Poly Momma

Last weekend I had a great date with a new fella. He is geeky and smart and sexy and all those things I like in a guy (if he  reads this, I hope he’s not embarrassed).  We had tons in common, plus, he’s poly so I didn’t have to explain anything. We seemed to match up quite nicely.

Anyway, carried away on a wave of NRE, I wrote a rather gushy email to him, which I immediately regretted sending. After all, he lives in another city, we both have primary partners and so I have a very specific level of relationship I’m after and I was afraid I’d given the impression that I was going to go boiling his bunny.

After fretting most of the day that he would be scared off by my enthusiasm, we finally chatted late last night (well, late for me is 10:30 PM). He explained quite bluntly that his plate was full and that he couldn’t commit to anything serious with a new person, which knocked me back for some reason.  I guess because I had put myself out there in my email, I felt slightly rejected, even though I never wanted anything even remotely serious either. But then it made me wonder, what else could he have possibly thought I wanted? I can’t even fathom trying to have any sort of serious relationship from a distance, not to mention the fact that we both have primary partners already.

He said he didn’t want things to get complicated.

Well, Amen to that. Complications are complicated.

It got me thinking, I’m all for setting boundaries, but all this paranoia is silly. If we took sex out of the picture, we wouldn’t have to hash things out like this. Let’s say it was some other shared hobby, like board games. He and I would just be new friends. It’s always better to play board games with someone you get along with and with whom you have other things to talk about. We’d chat on the internet, talk about board games, and maybe hang out and play a board game when I happen to be in his neck of the woods.  I don’t think it needs to be any more complicated than that, and I do not want it to be. If the friendship grows over time, that’s great. Otherwise, hey, board games are pretty fun!

At the risk of restating the obvious, I am married and I have a small child. I can’t devote time to something big and complicated and I don’t have much emotional energy to devote to anything serious.
However, no matter how casual something is, there is still some small amount of emotional investment. I mean, I even have an emotional attachment to some of my shoes (why else would I keep my purple Doc Martens around when I haven’t worn them in years?) so some emotional attachment is inevitable. I think it’s only fair to be honest about that and not let it be some scary taboo, otherwise things can get even more complicated. Trust me, I’ve been there.

The truth of the matter is, my relationship with my husband is great but there are a few things that we don’t get from each other. Also, both my husband and I like to get away every now and then and be on our own. We’re very independent people and these getaways are essential to the health of our marriage. He has several friends out of town, I don’t really have any. And so it would be nice to have someone to…play board games with when I’m away.

Anyway, I hope this all works out. If not, at least I learned a little something about myself.

Deborah Anapol, Ph.D, has published this excerpt from her book, Polyamory in the 21st Century in the Love Without Limits blog on the Psychology Today website. It’s a great introduction to some of the psychological and social reasons people choose polyamory. There is one aspect I found, at first, to be problematic. That is, the topic of sex addiction. However, in reading further, she is careful to point out that sex addiction, while far from the norm in polyamory, is still a destructive force when people use polyamory as an excuse for their obsession. I still have a problem with pathologising sexual behaviour (when such behaviour is between consenting adults) but there are still some destructive patterns that could be labeled as an addiction. Dr. Anapol also points out that while polyamory can provide shelter for these destructive patterns, a positive label can at least bring them out into the open.  She makes some other wonderful points and acknowledges the diversity of experiences in polyamory, unafraid to acknowledge the dark side without painting the whole movement as a ‘failed experiment’ the way some ignorant journalists might. This is one of my favourite sections:

“True, plenty of people use multi-partner relating as a strategy to avoid attachment, some even recommend this, but in my experience attachment is a powerful force which can override any mental argument or situational defense. Many people hope to find greater stability, depth, and personal growth in their intimate relating by choosing polyamory, while others seek the same qualities in monogamy. The bottom line is that whether we like it or not, all relationships are dynamic by nature and any effort to avoid this reality is doomed to failure.”

I think that pretty much sums up my pre-marriage non-monogamy. If I had actually bothered to learn about responsible non-monogamy strategies back before I met my husband, there were a lot of mistakes I would have avoided and a lot of people I could have avoided hurting. When I first learned about poly, I was in the “avoiding attachment” phase. I used to joke that I had a “90 day warranty” when it came to monogamy. I couldn’t stay in a monogamous relationship for more than 3 months before my eye would wander and I’d pull out the, “Well, I’m polyamorous, you knew this when we started going out, so I can do what I want” excuse then I’d do what (or who) I wanted and come back and say, “I think we need to take some time apart” or some such insensitive nonsense.

Basically, I was a jerk. And I used polyamory as an excuse to be a jerk.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with my sexual behaviour, but I was using poly to justify some very destructive patterns. By doing that, I was hurting the concept of polyamory. All those people I hurt now have a warped concept of polyamory because of how I treated them in the name of poly. For that, I am very sorry.

A common thread I’ve been hearing lately about polyamory, is that some people, when they are first introduced to it are scared off by “all the sex.”

One person’s first experience was being handed a copy of The Ethical Slut, and finding all the talk about sex to be too confronting. Another was this article on Alas, A Blog! about the writer’s experience of a friend’s attempt to coerce her and her boyfriend into a poly relationship via Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein:

“And then there was the polyamory. Specifically, there was a wide-eyed, subjectivity-less, hot-hot-hot female character named Hamadryad who nurtured others with her healing sexuality…

And all of a sudden? I was no longer wishy-washy bend-like-a-reed on the subject of polyamory. In fact, I was no longer wishy-washy on the subject of Heinlein. I now had a distinct opinion of Heinlein: read Heinlein, said this opinion, and lose your lunch.”

When I read that, part of me really wanted to jump up and down and scream, “NO! NO! THAT’S NOT POLYAMORY! THAT’S NOT WHAT IT’S ABOUT!! YER DOIN’ IT WRONG!”
But that would be denying the fact that for a lot of people, polyamory is about sex. Or at least, it’s about sexual freedom. It certainly was for me, back when I was new to it. But then, I was (and still am) a sexual person. I was discovering my sexuality and was all about sexual freedom. “I can haz multiple partners? And there’s a word for it! Awesome!”

But that’s not the whole picture.

I think part of the problem is the definition of sex. Sex, as it is most commonly defined in our heterocentric, patriarchal culture, is when one person’s genitals go inside another person’s genitals. Specifically, when a penis goes into a vagina. That’s the big, stupid wall that is erected around monogamy. We can do whatever we like, so long as nobody’s ding-a-ling goes in anybody’s hoo-ha. That is how we’ve officially defined monogamy: exclusive rights to someone else’s genitals.

This is, of course, a ridiculously narrow definition of monogamy. Ask most monogamous couples and their definition of unacceptable behaviour could be anything from oral sex to simply looking at another person. Hell, if TV sitcoms are to be believed, some monogamous couples even consider it cheating when their partner fantasises about someone else during lovemaking. But even many monogamous couples allow some things: flirting is ok, but not kissing; oral sex is allowed, but not intercourse; snuggling is ok, but only if clothes stay on; girls are ok, but not boys; etc. So, really, open couples just take it a step further and say intercourse is allowed. It’s just one step, but it’s officially what separates us from monogamous couples.

So really, it’s not just about sex. Sex is just that tiny, but significant, difference. It’s about relationships, honesty and communication. It’s about making sure there are no surprises, as Mo’nique said in her famous interview with Barbara Walters. Sex is part of it, but if you’re in a monogamous relationship and you don’t clearly define your boundaries, you’re asking for trouble. I’ve learned that the hard way many a time (“What? It’s not like we had sex, we just fooled around!”) and it was not pretty.

It helps me to think of polyamory like this: You have lots of friends, some are closer than others, but you have various levels of intimacy with all of them and you don’t care about any of them any less if you make new friends. In polyamory, the same is true of lovers. That’s it.