How Many Primaries Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?

I’ll start my telling you what I was going to write about, and then I’ll move on to a less controversial topic.  I changed my mind on this week’s topic because I’ve been convinced by multiple people that my viewpoint is wrong (when my lovers ask what I’m up to, and I tell them I’m working on a blog post, they naturally want to know the theme.  And then they give their two cents’ worth.  Ideally, of course, I can just persuade them to write up the post for me).

For the original topic: I’ve got friends who live in an N (meaning two of them are married, and each of the spouses has another live-in primary).  The married couple in the N is having marital difficulties, as tends to happen in any number of relationships, and they’re going through the normal protocol of what couples in trouble do.  And there’s a very real chance that the relationship is going to crash and burn.  The polyamorous twist is that each of the married people gets to keep their other primaries during the arduous process of working on the marriage.  So some of their emotional needs for intimacy are taken care of by the other primaries.

A fairly common rule in polyamorous circles is: no nookie with someone else while you’re having a fight with the primary.  It’s generally an effective rule; it prevents people from mentally checking out of a relationship by finding affection elsewhere, and it certainly motivates people to solve their relationship issues efficiently. 

In this case, as there are multiple primaries involved, I would argue in favor of not “punishing” the uninvolved primaries for the married couples’ poor relationship dynamic, as refusing access to loved ones could be perceived.  How would you feel if your partner asked you to move out for a couple of weeks because they were having a really big fight with their mother, and it needed to be resolved before they could deal with you?

I was told by all of my lovers that I am wrong in this case.  So I’ll drop it for now and contemplate before laying out my argument (still, the people in the N in question obviously share my opinion).  There is an overwhelming consensus in my circles that the spouse is the highest priority, top of the totem pole, be all and end all.  If you’ve made the public promise to do what you can to prioritize this relationship, and if your external activities threaten your motivation or ability to fix things, it’s time to get rid of them so you can focus on the big problem at hand.

So a new question arises from this debate: how many primaries can one person reasonably have?  Unless you’re particularly good at threesomes, the consensus seems to be one at a time.  But the married couple in the N each thinks they have two.  Right now there’s a conflict, and the marriage is in jeopardy.  How much of that is overcommitment to too many primaries?

Multiple “primaries” seems to work well for people who think of themselves as their own primaries (solo polyamory, it’s called in The Ethical Slut).  These people may live alone and have multiple very important secondaries in their lives, but there’s nobody else with whom they spend every night by default. In this case, all of the very important other people can have equal status and well-defined expectations about access, even if they’re not in fact more important than the practitioner of solo polyamory.  This may be a question of semantics; for whom is the most important person in their lives not they themselves (Answer: I'm aware there are some people for whom this applies, though they seem to be miserable and unhealthy.  And let's exclude direct offspring in this analysis)?  It seems so obvious as to not count when assigning primary status.

And what’s the time frame in “one at a time”?  I’ve admitted to having both a spouse and a non-spousal primary.  Most people would call the non-spousal primary a secondary, and that may prove true on a long time scale.  After all, one of these people has met my parents; the other has not.  One has already been involved with me for over a decade; the other has not.

On the other hand, I could be spending the night with either of them on a given day.  And on a short time scale, whoever is in front of me at the moment has my attention.  My spouse generally doesn’t call if I’m with the non-spousal primary, but he would if there were an emergency, and I’d drop everything to respond.  Come to think of it, I’d do the same for the non-spousal primary.  Or the secondary.  Or the secondary's primary.  Or even the guy I'd never met before who's having a seizure on the side of the road (and here’s where I differ in my ideas of non-primary partners from The Ethical Slut: there is nobody with whom I’m involved that I would not take to the hospital if the occasion arose).

Maybe the relevant aspect here is that the non-spousal primary is low-maintenance.  If he asks for little (which he does), then he generally can get everything he asks for, and I can make him the first priority for the small number of time and things he asks.  If he’s demanding or high maintenance, then I’m pulled in a number of directions at once, and there may turn out to be a fight between priorities.  And certainly, in a wrestling match like this, a spouse is likely to win.

But is that even an interesting question?  It might be most efficient to choose partners whose temporal and emotional needs fit well with your own availability so as to preclude that type of conflict in the first place.

*******

Questions or comments?  I’ve got opinions (and sometimes my lovers agree with me): polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Breaking up is hard to do. And it's pointless.

A recent phone conversation with an ex of mine got me thinking: what is the point of a breakup in a poly relationship?

In an ideal situation, it’s just managing expectations, which often can be managed in much less dramatic ways than a full-on breakup.  Can I ever be so certain about the entirety of my temporally-changing preferences that I can honestly say, “no, I never want to be physically intimate with you again?”  That’s almost as much commitment as marriage: no matter who you and I become in the decades that follow, I will always have your best interests at heart.

I’m particularly reluctant to express such finality because I seem to recall having once told the person who became my spouse--in no uncertain terms--that he will never get into my pants.  I think I even enumerated the reasons.  I hope the gods are still laughing over those plans.

In the case of the breakup in question, I was simply running out of time.  We saw each other rarely, and I need a degree of inclusion into someone’s life before I’m completely comfortable with physical intimacy.  The chemistry was there in some ways and lacking in others, and though I’m a firm believer that most problems can be solved, the effort required simply was not giving results in the same way as some of my other uses of time.  At least at that time.

We’re still friends who know a great deal about each other; almost certainly more than society would find prudent.  And since the breakup, we became long-distance.  We still speak on the phone occasionally, though we currently have better friends in each others’ towns than would merit actually seeing each other.  Still, there seems to be even less point in a long-distance poly breakup than an in-town one.  Am I certain that I will never be in a position to where I’d want to be reminded of my former self as seen through this person at a time when I happen to be swinging into town?

A fun pastime of mine is to look at my lovers’ dealbreaker questions on OKCupid (those are the questions to which certain answers are unacceptable in a partner, and either my partners or I have answered them unacceptably).  I defined my dealbreakers a mere year ago, and in the context of my lovers, I know them well enough to understand why they answered as they did.  These dealbreakers have become endearing features to me.  A mere year has changed my opinions dramatically, or at least educated me about context.

A couple of my lovers have the feature--and I think monogamists may find this annoying--of being in love with their exes.  I’m in fact thrilled about that mentality: it bodes well for me.  My lovers may come in and out of relationships that don’t involve me, and I can statistically count on being well regarded in the meantime, even if we do have some sort of violent end to the relationship.  Dan Savage agrees with me in his podcast #309 (wait through all of the topics he lists in the blurb to get to the relevant question, or skip to 27:46 for Melissa from Canada); high-quality people think fondly of their exes as human beings, and they’re likely to appreciate their current partners a great deal with that tendency.

Back to managing expectations--in the case of the breakup I’m thinking about now, I believe nothing short of a breakup would have gotten expectations low enough for my comfort level.  And even at our recent phone conversation, I was given the option of getting together for fun times at any point in the future.  So one might say I did a poor job of managing those expectations even with a breakup.

Or maybe I’m just lucky to have once chosen someone who gives me the right to change my mind.

Got a question?  I’ve got answers!  polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Jealous Again

In last week’s episode, my spouse took the reigns at writing on the jealousy/compersion scale, and I’d like to point out that I got a lot of positive comments on that post (note to self: let my spouse do more of my work for me).  It also got me thinking about just how innate a tendency toward jealousy would be.

When my spouse and I were young lovers, we were monogamous.  And as you might have gathered from last week’s column, my spouse is almost entirely non-jealous.  Um, let me rephrase that... was almost entirely non-jealous.  Almost annoyingly so (what, am I not worth fighting some moron for?).  We were/are a loving, well-matched couple, and he trusted me completely; there was no way I’d go for anyone else after I promised him I wouldn’t.  So why waste mental energy worrying about something that’s never going to happen?

But I started noticing things whenever little physical boundaries were pushed.  The blue lipstick on my cheek after we saw Blue Man Group got him a little... let’s say possessive.  And I got a wonderfully energetic night the time I came home gushing about the strippers at my friend’s bachelorette party (well-timed and moderate jealousy can sometimes be good for spiking up a relationship, but I'll delve into that later).  And when we opened up and it turned out there are a lot of extremely high quality gentlemen out there (where have all the gentlemen gone?  What a silly question--they’re all dating me!), my spouse didn’t exactly think I was going to leave him.  But he was aware he had some very attractive peers.

What I’m saying is that one partner’s behavior can affect the other partner’s level of jealousy, at least to a certain extent.  My spouse and I are extremely lucky to be rather low on the jealousy scale.  But there are certainly situations in which I feel either more or less jealous.  Therefore, there are some techniques to mitigate it.  Here are some that I’ve found.

Easier: minimizing jealousy in one’s partner

The big one: be extremely happily committed for a decade+ before you go open.  That seems to work wonders (also, the time suggestion is arbitrary and just happened to work for me).

It helps me if I know my partner who is far away (and let’s face it; I work a lot.  All of my partners are far away a fair bit of the time) is thinking of me.  A quick text when there’s a situation that reminds them of me makes me feel secure, with instant gratification.  This works even in such extreme circumstances as when the partner is on a date with someone else.  I probably wouldn’t consider dating someone who gets jealous over my occasionally sending a 30-second text to someone else I love ("occasionally" is the operative word here).  The same holds true with tangible items, but my bias is that instant gratification is better than material gratification; all any of that means is, “I’m thinking of you,” and the less a lover has to wait to hear that message, the more secure they feel.

Direct praise really brings out security and other warm fuzzies.  I know it can be uncomfortable to give when the person in question is right there in front of you, so I’ve come up with a couple of techniques for when I’m starved for praise.  A metamour and I discovered that our mutual partner is very good at talking up the other partner and much less good at articulating how the one in front of them is special.  So we keep a tally on what accolades were given in absentia and let each other know about them, even if the direct lover can’t or won’t.  I’ve also been known to straight up ask what’s so good about me if I get a lot of gushing over a different lover.  And I wait for an answer (there’s got to be some reason you’re wasting your time dating me).  All of my partners are my favorites for some reason.  I like to make sure they know that reason.  I usually don’t like to let them know my other partners’ reasons for being my favorites.  But on the rare occasions I let it slip, I’ve seen competitive improvements in the ones who were not quite my favorites in that aspect.  This only works on really, really secure partners, like superheroes.  I might not suggest it for mere mortals.

Time and attention are key.  A small amount of time with a great deal of focused attention is a wonderful investment in any relationship.  If I’m occasionally prioritized, I’m much more likely to come back after a long absence.

Stick to your time commitments.  I’m willing to give up some time to a metamour if I can trust that I know when mine will come.

Invite another lover along to make it three.  If I'm invited wholeheartedly, I will often decide not to go on said date.  And it's much easier to handle if that's my choice.

Harder: minimizing jealousy in oneself

By the time I’m feeling jealous, something’s usually gone horribly awry, but there are a few things that help in the heat of a jealous rage.

There’s always the old standby of slow, deep, meditative breaths.  I usually feel better after about 10.

Give the benefit of the doubt.  You’re dating your partner for some reason or other, so they’re probably a reasonable person.  What explanations are possible that make your partner out to be a hero?  Assume that’s the case until you hear otherwise (I wouldn’t suggest living with the wool over your eyes, though.  Ask when you get a chance what exactly is going on).  Often, by the time I hear the real story, my partner makes out looking even better than I could have imagined.

Treat yourself right.  A heavy workout or a good, long nap often make any tough situation better.

Questions, stories, or opinions?  Let me know!  polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Guest Post by the Spouse: Hey Jealousy! or Savaging Poly-Love

As anyone who really knows me knows, I'm a big fan of Dan Savage. His advice has improved the quality of our marriage more than once. (And maybe even made me a better spouse and friend...) I've been reading Savage Love since the old days when the letters started with “Dear Faggot…” I’m ever grateful for Dan's ability to put things in perspective, and help me understand and cope with my own culturally-unusual inclinations.

So of course I have an opinion on “Polygate”.

As you’re probably aware, Mr. Savage got himself into a little bit of hot water with the poly people a couple weeks ago in the process of answering a question about whether someone who is polyamorous be happy with someone who is not. This is not an unreasonable question for Savage Love, and I think Dan could have handled it easily, except that he took the extra step of defining the group. "Poly is not a sexual identity...", Dan noted, continuing, "It's not something you are, it's something you do." (emphasis his) Dan reiterated this point the following week, saying "But is poly something anyone can do, or something people are? I come down on the do side." 

What I understand Dan to be saying, essentially, is that certain things are innate properties or attributes, while others are preferences and activities. I hope I'm not taking this too far - and I think some of the folks who wrote into SL on the subject and were republished last week did stretch things a bit far - but I get the sense that this comes down to the political implications of innate attributes vs adopted attributes, rather than "identification" vs "orientation". And while the latter doesn't provide a lot of information, the former provides a tremendous amount, and is crucial to the question at hand. Because if you ask me to act against my preferences, the question is how much of my totality is being violated.

  

The question, then, is if being non-monogamously-inclined shares the same status as an innate property as sexual orientation. Is it a trait over which the individual has no choice? The comment boards are alight with people addressing this point.

Clearly, I have an inclination toward non-monogamy, and I was certainly uncomfortable in ways that felt unnatural when I felt I was expected to spend the rest of my life in a monogamous relationship, but I have trouble saying that indicates a biological grounding. I suspect, like many have noted, that there’s a continuum. Perhaps the spectrum runs from comfortable only with one partner to only comfortable with multiple partners, or perhaps between asexual and highly promiscuous individuals. (I use the term “promiscuous” as a non-judging descriptor; as readers are probably aware, my wife and I enjoy being sluts.) I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter much to this particular argument.

Because this whole argument has gone off the rails.

What makes us a good poly relationship is not that we like to have relationships with multiple people. It’s that we don’t mind our partners having relationships with multiple people.

Look, I don’t have to be poly-inclined to want to have sex with lots of women. That was me approximately from the age of 11. (Probably earlier, but I can’t remember back that far…) And I suspect that many of my friends felt about the same. But I’m pretty sure I had no idea how to have any kind of relationship at that time, let alone coordinate my emotions to accept, or even enjoy, my partner having relationships with other men and women.

Rather than tell stories about how “I’ve known since I was a teenager that I didn’t want to be monogamous” – the argument put forth by many on the poly-is-innate side – or rebut “Sure I want to have sex with multiple partners, but that doesn’t mean I go out and do it!” – the argument put forth by many on the poly-as-lifestyle side – I think the more relevant story is how long you’ve known that you didn’t mind having a non-monogamous partner.

I’ve certainly known since college. I had quite the crush on a girl I knew in college. And we did in fact hook up, for a few glorious, wonderful weeks. The thing is, she was seeing several other guys at the time. And I knew about this. Now, that could have made me jealous – some would say it should have made me jealous – but it didn’t. I was just glad to spend the time with her that I got with her, grateful for the intimacy that we shared for the short time we could do so. What she did when she was away from me wasn’t as important. Granted, I would have gotten an ego boost out of hearing that I was better than her other partners, or that she liked me more, or that she was leaving them to spend more time with me. And it certainly was ego-crushing when she dumped me and not them, although several years later I came to understand why and what I had done, as a naïve boy, to help bring that about.

But I wasn’t jealous.

And I think that’s where the discussion should be. Not what you want sexually; or, at least, not just that. There is a spectrum, but the truth is that we vacillate wildly throughout our lives in terms of what we want, whether we want to put all our attention on one person or we’re casting around for something new. Maybe you spend more time on one or the other, and that’s fine, but I suspect that it’s a mistake to put too much of an emphasis on that half of the equation.

Because, ultimately, being polyamerous isn’t just about you. It’s very, very much about your partners.

So, what does this imply about Dan’s advice?

Here's where things went off the rails. If we go back to the original article, we see that the polyamorous questioner, PP, was asking if he could be happy with someone who was, essentially, jealous. (Not his words, but basically the question at hand.) But then he asked a different question as the last sentence: "Can someone who is poly be happy with someone who isn’t?"

These are PP's separate questions:

Question 1: Can a polyamorous person be happy with a jealous person?
Question 2: Can a polyamorous person be happy with a non-polyamorous person?

Hey look! Two different properties, not of our poly person, but of our poly person's partner! Which means that it's not really about the poly person's identity. It's about what they need to make their relationship work.

If I were gay, I would prefer sex with men. I don’t think it would say a great deal about what my partners’ preferences are, other than by the fact that they’re unlikely to want me as a partner unless they, too, are not totally straight. My sexual orientation, I imagine, is to a large degree about what my preferences are.

In contrast, being non-monogamous, I could have a partner who is monogamous or non-monogamous. It doesn’t really matter. If she wants multiple partners and I’m one of them, terrific! If she’s only interested in one partner and I can be that partner for her, that’s fine. (This is not exactly true, but it’s subtle and for another entry.)

However, it’s rather important that my partner is compersive. Why? Because if not – if she’s jealous by nature (not judging, just characterizing) – she will be unhappy with my non-monogamy, leaving me with the choice to either cheat (unacceptable for an ethical slut), remain monogamous (unacceptable for a self-aware slut), or make my partner unhappy with my non-monogamy (unacceptable for any decent human being).

So my partner choices are defined by my partner… hey, wait, that’s actually similar to what a self-aware adult should do! If you love travel, a partner who loves to travel may make you unhappy. If you don’t want children, a partner who’s angling for ankle-biters will cause you heartache. If you love getting blow jobs and your partner can’t stand giving them… well, there may be some work to do either way.

So it comes down to two attributes and whether they’re biological: Where are you on the asexual/non-monogamous scale, and where are you on the jealous/compersive scale? Are they biologically ingrained? Are they learned or innate? Are they malleable? Do they naturally alter over time?

At the risk of taking a stand, I think desire for multiple partners is probably somewhat fluid, although I imagine that spending life confined on the "wrong" side of the spectrum - the one that goes against your identity - is a recipe for unhappiness. However,  I suspect that the jealous/compersion side is, to an extent, an innate property, if not somewhat malleable through experience and knowledge. If this is so, the implication is that we are more fixed in how we treat our partners’ behavior and less so about the requirements for our own. If you want to have sex with multiple partners, that’s fine, but you should be aware and have a certain due respect for your partners’ requirements of you. After all, this hypothesis suggests, your desires for multiple partners are just that: desires. Whereas, the hypothesis concludes, your partners’ jealousy or compersion is far a more a part of them than your interest in multiple partners.

So what was the answer for PP, and was Dan right?

First, based on our hypothesis above, let's evaluate PP's questions:

Question 1: Can a polyamorous person be happy with a jealous person? Answer: Probably Not.
Question 2: Can a polyamorous person be happy with a non-polyamorous person? Answer: Possibly.

Sadly for PP, Question 1 was the correct question to ask, but conflated the jealousy and polyamory axes. It doesn't matter whether his girlfriend wants multiple partners. The question is, can she accept his desire for multiple partners.

Dan's response? In addressing the question: She's made her call, you either have to be monogamous, or dump her. It's your choice. Pretty straightforward. And correct.

And on polyamory? "These are relationship models, PP, not sexual identities." I'm not so sure, Dan. It is true that they constitute relationship models, but if placing someone into an alternate model constrains their behavior in a way that makes them unhappy or doesn't suit them, hasn't that violated their identity? I'm not going to say that pairing someone who identifies as non-monogamous with someone of a jealous nature is akin to pairing a gay man with a woman in the hopes that the pairing will make a "normal" or "functional" or whatever excuses people used to concoct. However, I think it'd be a bit disingenuous to say that the two are totally dissimilar, too. 

Incidentally, in response to one (perhaps overblown) Twitter-er, Dan closes his second response with "No one is legislating against polyamory here." I'm not so sure. I'm no lawyer so I don't know how any existing state laws on adultery could be applied against consenting, non-monogamous adults. However, I have it on certain authority that the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 134, makes it illegal for anyone in the military to have sexual intercourse with anyone they are not married to if they or the other party are married. Got that? It is illegal for any person in the military to conduct a polyamorous relationship if either party in the couple is married. (Explanations online point out that it's not as simple as all that as there is a criterion that  "...the conduct of the Soldier was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces..." Any chance this might be used against folks in a non-monogamous relationship?) Something to chew on.

Ultimately, I suspect it all comes down to how innate the monogamy and compersive axes are, relative to each other and other properties. Perhaps Dan's assessment is not totally unfair, to the extent that one might not be as fixed in one’s interest in multiple partners as in the gender of those partners. However, I think there will one day be an accounting of how much a degree biology actually plays in sexual orientation, and how much may be a result of development and experiences, both also very important but not biological or genetic. It is my fervent hope that, at that point, it won’t matter, as all people will recognize that when consenting adults engage in play, the activities, genders, and number of participants will be irrelevant to the morality or legality of the actions. (And, furthermore, if self-identity of body morphology is as biologically entwined with cerebral structure as our current knowledge would suggest (particularly the mapping-of-self in the parietal lobe), we as a society really need to be a hell of a lot more understanding of transgender identification and modification than we currently are.)

A footnote: It has not escaped our notice that the two attributes discussed here – the polyamory axis and partners’ compersive axes – suggest a very nice Punnett Square that might be interesting to digest at a later date...

Why not?

People who know me well are often not surprised when I come out to them as polyamorous.  After all, I have a lot of natural tendencies that make openness easier for me than for many other people.  I tend not to feel jealousy (though I’m still subject to envy), and I’ve always had the opinion that more people are merrier, even under crowded circumstances.  The question sometimes becomes, what took me so long?

The short answer is that it’s extremely easy to be generous when one feels they have more than enough--in this case, more than enough love and security.  After years of attentive monogamy, I became quite certain that nothing external like other lovers would drive a wedge between my spouse and me.  This is something that I can’t over-emphasize; after enough time and space of being allowed to feel as if I were not competing for my spouse’s attention, it became easy to allow my spouse the time and space to pursue other people.  After I had the chance to become completely secure in my primary relationship, it was easy to be generous with my and my spouse’s other attentions.  This was a feeling that I’d noticed developing consciously for months, and quite possibly unconsciously for years, before I could define it.

The problem is that, for me, such security doesn’t develop in a pressure cooker environment, and I had a single experience that probably delayed the process of opening up by several years. 

When experimenting with boundaries, my spouse and I decided it wouldn’t bother us if we kissed other people.  This was convenient for stage performances and generally flirtatious friends, but we got our first intense experience at a party.  These were my spouse’s friends, so I didn’t know anybody, but that’s never stopped me from having a good time before.  As suggested by Miss Manners in her Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, my spouse and I usually go to parties together, engage in separate conversations, and talk about our different experiences when we get home.  This was going on, as usual, when I noticed an energetic blonde flirting mercilessly with my spouse.

My first instinct was to be proud of my spouse.  He still had it.  People wanted him, and they demonstrated it.  And it must have been flattering to him.  What happens when my spouse feels good about himself is that I have a *fantastic* time that night, and quite possibly for weeks after.  So I was pretty excited.

My spouse and the blonde went off to one area of the house, and I stayed in another to meet people.  Eventually I got thirsty, so I wandered off towards the kitchen.  On the way, I met an extremely attentive hostess who asked what she can get me.  I asked for a glass of whatever red wine was open.  It materialized in my hands a mere 30 seconds later.  I wandered back to where I was to continue conversation.

Eventually, I got hungry, so I wandered off again towards the kitchen.  On the way, a number of new faces stopped me and urgently wanted to talk to me.  I inched my way closer to the kitchen.  They inched their ways between me and the kitchen door.  I finally made it to the kitchen, and a door on the other side closed surreptitiously.  I got myself a snack, continued to hang out in the kitchen with light conversation, and started to notice I was getting tired.  I asked if anyone had seen my spouse.  There were murmurs that he was around somewhere, but wouldn’t I share my expertise on bike commuting in the city?  Fifteen minutes later, I decided to check behind the closed door, as there were jovial noises coming from it, and perhaps there I might find my spouse to go home.

As I took large strides towards the door, new people blocked my passage, hands outstretched to push me to some other area of the house.  They wanted to show me something or other, and in the confusion and mass of people, I went along.  Eventually, my spouse materialized, and we went home.

As might be expected, when we settled in to talk about our experiences, my spouse couldn’t wait to gush about this great kiss he had been having with the blonde.  Let’s just say my reaction was not charitable.  In a flurry of visceral fear and emotional pain, I backtracked kissing permission on the spot.

So then we were back to being closed for a while, or at least more closed (flirting and innocent touching was always allowed).  And when I’d finally had a chance to think, I realized that what I thought I was reacting against--kissing--was not the problem at all.  I was reacting to my needs not being met.  The problem was that a houseful of my spouse’s friends, seeing that my spouse was kissing Someone Not Their Spouse, banded together to keep me in the dark and keep me from getting home when I was tired (my spouse, by the way, just read this and is a little flattered that his friends would go to such lengths for him).  My spouse’s behavior was perfectly within the boundaries we had set up for ourselves.  I just didn’t like the feeling of being ganged up against with the assumption that, in a fight between my husband’s fun times and my presumed constraints, my husband’s fun times would win, with a large number of enforcers to keep me from finding out.  I just wanted to go home, and a conspiracy of partygoers were pointedly exhausting me and deliberately keeping me from reaching that goal.

Incidentally, several months later at a party with many of the same people, a completely different unofficial couple was making out, and I was told under no uncertain terms to keep the official girlfriend from finding out.  As mentioned last week, I don’t think it’s my job to tattle.  But I did choose to stop interacting with that group.

What I learned from that experience is that the simple fun of nonmonogamy is not sufficient for me to consider openness.  What I need is ethical nonmonogamy, wherein all people involved are kept informed of who else is in the loop so that boundaries are not often broken, and there’s an escape route for when they are.  What constitutes the important aspects of ethics change with time and with individual people.  What doesn’t work for me is an assumption of secretive nonmonogamy, especially if the expectation for me is that I both refrain from my own extracurricular fun, and my spouse and presumed equal partner in life is celebrated for cheating and getting his.  Hence, my quiet breaking off from the group.

The other thing we learned is that separate transportation from an event can create that all-important escape route and do wonders for spousal harmony.

Questions or comments?  Try me!  polysaturated@rocketmail.com.