I got a real letter, from someone who wants information! Yipee!!

I’m a predatory older woman in a newly open relationship (OK, I'm 35). I like a stupid young guy (25), want to make out with him, and have permission to do so. He has a girlfriend, but has not even had the "are you my girlfriend" talk, much less "how exclusive are we / what's okay for me to do". This ambiguity has not stopped him from kissing me once, some other woman twice and, actually, that's only the ones we know about. The other woman and I are making friends over this, and nobody senses any particular malice in the situation, only immaturity.

Am I in the clear for making out, because no contract is explicitly being broken and I have clearly stated her intentions to not hurt anyone?

Or should I definitely wait until honest communication is initiated and had between two stupid young people, who seem intent on avoiding all such topics, and are probably going to screw each other up no matter what I do?

I started off firmly in the latter camp, but am now on a slippery slope of "how responsible for other people and their boundaries do I really have to be, if I've got my own shit in order? Surely it stops *somewhere.*

-Predatory Older Woman

Dear POW:

First off, congratulations on your newly-open relationship and on your maturity in making friends with your kissing-buddy’s other kissing buddy (at least the one you know about).

To answer your actual question, I’d like to point out that you are not responsible for anybody’s relationships except for your own.  I’m going to get a lot of flak for this, but my spouse agrees with me as far as I know, so I’m OK with being 2 against the world. 

Incidentally, I happen to appreciate people who don’t approach me to tell me to accept their interpretation of the Bible as Truth, who don’t judge my lack of monogamy out loud in my presence, and who don’t tell me they just slept with my spouse, so perhaps I should divorce now (I’ve got that all under control, and my spouse has already told me, thanks).

You and your Young Friend are responsible for your relationship; Young Friend and the other people involved are responsible for their own relationships, and it’s not your job to run those relationships yourself.  I’d in fact find you intrusive to do so.

I’m not proud of it, but I will admit that the first person I became emotionally involved with would have been cheating had we become much more physical, and if his wife knew the extent of the attachment, I’m not sure she would have been pleased at that.  But I trusted him to keep his own confidences when he wanted to and to pursue an external relationship that would allow him to get what he was missing and thereby minimize frustrations in the primary relationship.  They had a don’t ask, don’t tell policy.  Telling the wife would have negated the “don’t tell” part; it’s the husband’s responsibility to break and keep established policy when he sees fit.  For my part, I protected my marriage in the best way I knew how, which was to tell my spouse everything that I found relevant as soon as it was going on.

That said, would I have wanted to be married to that first person I became “involved” with?  No way.  I wanted to marry someone honest, and it’s my own job to find such a person, persuade them somehow to love me, and maintain open and honest communication going both ways ad inifintum.  At the time, I wanted to play with someone dishonest (well, I wanted to play with this individual, who happened to be dishonest), partially because I felt that I don’t have much other choice in play partners in the society in which I live.  Since I’ve found that not to be the case, I’ve upped my standards and now insist on honesty in all of my partners.

Here’s why I changed my mind in favor of not getting physically involved with a cheater: there’s a huge disadvantage to partners who aren’t communicating with their primaries--they’re skittish (even though I’ve only experienced this once, it’s not something I want to test considering the number of times I’ve heard about this tendency from others).  It’s very hard to get any sort of commitment from cheaters, and here I’m not talking about marriage (apparently, that’s fairly easy, as there are lots of cheating spouses out there).  I’m only talking about making plans.  If you’re involved with someone who’s cheating, plans can always get canceled at a moment’s notice if the primary threatens to get wind of it, or if the cheating partner has a moment of remorse (this seems to happen a lot.  Not sure why they keep cheating if they’re going to feel bad and cancel a significant portion of the time, but I’ve never been in those shoes, so maybe someone can comment and tell me).  This model--where plans are always tentative--only works for me if I’m carrying around a really good book such that I don’t mind being let go.

The situation with your Young Friend seems like it’s entirely different in scale, both for the primary and for you, so that’s unlikely to be a problem.  Youngsters are extremely good judges of character (although people who are about to tie the knot often are not...), and your Young Friend and the primary are going to be thinking of any number of things when figuring out when and how long to be together.  If communication or trust becomes a problem for them, they’ll react accordingly.  You’re probably right, statistically--they’re likely going to screw themselves up without your help.  Most cheaters do get found out, if that’s what your Young Friend is in fact doing.  You’re not the only hope.

The last consideration I’d like to posit is a famous Dan Savage suggestion: if you’re involved with someone significantly younger than yourself, follow the campsite rule: leave them better than you found them.  You as the older party are in a privileged position to have tested out and experienced emotions and responses to love in its various forms, and you can do a great deal of good by educating your Stupid Young Friend in respect, boundaries, communication, and other protocols that people tend to follow well.  It’s an investment in your Stupid Young Friend’s future relationships, even if the current one doesn’t hold for long, and will help him drop the Stupid from his name.  You can do the educating in a memorable way, and you can even do it between kisses.  Or you can insist on complete propriety until you’re happy with the state of communication he has with his primary.  It just depends on what your priorities are.  My guess is, if you’re feeling uncertain enough to ask, something would benefit from a change, and given your greater level of experience, it seems like your responsibility to initiate that.  I personally wouldn’t play with your Young Friend, but I would have before.  You’re getting your feet wet and figuring out your personal boundaries right now, too, and there’s nothing wrong with giving yourself permission to make mistakes as long as you recognize and learn from them.

*******

More questions or comments?  Bring ‘em on!  polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Three's a Crowd

It’s easy to feel loved when there’s one-on-one, face-to-face interaction with your lover (ideally).  What happens when there’s more than one person to focus on at a time?

Any number of things, of course, but let’s take the simple case of a V.  In this model, one person acts as the center and has two lovers involved with them, but the two lovers are not involved with each other.  I’m part of three V’s (for this story, at least); in one, I’m the center, and in two others, I’m one of the arms.  I’ve found something interesting that happens when all the members of the V get together: they get pissed off.  More specifically, the arms get pissed off at the center.

Let’s start our discussion talking about me.  I’m the center.  I had two lovers in tow, and it became obvious that one was feeling hurt, so I gave that one extra attention.  Since time is finite, even if affection is not, the lover who was doing fine at first got ticked off with the sudden status change.  So I had two lovers who were hurt, and nobody who was happy (well, I was, but that’s different).  Turns out I find it really, really hard to make everyone in the room feel adequately loved if there’s more than one of them.  Just in case you’re wondering, everyone was civil, and everyone expressed themselves and their needs to me without blaming each other.  We’re just going to be really careful about getting all of us together in the same room again.

So what happens to me when I’m off to the side?  I’m also part of a V where I’m one of the two lovers of a central main squeeze.  The other arm and I are starting to interact independently, but the center is always coloring the interaction so far and therefore remains firmly in the middle.  And guess what?  Whenever we get together (this includes and might really be more pronounced when there are only two in the room and the third is a topic of conversation), the arms get pissed off.  Here’s what’s interesting: the arms both recognize each other’s pain, empathize with each other, get together, and gang up on the center.  Ouch.  But we really try to do it kindly.

So what can be done?

I’ve been very happy as an external point in a V with my spouse and another of their lovers.  My spouse is really, really good at this.  I think what happens is that I get all the attention I want when we’re alone together, and when another lover comes in the room, I’m so completely fulfilled that I wouldn’t care if I were ignored completely.  It’s very easy to dote attention on another person when I feel like I’ve gotten all the attention I need (I’ve been accused, out-of-character, of being “giving” in this sort of situation).  That might count as cheating because it’s extremely easy for live-in spouses to pay attention to each other (then again, my spouse was one of the parties of the V where I’m the center, so it’s not foolproof to just have a spouse involved).  How do other lovers manage to get enough time/attention/needs met?

Some people choose to keep all of the lovers separate.  I must admit this makes life pretty easy, in the same way that monogamy makes life pretty easy.  If you don’t have to see love directed at someone else, you don’t have to wonder where you fit in.

I’ve noticed that in all of these examples, the external points of the V don’t necessarily know each other well.  Does it get better when everyone has strong and independent relationships, such as happens in the case of large families with lots of kids?  Is there a set of protocols (my favorite being: focus on the person in front of you.  But what happens if there’s more than one?!?!) that might be followed to make this sort of situation work?  Is it that much harder to make three people happy in a micro-time-scale situation than it is to make two?  Are the variables involved with three people so complex that they can’t be generalized?

I’ll do some experiments.  And I’ll report back when I find out.

Until then, questions and comments can be addressed to polysaturated@rockemail.com.  I’d be very happy to tackle a question to which I do know the answer for next time.

Breaking up is hard to do

Most aspects of openness apply pretty well to monogamy, only more so, but I found myself in an interesting position recently.  I was with a lover at the time they were experience a breakup in another relationship.

If you think dealing with a lover who’s into someone else incites jealousy, try being with a lover who’s into someone else and no longer has access to them.  Breakups, depending on the nature of the relationship, are emotionally all-encompassing for an indefinite quantity of time, and an innocent bystander might not feel very useful, or even visible.

What surprised me was my reaction.  Sure, it’s not exactly what I’d call a rip-roaring good time to hang out with someone who’s in the process of breaking up, but it is generally rewarding to be around someone you love, even if they--or you--are not in a good mood (I noticed this when I failed to be disappointed in having missed a threesome involving one lover and one new third in favor of arguing with a different close lover of mine--taking care of business with my own choice takes precedence over fun times with a random person any day of the week).

Turns out the effect of being around for my lover's relationship status change was not so different from counseling a lover over anything major that doesn’t apply directly to me, for example a job loss.  This metamour (my lover’s lover) was important, if not to me directly, than to my lover’s life, and therefore to me.  It was my pleasure to be available to listen and just be with them as they sorted out their feelings and priorities for a next move.  Kudos to my lover, in that case, for not comparing me to the love they lost, and just allowing me to be with them.

I’ve had or heard of a few variations on the same theme.  In one case, the breakup involved transfer of Stuff, wherein the ex-metamour took back some objects that were theirs.  Knowing full well that I wasn’t going to be able to replace the emotional content of those objects, I could still send over a version that had my stamp on it (it seems to have helped here to acknowledge that I was not trying to barge in on replacing anything emotional, but just offering a little nudge that I was thinking of them, and their love life can be good even if not the exact design they would choose).

In another instance, a friend of mine was counseling her primary over the loss of his secondary.  My friend admitted that it was in fact very easy to be present to her primary because any residual jealousy issues went away with the relationship, and she could focus entirely on her primary and his reaction to the breakup.  From all the anecdotal evidence I have, counseling a lover on a different breakup doesn’t seem that bad.

It might be nice to have the emotional support of a different lover if you’re dealing with the loss yourself.  In this case, or when a breakup is in process but not completed, I’ve heard a lot of cautions about seeking solace from one lover when time and energy would be better spent communicating with the person with whom things are going poorly (and this brings us back to the potentially hot threesome I turned down to argue with an established lover--it might have backfired to forgo necessary communication to indulge in a bit of personal pleasure).  For one thing, bringing an innocent third party into the mix can turn volatile.  For another, unnecessarily delaying important communication has consequences of its own, including letting problems fester that can otherwise easily be nipped in the bud.

Got a question?  I’ve got opinions.  Try me at polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

The physics of sharing partners

Say you have the impracticality of multiple long-term romantic partners.  How do you know who gets whom and when?

The simple answer: Google calendar.  There are no surprises if everything is planned out (well, very few.  I’ve been given more or less time than I had scheduled with a lover due to the vagaries of air travel).

The more complex answer: it’s not so different from having a child with shared custody.  There’s a general plan for who has the child when, and in emergencies (weather and sudden violent illness related, mostly, in the grown-up case), the plans can be changed and renegotiated.  A child can move from place to place on their own if they’re old enough, or one guardian can come and pick up the kid so there’s overlap of custody.  There’s an element of choice and an element of convenience (which parent lives closer to school?  Or in my case, work?), plus an element of legality (I am, after all, married to one of my partners, and we generally share a domicile).  It’s been a long time since I’ve heard someone complain of shared custody of a child, and sharing partners is usually no different.

It helps in my case that all of my non-spousal partners live out of town and alone (to a first approximation).  For practicality, then, I usually do the running around visiting, and my spouse gets to have our place for a little while. Sometimes, a lover visits me, and then my spouse has the option of staying home and putting up with an extra roommate (note: some people enjoy being around visitors with a vested interest in their spouse.  Some people don’t) or finding someplace else to be for a little while (quite possibly another lover’s house). 

Some of my spouse’s lovers are in-town, and the idea is the same there, even if the time frame is shorter.  If my spouse has a lover over, I usually stick around for dinner and then let them have some privacy (worst case scenario: work late!) for a few hours.  When I come home, my spouse has the choice of (1) taking the lover home (2) sleeping in the guest room with our visitor (3) sleeping in our room while the visitor’s in the guest room, or (4) sleeping in a big puppy pile if we’re all comfortable with each other.  Option (4) is really fun the next morning at breakfast, especially if you’re the one who slept in the middle.

So who’s comfortable with whom?  That depends greatly on who’s involved.  Some people like each other.  Some people don’t.  Some people are just busy that night.  Pheromones are strange things, and it helps if people don’t get too bent out of shape about who’s got what micropriorities and when. 

Some people would make great long-term roommates.   Some drive us crazy.  And some are fine for a few hours.  Many couples exercise veto power over potential partners-of-partners if they don’t get along.  We personally tend to have enough solo social options that we’re fine if the spouse is with someone we aren’t terribly fond of.  But it’s really nice if everyone can be civil for the few moments of joint custody whenever they happen.

Got a question or a comment?  Email me a polysaturated@rocketmail.com.  I’m always happy to give my opinion.