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Posts Tagged ‘polyamorous relationships’

In which I ask myself “Why?”

Posted in polyamory, relationships, sex, tagged , , , , , , , on 05/07/2012| 1 Comment »

I mentioned in my last post that I’d been questioning whether or not being polyamorous was worth it. I came back with the answer ‘Yes’ but didn’t really explain why.

I did a bit of brainstorming about why I do this, to serve as a reminder for myself and hopefully anyone who reads this. I’ve written before about Deborah Anapol’s article, Why People Choose Polyamory and found some inspiration there again.

So, why?

 Because I love being in love.

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Being in love and having it returned is one of the best feelings and I have found that being polyamorous means I get to experience that even more. I don’t have to stop being in love with one person in order to be in love with someone else. I never have to face that agonising experience of ‘BUT I LOVE THEM BOTH, HOW CAN I CHOOSE?’

Because I love sex.

Free Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I say it’s not just about the sex, but it definitely plays a big role. I do like sex a lot. It’s something I enjoy without guilt, and I am not afraid to seek it out or ask for it. I’m a sex-positive person and for me, sex is healthy and fun, however there is a lot of emotion that comes along with sexual intimacy. Polyamory offers an ethical framework where neither the physical act nor the emotions are taboo.

Because I want to grow as a person and push past my comfort zone.

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Polyamory is challenging to both social norms and personal boundaries. In Deborah Anapol’s article on this, she says:

“The blessing and the curse of polyamory is that love which includes more than one tends to illuminate those dark shadows many would prefer to ignore.”

I personally hate glossing over problems. I prefer ‘front loading things,’ as my boyfriend is fond of saying, and keeping everything out in the open. This can be very confronting for other people, though many find it rather refreshing. As a dear friend of mine said to me once, “What I love about you, is I never have to guess what you’re thinking.” For better or worse, this is how I deal with things. If there is an elephant in the room, I say, “Hey! An elephant!” Then stride right up to it and start feeding it peanuts. For me, the communication and exploration aspects that are essential in making polyamory work are one of the things I enjoy. Though it is exhausting at times, I learn more about myself and constantly grow as a person.

Because I want my child to grow up in a happy home.

Mother and Child

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This one is being challenged at the moment, but I feel that forming more close bonds with other adults means my son will have a bigger family and more access to adult role models than if my husband and I were monogamous. We live far from our blood relatives, but we both believe in having a larger family. The article I wrote about in my last post covers this topic well, so I won’t rehash all of that.

I find that this lifestyle is rewarding and challenging. Sometimes I think it might be easier to be monogamous, but for me, it would be limiting, monotonous and I would have to deny much of my natural sexuality to make it work. When faced with the choice between the two, I would choose this lifestyle every time.

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Have I been a Poly-anna? Some thoughts on Deborah Anapol’s article in Psychology Today

Posted in families, parenting, polyamory, relationships, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 03/07/2012| Leave a Comment »

Deborah Anapol’s article in Psychology Today, “Group Marriage and the Future of the Family,” was published back in March, but it only crossed my path today. It is a very positive article (I’d expect nothing less from Anapol, author of Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits) and paints a very rosy picture of the benefits of polyamory on children:

“One of the most common concerns about polyamory is that it’s harmful to children, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Multiple-adult families and committed intimate networks have the potential of providing dependent children with additional nurturing adults who can meet their material, intellectual, and emotional needs. While parents may end up focusing less attention on their children, children may gain new aunts, uncles, and adopted parents.”

I find this article timely, as my poly-family has recently had its limits tested and right now looks dangerously close to breaking. I won’t go into details because it’s still a fresh wound and nothing is certain. But it does raise the question for me, what if these adults, with whom a child forms a close bond, decide they no longer want to or are unable to be a part of that family? It could potentially be as stressful as a divorce, especially if there is animosity amongst the adults. What about when the departing adult wishes to maintain a relationship with a child they helped raise, but the biological parents want nothing to do with that person, the pain of loss being still too strong? In cases where the relationship is clearly defined, i.e. the leaving partner is the biological parent or a spouse of one of the parents, there are legal rights and clear custody arrangements, but what about the ‘other’ people? The pseudo-aunties and sort-of-uncles? Is the idealistic dream of ‘one big happy family’ just that? An unattainable ideal?

I worry sometimes that we who practice polyamory and advocate for its acceptance perhaps paint too rosy a picture of polyamory. Sometimes, it’s very, very difficult. Lately, I’ve been facing a lot of challenges in my relationships and they have all come fast and hard, one after another. A friend of mine once asked me, baffled by my emotional pain about a recent breakup, “Isn’t the point of getting married so that you don’t have to go through this again?” and I’ve asked myself the question several times over the last month or so whther it is worth all this pain to keep pursuing polyamorous relationships. For me, the answer is just as easy to answer as if I were single and pursuing monogamous relationships: yes. My relationships are worth it.

Whatever the shape of a relationship, there is always potential for pain, heartbreak, jealousy, anger, loss and more. When it goes wrong, it hurts. Furthermore, you can be doing everything right and still wind up hurting someone else or getting hurt. When you open yourself up to intimacy, you make yourself vulnerable. That’s what makes it intimate. The more people you open up to, the more chances there are for things to go horribly wrong. Is it fair to put children in the middle of that? I don’t know. It’s a good question, and I’m starting to see the benefit in people being closeted to their kids. It breaks my heart to think of taking away a member of my son’s stable network of adults, but at the same time, I don’t know if I can open up myself or my husband to being hurt by this person again.

I still believe that polyamory opens up the potential to a larger network of adults to give children a larger family of which the typical nuclear family deprives them. I agree with everything in Anapol’s article, and I’ve seen examples personally of people forming a large poly household of interconnected and inter-committed adults. Maybe that is the key, that a greater commitment is required to make things work, whether between two people or more. I don’t have all the answers, but I do hope I find them, and I hope Deborah Anapol is right when she says,

“…polyamory may be at least as good as the other options for raising healthy children.”

It’s the least I can hope for.

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Polyamory cards!

Posted in coming out, polyamory, tagged , , , , , , on 19/04/2011| 1 Comment »

Recently, as I may have mentioned before, I went back to work. I’m only working one to three days a week, but it helps.
On my first shift back at work, I was talking to a former, now current, co-worker and I couldn’t remember whether or not I had explained my relationship style to her. I decided to mention it anyway, and found myself derailing the conversation to explain myself.
It occurred to me, it would be nice to have a simple way of explaining it, or some sort of information card to give someone. While my co-worker was on her break, I quickly wrote up some key points on a bit of paper and handed it to her when she came back. She nodded and said, “Oh, ok. Cool! That makes much more sense now.”

And so, I decided to have some cards printed up.

A Polyamory Card

I ordered 250, which seems like a lot to me. If you’re in Australia and you’d like to order some, leave me a comment and I’ll send you an email with details.

I later found out that Joreth had the same idea, and provides a free .pdf for her version of Polyamory Cards to print out and hand out.

These cards should provide a little bit of clarity, and, as I state on the cards, can be a starting point for future discussions. I think have succinctly addressed what I find are the most common questions, and I think leaving sex down at the fourth Key Point will calm fears that I’m some sort of sex weirdo.

I’m wanting to be more ‘out’ amongst friends and people I care about and even some acquaintances, but as I’m going to be getting a degree in education and a hopefully a job teaching, I know in the future I’m going to have to be very careful. I already try not to talk explicitly about my sex life on this blog, but I know that as soon as someone hears you say ‘non-monogamy’ they instantly think about all the crazy, kinky group sex you must be having. Sex is tied up so intimately with morality in our culture that the idea of polyamory strikes some people as hedonistic and immoral. I really hope I can compartmentalise well enough to keep this side of my life separate from my career, and I really hope my lifestyle won’t affect my future job choices.  I also hope that I can be strong enough to stand by my choices and the people I love if faced with that decision.

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Language barriers

Posted in relationships, tagged , , , , , , on 02/12/2010| 2 Comments »

I like to think of myself as a good writer. At the very least, I try to be a careful writer. I steer away from ambiguous words, and try to illustrate my point in several ways (when I have a point, that is). This prevents others from taking what I write the wrong way, or inferring something that isn’t there.

These skills are also important in relationships. Since communication is so important, it’s also important to be clear in your use of language. Euphemism, innuendo, and vague word choices can set you up for some disastrous results. I wrote about this before when talking about how “sex” can even be defined differently depending on our boundaries or by the circumstances. Ambiguity is the enemy of art, to paraphrase Stanislavski, and it’s also the enemy of healthy communication.

For example, when setting boundaries, it’s important to be clear what you mean. Saying, “I’m not interested in a serious relationship” leaves way too much room for creative interpretations. “Relationship” could mean several things, and “serious” – what the hell is that?  The person saying it could mean ” I don’t have a lot of time to devote to a partner right now, but I’d be interested in an ongoing friendship with benefits,” but to the person hearing it, it could mean “I’m just interested in having fun for tonight, be gone before breakfast,” or vice versa.  Besides, you can’t regulate something like emotional attachment. Things you can regulate are concrete things like actions, time and space constraints and priorities. Rules that work are “No dates during the week,” “Never hook up while drunk,” “No sleeping over when I’m home,” or “My primary relationship comes first over any others.” There is no wiggle room on those. They are clear, concrete and well defined.

Another example is in reporting activities to a partner. “We fooled around” could mean just kissing to one partner, but to the other could mean oral sex. But in some cases, that phrase is acceptible if there is further information included. “We fooled around, but didn’t go very far. Just some touching.” That’s still vague, but it established some clearer parameters without getting into potentially uncomforable details: at least the partner knows that there was no oral or penetrative sex. Fair enough.

Clear communication means eliminating guesswork. Unless a person has all of the pertinent information, they can’t make an informed decision. And everyone has the right to make an informed decision.

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Poly FAILs

Posted in polyamory, relationships, tagged , , , , on 02/12/2010| 3 Comments »

Well, that was fun.

All this complication, confusion and fretting has come to a close. For me, anyway.

FAIL.

New Guy was not being paranoid, and it turns out it wasn’t my fault for getting “too excited.” I wound up in the middle of another couple’s communication issues, and was actually somewhat of a victim in the whole thing. I wasn’t operating with a full set of information and therefore made assumptions based on my previous experience. Had I known the truth of the situation, I would have made different decisions.  I guess I learned not to assume that everyone’s polyamorous relationship is based on the same thing. I actually already knew that, but in the future, I will try to suss out the whole picture before I proceed and be clearer about my own expectations from the start.

So now, instead of a New Guy, I have a New Friend.

In light of this recent catastrophe, I’d like to share some of the other poly FAILs I’ve encountered along my journey.

  • There was the guy who knew I was poly, then proceded, during coitus, to ask, “Why would you want to be with anyone but me?” And it was all I could do not to push him off me and say “Actually, the fact that you’d ask that makes me not want to be with you at all.”
  • There was the fellow who,  over the course of a year of an open relationship told me repeatedly that he was not in love with me, was incapable of being in love, then broke down after I ended things with him,  telling me that he had always loved me. I did love him, but after a year of dealing with his self destructive behaviours, I couldn’t watch him abuse himself anymore. He only made things worse by trying to emotionally blackmail me with talk of love when I tried to walk away.
  • There were the many times I got attached to a lover, only to have him leave me when a “real relationship” came along.
  • Then there were all my failed attempts when, after a series of casual lovers, I thought the only solution to my craving for intimacy was to pursue a monogamous relationship with someone, in spite of the fact that I’m not, by nature, monogamous. Those did not last.

All these experiences helped me to grow and to get closer to figuring out what I want. I’m grateful now that I have a partner who supports me and loves me no matter what. Now, at the end of the day I have someone I love to come home to.

I hope that New Friend can learn from his mistakes and become a better person from this experience. And maybe, at some point, New Friend can be New Guy after all. I’m not holding my breath, though.

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