship, because most people can't be pressured into friendship. And I don't see any way to present the above ultimatum without D's and M's feeling very pressured by it and feeling that you're getting in the middle between them. --------------------------------------------------------------- Index kids, gender I think children do question a lot of things that they see on television and elsewhere. But they may not question the things that their parents want them to question, without prodding. I am not so sure that it's all that necessary to protect children from gender roles, at least in the realm of which toys and clothes to prefer. I think it's important to correct misassumptions such as "boys/girls can't do X career" but that's relatively easy. I think it's kind of pointless to try to protect from the other stuff -- it's absolutely ubiquitous, and by the time the kids grow up, the roles will be different from the way they were when the parents were that age, so they can't help anyway. (My mother told me not to call boys *chuckle* fortunately she didn't say anything about sending them email :) Kids pick up their own ideas about gender very early. I was always kind of cross-gender -- ever since I can remember, I would cry if my mother made me wear a dress. And I played mostly with boys' toys. I think parents have a lot of stuff to deal with other than gender roles, and mostly they reinforce gender roles without thinking about it, not because of homophobia. I also think that kids have some gender characteristics built in. --------------------------------------------------------- Index: coming out, parents, weddings My take: If you are bound and determined to have ONE ceremony that's pagan and poly and invite EVERYONE, then this is probably the best way to go about it. If I were in this position, however, I would follow your original plan of having a "secular" ceremony for the family and a private pagan ceremony for those who would truly appreciate and support it. I would not want to have a pagan ceremony and have people there who hated it -- that would spoil the energy for me. --------------------------------------------------------- Index: trust, control, handling problems when I see that rule (ÒdonÕt take problems outside the partnershipÓ), I translate it to either "I must physically remain with this person until the problem is solved or at least must spend all my free time with them" or "I cannot talk to others about this problem until it is solved." I don't feel comfortable giving people other than my partner that much control over my behavior. I think I'd have trouble being beholden to more than one master, so to speak. And I would only give that promise to someone I trusted very deeply, and it takes me a lot of time and energy to build that level of trust, so I don't tend to have it in many of my relationships. (Having it even in one is a relatively new thing for me.) It's also really important to me, when I am having difficulty with someone, to be able to talk about it with my other friends. Insofar as "going outside" includes talking with others about the problem, I would really chafe with such a restriction. If a problem persists, I need others' perspectives to help me solve it; staying within the problem-laden environment tends to make the problem worse or at least doesn't tend to solve it. There were also times in the past, when I was very anxious over some problems with my partner, when I really needed to spend time with another lover whose presence palpably relaxed me. And my partner needed the same kind of relaxing contact with others. I would most definitely agree that when there is serious trouble in a serious relationship, that's not the time to go starting new loves. When there is trouble in a not-primary relationship, however, I personally am more inclined to view it as a sign the relationship can't sustain itself and to begin to look around for other options. ------------------------------------------------------------ Index: communication [cheating] I personally don't like the idea, because I've been there -- I was dissatisfied in a relationship and unable/unwilling to communicate my dissatisfaction, so living a double life in a sense -- not having an affair exactly, but not sharing myself. I found it extremely uncomfortable, cramped, and stuffy. And when I am around people who are choosing this option, I find it difficult to avoid jumping up and down and yelling "Don't! There are better ways!" But it doesn't mean that I think they are perverted outcasts. I just think they're making a mistake. :-) -------------------------------------------------------- Index: kids it would seem to me impossible to develop accurate studies to examine the effects of emotional abuse, or even parental unhappiness, on children. But not being able to do a study of something does not mean that thing doesn't exist, or that it's less important than things we can study. Studies show that marriages end more often than they don't. They would probably show that polyamory is damaging to relationships and children. They would probably show that children who are forced to follow appropriate gender roles do better than those who aren't. I don't believe in better living through statistics. It is a good thing when possible for children to be around a lot of people and to have many caretakers, but I don't believe having exactly two biological parents around all the time is a right. If we followed through as if this were a right, we would be preventing adoption, divorce, single parenting, and business travel by parents (or outside work by parents). --------------------------------------------------------------- Index: intuition If you have a mind that works mostly on a level below conscious awareness, it can still be uncomfortable trying to solve problems. As a recovering obsessive analyzer, I can recommend two approaches: 1. Use a form of meditation or hypnosis (or coin tossing, as others have suggested) to help your conscious mind connect with your subconscious intuitive mind (which tends to have more direct access to the right answers for you). 2. SSRI's (i.e., Prozac) ---------------------------------------------------------- Index: success what's marital success? And why would that be used as a measure of success? If it were, both of us would be marked as failures. I'm 33 and have never been married. Obviously that means I am not in any marital success category. Even if I were married, a researcher would discover that my marriage has failed to be properly monogamous. So they would probably conclude a sense of commitment is lacking; that would put me into the marital failure category. I have the same problem with the "psychological problems" measure of success. How do I know that a researcher wouldn't conclude I have psychological problems because I am unmarried, bisexual, and/or polyamorous? I don't think there is any way at all to look at someone *else's* life and judge whether they are a success or failure. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: changing behavior/feelings, other partners I find that saying it in the following way makes me feel that I have more influence in the situation: My reaction and M's reaction to D's feelings are making it hard for me and M to have a relationship. If you look at it that way, there may be more hope, because your reaction (and to a lesser extent M's) are things you can actually work on directly. D's decidedly aren't. it might be worthwhile considering more carefully what the options are for change before resulting to ultimatums. 1. D can change. Not very likely -- he has little to gain and you have no direct control over him and very little positive influence (and negative influence probably won't work well). 2. M can change -- maybe, if she feels like doing the work. But you don't have a whole lot of direct control over that either, although you have positive influence. 3. You can change -- you have the most control over this aspect of the situation. You can't change your feelings, but you can change how you think of those feelings and how you behave in response to those feelings. You have two options for changing yourself: (a) you can change internally, by working differently with your feelings about the situation, and/or (b) you can change externally, by changing your behavior. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: traits for successful poly Rather than trying to identify personality traits (that help with poly), I think it's better to try to identify strategies that have worked and not worked. (Elise's FAQ "How to Fuck Up" does this VERY well.) my partner is an impatient person, and I'm a high-maintenance person, and we get along just fine. I'm a jealous person, and my partner is a poly person, and we do just fine. People are not simply collections of characteristics such as "jealous." People can affect their circumstances, can figure out and solve problems. I think it's important to have some way of identifying good and bad poly strategies, but I'm not thrilled about the idea of stamping "Poly Seal of Approval" on certain people based on their MMPI scores and withholding it from others. I'm territorial. I asked my partner not to have sex with other people in our bed. Neither of us has a problem with that request. And we're still poly. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: cultural pressure James Richard Gourlay wrote: >There is nothing stopping a boy going into parenting, or ballet dancing. Erm. No laws *stopping* him perhaps, but there are a lot of subtle and not so subtle discouragements -- parents' disapproval, peers' lack of understanding, and those make it harder for some people. This is one of the points of feminism that I have always thought was poorly understood: that improving equality of the sexes meant not only making laws to prevent discrimination but also attacking discrimination at a psychological level -- the internal beliefs that hold people back from what they want to do because they think "only can do that." If someone strongly wants to do something that's against the unwritten rules, they can. But the more subtle pressure there is not to do it, the harder it is for some people to break through. this applies to polyamory: lots of people dream about it but never get there because they think their circumstances won't allow it. There are few enforceable laws against it, but there is a mass of public opinion and public ignorance. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: studies I find much sociological and psychological research that purports to study whole populations flawed and/or inconclusive. I think people want the apparent certainty of science and so they tend to apply science where it doesn't quite belong and put more faith in the results of questionable studies than they should. So I don't completely throw out all research into the human condition, but I do tend to distrust it if it disagrees with my experience, and I do tend to live more on anecdote and personal experience than on large scale studies. The results of such studies are counter to my experience more often than not; if I pay them too much heed, I feel like I don't even exist. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: success, studies Many people will self-report what they think the experimenter wants to hear. Many people will self-report as happy and successful because they want to think well of themselves. Some people will self-report as not happy or not successful simply because they don't want to be seen to brag or they have a habit of seeing the negative and not the positive. Any test where the experimenter decides which statements indicate real happiness and success and which are something else is subject to experimenter bias. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: communication, connection, promises, cheating You have a right to expect a reasonable degree of communication in your marriage. I would consider someone who's extremely resistent to working with me on what I need very close to being abusive. cheating will force things in the end. Are you considering it as a last ditch effort to make your wife open up? I do know situations where that worked, but it's very risky, kind of like trying to perform surgery with dynamite. You would like to find a way that doesn't involve your confronting your wife. You want to avoid creating a stressful situation. However, you can't do that, because the stress is already there -- you can only put off confronting the stress until later, or do it now. If you cheat, you put it off, but it will appear at some time you can't predict, possibly a very inconvenient time for you and your kids. Hendrix later goes on to say that the best way to help someone feel loved is to show them that you love them in the ways *they* want to be loved -- then they might be willing to do the same for you. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: studies, success to me, happiness is a transitory state. There have been times in my life (such as yesterday) when I felt very unhappy, but I also felt I was making the right decisions and moving toward things that I wanted in the long run, so I considered my life and choices successful. I also think it's not possible to run a study based on self reports of happiness or success. (See my post on the subject.) I went through a year of misery before we began to make poly work well for us. If you'd come on me within that year I guess you'd have stamped me "unhappy: not right for poly" and tossed me on the ash heap. I don't approve. I'm damn glad my therapist didn't give me some battery of personality tests and then tell me I should give up the idea because I was clearly too jealous and territorial to make poly work. "personality traits" have nothing to do with success at polyamory -- polyamory (which comprises a great many different relationship styles in itself) is for as many different kinds of people as monogamy or any other relationship style is. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: counseling my partner and I knew that we had a good couples counselor when, after the session, I said: "I like him, but I'm afraid that he might have sided with me more than with you," and he said: "I thought he sided more with me." ---------------------------------------------------- Index: sharing feelings One of the things I like best about my current relationship is that I can cry freely and I don't have to worry about upsetting my partner by doing it. If I knew my partner was upset by my crying and didn't want me to do it, I would have to shut down a whole lot, or keep away from him at times when I felt like crying. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com It's so curious: one can resist tears and "behave" very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window... or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed... or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. --Letters From Colette ---------------------------------------------------- Index: scheduling [poly scheduling program] Here is a test problem for the program: Alpha: works flex time, wants to see Charlie every two weeks, must be at the same time Bravo is seeing Delta, must be a weeknight other than Friday. Bravo: works rotating schedule anywhere between 7am and 7pm, goes to bed by 9:00 on 7am shift days. Wants to see Delta every two weeks. Charlie: works 9am to 7pm, wants to see Alpha every two weeks, must be a day other than Monday. Wants to see Echo once or twice a week. Delta: works flex time, wants to see Bravo every week or two, has class Wednesday evenings, cannot see Bravo on the two days after seeing Foxtrot. Echo (not present): Work schedule unknown. Wants to see Charlie once or twice a week. Wants to see Golf once every week or two. Cannot see Charlie on the two days before seeing Golf. Foxtrot (not present): Work schedule and preferences unknown. Sees Delta sporadically. Golf (not present): Work schedule unknown. Wants to see Echo every week or two, preferably on the weekend. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Where am I going, and what am I doing in this handbasket? ---------------------------------------------------- Index: commitment, promiscuity You can only do one or the other (sluttishness or commitment) with a particular person. But if you're polyamorous, you can have committed relationships, and also spend time being a slut with people you're not in committed relationships with. My definition of "slut" is "someone who seeks physical contact with as many people as possible." It doesn't include "not caring for the others' feelings." -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Anyone who wants to can call themselves a pervert or a queer, but slut is a compliment you have to earn. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: other partners, communication, negotiation, mono/poly Monogamous people handle a poly person's other relationships in lots of different ways. Some people accept the other relationship. Some people insist that it end. Some people negotiate compromises. Whether you can influence her to be with just you depends in part on how important the other relationship is to her, and on how important it is to her to be polyamorous. Some people just end up in that situation and don't want it as a lifelong lifestyle. Others strongly insist on it. Talk to her, tell her you'd prefer her to be monogamous with you, ask whether the other relationship is importnt to her, ask whether polyamory is important to her, ask whether there is something you can do to convince her to be monogamous with you. Respect her answers. People need/want polyamory for a variety of different reasons -- you're better off asking her than asking us. Some people want it because they have a longterm sexual friendship and don't see why they should give it up. Some people just fall into it. Some people need a lot of sex. Some people like sex outside a committed relationship because it's easy emotionally. Some people want to maintain a sense of independence and control over what they do with their bodies. Some people find someone who clicks really well with them sexually and they don't want to give it up. Some people don't grok the difference between friend and lover, don't know where the line is. Etc. etc. etc. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense. -- Harold S. Kushner ---------------------------------------------------- Index: communication Case: someone wants the relationship to be monogamous, and zir partner doesn't, and they negotiate and discuss in order to figure out exactly what it is about a monogamous relationship that's desirable to the first person, and exactly what it is about a sexually open relationship that's desirable to the second person. In this case, it might seem initially that sexual exclusivity is a sine qua non, but after discussion and negotiation it turns out not to be. Very common among people who grew up with the idea that monogamy was the only possibility. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth. -- Mark Twain ---------------------------------------------------- Index: counseling Counseling often feels difficult when important issues are being worked on. If your partner gave up because it felt too difficult, it might be helpful to try counseling again, and this time stick with it. I think starting it every few years and then quitting when it gets uncomfortable and then letting the problems lie unsolved for another few years would be a bad pattern to get into. Or there might be a form of counseling, or a different counselor, that would be easier. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com To love another is not enough....It is not enough to be "supportive" and "there for them," and all the rest....She is waiting for the signal of deep feeling, that one tear that says, "I admit the wound." -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves ---------------------------------------------------- Index: models vs. people, negotiation, needs and wants You and the others seem to have different preferences for what *kind* of polyamory you want. Some people want the "big happy family" kind, and some people want the "separate friends" kind. Both kinds are "good poly" but they can sometimes conflict. My partner and I like it when we get along with each other's lovers, but we don't want a big poly family. I guess it's within the realm of possibility, but so far we haven't met anyone we want to marry, nor are we looking in particular. We both like having some separate friends. It's refreshing to get away for a time, even just an evening. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot you can do to change your situation, given the current bunch of people you're working with, because you can't make people be friends with each other if they aren't so inclined. You might try accepting the separate-friends paradigm most of the time and occasionally inviting your lovers to get together for dinner or a picnic. That can be helpful also as time to work out any issues that need discussing. If the current situation feels very uncomfortable to you, you might begin by discussing it with your wife, telling her what you need and what you can tolerate, and then have her discuss it with her lover. If you want your wife and girlfriend to get along better, you can do a similar thing. A telephone game like that can be awkward and lengthy but it can preserve people's sense of privacy better than direct confrontation, and may result in a more comfortable situation in the long run. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com "Polyamory is annoying sometimes." "Yeah. Why can't I just have bad times with *one* person?" ---------------------------------------------------- Index: negotiation, needs and wants, partnership as entity First we negotiate with our favored options, then we fall back to less favored options. One of the "not particularly favored but sometimes better than the alternatives" options is leaving. In my partnership, there are three sets of needs/wants: --The needs/wants of my partner --The needs/wants of the relationship --My needs/wants In a partnership, I consider all those sets of needs/wants as equal. I don't put mine above the others just because they're mine, or vice versa. However, I also weigh the importance of particular needs. For example: my partner and I get along better when we have a certain amount of quiet time together every few days (this is a need/want of the relationship). We scheduled this for Saturday. A friend called and wanted to spend time with us on Saturday. Both of us want to see the friend (wants for my partner and for me). But we believe that our relationship will suffer temporarily if we don't have this time to ourselves. So we declined. So in this case we put a need of our relationship over each of our own wants. Conversely, if one of my very important needs, such as the need to have a degree of control over my living environment, is in conflict with something my partner wants (maybe he wants someone to move in with us), I will put that need ahead of my partner's want and also ahead of the relationship's wants/needs and will insist that the person not move in with us, even if it harms the relationship to do so. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no. -- Susan Sontag ---------------------------------------------------- Index: relationship as entity If you think of the relationship as a separate entity from each of you, that thrives on connections between you and on emotion, then you can think of holding emotions inside yourself and failing to communicate as starving the relationship. Even negative emotions can nourish the relationship, as long as there is a balance between negative and positive emotions in the long run. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Not that I want to beget a child or plant a tree right away, but it would be quite something to come home after a long day, like Philip Marlowe, and feed the cat...to have a fever...to have blackened fingers from the newspaper. To be excited not only by the mind, but at last by a meal...the curve of a neck...by an ear. To lie! Through the teeth! To feel your skeleton moving along as you walk. Finally to suspect, instead of forever knowing all. To be able to say "Ah" and "Oh" and "Hey" instead of "Yes" and "Amen." -- WINGS OF DESIRE ---------------------------------------------------- Index: counseling. control, wants and needs When a negotiation turns into a power struggle, you pretty much need a third party to mediate, either a couples counselor or an observant and fair friend. It looks to me more as if you are trying to control your life than hers. Controlling her life would be: "you can't be poly, and you also can't leave me, or I'll make your life miserable." But simply "I don't want to be in a poly relationship" is not directly controlling. You are saying "Here's what I can tolerate." You and your partner gets to decide whether there is any overlap between your tolerances and zirs. And you get to decide jointly where in the overlaps to settle. From here, it looks as if it wasn't the sine qua non in itself that led to problems, so much as some combination of context, delivery, and reaction to it. In other words, the problem is in the relationship, the interaction, not simply in what you did or what she did. She might say: "If you hadn't said X, this problem wouldn't have happened." You might say: "If you didn't require Y, this problem wouldn't have happened." You're both right, therefore no one can be blamed any more than anyone else. Therefore blame is pointless and the best way to solve the issue is to start over from scratch with "What do I want?" "What can I tolerate?" and look for overlaps. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com When the child was a child, It walked with its arms swinging. It wanted the stream to be a river, the river a torrent, and this puddle to be the sea. -- WINGS OF DESIRE ---------------------------------------------------- Index: intuition One doesn't "know" the future of a relationship intellectually, any more than one knows the lotto numbers for next month. One can access the answers through intuition. (Coin flipping is an intuition-accessing method used by various folks here, although I don't any who used it to decide whether to remain in a relationship.) The best way to trust the process that I've found is to trust my own intuition and trust that I will mostly do the right thing. If you have trouble doing that, there are various methods that can help you gain that confidence. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Soon anyone who's not on the World Wide Web will qualify for a government subsidy for the home-pageless. -- Scott Adams ---------------------------------------------------- Index: healing, sharing feelings Feelings need to be given room, but they need to be recognized for what they are -- feelings, not rational discussion tools. When I have a fight with my SO, there is usually a period where we are both saying "You did this," "Yeah, well you did that." And sometimes we get stuck there for a while. But both of us know, when the adrenalin has boiled off, that it was a miscommunication, not a deliberate hurt. And we come back together and say: "OK, so when I did this, you thought I meant that, and you felt such-and-so." To reflect the other person's perception of things is an amazingly powerful healing tool. -- 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 ---------------------------------------------------- Index: safe sex If you're not having any kind of sexual contact, or if you are using strict safe sex precautions -- latex every time you touch each other's genitals or body fluids -- then I suppose you don't have to tell each other what diseases you might have, since you're behaving as if you both have them. Otherwise I think you must have a safe sex discussion, not only for her protection but for yours and your partner's. After all, she might have diseases too -- including some that might get passed on to your primary partner. I think it's wrong for you to take away her power to make the decision for herself. If you are confident, and you tell her what you know about your herpes infection, she may agree with your assessment of the risks. But I think she should have the opportunity to make up her own mind. One of my partners told me up front, and I am very glad she did so. I don't happen to think herpes is a big deal, but I have a responsibility to protect my other partners. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I stopped my subscription to Consumer Reports ... I don't want to know about the "acceptable amount" of rodent hair in wholesale tuna fish. I'm a very weird guy. I have no acceptable amount of rodent hair. Some people, 300, 400 hairs in a can. Some, seven or eight. For me, even two is too many! -- Robert Klein ---------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy Treating jealousy as one person's problem: "Well, I get jealous when my partner kisses someone else in front of me. I know it means I'm insecure. I should work on my insecurity." "I just couldn't resist kissing someone else in front of my partner. I know it means I'm insecure about my attractiveness. I should work on my insecurity." Treating jealousy as a partnership problem: "The problem is that I think kissing someone else in front of me is rude, and I get upset when it happens, and you think it's acceptable and feel restricted if you can't do it. So what do we do now?" ---------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, polarizing It may be your problem in that you're the only one affected by it. In a lot of cases, though, if someone gets upset, the people around them also feel upset. So in that case the problem affects more than one person. It may be that in some situations, you have little influence over the other person's behavior and so you have to treat the problem strictly by modifying your own behavior. In that case it would be your problem, because you don't have the kind of relationship with that person that supports solving problems together. I have mostly tended to handle such issues by removing myself from the situation (i.e., strictly by modifying my own behavior). It was only after I'd been in a primary partnership for a while that I realized I also had the option of asking my partner to modify his behavior. When I've been jealous in non-primary relationships, asking my partner to modify zir behavior hasn't worked or hasn't seemed like a reasonable option. I can still say that part of the problem is the other person's behavior, but I may not be able to influence that behavior. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: other partners [uncomfortable with partner's SO because secret affair was revealed] If I were in your position, and I *wanted* to talk to her, or my partner wanted me to, I would check on as many of those assumptions as I could beforehand. I would voice my concerns to my partner ("I'm afraid if I talk to her, it will break up your relationship with her") and then wait for him to give me the go-ahead to talk to her or not. I can vouch for the healing power of talking one-on-one to a partner's partner whom I've felt uncomfortable with in the past. It hasn't solved all my feelings of discomfort, but it's a lot easier to see where they are coming from, and it is nice to know that they are not (any longer) coming from personal animosity between us. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I think that most people, in the presence of true community, would be terrified. Because it's demanding and intolerant. It's harsh. It's cruel. For all of its kindness and generosity to those who belong, it's generally not very kind to those who are not. -- John Perry Barlow ---------------------------------------------------- Index: coming out, healing A declaration of love for someone else is not the best way to open negotiations about polyamory. It can feel very threatening. Opening poly negotiations in a monogamous relationship can be tricky and it's best to have the consent of your important partners before going ahead with a polyamorous situation. Your new relationship may not be a threat to the fact of your relationship with your partner or to your love for your partner, but it's definitely is a threat to your partner's desire that you love her exclusively and your new relationship is a threat to the *kind* of relationship you had. That you try to tell your partner that the new relationship is not a threat suggests a deep lack of understanding of how your partner feels and what's important to her. One way toward healing in this relationship is to try very hard to understand why your new relationship *does* feel like a threat to J. I think that you should talk to L about the possiblity of ending your relationship, rather than putting the whole burden onto yourself. I know you will feel terrible if you have to leave her or put your relationship with her on hold. But I think you should spare yourself the argument that you have an "obligation" to maintain a relationship with her. She is an adult and entered into this situation freely. You have no obligation to *protect* her from a situation that she was the primary cause of in the first place (by expressing her love to you and suggesting polyamory). Sounds like you've all experienced your share of heartbreak. So don't think that you can protect the others from hurt. You will show them more respect if you allow them their own hurts. Your heart tells you that you are willing to take J back and remain monogamous if she wishes it. I think you should follow your heart on this one. However, since J and L are talking, the chances are good that you will be able to maintain at least a friendship with L. It might be hard to maintain a friendship without physical contact or expressions of love, but if you can do that for a time, J may become more comfortable with the situation -- *seeing* that you can be in contact with L without threatening your relationship with J. Then she may be more willing to allow a more demonstrative relationship between you and L. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com We will have no deus ex machina in our poly drama. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: pregnancy I think the child also has a right to know who zir father is if possible, if only for reasons of medical history. I think I'd have a really hard time bringing a child into the world if I didn't know who the father was. I hope I will only bring a child into the world if the father and I have deliberately planned to have a child and I have no doubt whatsoever as to whom the father is. (Yes, that means I'll have to avoid intercourse with other men if I decide to get pregnant...I hope it doesn't take long... ;-) -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com When the child was a child, It didn't know it was a child. Everything was full of life, and all life was one. -- WINGS OF DESIRE ---------------------------------------------------- Index: defining poly, ending a relationship It doesn't automatically follow from poly for me that my lover won't leave me for someone else, any more than "We have a committed relationship" follows from having sex with someone." It can be negotiated that way, sure, but... To me, poly means "I may have relationships other than this one." Any other agreements are a la carte. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. -- J.R.R. Tolkien ---------------------------------------------------- Index: changing feelings/beliefs, negotiation I don't think it's unreasonable to expect your partner's support in getting used to polyamory. This is exactly how my partner and I have been handling the issue -- I've worked on my feelings and he's made changes in his behavior. And to a certain extent the other way around, too. If it's true that you don't have those feelings unless certain behavior happens... well, it's a lot easier to change behavior than to change feelings. So I think his changing his behavior in some way that you both feel is reasonable is the best solution at this point. Later on when you feel more comfortable, you can renegotiate the behavior limits. Of course, recognize that being asked to change one's behavior can cause bad feelings as well -- especially if it's behavior that one enjoys. So the challenging part comes in trying to find overlap points where neither of you is experiencing extreme discomfort. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Most of an editor's time is spent saying no. -- Cliff Stoll ---------------------------------------------------- Index: other lovers, commitment I am not able to commit to being patient with neglect. I want regular contact with my lovers. I also maintain regular contact with my existing lovers when I develop a new relationship. He kept insisting that he was committed to me, and I didn't really believe it or want a promise of commitment. When I "called in" the commitment and asked him to agree to see me on a regular schedule instead of haphazardly, he was not willing. Intellectually, I was not surprised and did not consider it a betrayal. Emotionally I kind of did. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. -- George Bernard Shaw ---------------------------------------------------- Index: commitment, trust It takes a lot of trust to believe that a partner won't suddenly change zir mind. (I managed to stumble and drop this trust for a few hours over the weekend. It was very embarrassing.) But it is possible to develop this trust and hold it most of the time (even for a basically untrusting person like me :). It is also possible to make a commitment about the circumstances under which one will leave, without making a "permanent commitment." The former is the only kind of commitment I will accept, because I think a permanent commitment, at least one that makes any promises about feelings, is quite simply a lie. One cannot predict the future with enough certainty to say that one will willingly stay in a relationship forever. So to commit to it is lying or not knowing oneself very well. And I would not want someone to stay with me unwillingly simply because they'd promised to. It would be like living with a ghost. I ask for a commitment to work on solving problems and not to leave unless this attempt has been made. I think mutual decisions to leave are best, but I wouldn't go so far as to insist that no unilateral decisions are possible. I want the right to make a unilateral decision if I must -- if my partner were to begin abusing me frequently, for example. I can certainly predict that the likelihood of making such a decision is extremely low, and I can accept his statement of the same, and that lets me carry on trusting that it won't happen (most of the time). -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. -- G. B. Shaw ---------------------------------------------------- Index: commitment, trust I can certainly anticipate being able to stay in a relationship forever, but I know there are boundaries and beyond those boundaries I will no longer be willing. I believe very strongly that we won't cross those boundaries, but I am not going to pretend they're not there, or say that it doesn't count if we cross them -- if we are legally or financially entangled or have children, it will count as far as affecting our lives is concerned. I do not have absolute control over myself and the universe, and I would need such absolute control in order to make an absolute commitment. My commitments are best guesses, good enough to work with. They're not absolute. Nothing is absolute except the laws of thermodynamics. We live in a physical universe and although we might be able to say that in some soul-only existence we could make a forever commitment, that is simply not possible in a physical existence. People choose to deal with that uncertainty in different ways -- I think we're very close in our views and I don't think your way of dealing with it is wrong. I'm just playing "turn the gemstone in the light and see how the different facets sparkle." ---------------------------------------------------- Index: gifts, understanding I think that a gift should be in part an acknowledgement not only that one has a relationship with a person, but also that one knows a person (which includes knowing what they like). In a way that's part of the reason why I don't like it when someone tells me exactly what they want -- it doesn't allow me to show my knowledge of them. One of the exercises in Hendrix's book tells partners to write down (1) what their partners do that makes them feel loved, and (2) what else they'd like their partners to do. That makes a list from which the partner can choose when zie wants to make a loving gift -- so that zie can choose something that is comfortable for zir, and also something that says "I love you" to the other person. Of course, if there is a strong need that isn't being met, or if there are no overlaps between what one wants and what one's partner is willing to do, then there's a problem. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: counseling Why is therapy considered "buying a friend with specific talents," when car repair, financial advice, teaching, medical care, massage therapy, job counseling, and hauling are not? IMO, the view that a proper friendship should provide therapy, or that therapy is a "paid friendship," shows how much shame still surrounds the idea of talking about one's life problems with others -- there's still a strong belief that such things should always be kept "in the family". It's also a woefully rigid view of friendship. People go about friendship in many different ways: some people talk about their problems, some people go fishing. The former is not a better form of friendship than the latter. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: abuse, ending a relationship I tend to use the word abuse rather loosely to refer to anything that hurts or frightens me. Some of the nastier fights and misunderstandings I've had with my partner have seemed abusive to me by that definition, but not to the point where I was ready to leave -- only if they had continued or become habitual. I am more sensitive to emotional abuse (the kind of unpredictable anger that requires one to walk on eggshells in case of setting it off) than being hit per se, and being hit in anger would affect me not because of the physical blow but because I'd see it as an attempt to bully or intimidate. It would be a very serious thing, but I don't think I'd walk out permanently the first time -- maybe the second, definitely the third. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: changing behavior/feelings, negotiation, ending a relationship You tried monogamy and discovered that it wasn't for you as written. Lots of people find themselves in that situation, since you can't really know how you'll react to something until you're there. I am puzzled, though, why you then concluded that the only choice was to unilaterally end the relationship. It seems to me that if you stay with someone for several years, and you still care about them, you more or less owe it to them to say "This thing about our relationship isn't working and can we negotiate some changes?" rather than dumping them. If you want out anyway, I can see using something like that as a lever for dumping them (I did that once, sort of), but that's different. IMO, one discussion does not suffice to determine where the middle ground lies. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: sex ---------------------------------------------------- Index: sex, understanding People in a long-term relationship often have to work to make sex great. It is not automatic. It is possible to revitalize sex in a relationship. Doing so takes the participation of all partners, which means all partners need to feel that they're getting something they want out of the deal. The key to awakening your partner's sexuality is not in getting her to do what you want. It is in finding out what turns her on, and fulfilling those fantasies. If you do that, she is much more likely to become interested in helping you fulfill your fantasies (including ones involving several women). Maybe you'll even discover a few new ones of your own. Or develop some shared ones (the best way, in my opinion). There is no official answer to the question whether poly is an orientation for a particular person -- if you really want to know, you'll have to try it and see, or try something else and see if you can be happy with something else. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: trust, negotiation, changing beliefs/feelings, healing If I trust myself, then I also trust my ability to "read" other people and to tell whether a relationship is good for me. I can thereby develop trust in my partner -- "OK, this person seems like a good person to have a relationship with." Part of trust for me is also knowing what I can't know, what must be built on observation rather than hunch. If I am with someone new, I can make an educated guess about whether they'll go outside the relationship at inappropriate times, but I can't know. If my partner has suddenly started behaving very differently (going outside the relationship inappropriately, when zie hadn't done that before), I will also need to fall back on observation for a while to figure out their new patterns of behavior. That's why, when my trust in someone is broken (which for me means that I can no longer successfully model their behavior), it takes me a long time to rebuild it. While I am rebuilding trust, rules help me, because they provide an external framework (if the person follows the rules, that is). Later on when I have made new models of the person, I don't need the rules so much. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: other partners, confidentiality If she thinks he's devoted to her or wants him to be, then I think making fun of her behind her back is an unethical form of dishonesty. If she thinks he's just in it for the sex and that's why she is in it too, and if they both think each other are twits or otherwise incompatible for the long term, I don't see anything wrong with it in particular. Another thing to consider: some people engage in a kind of gossip that sounds nasty on the outside but really derives from a sense of affection for the person and for human foibles in general. When I was having problems with my primary partner, they obsessed me, and I talked to everybody about them. I was not saying to others anything that I hadn't already said in some form or another to my partner. But I was certainly doing a lot of bitching, mostly because I needed to blow off steam. I'm sure some people wondered why I was staying with him, at the time, because I was wondering the same thing. Nowadays things are a lot better but I still sometimes bitch about my partner, again not saying anything that I haven't already told him, but just blowing off steam about small issues that sometimes become irritating. However, I also praise the aspects of the relationship that I do like, so I think my friends have a reasonably balanced picture. I expect the best way to find out for sure what a friend's intentions are when zie bitches about a third party is to ask. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: safe sex ---------------------------------------------------- Index: ending a relationship, trust I do not make the promise "I will never leave" because to me that promise (using that wording) ignores certain aspects of reality. I will leave if there is too much abuse. I will leave if I have a mental breakdown such that I cannot handle the situation as it stands and we can't find a way to change things to remove the stress. I will leave if there is something very important that we cannot find a compromise on. Now, I think those things are very, very unlikely in my partnership. I've made the promise that I will do my damndest to make sure the relationship continues to be viable and continues to make us happy. Leaving would be a last resort. And because I trust my partnership is sound, I believe it will last for the rest of our lives. We want it to. But because of uncertainty about the future, and because it's very important to me to make completely accurate promises, I won't make a promise that I will *never* leave. If I can envision situations in which I would leave, then I admit that, even if they are very unlikely. I don't decide that they don't count. Your promise "I will never leave (unless you do something that causes me to feel you're a stranger to me)" would not make me feel any more secure than the promise to work to keep the relationship viable, because I will never know for sure all the things that might cause you to feel someone is a stranger. ---------------------------------------------------- Index: trust, giving feelings room (Reassurance) It's not the sort of thing that can be explained; it can only be shown through action and time. Part of a solution may be to accept that this is a feature of your relationship and let C have her feelings. If the feelings are *very* unpleasant for her, then you may want to explore what exactly about your friendships feels the most threatening to her and restrict some of that behavior (without giving up the friendships themselves). If she thinks the feelings can be dealt with, then the best solution may be to give the feelings some space without trying to change your behavior or reassure them away. Witness them, and do reassure, but don't expect that to make the feelings go away. Just let them be. Both of you can work on finding the place where you can have what's most important to you and she can avoid prolonged, unpleasant feelings. For many people, it is not just sex that sets off jealousy. How would you feel if you were asked to spend time with your friends without touching them? Would you still be able to find other ways of connecting with them that would satisfy you? (I've had very romantic relationships that involved no physical contact.) Time, connection, communication, compromise, willingness to sacrifice. The thing that helped most for me was my partner's offer to try monogamy (by my definition) for an indefinite period of time, and my partner's giving me a gift of something that would be only for the two of us, something that was important to me. -------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, envy, feelings, communication Jealousy is so much harder to deal with when you're also envious because you're in love with *her* too. At least for me. Try not to be upset with yourself for not liking the way things are. You want him, you want her, you don't have either of them. They're taking each other away from you. And that sucks! Really! Admit it -- you want what you want. Now, at a separate time say "It sucks, but that's the way it is, and there will be and are good things about my life too." It's much easier to accept your emotions than to try to "should" them out of existence. Please do consider telling your partners of your feelings. That is the only way you might get through the pain to the point where you'd feel pleasure in watching them together again. Telling them doesn't mean they have to do something about it, other than to say "Gee, we're really sorry." But it can really clear the air. And in some cases compromises can be worked out. It's hard. It's embarrassing. But it can be really worth it. (Sheesh, I sound like a soft drink commercial.) A new sweetie of my partner's recently told us of some jealousy zie was feeling toward me/us. It wasn't pleasant for any of us to deal with but I really appreciate that zie told us. I know the temptation to leave someone so as not to be a bother. But I hope you don't do that without trying openness first. It can open doors to worlds you never dreamed of. -------------------------------------------------- Index: time, scheduling I'm not sure where you got the idea that quantity time has to mean not working at all. However, if you want to talk about work, for many people, regularly working the 50-80 hours a week that is asked for in many professional urban jobs these days is not conducive to maintaining the best quality of relationship. I would think that one of the potential advantages of N>2 households would be that with three or more income-producers, it would be possible for individuals to work fewer hours if they wished. As for being alone, I love it and need it. That has little to do with "quantity time" for me. For me there is a different quality to a relationship that includes enough together-time that some of it can be spent doing separate things together, rather than interacting intensely. When I got into such a relationship, I had been single and had lived alone for a long time, so quantity time, doing-separate-things-together, was something I wasn't at all used to. It took me a while to get used to it. But I find now that it greatly strengthens the fabric of our relationship and I don't like doing without it. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Quality is Job 1.01. -- Daniel Sears -------------------------------------------------- Index: communication, feelings understanding You seem to suppress your Stuff rather than bringing it up as soon as it gets evoked. I used to suppress my Stuff a lot because I believed I shouldn't be a bother. But then I realized that when the Stuff eventually came out, it was a lot stronger and more angry for having been ignored for so long, and then I got into the vicious cycle you describe of feeling guilty for having a reaction that's "out of proportion" to the situation at hand. What worked for me was learning that I could bring up a problem as soon as it arose, and if I did so, I was able to deal with it and let go of it a lot faster, with an emotional reaction that was more in proportion to the problem. That only works with some people, of course. My partner doesn't get defensive easily and doesn't use withdrawl as his first response. But we also work hard on understanding our reactions to each other during fights or outbursts and on learning to give each other what we want. A lot of people are "fixers" and need to be reminded that some things can't be "fixed" by tackling the problem head-on. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on. -- a 5th-grade science paper -------------------------------------------------- Index: sex, condoms The last time I posted about this somewhere, I got flamed for daring to post about penises without having one myself, but here I go again: I think it's possible for some men who have difficulty with condoms to become more comfortable with them -- with practice. Try a variety of different kinds -- there are many shapes, sizes, and sensitivity levels. Experiment with them in private -- put them on, masturbate with them. Try putting lube inside for a different sensation. Experiment with them with your partner, without intercourse or erection or orgasm as an end goal. Put one on, play. With a condom on, but without intercourse, erection, or orgasm as a goal, caress your partner's genitals with your penis. If you have trouble staying hard or coming when having intercourse with condoms, adopt an experimental attitude toward intercourse. Try different positions. Withdraw and masturbate and play and re-enter. If the condom shifts around or comes off, try using more lube on the outside, try different positions or movements (one of my partners sometimes needs to ask me to be still and not move so much), try a different kind of condom. If it's too small or binding, try using lube on the inside (at the tip only, not the base), or try a different kind -- the sizes are not standardized; width especially can vary a lot. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Objects in condom are larger than they appear. --AR -------------------------------------------------- Index: scheduling wants and needs If I only have a few days with a sweetie, I keep them to myself as much as I can, limiting outside engagements and busy-time. If necessary, I hole up with them in a hotel room. If there are things to do/people to see, I make sure there is plenty of quiet just-us time in between outings or seeings. Once I was planning to visit a sweetie and zie (without consulting me) planned a party for the time I was going to be there. I considered this a sign that zie didn't want me around, so much so that I said I would do something else that weekend if zie wanted to have a party. Seeing your description of your time with your sweetie, I understand a bit better now what was going on in zir mind (although I still wouldn't put up with it. :-) Actually, come to think of it, I do this all the time, with all my friends/lovers, and my partner. Not just with an LD sweetie. I love one-on-one time with people. Make quiet time, and guard it. You might feel you're not "really doing" something, but you are. You might feel you're being selfish, but you deserve it. It's real, it's important, and your friends/lovers/ partners will accept your need for this if you know how important it is. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. --Lin Yutang -------------------------------------------------- Index: scheduling, wants and needs Index: wants and needs Some people "categorize" more naturally than others, and these people are more likely to feel they are living some quantity of separate lives, I think. When I figured out that I do this, I decided that "really me" was someone who collects and categorizes and likes to focus in on one group or one person or one idea at a time. But then I like to step back and look at my "collection," and this helps me see both the similarities and the differences among different groups/people/ideas. This affects the way I do polyamory in that each relationship brings out different facets of me, different thoughts and ideas, and exposes me to a different view of life. I value that a lot. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about? Chance alone has a message for us....We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds. --Kundera -------------------------------------------------- Index: feelings I got to the point where I could usually give out a snippet of information (such as "it's a button" or "it's not your fault"), something so my partner wouldn't feel scared not knowing what was going on. That would usually allow him to stay with me during the non-talking part and then I'd be able to talk eventually. Sometimes it takes a few days to go through the whole cycle, but once the immediate crisis is past we are able to put it aside for a while and then bring it up again to see if we can get additional perspectives/understanding. We had a good counselor to help us and we worked with some books, too -- still it took about two years and multiple difficult sessions before we began to feel that the different ways we deal with anger weren't going to tear apart the relationship someday. Given that anger is handled so badly in this society, either repressed to the point of core meltdown or used as a weapon, given that people aren't taught reasonable ways of dealing with it and have to muddle through on their own, I think we're doing pretty well, though. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Children, apples of my eyes, when you feel like weeping gems, go to the garbage dumps, the dead ends of the labyrinth, the oubliettes, the cemeteries, the charnal grounds. Find yourself a spot there and surrender to the melancholy of the place, recollect the sadness around you and the misery of the world, and wish ardently that they cease. The more sincere your feelings, the clearer the gems that will form. Gems from cruelty have facets, gems from broken hearts are purple or orange, the death of a child brings forth emeralds; animals that people torment bring forth pearls and diamonds. The deeper the emotion, the more luminous the gem. --Esther Rochon/Henry Polard -------------------------------------------------- Index: scheduling, wants and needs, negotiation I might say, having been presented with the list, "These things sound fun, but I'm afraid there might not be much time for us to relax together, and I'd really like that, because I don't get much time to see you. Does that sound reasonable to you, and is there any way we can rearrange things to work that into the schedule?" Is this just a guest or is it a sweetie? You are disappointed because you didn't get some of the interaction you wanted -- to me that suggests perhaps you should not defer in this case, insofar as it affects your connection with your sweetie if you're disappointed. I know what you're saying because I automatically think I shouldn't be a bother, and I find myself deferring in situations where I should negotiate. But in the long run, I've found, I'm much less of a bother if I can get some of what I want. :-) The best way I've found to schedule no-expectations time is to schedule fewer engagements, and/or end engagements a while before it's time to go on to the next engagement, by saying "Well, we need some time to relax." Or say "No" to certain things with "We'd like to but we planned to spend that piece of time together." The key is seeing that empty time as real. It's kind of a zen thing in a way. "The useful part of a pot is the empty space it contains." -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Love: a blurring of the distinction between selfish and selfless. -- Ofer Inbar -------------------------------------------------- Index: fighting, group dynamics If your partners are so similar that they always take the same side in a fight, it may well be that they are similar enough that they have some of the same relationship issues. Not that your issues *aren't* involved in the messes, but the balance may be somewhat different than you think. Thinking on the three male sweeties I've had in the past year, I can't imagine them always taking the same side in a fight. They're way too different. I know that for a long time I thought I had certain 'issues' because I kept running into the same trouble with different partners. But then I met some people with whom I just didn't have those problems. So I concluded that the original 'issue-repetition' was due in part to my choosing partners who had certain similarities. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in the proper order then why can't he? -------------------------------------------------- Index: cultural pressure, defining poly The "basis of society" upon which polyamory rests is "people live in family groups." The only difference between polyamory and monogamy is how many adults are in the family at one time. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Where am I going, and what am I doing in this handbasket? -------------------------------------------------- Index: handling problems If I have a problem, I am the best person to take responsibility to solve it. But I don't agree with the implication that if I have a similar problem with several people, that means the problem must be internal to me. It might be a mismatch between what I want or who I am and the culture of the area in which I live, for example. Example: I love to touch people I like. For a long time, because I lived in areas where casual touching wasn't part of the culture, most of my partners and friends did not like to touch much, and I thought that there was something wrong with me for wanting to touch so much. Then I moved to an area where casual touching was more common and more accepted. I concluded that there wasn't something wrong with my desire to touch people; there had been a mismatch between me and the culture I was in. I think that all craziness between partners is a result of the interaction between them and not the result of only *one* partner's stuff. Second, I think it is quite possible to have partners who are similar enough to each other that particular relationship problems are similar from one relationship to another. Especially if part of it is cultural (see above). -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in the proper order then why can't he? -------------------------------------------------- Index: cultural pressure, activism Poly-people are not persecuted and harrassed to the point of fearing for their lives *only* because most people have never heard of polyamory. If it became more widely known, you had better believe poly-people would be persecuted and harrassed, especially those who live in family groups. I think political action groups with similar agendas should cooperate on issues that concern all the groups. Domestic partnership law could benefit if it were extended to multiple partners, for example. Basically, poly relevant laws are the laws that say who is a family member and who isn't. Who gets custody of kids, who gets to visit in the hospital, who gets benefits, etc. Who gets invited to company parties. Whether there are "Companions fly free" specials on airplanes. Triple-occupancy rates at hotels. Etc. I think each person can make up zir own mind about how much to identify as poly and how much time to think about it. Someone who is primarily partnered to one person but has friends that they have sex with may not want or need to spend as much time thinking about poly-activism as would a family of several adults and kids who are committed to each other's welfare and want that recognized by society. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART? -------------------------------------------------- Index: handling problems, role models I think it's OK for "role models" to have problems. If they don't, they can't be real role models because people will just look at them and say "Well they're perfect for some reason, and we can't use them as a role model because *we* have problems." I also think that what a "role model" consists in a lot of times is a model of *how* to solve problems, not a model of having none. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com My role model, inspiration, and heroine is Morticia Addams. -- Siouxsie Sioux -------------------------------------------------- Index: intimacy, defining poly I don't have a sexual partner or three, then I am quickly going to want to steer a cuddly friendship toward sex. Touching can be arousing for me, especially if I'm not getting enough sex. I define "partner" in the way you describe (although I don't put up with more mistreatment from a partner than from a friend, necessarily) but I define "romantic" as something entirely different -- a relationship that focuses on itself. I have romantic relationships with friends with whom I maintain separateness and with whom I don't spend a great deal of time. I don't agree with the implication that *anyone* who feels threatened "has utter control" over that feeling and chooses it, or deliberately chooses partners that will play into it. Some people are just plain scared at the beginning of a relationship or when a relationship changes to something different. They can't be talked out of being scared necessarily but it is *temporary* once they see that things are becoming stable. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com "Frankly, Scarlett, I'm not feeling very proactive this week." -- TM -------------------------------------------------- Index: activism I don't see much point in determining who's more persecuted than whom. Poly people want something, queer people want something similar; we work together to make that happen. I've never liked the "more persecuted than thou" aspect of activism. I find it divisive and I think it encourages feelings of helplessness and victimization. I guess we agree that "us poor victimized polys" shouldn't be part of our political agenda. :-) I think whether someone identifies strongly with being poly is up to the individual, and I don't agree with trying to develop an across-the-board rule about it. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I am not politically incorrect. I am politically challenged. --MB -------------------------------------------------- Index: defining identity, activism I sort of fundamentally "don't get" your question about groups because I look at individuals rather than groups. I think groups are made up of individuals with particular tendencies, and for any interest, there will be various groups with differing focuses and intensities. Another somewhat related thought on "the importance of identities": The importance of various aspects of identity seems to change depending on what's going on in one's life. When I first came out as bisexual, I was very caught up in identifying as a bisexual person. These days, it doesn't seem like a big deal -- I just am, that's all. When I first began exploring polyamory, I was very focused on it and where I fit in, and to some extent I am still in that phase, but less so than a year or two ago. So I think that given any possible "identity," it will be an obsession for some people and reasonably important for others and not particularly important for still others. I think that both can be healthy; if there are some situations in which one is healthier, I think they'd depend on the person and what stage of life / identity exploration they're in. The problem is not in how someone identifies oneself, but in how one identifies others. It is better in most cases to be able to accept other people who don't happen to have than to reject them as sinners/oppressors/chauvinists/misguided simply because they don't have . The problem with some political groups is that they reject out of hand anyone who doesn't fit their narrow identity profile. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage. -- Mark Russell -------------------------------------------------- Index: safe sex Index: models For me, primary/secondary refers to two things: 1. Whether I am planning a future with someone. I plan a future with my primary partner(s); secondary partners don't get as much of a say in my plans. 2. How much time I spend with someone. If I consider someone a primary partner, I expect us to spend the lion's share of our time together (with occasional exceptions). Primary/secondary doesn't for me refer to intensity of feelings; that is too changeable. I am aware that my model limits the development of the relationships that I label "secondary." I consider that a fact of life: some relationships don't get a chance to develop as fully as they might, because of prior commitments, distance, or other practical issues. I think no matter whether we commit to hierarchies or not, we create them, and relationships are always developed within constraints. I make my hierarchies upfront and hold to them, rather than changing them as I go along because I like to know where I stand. I would feel insecure if a partner I deeply cared about refused to tell me where I stood in zir life (maybe I should say "zir future") by saying zie wanted to focus on "what is happening at the moment." I tend to make plans around my primary partners. If someone won't make plans or commitments around me because zie wants to stay open to other options, that is the same to me as if they say "I am primary with someone else and can't be with you." I would label that relationship secondary. I know I'm using somewhat loaded language here, but I'm really not trying to flame. I don't like nonhierarchical for myself, but I know it works well for some people. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. --Janis Joplin -------------------------------------------------- Index: personality type I'm far to the Introvert side of the Myers Briggs spectrum, but I also find sharing extremely important. A lot of people misunderstand the E-I continuum. It's not about how much one cares about people, how much one likes to be with people, how much one wants to communicate or share with people. It's simply about whether being with people (especially crowds) is draining or energizing. I like being with people, and sharing/communicating is an absolute necessity for me, but I find being with people draining and I have to be by myself (or with my partner; I've let him "in", so to speak) at least part of every day to recharge. The net is great for Introverts who like to share, since we can be alone and be sharing at the same time. -- Stef, alone on the couch with a PowerBook and a Diet Coke, sharing -------------------------------------------------- Index: jealousy, communication Polyamory *Helps* prevent jealousy, because IME, the more jealousy is talked about, and accepted, the less intense it is. Polyamory Forces better communication -- well, that's a bit strong, but it did feel that way for me, when my partner and I began to have poly problems. Before the problems began, I saw us as reaching a communication equilibrium that was not particularly deep. And I was beginning to worry that we wouldn't be able to break the ice that had formed. The poly problems put a fucking blowtorch to that ice. There are plenty of non-sexual interactions that can cause jealousy, but in the monogamous world that's not well understood. In the monogamous world, there tends to be an assumption that unless you're fucking someone, your partner has no cause to be jealous and jealousy is to be maligned and ignored. (Or the opposite assumption: that if you're jealous, whatever is doing that must be stopped immediately, no discussion.) Many poly folks know better -- jealousy has to do with time and attention and energy, not fucking, and it can be managed. -------------------------------------------------- Index: handling problems I only know your side of the story, but it looks as if you're taking on way too much culpability. If she gave you permission and felt bad afterward, she is responsible for those feelings, not you (how could you be? You couldn't have known about them). You are obliged to offer her sympathy, and to apologize if there was a misunderstanding, but you should not take the blame. If I were in your position, I would do one of two things: 1. Stop playing with them for my own self protection. If he asked for a reason, I might say that someone had a problem with it and as I only play with full consent, I am obligated to stop. Or I might say it was a personal decision, nothing to do with him as a player, and give no information. 2. Get together with the two of them at the same time, explain the miscommunication, and ask them to clarify their agreement about playing with others and get back to me with the results. Which thing I'd do would depend on my assessment of their communication ability. What she did might have been a one-time mistake or might be rabid manipulation -- if it were the latter, I wouldn't want to get further involved in the situation. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on. -- a 5th-grade science paper -------------------------------------------------- [How much should you tell other people about what kinds of relationships you're involved in?] Ground rules about relationships are designed to facilitate social interaction. They aren't part of the "intimate privacy" aspect of a relationship but rather the "social support" aspect. Saying I'm in a primary partnership just gives other people a few hints about how they should interact with me and my partner (if nothing else, hints about what questions they should ask). If communicating the ground rules helps people to treat someone as they would like to be treated, then that avoids miscommunication difficulties that can drain energy away from other more life- and relationship-enriching activities. My relationship with my primary partner comes first in my life. By communicating that to others with whom I have relationships, I save time and hassle and disappointment. Likewise, if I do not have a primary partner, by communicating that to others, I avoid their making incorrect assumptions about me or people they see me with. The fluid, wax-and-wane social construct of relationships is less common than the social construct that gives labels to different kinds of relationships. I think someone who believes in that construct has something of a responsibility to communicate their expectations to someone whose expectations/constructs they don't know. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The secret of the universe is @*&^^^ NO CARRIER --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it appropriate to label your relationships?] If one is interested in specifics, one should ask. I think public labels for relationships and public description of certain ground rules often help direct one's inquiries in the right direction. Most people will agree on the general area a label covers; few will agree on specifics. But it helps to focus the discussion. If I'm interested in someone, I want for my own information and peace of mind to find out if there are other important people in their life and how that might affect my relationship with them, at least in the initial stages. It helps me decide how to proceed. I proceed somewhat differently with someone who has a primary partner than with someone who doesn't. Usually that works well for me. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I think that most people, in the presence of true community, would be terrified. Because it's demanding and intolerant. It's harsh. It's cruel. For all of its kindness and generosity to those who belong, it's generally not very kind to those who are not. -- John Perry Barlow -------------------------------------------------- [Is the desire for a primary relationship a cultural construct?] People have been taught to think they need "a lifelong romantic/sexual partnership" and they may not need that as much as they think. However, I've discovered that I very much want, simply, a *partner*. Not necessarily a lifelong partner, tho' that would be nice, not necessarily a sexual/romantic partner, in the standard sense of the word romance (although there has to be something kind of like romance there - mirroring each other, encouraging each other, thinking we're "neat"). A best friend. Someone I can share a lot of my life with. A muse. The primary thing that I get out of this sort of partnership is motivation. When I'm by myself, I'm not much of a self starter. I meet my basic needs and explore a bit, but not much. When I have a partner, I find it easier to encourage and inspire myself, easier to explore farther. I can do without this and even be reasonably happy, but I seem to be much more contented (if you can get the difference between "contented" and "happy" there) if I have it. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Follow the Light, not the lamp. Shatter the lamp; the Light remains. -------------------------------------------------- [If you can't get something in your life right, does that mean you're sabotaging yourself?] I really dislike the school of thought that looks first to self sabotage to explain every failure. There are a great many reasons why someone might not have the friends they want or the relationships they want, and internal ambivalence only one of them. Others include lack of knowledge how to meet or communicate with people, or being in a culture (even a part of the country) that doesn't value what you value or what you have to offer. I prefer to think of failure to get what you want as a mismatch, and to begin searching for specific areas in which there might be a mismatch. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there. -- a 5th-grade science paper -------------------------------------------------- [Does polyamory really work?] Polyamory is difficult because there is no wide paved road to follow as there seems to be if you choose a monogamous relationship; you have to communicate to figure out what you and your partner want, more so than many monogamous couples feel they need to communicate (I think they're fooling themselves if they think communication in a monogamous relationship is easier in the end, but that's me). But if the communication is achieved, unpleasant consequences do not generally come to pass. Some of us do not feel that we *are* poly in some deep, fundamental sense, but we choose to live a poly lifestyle simply because we are happy in poly relationships and so they are worth it. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com "I'd like to buy him for what I think he is worth, and sell him for what he thinks he is worth." -------------------------------------------------- [How do you transform obsessive bonds with someone?] I use magick and ritual. It's best if you make your own, because only you know which symbols and actions have the most meaning to you. But here is a simple example: Get yourself calm and centered. Take a piece of paper and write on it all the things that you DON'T want the relationship to be like. Burn it, or tear it up and flush it down the toilet while saying out loud that you let go of those things. Take a piece of paper and write on it all the things that you DO want the relationship to be like. Say them out loud. Put the paper under, in, or near some water and near a candle. Every day for a week, light the candle, and while you are lighting it, think about how you want to transform the relationship. Keep the candle lit for five minutes. At the end of the week, burn the paper (releasing your wish) and pour the water onto the ground. Go about your business. The transformation will happen. It may take a little while. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do. -- McCloctnik the Lucid -------------------------------------------------- [Are relationships that are grounded in a prohibition (such as monogamy) false by definition?] I don't know of any relationships that are grounded in a specific prohibition. I know of relationships that include a specific prohibition against sex with other people, but most of them are based in a lot of other things, and the prohibition against sex with other people is just one part of the relationship, not its base. Nor does the prohibition automatically become the base of the relationship simply because it is a specific prohibition. Some people automatically chafe against a prohibition. But others do not. If something is prohibited to me, unless I want it anyway, the prohibition is not a big deal to me as long as I think there is a good reason for it. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test," said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster. "I wish the toaster to be happy too." --Unknown -------------------------------------------------- [When do you bring up a developing interest in someone new?] We try to talk about new relationships as they are developing, but we reserve the right to tell afterward if things happen suddenly. However, we also reserve the right to veto a partner's budding relationship after the Deed if the new person comes across as a one-eyed purple spiky instrument of the devil. Part of our understanding is that anxiety is to be expected. The last time my SO got involved with someone, I talked with zir new partner explicitly about my discomfort seeing my SO being physically affectionate with someone else. Zie said zie understood how I felt. That took a lot of the pressure off. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Irrationality is the square root of all evil. -- Douglas Hofstadter -------------------------------------------------- [Do you have to be friends with your partner's other partners?] I think that people have the right to choose whom they associate with. If you feel you don't gain anything, or in fact lose, by being friends with your husband's Other Significant Other, I don't think you should be obligated to be friends with her. Your husband has a right to request, but I think he should respect the answer "No thank you." And I think you have the right and responsibility to say "No thank you" if that's what's right for you. Ask him what you would gain if you befriended his OSO. It seems to me that the person who benefits from it is he, not you. So you're right that whatever you do for his OSO (beyond politeness) is a gift and not an obligation, IMO. I need some control over certain parts of my life, and one of those is whom I choose to associate with. I am glad when I like my partner's OSOs, but unless he has given me the privilege of picking who they are, I do not automatically agree to be friends with whomever he picks. That would be like an arranged marriage or something. You give a whole lot of justifications why you are not being friends with his OSO in the ways they want. Do you really need justifications? IMNSHO, your choice is fine on its own. If you give reasons, then counterarguments will be presented. Ultimately I think it is best to avoid justifications and say simply, "I don't want to; she's not the sort of person I would choose as a friend." -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting. --e. e. cummings -------------------------------------------------- [Is it OK to see a counselor?] Some problems really do need to be bounced off other people to be solved; they cannot be solved within the relationship except with great difficulty. And in such a case, the other people should ideally be sensitive, reflective, able to assume a relatively unbiased perspective, and willing to put a fair degree of energy into the issue. It's great if you have friends of that sort, but some people don't. Some people have friends who are busy, who maybe don't understand relationship problems particularly well, who aren't all that great at being unbiased. In such a case, if the problem is the sort that really does need the input of a third party, seeing a counselor or going to a group is the best solution. That isn't going to fix the problem on its own. It's going to be a reasonable guarantee of getting someone to help you focus on the problem yourself. I don't think there is something shameful about relationship problems such that they should be kept among friends and only taken to a professional as a last resort. I can't remember where I saw it, but some book I read suggested that if people waited to go to a doctor as long as they wait to go see a marriage counselor, doctors would be morticians. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com 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 -------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you feel bad because you feel bad?] It works best for me when I don't try to line myself up to some perfect ideal paragon of humanity, and I just go ahead and do what I have agreed to do, and accept the feelings, and share them with my partner(s). If my partner gets to spend some time alone with a person we both care about and don't see enough of to satisfy us, I feel envious. If my partner gets misty eyed over someone and babbles about zir, I feel threatened. I know there's not likely to be a real threat, but there it is. So we talk about it and usually my partner tries to avoid gushing about zir sweeties unless I'm in the mood and we try to equalize our time with people we both want to be with. You might ask yourself whether your feelings are at the level of "just stuff to deal with" or whether they are strong enough that they indicate you're moving too fast into this relationship. I know that if my partner had been monogamous for 10 years and suddenly became unmonogamous 'cos of a specific person, I'd feel a bit threatened by that person's power over my partner, and I might wish to monitor their relationship closely for a while, and not encourage several days of alone time until I felt more comfortable with the situation. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint. -- Dave Sim -------------------------------------------------- [How should polyamory be explained to the larger culture?] I think polyamory is a sexual orientation similar to hetersexual/bisexual/homosexual if you are of the opinion that the latter three changeable in some cases. If one claims that het/bi/gay are fixed in all cases, then I don't think poly is a sexual orientation, because in some cases it is clearly not fixed. I think ultimately the best way to present polyamory to the culture at large is as a relationship style issue. A family style issue. People wouldn't attack you if you chose to have your aging parents live with you. They wouldn't attack you if you and your spouse took separate apartments for six months so that you could pursue jobs in different cities. (They might gossip, but I doubt they'd try to mount a legal challenge.) They wouldn't attack you for choosing to have five kids. So why should they attack if you choose to have more than one partner? -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? -- Richard P. Feynmann -------------------------------------------------- [Reasons for not mentioning the gender of people you're talking about] As soon as you mention someone's gender, your listeners automatically drag in a lifetime's worth of assumptions. You can't address those without explicitly talking about them. If you don't mention someone's gender, however, some listeners will be actively trying to guess the gender of the person you're discussing by comparing what you're saying against their assumptions. That may lead them to examine their assumptions more carefully. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Standing on thin ice and trying to hit two birds with one big stone poses the danger of dropping the stone. -- WL -------------------------------------------------- [Does one have a moral responsibility to use language in a certain way?] I think most issues of language come down to a matter of choice rather than of moral responsibility. I don't think about "moral responsibility" every single time I make a decision about my language -- if I did, I would go insane. It's appropriate to indicate gender if you feel like it, and not if you don't. I'm not willing to put my writing style up to a vote. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com First they came for the drug users, and I said nothing because I wasn't a drug user. Then they came for the atheists, and I said nothing because I wasn't an atheist. Then they came for the hackers... --mortis -------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if you you feel controlled/manipulated by others in your life?] Write down a Bill of Rights -- what you believe you have a right to choose in your life and what you are willing to do for others. For example, you might write "I will be polite to people in the house, but I have the right not to socialize with them" and "I have the right not to tolerate accusations; therefore I will leave the room if a discussion turns into accusation" and "I have the right to choose my own friends for whatever reasons I choose and to choose not to consider someone a friend for whatever reasons I choose." Then whenever someone starts this game, hand zir a copy of your Bill of Rights and say "This is what I am willing to do. If it's not halfway, then it's not. Take it or leave it" and refuse to participate further in the discussion. If you stand up for yourself, you will not prevent his getting upset or frustrated. If that's your primary concern, then your best bet is to do whatever he wants. :-( If you say no and mean it, he will probably get more frustrated at first. But over time, if you stand firm, a new solution will emerge. I was in a similar situation with someone who kept putting more demands and restrictions on me and would get frustrated and angry when I resisted. I would get sick/anxious when he was angry, so I'd do what he wanted so he'd stop being angry. I ended up leaving that relationship partly because of that dynamic. One of the tenets in my Bill of Rights is that *no one* has the right to control me through fear. He may feel that you don't care. That's up to him. You can't control how he feels. You might reflect that back to him, with an emphasis on reminding him that this is his feeling, not some Universal Truth -- "I understand you feel right now that I don't care about you. I'm sorry that you feel that way. I do care. But I am not willing to do ." A book that helps a lot in teaching people to communicate this way is GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT by Harville Hendrix. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the center of the silent Word. --T.S. Eliot -------------------------------------------------- [What can you do about loneliness?] No single human being can cure another human being's loneliness and depression. The best way to arm oneself against loneliness is to have several friends and activities one can choose from when it strikes. That way if all your friends are busy there is still someplace you can go. Even if you have an SO who can help a lot of the time, you still need other interests and activities for the times when your SO isn't available. The best way to find a cure for loneliness and depression that's *always* there is to find a spiritual path. If that doesn't work for you, you can find activities to get involved in, join a support group. Get treatment for depression if that's what's causing your loneliness. Take the issue into your own hands rather than waiting for another person to fix it. (Recommendation: ZEN AND THE ART OF MAKING A LIVING) -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test," said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster. "I wish the toaster to be happy too." --Unknown -------------------------------------------------- [How to handle threesomes] If someone feels left out, he feels left out, end of story; those are his feelings, and concentrate on actions that help alleviate them as well as giving other participants what they want. If the discussion turns into "Well, you have no right to feel left out," then no one's needs are served, IMO. Keeping a tally sheet of orgasms is not the best way to ensure that all participants feel things are fair. When I am having sex, sometimes there gets to be a point when I need an orgasm or I'm going to feel mighty frustrated. That has nothing to do with whether the other person has had an orgasm or half a dozen. And if, when I want an orgasm, my partner turns to another partner and says "Take care of yourself, dear," I'm not going to be particularly happy with the situation. I much prefer discussing "rules" in advance (with all the participants) rather than jumping into bed and working things out on the fly. For me, there is MUCH too much going on once I'm in bed to stop things and say "Ahem, I think we need some guidelines now." And it is much harder for me to say that I am feeling uncomfortable if several other people in the bed all seem to be having a good time. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com i'd rather not be "coupled up" by anyone (i have unusual docking software). --a -------------------------------------------------- [How do you choose a therapist?] Simple problems respond to a behavioral approach. Complex ones don't, necessarily. I would caution against people's believing that all their problems can be *solved* in 6 to 10 sessions. My advice for picking a therapist would be to choose one who works with a variety of methods -- not just talk therapy, because many problems don't respond to talk therapy alone, and not just body work or emotion work or spiritual work, but a combination, and a therapist who is insightful enough to tell when to use the various methods. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com A pessimist is someone who has had to listen to too many optimists. -- Unknown -------------------------------------------------- [Who's responsible for making a poly relationship work?] I don't think that the person in the middle has to or should bear most of the responsibility for making a three- way relationship work. That puts a lot of pressure on that person and pressure can cause them to think unclearly. I think all parties involved bear responsibility for making it work. That is true whether there is one poly person or several in the group. The responsibilities of the different parties differ somewhat but all can be summarized as being honest about their feelings and striving for clear communication and agreements that feel fair to everybody. I also disagree that a relationship has to be smooth and stable to make poly work. I do think that there needs to be basic trust that problems can be resolved (maybe that is what you mean by "stable"). -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom ... for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough. -- William Blake -------------------------------------------------- [How do you treat partners during a crisis?] When I get to see someone only infrequently, and they spend the whole visit talking about another person, or curtail the visit to go attend to another crisis without even bothering to explain and apologize, I feel very unimportant to that person and sometimes I even feel used. If the issue was that he didn't respect your choice *to go to Cleveland* or didn't agree that it was your choice to make, then there's a problem. But if it were me, I would not object to someone's leaving so much as I would object to zir not even offering the politeness of discussing it with me first, saying something like "I really feel that I need to go to Cleveland; I'm very sorry that our visit has to be cut off, but I would not be good company if I couldn't be with my friend right now. I hope you aren't too angry about it..." I would feel unhappy if someone left under those circumstances, but I'd probably deal with it. If someone packed without even offering an explanation and an apology, I would really feel like I wasn't much more than an afternoon's entertainment to zir. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Ich habe einen hupchen mit dir zu ruepfen. "I have a small hen to shred with you." -------------------------------------------------- [How does one handle three-way relationships?] I've often been in a situation in which the party in the middle has something at stake and therefore tries to do more than zie should to push the people at the ends of the V together. I've been in that situation both in the middle and at the ends. In my experience, when the party in the middle tries to do too much, things end up worse than if the party in the middle had done nothing at all. So it's a delicate balance. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Whatever you want too much you can't have, so when you REALLY want something, try to want it a little less. -- Walter Slovotsky -------------------------------------------------- [Definition of codependent vs. loving behavior] Being codependent is frequently putting another adult's needs ahead of your own. Being loving is considering another adult's needs alongside your own. Sometimes you may decide to do what they want and sometimes you may decide to do what you want, or you might compromise or negotiate. Unselfish is a manipulative word and I think it should be banned from the language. I believe the best way to be loving is to make sure that your own needs are met; then you have more energy to give love to others. But in order to make sure your needs are met, you need to know what they are, and that means thinking about yourself, and that means being "selfish." So how can unselfishness be loving? -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Love: a blurring of the distinction between selfish and selfless. -- Ofer Inbar -------------------------------------------------- [Feeling uncomfortable with a poly situation that developed out of a secret affair] There are several issues going on here. (1) You're being told that you "should" accept something, that you should change your feelings. But feelings can't be scolded into changing. You don't accept the relationship right now and that's that. Of course, your feelings are not the same as your actions. Despite your feelings, you might still choose to give permission for the relationship to continue, or ask that it end, or decide to stay out of it, or any number of other options. But your feelings are your feelings regardless. (2) It may take some time to assimilate finding out that your husband had a secret relationship. Your having a lover too is probably not going to make it a lot easier. (3) Your husband's lover also has feelings about the situation, and it seems things are turning out in a way she does not particularly like. True, she "asked for it" in a way by agreeing to an illicit relationship with the possibility that it might be discovered, but once again, that doesn't change the fact that she has feelings about it. I would recommend getting it all out on the table with a discussion among the three of you, or a discussion between you and her in private. The goal would be to come to an open agreement among the three of you about what sort of relationship(s) will exist among you -- something that you can all agree is at least marginally acceptable to try, although you may not be really happy with it. It may be of course that there is no overlap, but if there is, it's worth the work to find it. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com No caffe latte? And you call yourselves a bookstore? -- Shanahan -------------------------------------------------- [Can anyone really turn off the ability to love -- i.e., feel monogamous?] In terms of romantic love, some people do have that little valve. "Programming" comes in where society tries to tell you this is the ONLY way to be. Some people are actually monogamous and prefer monogamous partners, even after they have seen through the programming and know that is not the only way to be. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Programming is like sex: Everyone thinks they do it better than anyone else. -------------------------------------------------- How much public cuddling we do depends on whom my partner and I are with. Using a "Kinsey-like" scale of cuddling, with our parents, we are between 2 and 3; with friends, between 3 and 4; at ordinary parties, between 4 and 5; at cuddle or play parties, between 5 and 6. :) As for in public with strangers -- I'm a consensual exhibitionist, which means I enjoy it, but I stop before the point where I start getting nasty looks. I'm not into shocking people for its own sake. That usually translates to "between 4 and 5." It also depends on which sweetie I'm with. Only my partner really likes PDA in public among strangers. My other sweeties don't much like it, either because they prefer to be discreet/independent, or because they don't particularly want to invite gay-bashing. I am unhappy if a sweetie acts like zie doesn't know me, and depending on circumstances, I sometimes want zir to publically declare our relationship among people we know, at least to the point of touching and interacting with me as well as touching and interacting with others. However, sometimes this is not possible because my partner and I avoid cuddling with other people in front of each other. I don't particularly care whether a sweetie is cuddly in public among strangers -- I grew up in a non-touchy culture and I understand the subtle discomfort some people feel with public touching, and I understand that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how important one feels the relationship is. This means I am OK with public behavior somewhere between 1 and 2, although I prefer 3-4. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Sometimes you want to ride herd over the default choices. --Colorful metaphor hall of fame -------------------------------------------------- [Who handles boring chores in a relationship?] I sometimes like doing repetitive tasks such as dishes, because when I do dishes I can think about whatever I please, or talk on the (speaker)phone, or listen to music. The issue is not who does what tasks, but how the tasks are viewed. Fixing a car is often seen as "more important" than doing dishes because it involves more "figuring out." Whereas repetitive tasks such as dishes that free one's mind for thinking are not seen as important. I would like to see a society in which people were encouraged to take meditation classes so they could properly understand the attitude to take toward doing dishes. I would like those people to be valued as advanced members of our society -- heck, anyone can figure out how to put something together, that's an ape thing, but only an evolved human can bring the proper meditative state toward repetitive tasks. That's another way of looking at it. I find it ironic that Gregorian Chant (a repetitive kind of music designed to bore one into a meditative trance :) is becoming popular but doing dishes is still seen as meaningless drudge work compared to changing the oil in a car. Actually, my partner and I tend to do the chores together. That makes it go faster (more than twice as fast, sometimes it seems to me) and it's fun 'cos we like working together. And that way we both know what the chore involves. However, this does require that we accept the way the other does things. I have a friend who had a new baby and complained bitterly that her husband didn't do enough of the work of taking care of the baby. But when I visited, I saw that when her husband picked up the baby or gave him a bath, she tended to criticize how he handled the baby. I can see how that would lead to a situation where she did most of the work. Now, she said "He is incompetent on purpose so he won't have to do it much." But I think he just had a different standard, not necessarily an "incompetent" one. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com 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 -------------------------------------------------- [Making the transition from mono to poly] I was poly before meeting my current partner, in terms of having overlapping nonserious relationships from time to time. But when it turned out that we wanted to be partners, a different script suddenly started playing, and it included monogamy. Problem was, we had been poly up to that point and neither of us wanted to give up our other sweeties. Also, the script responded to any public interest in other sweeties or potential sweeties with a certain degree of uncomfortable possessiveness. I had been poly too, so I didn't think he was "using me." But *I* was willing to give it up to be monogamous, now that we were in a *real* relationship, and I didn't understand why he wasn't. When I considered being poly because he wanted me to, I felt that was giving away too much of my power and too much of *my* vision of the relationship. When I considered being poly because *I* wanted to, the desire wasn't strong enough to push me through the pain we were going through. At this point my partner had given me the gift of offering to be monogamous if that's what I wanted, and we had been monogamous temporarily for a couple of months. I had to decide which it was going to be. So I turned to a method I use for getting intuitive answers to things, and it said, to my surprise and some displeasure, "You must be poly." That was the best way for me to get through the difficulty -- replace one script with another, more intuitive and better attuned to who I was as a person. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com Four Stages of Acceptance: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so. --J.B.S. Haldane -------------------------------------------------- [Is fear at the root of every negative emotion?] Some people live with fear as the root of most of their motivation. Those people experience fear as the root of everything. I used to feel that way, so I know. But for me (probably because of medication, not because of some great evolution as a being), fear is no longer the root of everything, nor of every negative emotion. For me, there is no single root. Sometimes I get angry because of a belief that something I see happening is *wrong*, morally. That rarely involves fear, for me. Sometimes I get angry because I feel uncomfortable, emotionally, physically, or spiritually. I could intellectualize and say that involves fear that the feeling will continue. But it doesn't *feel* that way. It simply feels like anger. Yesterday my partner accidentally hurt me physically. I got angry and cried. But there was no element of fear there. It was strictly physical discomfort. I was not afraid he'd continue hurting me. The day before, I got angry 'cos he said a crucial line in a movie before it happened, and it spoiled the line for me. I was angry because he gets pissed when I do things like that, and I didn't think it was fair -- double standard. But not because I "feared" he'd do it again. I think people are different, and trying to find a single root cause for people's behavior or feelings is inappropriate. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com 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. --Kundera -- -------------------------------------------------- [What leads people to be polyamorous?] I'm polyamorous because I like exploring various kinds of relationships and connecting with people in lots of different ways. It so happens that multiple relationships fulfill various wants I couldn't have fulfilled by one relationship, and provide new experiences. That's nice, but that is not *why* I'm poly. I can fulfill my wants without being poly and have new experiences without being poly. My primary focus is on connecting with people, not on satisfying various needs of mine (other than the need to connect with people). Polyamory gives me more ways of connecting to people and that's why it's right for me. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I got a life. I ordered it through the computer. -------------------------------------------------- [Should we focus more on the sex part of polyamory than the love part? Wouldn't that be more radical?] It is dangerous to start down a path that makes what society thinks more important than what we think (including what society thinks about sex). But I do not think that focusing on the "love/intimacy" part of polyamory automatically means that. Romantic love with multiple people is most certainly frowned upon (whether or not it includes sex). OTOH, having sex with multiple people tends to be pardoned more easily than having multiple romantic relationships. Go to a bookstore and look in the self help section, and you'll see a lot of books about surviving and forgiving your spouse's affair. Now see whether any of those books suggest that it's OK for your spouse to continue in a romantic relationship with that person as long as they're not having sex. None that I've seen. When I was encountering polyamory for the first time, my difficulty was not in accepting that someone in a primary partnership with me would want sex with other people, but that zie would want and need romantic relationships with other people. Romantic relationships seemed like more of a threat. I think that's why there are so many "Don't ask, don't tell" arrangements. The person asking for that arrangement is saying, in essence, "You can have sex as long as it doesn't mean something important, something you would have to tell me." To the extent that I am challenging something by doing polyamory, I am challenging the restriction that says "You can have only one adult sexual/romantic relationship at a time." -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. -- Lillian Hellman -------------------------------------------------- [Handling jealousy] I don't think jealousy obscures things or provides a built-in explanation. What explanation does it provide? (Unless it's a license for the non-jealous party/ies to cluck and say "Zie's jealous, what a shame" and ignore the issue.) I do think that one can silence oneself by assuming that any negative feeling having to do with other people's relationships is selfish and evil. I think people have different ways of articulating/explaining their feelings, and some people are better at it than others. The first time I felt jealousy in my partnership I knew what I was feeling and why. But I believed there wasn't room in my partnership for that feeling, and so I felt I wasn't allowed to feel it, talk about it, or ask for any changes. So I let it fester. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest. -- BABYLON 5 -------------------------------------------------- [What do you do if a new partner wants your relationship with zir kept secret from an existing partner?] I would not agree to keep a liaison secret from my partner for any reason. I might *possibly* agree to keep a liaison secret from another person's partner if I trusted that they really had a "Don't ask, don't tell" agreement. But in most cases I would be suspicious that permission really had not been given. In such a situation, definitely the only kind of liaison I would permit myself would be a brief one with someone I was not likely to come into much contact with in the future. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com My job is to start arguments, not resolve them. --J.M. Straczynski -------------------------------------------------- [Is it useful to deal with jealousy by looking into your past?] My past does not directly connect much with how I respond in the present. Changes in my feelings have much more to do with present stimuli than with revamping my past. Take jealousy for example: My jealousy began to lose its force when it became OK to talk about it with my partner and when it became clear that my partner was willing to change his behavior, to a certain degree, to accommodate it. I also explored and learned where some of the jealousy came from. That was interesting, and it helped my partner understand me better, but it didn't make much of a difference directly in how I felt in the present. I don't feel jealous over how my partner's other lovers treat zir, but I did feel jealous in kind of that way a couple of times when my partner was pursuing someone who is acting unavailable. For several years I felt that a child part of me was running large chunks of my life. I did a ritual in which the child part was provided with an older sister to help her grow up. So rather than digging back into my past, I am trying to grow up in the present. That works well for me. -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com The pursuit of the Inner Child has taken over just at the moment when Americans ought to be figuring out where their Inner Adult is. --Robert Hughes -------------------------------------------------- [How to view insecurity] There are two ways of looking at insecurity. One is to assume that insecurity is all your own fault -- if only you didn't have these internal weaknesses, you'd be able to happily enjoy your relationships with your partners without ever asking anything from them in return, other than to be there when they felt like it. The other is to look in your environment for things that might be making you insecure. Is one of your partners suddenly behaving in ways you didn't expect? Treating you in ways you consider unreasonable? If that could be addressed, would you feel secure? If so, maybe you're feeling uncomfortable for a good reason. Maybe your discomfort is not evil and harmful, but an important warning sign. Let's say your partner comes up to you one day and slaps you (nonconsensually), and then repeats this twice a day for a week. You might feel angry about this. What would you assume is the source of the anger? Is it because your partner's behaving in a way you don't like and don't understand? Or is it that you have poor pain tolerance? (That's what your partner is saying. That's what your friends are saying.) Let's say your anger gets out of control on the eighth day and you hit your partner back hard enough to knock zir down. Ooh--now your anger is being called "very harmful." What should you do? Go to a firewalking NLP seminar to learn self esteem and pain tolerance? Or tell your partner that this behavior is unacceptable? -- Stef rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty stef@netcom.com There's a difference between keeping the door unlocked, and keeping your mind open wide enough to let all the flies in. --Mixed metaphor hall of fame