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.
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