Polysaturated

I have a lot more in common than monogamous people than I might care to admit.  See, I’m in a number of parallel open relationships, but I don’t happen to embrace the term "slut" the way a lot of fun-loving, friendly, sexually adventurous, and open people do.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the term; quite the opposite.  In some ways, I wish I were one.  It just doesn’t resonate with me.

I happen to be in love with what society might have me believe is more than my fair share of people.  I'm sleeping with most of them.  Right now, I’d even say all of them.  The term "in love with" implies to me a degree of reciprocity, and though there may be a fair number of people for whom I feel love without really knowing or caring about their opinions of me, I’m pretty sure that if the feeling is mutual right now, I’m already involved with them.

The fact that it’s more than my societally-allotted number of people makes me busy.  Really busy.  Good relationships take time and care, and I’ve got a number of them going on.  So to find a new person would take a lot of effort, probably on their part.  The bar is really high for my time and attention.

The truth is, casual sex would probably teach me a thing or two.  I don’t even know what I don’t know about the possibilities of sex, and a great way to find out would be by demonstration.  A proclivity toward low-investment, casual (but safe) sexual activity would probably benefit all of my partners when I am in bed or on the kitchen counter with them.  But I find sex a lot more fun after a number of tries with the same person, and with a fair bit of emotional investment.  A good and common argument for monogamy is that committed monogamous people already don’t have as much time as they want with their primaries; how can they conceive of inviting in another person who would also use up time?  My rejoinder is usually that the quality of time improves in an open relationship.  But there must be some limit to that as more people become involved, and I’m rapidly reaching it.  Hence the term polysaturated.

I’ve noticed that about myself for a while--long enough to reserve the blogspot name.  But I still run around in kink group circles, either to look for unicorns or to help get a partner laid (a rousing personal endorsement works wonders).  The people are wonderful, and the events are fun and friendly.  And talk about sex education--somebody in a room full of kinksters is bound to know something I don’t!  But I’m not entirely happy about the message I give out constantly: I’m willing to sleep with a lot of people.  And none of them are you.

Thankfully, kink and sex groups as a rule are great at honoring a culture of safety and consent.  So I’ll keep going and see whom and what I can pick up.

Questions or comments?  Email me directly: polysaturated at rocketmail dot com.

Envy, Jealousy, and Compersion

Clearly, I get a lot out of openness in relationships (for a cheat sheet on what I’m talking about, check out post #2).  That said, consensus is that open relationships are harder to maintain than monogamous ones.  A common reason for that is the potential for jealousy in an open relationship.  No brainer; if your partner has a partner who isn’t you, a natural and socially acceptable response is to feel jealous.

But what does that mean?  I like a definition proposed in Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino, wherein the term jealousy is reserved for the feeling of having a toy and not wanting others to play with it.  The term envy describes wanting or wanting to play with someone else’s toy.  That translates to my relationships as: if I have a partner who has another partner, I can either feel jealous and just not want anyone else to have any individual experiences with them (that seems to drive people to do crazy things in the name of “love”); or I can feel envious of my partner’s time, experience, particular flavor of love, or whatever else can go on in any relationship between two people.  That envy might go away if I felt like I had enough attention paid to me.

Or, option 3 is compersion.  Compersion is often described as the opposite of jealousy, meaning a feeling of delight in a partner’s experience, even if it doesn’t involve you.  In my estimation, anything my partners can experience without me either generates ideas that I can benefit from later or exempts me from an experience I might rather not have.  Most of the time, compersion relates to love or sex, but I use it much more generally.  I delight in my partners’ victories at work, or socially, or in the lottery.  It’s just as easy for me to delight in their enthusiastic sexual activity, as long as I know I’ll get mine.

People in open relationships are not inured to envy/jealousy; they just learn to deal with them.  In this case, I can’t help with the feeling of jealousy per se; I tend not to get it.  If I get jealous, it’s usually over time, and that’s easily fixed with the Google Calendar.

Envy for me is a lot more common, and it’s tied to insecurity.  Every relationship between two people is different, and the great ones (all of my partners are great at relationships) all have uniquely glorious aspects that I admire.  Some of those involve me, and some of them are impossible in a relationship with me. 

If envy is for an individual experience, I find that easy to fix.  Just repeat the experience with someone else.  I usually like to go last in a series of similar dates so I can get the benefit of everyone else’s learning experience (you tried that wine at the restaurant and found it terrible?  Let’s get a different one that’ll probably be better), as long as it happens in a timely fashion.  The exception is that I like to go first if it's a new experience for a lover; the look on their faces as they do something novel is unparalleled.  Other poly-couples I know prefer having the primaries go first so that whoever isn’t going on later rounds of the date has pleasant memories to distract from envy. 

If envy is for a particular relationship dynamic, that’s usually a bit harder.  Relationships are full of variables, and two different people will not have the same responses to variables.  Example: I hate telephones.  A relationship that involves a lot of quality phone time will never have me in it.  But it still hurts to register the time and particular tone of voice when one of my lovers is on the phone with their other lover(s)/wanna-be lover(s) and I’m around, even if that particular relationship dynamic would bug me.

On the other hand, something admirable that’s visible right in front of your face--because your partner is experiencing it--can be fun to try to emulate.  As someone who’s been married for many years, my bias is to try to be easy to live with.  When I met a metamour in the early stages of a relationship with one of my non-spousal partners, and the dynamic was an all-encompassing puppy-crush, I noticed the metamour got a way with a lot of shenanigans.  So then my partner suddenly had two pains-in-the-neck to deal with, and he wisely figured out he’d best not complain.

As usual, it helps to figure out what triggers envy/insecurity and effectively communicate that (in case you’re wondering, not all of my requests are complied with).  For me, communication style matters a great deal.  I hate having my sexual technique/preferences directly compared to another lover’s, but kind suggestions are hot.  I feel more secure with an acknowledgement that a lover is in an unexplainably touchy mood rather than an attempt to brush it under the rug.  I like new rule requests framed as a question or discussion rather than an ultimatum.  Any number of possible rules and regulations, or just preferences, can be found in Opening Up for those who aren’t sure what could be triggers for them and who might want warning.  I’ve found it more useful to go out and see for myself what pushes my buttons.

And as always, stories, suggestions, and questions can come directly to me at polysaturated at rocketmail dot com.

Fried pickles

Rather than say anything with content today, I'm in the mood to tell a story.

I was at a restaurant with a lover, and it happened to be a restaurant that I wanted to try out with my spouse (note: going to this place with my non-spousal primary, even doing so first, does nothing to prevent me from trying the experience out again with my spouse).  I wanted to try this place because I'd heard it has great fried pickles, and my spouse loves a good fried pickle (incidentally, I'd heard that from the same lover who took me there, though the information was second-hand).

I'm pretty picky about food, and one of the many qualities I look for in food is health benefits.  So if I'd followed my individual druthers, I might have opted for a side salad.  But I'm awfully fond of my spouse, and my spouse is awfully fond of fried pickles, and I wanted the experience of eating great fried pickles with my spouse and watching him be delighted.  The only thing that was missing was my spouse.  And I ordered the fried pickles.  Perfectly self-aware emotional eating.

Now I know full well that eating fried pickles doesn't magically make my spouse appear, much as the taste reminds me of him.  But through the practicality of texting (and yes, I was very politely texting one lover while eating dinner with another), it became clear my spouse happened to be in the neighborhood with nothing preventing him from dropping by.  So he did magically appear, and I happened to have a plate of fried pickles ready for him.  And I had exactly the experience I was looking for but thought I wouldn't have when I ordered them.

Incidentally, the fact that we could draw on the tables reminded me of another lover, so of course we drew a picture that reminded me of her.  She, sadly, did not materialize.  But I'm still in favor of being prepared to delight a lover at a moment's notice.

Want opinions?  I've got 'em!  Email me at polysaturated at rocketmail dot com, and I'll wax philosophically on your topic of choice.

Why Choose to be Open?

I get this one a lot: Open relationships sound intriguing (or neat, or interesting, or insert any number of mildly positive adjectives here), but it would never work for me.

Let me first point out that I think that's fine.  Or neat, or interesting, or intriguing.  Especially if you're coming from a place of living within existing social and cultural ideals (I specifically call them ideals rather than norms, because a fair number of people who think they are in happy monogamous relationships are in fact simply ignorant of the openness of their relationship).  If you're coming from a place of actual, thoughtful, and heart-felt self-awareness, I think that's fantastic.  There are as many ways to conduct a relationship as there are individual relationships, and it's up to you to optimize yours (singular or plural).

And if you're considering, or just curious about the thought process, I would like to enumerate some of the advantages that open relationships have.  I was told when I got started and agree wholeheartedly: open relationships are harder than monogamous ones.  But if done carefully, they can be much stronger.  Here's how:

(1) The stress of having to be the one, absolute, true, and perfect love for another independent individual is gone.  No more going along for the ride because you know your lover likes mountain climbing and you're afraid of heights--but more afraid they'd leave you for someone else if you never went.  It sounds simple, and for some activities, the concept holds for monogamy (I hope everyone has permission to at least go out independently with Platonic friends).  But opening up physical aspects of romantic relationships can also reduce pressure in the bedroom.  The most common example is when kinks are not perfectly compatible (and whose are?).  Isn't it nice to outsource the activities you're less into?

(2) Relatedly, people learn things better and more efficiently if multiple teachers are involved.  More varied experience with sex results in better sex.  At worst, it results in greater appreciation for the primary partner.  This counts both for training your partner and for getting new ideas yourself.  A common complaint in monogamous relationships is that sex gets routine (I'm in no way saying that's a bad thing!  Knowing how to push a partner's buttons and instant gratification can be wonderful), and there's nothing like a new practical experience to infuse some creativity into the process.

Once again, education applies outside of the bedroom, too.  I drink way better cocktails due to one lover and way better coffee because of another.

(3) Variety.  I don't even think that one needs clarification.  I can't think of anyone above the age of 10 who likes to do or think or wear or read or watch anything to the exclusion of all others, even if it is their favorite.

(4) External validation.  You know how, in a long-term relationship, praise and appreciation from your partner start to mean less and less because you think they're either biased, or busy, or just saying things to make you happy?  People get energy when new people click with them.

This is another one of those things that doesn't have to be physical.  Great connections with new people don't have to go very far to infuse energy into someone, and this energy can be transferred to their relationship(s).  It's just that some people find it extremely validating to be chosen sexually.

(5) External correction.  On the opposite side from (4), people have quirks.  Some quirks are charming, some are innocuous, and some would really benefit from being changed.  Reproducible reprimands from a long-term relationship partner either become grating if they turn to nagging, or they may only apply to the partner and not to the outside world.  Having multiple people who are emotionally close enough to weigh in on the subject can clarify matters.

(6) My last benefit on this list is a bit subtle, but an attitude of openness reduces what I think of as the culture of rejection in monogamy.  People looking for their single lifetime monogamous partner tend to have a list of deal-breakers, and dating can become a chore of looking for negatives instead of appreciating positive attributes.  Sure, there are many reasons people don't get along, and they can take a while to surface.  But life is less stressful if you're not looking for problems in someone else or seeking out someone who may be "better" than your partner, as if humans can be quantified.  And here we've come full circle; let me refer you to reason (1) and point out that anything you need in a partner that a particular lover doesn't have might show up in someone else with whom you click.  Then you can have the best of all worlds, and nobody gets rejected.

More fun thoughts on why (and some practicalities on how) to choose openness can be found more verbosely in The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy.

Here's a blog about polyamory.  I'm inspired by the number of people I've heard talk about how they can understand or identify with polyamory or open relationships, but they have no practical experience.  I've been in a happy, practicing open marriage for about 2 years (happy for 8, open for 2), and I've got opinions.  Plus, I've learned a ton, and I'd like to share my experiences with those who might benefit.  After all, in face-to-face contact, I get a lot of questions about polyamory, and they're starting to sound the same.  So bring them on.  Anything you want advice about?  Give me a shout at polysaturated at rocketmail dot com.

You'll get opinions from me that have been run through my spouse, my non-spousal primary, and my lover who is secondary by choice (my definition of polyamory: I'm in love with multiple people, have loved each of them for a significant time, they have practical and personal differences, but I don't necessarily have obvious differences in emotional priority among them).  If you're extremely lucky (or your question very complicated), you might get opinions from my metamours (lovers of lovers, with some of whom I have independent relationships).  So you'll likely get a good consensus of well-thought-out answers.

In the meantime, I think the big question about relationships, monogamous and open, revolve around effective communication.  And communication is hard.  Most hard things benefit from both theoretical instruction and practice.  You're in charge of practice, but I can recommend anything put out by the Harvard Negotiation Project for theoretical instruction.  I'd start with Difficult Conversations; it's very accessible, practical, and short.  You may have no need to write me after all.