That of Which I am Not Jealous

All this talk about what makes me jealous has got me thinking about what doesn’t get me jealous.

I’m not envious when other people have things that are cooler than mine, but that I can use or enjoy.  Extra bonus points if those things take a lot of maintenance that I don’t have to do myself (here I’m thinking: the superfluous apartment in an exotic location.  The awesome car.  The swimming pool.  The boat). 

This may apply to lovers.  Why covet my neighbor’s wife when I can enjoy her, too?  (Hi, girlthing!)

I’m not jealous when people use my things.  This is probably a similar phenomenon.  They’re my things, and I don’t mind sharing as long as they come back.  Especially at times when I’m not using them myself.  Here I’m trying to think of anything cool I have that other people might want to use.  (Pause) 

Oh, I know!  The motorcycle.

And yes, this applies to the spouse.  If he’s up for it, you may borrow him.  I really won’t mind.

I’m not envious when people have things I don’t want, even if they enjoy them greatly.  Here I’m trying to think of anything as an example (ugly artwork?), but I’m finding it’s not worth the brain space.

And of course that applies to people.  I’m certainly not envious of a friend’s happy relationship with someone I find to be a jerk (there are a few examples of that, and I won’t name names).  More likely, I’m in shock and awe that it seems to work out for them.

I’m not (usually) jealous when people have a copy of something I also have, even if their copy is better than mine.  Same case as above: other people have much better motorcycles than I have.  I’m happy for them.  I’ll get one when it’s important.

As usual, this also applies to people.  I’m happy for other people to have great relationships with my lovers.  The skills acquired in obtaining and maintaining those relationships usually trickle down to me to make my life better.

So the only thing left to make me jealous or envious is when someone has something that I want and that I don’t have.  If it’s a physical object or an experience and I notice that feeling of jealousy, I prioritize my funds or my time to enable me to fulfill that desire of mine.  And then I’m no longer jealous.

If that’s the case in a relationship, some primary couples come up with rules (don’t do this with anyone else!).  I’ve noticed my spouse and I don’t have a lot of rules, and I think this is why: by the time we discover we have a boundary that’s been crossed or there’s some other reason we need to implement a rule, there’s something fundamental that’s gone wrong.  Having the rule in place might act as a temporary Band-Aid while we’re working on fixing the problem.  But a rule is not going to fix the problem in and of itself.

What fixes the problem is giving my lovers what they want, once they know they want it and manage to communicate that to me.  Sometimes they don’t know what they want or what they’re missing until they see me give it to someone else.  That can inspire jealousy, and that can hurt.

And in a good relationship, there’s usually a fun and easy fix to that.

*****

Questions or comments?  I’ve got opinions!  Try me at polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Love and Money

Sometimes I’m jealous, and sometimes I’m compersive.  And sometimes, I get a different reaction for exactly the same action.  It all depends on context, and I’m still observing what contexts inspire which reactions.

First off, my lovers will all point out that I react better to things when I’m well fed and slept.  I’m already aware that I’m generous with my resources if I feel like I have enough of them (i.e. I’m pleasant to be around if my physical needs are met).  Jealousy doesn’t so much involve my resources, but other peoples’.  Similarly, though, I can be generous with other people’s resources if I feel like enough of them go to me.

Let’s work with the assumption that I have opinions on how other people use their resources (this wording may sound callous, but the truth is, people do have opinions about others’ choices, and they express them.  They can express judgements to the relevant person and have a chance to explain their points of view, or they can express them to others and wait for the judgements to get to the relevant party through the gossip chain, at which point they may be wildly distorted).  My lovers’ resources include time, affection, and money, among other things.  If I feel like I’ve got enough access to time, affection, and money (money being perhaps a special case that I’ll discuss a bit more below), I enjoy hearing stories about how such resources are used on someone else.  I’m compersive.  I’ve got enough context to understand the nuances, subtleties, or interesting quirks of what goes on in an interaction with someone else, and I enjoy hearing about the outcome.  If I don’t feel like I’m getting enough resources, and I hear about them being used elsewhere, it just pokes at a feeling of emptiness that I may already have.  It highlights the difference between potential (what resources are available) and reality (what I have).  And that doesn’t feel good.

What if resources aren’t available?  Then it’s fairly easy for me to deal with the difference between ideal (what I want) and reality (what I have).  After all, lovers get busy (time), affection waxes and wanes, and money comes and goes.  All of that is easy to handle.  I can happily deal with being alone (time and affection), or eating ramen on a date (I graduated college, after all).  What hurts is if these resources are available from a lover, but not for me.  A busy lover chooses to spend time with someone else and doesn’t make time for me.  Affection for me wanes while NRE is rampant with someone else.  That’s what tends to hurt, not busy work schedules or relative poverty.

So what about money?  I think it’s a special case because, much as it’s a topic of gossipy conversation, it’s not socially acceptable to express opinions on how other people invest their money (the exception being to one’s spouse).  I often ask married couples out of curiosity how they deal with finances, and I’ve never gotten the same answer twice.  There seem to be infinite ways to deal with money, depending on the couple’s personality.  Perhaps because of the social taboo against opining on money spent between lovers, it doesn’t have the same emotional content or expectation that time and affection do for me.

But making the assumption that lovers do share a financial life, is money really that different from time and affection?  After all, there are many individualized ways to deal with all of those resources.

Some couples pay into an account that’s used for joint activities and bills.  The analogy for time/affection may be that they are the purview of each individual lover, and the couple just makes sure to invest enough in each other to keep things well maintained.

Some couples put everything into a joint account, except for an allowance (analogy: you may sleep with anyone you want on Tuesday nights, but everything else is for me).

Some keep all finances separate and negotiate bills as necessary (we are all individuals in this lovers’ scenario, and I may or may not be there for your experiences at a given moment).

And some just fight with each other (I want to use our resources on me and not on you).

So if my observation applies more broadly to people, and most of society goes around feeling jealous about their significant other(s), does that mean that a significant portion of society is running around not getting their needs met?  That’s rhetorical for now, but it’s fairly self-explanatory that people aren’t jealous of those they don’t care about.  Do we have rampant unmet expectations from those about whom we do care?  And if so, is the culprit a general lack of relationship skills, or unreasonable expectations from said relationships?  Maybe if it’s my unreasonable expectations, they can be managed to mitigate the effects of jealousy.

Because I feel like my marriage is a source of infinite resources (we’ve got all the time in the world together, there’s a ton of affection, and, well, we’ve historically managed to manage our money somehow), it’s very easy to not feel jealousy within that context.  It’s the other relationships, where the emotional connection may be on a similar scale but time and distance affect expression of the other resources, where I’m more likely to feel jealous.  I’ve heard that from a fair number of polyamorists, though I get the impression that it takes longer from the beginning of a new relationship for me to really care about the outcome than it takes others, so it requires a bit of longevity in a relationship for me to even get around to jealousy.  After all, we only seem to want to control the people we care about.

*****

Questions or comments, or answers?  I’m listening!  Try me at polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Meta-love: What is it good for?

What else is a meta-lover good for?

They’re great company when both of us miss our mutual lover. 

It’s a bit like having a beloved family member temporarily away, and the rest of the family knows that person so well that the stories keep popping up, with everybody having enough context to get a good laugh or memory out of  them.  Only you don’t necessarily have the same connection (or spectacular lack of connection) with a meta-lover as you would with family.  I already talked about my spouse’s ex, with whom I’d do workouts or have dinner if my spouse was away (traveling, working late, etc).  I even heard about a meeting between my spouse and my girlthing, purportedly to talk about “topic(s) of mutual interest,” but which degenerated into a soliloquy on Why Poly is Difficult for Married Men (I’m angling for the Cliffs Notes of that conversation to be the next Guest Post by the Spouse).  And a comment from my secondary on hearing one too many good one-liners originally spouted by my non-spousal primary: I want to take this guy out for beers and talk about you.

My secondary’s primary is particularly good company when my secondary is physically or emotionally absent (which predictably happened a lot while he was in PhD-hell).  It’s nice to have someone to talk to who understands the nuances of how and why I miss him, and who can fill in some stories to help me feel included in his life in the absence of firsthand experience.  Lucky for me, her great company came in handy for a fantastic adventure road-trip during an unexpected absence.

“You’re flying over Nashville!” the first text from my secondary read when I turned on my phone again after my flight was over (really?  Why did they route me through there?).

“Now is a bad time for a visit.  I need to go home tonight,” read the second.  A family emergency had come up, right when I was flying to see my secondary.  He and I had three hours to pack him up before I drove him right back to the airport.  And then I had two weeks at his house, without him.

Once again, I’m lucky--I can work remotely, so I had a couple of extremely productive days to do my own thing in a house with which I was familiar but in which I had no real responsibilities.  I noticed that every couple of hours, I’d get an email or a text from one of my secondary’s friends who was aware I had been abandoned in town, and would I like to go out for beer/dinner/fill-in-the-blank (and no, sex was not explicitly offered, though there was general curiosity about whether I was seeking a lover to fill in)?  I was busy; I was tired.  I accepted one invitation and declined the rest, even though I was touched by the thought that even though the person I had flown into town to see was unavailable, he took it upon himself to ensure that someone worthwhile was entertaining me (mental note: it’s not only meta-lovers, but friends of friends for whom this trick of keeping great company works).

The other fun part was sharing the house with my secondary’s primary.  It certainly had potential for interesting plot to be in a house I tangentially knew with someone I barely knew at all but who comes highly recommended.  If this were a sitcom, there would be a catfight.  Instead, it was like couch surfing with someone who got a five-star Yelp review and has access to amazing Scotch (thanks, Secondary).  It’s interesting how much fun it can be to get forced into close quarters with a high-quality stranger.

More precisely, it was only close quarters until she invited me on the road trip (“invited” is the wrong term.  “Captured” may be more accurate).  After that, it was extremely close (car-sized).  She had a three day weekend, and I had fully packed bags with literally nothing to do with my time, so we drove.  We drove a long time.  Turns out, my secondary historically didn’t like road trips (I think he’s changing his mind about that one), but his primary and I do.  So I ended up with a built-in companion with a strong common interest, and we got to do something that only the two of us out of three would enjoy.

Driving is a great excuse for sharing stories, and we did a lot of that, both individual histories to start to get to know each other and some focus on our mutual lover.  Hours of driving give plenty of time to agree about, disagree and analyze, and share hopes and dreams about our mutual lover.  And if misery actually does love company, it was great to have the company.  We both missed the same person.  It’s special to have that understood.

What I was unprepared for was how obviously we must have been carrying the “someone’s missing from this scenario” message to the outside world, apparently along with “please try to fill in for them.”  In my experience, strangers leave two people alone to focus on each other, regardless of the gender balance.  In this case, the number of people of both of the most common genders who tried to catch our attention, and lingered for a borderline culturally inappropriate length of time as if trying to score an invitation to stay through the morning, was high enough to simultaneously shock and amuse me.

We’re still in a relationship V, with a clear central lover, but my meta-lover and I do talk independently, and sometimes we see eye to eye better than either of us does with our mutual lover (hence calling him out on BS).  We also sometimes warn each other about interesting or complicated things going on in our lover’s life, which is a useful preview for whenever there’s a handoff.

So what’s a meta-lover good for?

Caring for either you or your lover whenever the other isn’t around.

*****

Questions or comments?  I’ve got answers, or at least sources of answers.  Try me at polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Meta-lovers

Question (at dinner, at one of my lovers’ birthday shindigs): Your lovers’ lovers... do you love them, too?

My answer: Yes, but not in the way you might think.

*****

What’s a meta-lover (I think that term rolls off the mental tongue better than the culturally accepted metamour) to do?

The answer, as usual, is anything they want to do.  But here’s a short list of what I tend to do with them.

First, what do I mean when I say I love them?  I might not even really know them, depending on how my lover found or was involved with them to begin with.  But we certainly have something in common, or should I say someone.  I like to point out that I’m in favor of all of my lovers, meaning I’m in favor of their happiness and their experience.  My meta-lovers are part of my lovers’ experience, and my meta-lovers help make my lovers happy.  How, then, can I not be in favor of my meta-lovers?

Sometimes, the best way to be in favor of a meta-lover is to leave them alone.  If there are jealousy or access issues (and everyone has those to a certain extent), it might work best for the two meta-lovers to at least temporary stay out of each others’ way.  It’s a kind version of the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy.  If I really don’t want to think about my lover’s other lover(s), but I want to know about them, it’s easy enough to come up with a schedule that ensures we don’t run into each other.  It still honors their time, space, and relationship(s).  For a while, my spouse didn’t want to have anything to do with my lovers (my girlthing, had we gotten together earlier, would be a noted exception), but he’s starting to warm up to the idea of having my lovers as friends, or at least acquaintances.  After all, he can pick their brains about how to handle me.

Sometimes I’m Platonic friends with a meta-lover.  I’d say I’m friends with most of my meta-lovers (there are a few who are farther away, spatially, and with whom I don’t interact often, but I find them all perfectly pleasant people).  My spouse’s ex was a good case in point; we’d have dinner together and/or go for workouts without my spouse (until he came home and got hugs from both sides).  We were maybe a bit more giggly about inappropriate subjects than your standard workout buddies, but there’s a great deal of instant connection, or intimacy, or knowledge when two people share someone who inevitably has quirks.

• Sometimes the quirks are the same with two different people, and that usually makes me laugh.  Isn’t it unusual how much heat she generates at night?  Or charming how giddy he gets around redheads?

• What I find more interesting is how different someone can be with someone else, i.e. the quirks don’t match up.  If I’m the variable and not the constant, it illustrates what my unique contribution to the relationship might be, even if the contribution is just how I receive or perceive activity.  Doesn’t he give the best bear hugs?  Wait... what do you mean they hurt you?  Isn’t it cute how shy he is?  Um... you think he’s outgoing?  Maybe there’s less laughter involved in those conversations with the meta-lover, but they’re usually much more substantive.  Are we perceiving the same person differently, or are we bringing out different qualities in a complex one?  Understanding the differences in how a partner behaves towards me than towards another lover makes me feel irreplaceable, even if the differences aren’t exactly flattering.  Sure, they might be able to get the milk for free from someone else if I weren’t around, but would they get elbowed in the ribs whenever they broke into that fake Scottish accent?

• Another advantage for being friends with a meta-lover is the possibility of ganging up on the common lover.  This may well be my favorite part of having a meta-lover.  I’ve heard it called, “having more than one person call you out on your B.S.”  If you and your monogamous lover disagree on some aspect of your behavior, who’s to say what’s more in line with accepted sociocultural norms?  If there’s an odd number of people in the equation, it can be fairly easy to take a clear vote.  Sometimes, ganging up on a lover can be done nicely, in a way that convinces them of the merits of alternative views of the world and makes them thankful for the multitude of wonderful people looking out for them.  Sometimes ganging up just makes them feel... attacked.  As a historical practitioner of both methods, I greatly prefer the former.  Now, the trick is to do the former on purpose (more on that when I figure it out).  At any rate, it’s nice when my lover’s lover agrees with me, even if my lover doesn’t.  And it certainly makes me think hard about my position if two of my lovers disagree with me and agree with each other.  Hence, I just got a haircut.

Advanced skill that I’m working on: being lovers with your meta-lover.  OK, I’ve gone as far as really fun threesomes with a clear (or maybe a less-than-clear) middle partner and being willing to be a roommate with a meta-lover, but the nuances of relationships and sexuality--and how hard it is to even get two people to like each other more or less equally--make an equal threesome something that I’m just not experienced enough yet to comment on.  But I’d bet it’s amazingly fun.  Call me back in a few years and see if the answer’s changed.

*****

Questions or comments?  I have answers, or at least inaccurate theories that two lovers can call me out on.  Try my at polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Guest Post by the Spouse: Fuckaree! -or- Casual sex is better with you…

I just flew back from a Fuckaree, and boy are my balls tired!

OK, let’s start over.

A very nice part about being in a poly relationship is the option to
have an infinite set of good times. It doesn’t mean you will have
those times, or even can have those times, but just that they’re
possible. It’s very freeing to hit on someone, knowing that there are
no stakes and there are no boundaries. Not interested? No worries, I’m
good. Interested? Let’s see where this can go…

So I just enjoyed a Fuckaree, here defined as a brief cavalcade of
sex, sort of a fucking-jamboree, as it were. (I wanted to use the term
Fuckaroo, but apparently that has already been co-opted as a bad time,
sort of a protracted duration of FUBAR.) There was some deliciously
and deliriously casual sex with a lover who gave every appearance of
insatiability. There were some ridiculously indulgent acts and highly
irresponsible late nights. (On a school night?!) There was even a
highly unexpected threesome with someone who was quite old enough to
consent but quite out of our range in all other respects.

All very nice and good and pleasant stuff.

Here’s the thing I realized… being the poly-hubby, I have a fair
amount of flexibility with regard to my actions, as long as I behave
safely and by the rules. Nonetheless, I discovered that I couldn’t
really enjoy the aftermath of my actions until I knew that the wife
both knew about them and was excited for me.

Fortunately for me, our own Poly Saturated is quite compersive, and
has expressed great excitement and enthusiasm for my exploits. Still,
this experience has taught me something about our relationship, and I
wonder how common this is. Casual sex is possible and can be immensely
fun and pleasurable. But the true fun and pleasure may rest to a large
extent on my wife also enjoying, whether it’s a threesome or group
sex, or simply being encouraging ahead of time or supportive after.

“Go get her, Tiger!” read one particularly significant text from my
lovely wife, after which followed a most delightful adventure!

I really like sex that comes with deep and intimate relationships. And
I also enjoy casual sex. But I think the true enjoyment in either
comes in knowing that they are part of the relationship that I enjoy
with the most important woman in my life.

Now that I write that, it occurs to  me that that’s like everything I
do. I have a lot of experiences, whether they are fun, interesting,
difficult, or tragic. In all cases, I gain new perspective on my own
life through the lens of my lover and life partner. Even when I go off
to enjoy strange, new sex, I can hardly wait to re-examine it with
her. In fact, I think I have an idea for an awesome new Hallmark card:
“Sweetheart, casual sex is just better when you’re around!”

Some might think this makes me whipped. To them, I would say, maybe I
am, but I just had one fuck of a fuckaree, and the fact that my wife’s
smile and High Five amplifies and relives my pleasure doesn’t detract
one bit.

Now excuse me while I figure out how I’m going to give the wife some
well-deserved sexual payback!

-Poly-hubby