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.

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.

Why doesn't (s)he call?

I’m the one who doesn’t call.  I’ve spent years hearing complaints about myself in the third person, and so I thought I might take a moment to try to defend myself.  Maybe the other people who don’t call have some of the same excuses, or other perfectly reasonable ones.

First off, it’s not about you.  This applies to a lot of situations, not just about why someone will or will not call.  I’ve heard cogent arguments from teachers that something as personal-seeming as an oral exam has more to do with the examining committee than about you, who studied hard for this thing.  So it surprises me, the extent to which people consent to wasting mental and emotional energy taking a lack of action personally.

Here’s what it is about: me.  I hate the telephone.  Since we’ve gotten away from landlines, the reception has gotten poorer--I find myself missing even more non-verbal cues than on email.  Plus, the socially acceptable spaces for making phone calls have largely disappeared, leaving us to call while we’re walking around and distracted.  Not to mention, I just happen to be a visual/kinesthetic learner rather than auditory, so talking on the phone doesn’t even impart that much information to me.

More importantly, I’m busy.  I’ve got a job I value; a suite of lovers who, low-maintenance as they all are, seem to benefit from being included in my life; and some priorities of my own.  Adding someone new to the list of people who get real-time communication might turn into an obligation rather than a treat.  I don’t call you because I assume you’re busy living your own life.  I sure am!  Who has half an hour of unscheduled time in which they’re not already invested in their own activities and happen to be alone (my most important rule of poly: focus on the person/people in front of you.  That applies to friendships, too)?  I might schedule a phone call if I want to connect with you.  Or write you an email.  Or--if if I don’t want to hear about your life, too--suggest you follow me on some social medium or other.  But I won’t call just because we met and I might want to hang out; there’s an opportunity cost of great things that are already happening in my life.

I’m thinking of this now because I’m specifically choosing not to call someone with whom I had a great first date.  OK, it was great for me; it may not have been for him.  But the truth is, I know people are on their best behavior on dates, and just as I don’t usually discount a mediocre first date, a great one isn’t sufficient information to predict a great relationship.  I might be willing to let this one go.  I’d also be willing to go on a second date if he found me (it sometimes only takes one to negotiate a tango), but scheduling the first one was hard enough, and I don’t see what awesome people or activities I’m willing to give up in order to get more information on this guy.  New acquaintances just don’t pop up into my head that frequently.  There’s certainly no ill will; I rather like this particular guy.  Even for the ones I don’t particularly like, I’m certainly not ignoring them on purpose out of spite. 

I suppose I could call him now, since I’m thinking of it. 

But I’d just rather write my blog.

Why Be Poly (part 2)?

I particularly enjoy being polyamorous when the best spouse ever is away on business  and outsources the onerous job of entertaining me, such that I have weekends like this:

***

The best lover ever (note to other lovers: you are also the best lover ever.  In a different way) came over on an early flight and purposefully built my anticipation by refusing to call me when his flight got in, so I was stuck at the parking lot waiting unnecessarily (OK, that's a lie.  It was a new airport, and I suck at reading signs).  He warned me earlier to have a full gas tank.  He did not warn me to have an overnight bag packed.  That one was a surprise.

After a delightful outdoor lunch in lovely weather (but why did we only get one fork for two meals?!?!?!), we hopped in the car.  He drove, because we knew where we were going, and I did not (here's where another of the best lovers ever comes in: a picture from her that I got the day before finally decided to come up on my phone, and the two occupants of my car enviously admired her spooky Halloween-esque preserved eyeballs).  In an unfortunate combination of traffic and my falling asleep during my navigatory duties (hey-- he got in early!!), we missed the exit for our first stop and went straight to the town where we had dinner reservations.  We were several hours early, so we wandered through a lovely fall festival full of beer and rock bands that featured slightly heavyset blonde lead singers.

The weather was so nice that we allowed ourselves enough distraction to arrive late for dinner, despite an excellent parallel parking job that earned the comment, "you're not from around this town if you park that well, are you?"  Really good food.  Quite good booze.  I was told there was no need to be sober for our next activity, which I had more or less figured out by the giant haunted prison across the street.

Oooh, haunted house season, and in a decrepit prison, no less!  The walls were crumbling.  The make-up was awesome.  The women in front of us couldn't stop screaming, even when they got exchanged for different women.  One room was in 3-D.  Another had moving walls.  There was even a werewolf, probably in homage to the historical Prison Dog (who inspired the only completely cute object in the gift shop).

And that's not all.  After a bit of refreshment (there's still no need to be sober for the rest of the night's activities...), we went to...

...wait for it...

... another haunted house!  But not just any haunted house.  The best haunted house in the country.  #1, according to some survey or other (there are discordant opinions sometimes).

Um... yeah.  The prison was better.  Except for getting poked by a vibrating chainsaw.  Oh, and the giant blood splattered Easter bunny with the axe.

Next day began with brunch and another fall festival, this one featuring chili rather than beer.  A mishap with the GPS sent us to... another fall festival!  This one featured well-preserved classic cars.  Well worth the detour, even if brunch left us too full to try the crab fries.

We eventually made our leisurely way home, stopping at a state park for a fall walk and Tarzan-swing on a particularly sturdy vine.  And we were finally rewarded for all the driving by partaking of the best crab bisque (was that what it was?  I'm sleepy after all that excitement) ever.  Even though I've never seen that one reviewed on line.

There was still no reason to be sober for the night's activities.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

This one applies to monogamists, too (it's amazing how much of poly living applies to monogamy), but it's sometimes fun to have the spouse gone.

As soon as he left, I missed him.  But that didn't stop me from staying up too late, changing some organization to the way I want it, listening to my music (and pretty loudly), eating food that I like, calling people who are more my friends than his, and generally taking care of secondary priorities before they became primary priorities out of the necessity of negligence.  It was all fun.  It always is.

And a lot of the fun was getting him back.  Having had enough of being without the little stuff that reminds me I'm sharing my space (and finding myself acting like him in his absence), and of doing the stuff that makes me me when I'm by myself, getting someone back is like giddily finding someone new, only they already know you.

Too bad I now miss the lover who was here while the spouse was gone.

Got your back

I was at a lover's house screening someone as a possible third.  The potential third was over for dinner, and I knew this guy, but my lover didn't.  The third had two distinct advantages: a self-proclaimed superior talent for box jobs and a Rolodex full of highly satisfied females who might also be willing to act as thirds.

I was rather smitten by the idea of a superior box job, enough so that I'd be willing to overcome my general disdain for casual sex (see Post #5) to do the experiment.  I was smitten enough that I failed to register some odd signs.  A few not-so-subtle jabs at my established partner.  And when my lover started yawning and putting his clothes out for the next day, the Pussy Whisperer didn't get the hint to leave.  He had to be shown the door.

At the debrief, my lover pointed out the signals of narcissism, which usually correlates with a poor choice in lover, and I was flabbergasted to have remembered them all but not taken the signals as the red flags they were presenting.  We jointly opted to forgo the threesome and the potential matchmaking and just enjoy each other's company for the moment.

I'm sharing this particular story because it illustrates a number of things I think about fairly frequently:

(1) Hospitality.  This is a shout out to the way-better-than-average people I date.  In this case, my lover is someone who was willing to entertain--with perfect manners and at home--someone for long after he showed himself to be unsavory.  And my lover managed to keep the upper hand; a temporarily unpleasant situation doesn't need an invitation to be repeated.

(2) If you want to play, don't diss an established partner.  Ever.  You are either going to lose or you'll get with someone who's not worth playing with anyway.

(3) I was extremely glad to have someone whose head wasn't swimming with promises of a life-changing box job watching my back and screening people for/with me.  Two opinions are better than one, especially if they lead to a quick consensus.  Relevant reading for similar situations or any situation when you're evaluating someone alone: The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Beker.  It's less about fear itself and more about learning to listen to the little responses your body gives when you're with someone who's giving you the willies.

That's all for now.  Got a topic or a question?  Let me know at polysaturated at rocketmail dot com.

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.