He Said, She Said

Spouse: blah, blah, blah, local rules and regulations in the city we’re visiting.

Me: Really?  Have they already implemented that here?

Spouse: I don’t know.  We can find out.

Me: How?  Pull out your smart phone in this bar and use the Google?

Spouse: No.  Just ask the guy next to you.

Me (furrowing brow): Why would I do that?

**********

Much as I’m a believer in equality/tolerance/just letting people be who they want to be, life experience seems much different for men than for women.  Especially when it comes to dating and sex.

The common misconception by people looking in from the outside is that in heterosexual open relationships, it’s the guy who’s out there getting variety, and the woman who sits at home sulking waiting for him to come back home to her.  Nothing can be farther from the truth.  The truth is that in nonmonogamous relationships, women have the upper hand (the spouse had a cogent explanation for this that I’ll try to get him to post at a later time).  And it makes us relate to people differently than men do.

It’s overstated, but still generally true: men fear women will laugh at them.  Women fear men will kill them.

In day-to-day life, though, I--a woman--really just fear that if I express even the slightest interest in a man as a human being, I’ll have a hell of a time convincing him to leave me alone when I want him to, which will likely be very soon after I start engaging him.  And that makes me very, very choosy about the people with whom I initiate interaction.

Explanation by the spouse: that’s because men--the traditional initiators of interaction--are so used to instant rejection from women that they have to latch on to any glimmer of hope they get from the opposite sex.

Back to Poly: So that puts us in a catch-22.  The guy next to me at the bar had, in fact, tried to initiate contact with me.  But I specifically came to the bar with someone (my spouse), and I wanted to focus on connecting with that person.  It was late, I’m a morning person, and I didn’t want to be out all night entertaining this new guy and having that heart-to-heart with my spouse (why not just talk at home, you might ask?  Well, it turns out that whenever we try that, our lives are so full we end up just falling asleep, so we need a crowded bar to talk.  Spouses are soporific).  Plus, statistically, I’ve gotten a surprising quantity of, well, surprise from purportedly well-meaning men who have a hard time understanding that my willingness to say hi to them does not indicate anything about my willingness to sleep with them.  Or my willingness to hear their life stories.  That puts consequences on me, whether it's just working harder than I want to politely try to get out of the conversation multiple times, or something more overt, like watching the hurt come up in the guy's eyes when he realizes he's being let go.  Or very occasionally, an actual verbal backlash.  At any rate, life is much, much easier when I just don’t engage, and yes, that makes me one of the many snobby women that people complain about not giving anyone the time of day.

So I gave the stranger at the bar a silent, weary smile and turned my back to him.  And yes, he was sitting alone at a bar, looking lonely and like he wanted a conversation.  And my spouse empathized.

According to the spouse (Poly wrote this based on conversation after this incident, and the spouse edited): a single woman is much more socially accepted into a group of random people, whether a heterosexual couple (women are non-threatening, and a new guy might want to steal the woman away the guy who’s already in the couple) or a larger group that takes a bit of body-language shifting to include one more into the conversation.  In an extreme case, sex parties often allow couples and single women, but no single men (Poly’s honest but naive question: if I’m polyamorous, can I just bring a lot of men with me and then there won’t be any single ones?).  Statistically, “straight” women’s sexuality appears a lot more fluid than straight men’s: Sex at Dawn and my girlthing both agree that women might be more concerned with how they’re going to get their cup of coffee the morning after their first female-female sexual experience than with an existential crisis of their sexual identity.  And that seems to translate to social groupings as well.  Women can be great friends with women, whereas strong man-on-man friendships are looked upon askance in Western society, and that reduces the social risk/reward ratio of including new women in even a Platonic group over including a new man.  After all, the best reward a man can get from another man is a social acquaintance, whereas there’s potential for great friendship if not sex from a new woman.  The extreme risk of including a new man in a group is--as stereotyped--death to a woman, whereas the worst risk of including a woman is laughter at a man.  The one-penis policy that applies to a large number of heterosexual open couples carries over to social groups as well.  And that makes life as a single man particularly lonely in a way that I as a married/happily over-sexed/independent woman really can’t relate to.

The good news is the guy next to me struck up a conversation with the couple on the other side of him.  Though I could see the sense of weariness or pity in the woman’s eyes, as well.

So as is often the case, I’ve identified a problem and haven’t any clue of a possible solution.  But I’m working on it.  And if you have ideas, I’d love to hear them.  Questions, comments, and ideas always welcome at polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

The definition of love

Me: I love you.

Lover: I could be a pain and ask what you mean.

Me (without skipping a beat): I mean that your priorities are at least as important to me as mine.

_____

Sure, I’ll take one for the team often enough, especially if it’s on a topic that’s easy or about which I don’t care, but when I love someone, it’s a completely different vibe.  I want them to be happy.  Them being happy makes me happy, and I don’t even have to be the one to do it (that might help explain why I get such a kick out of my spouse coming home happy after the Walk of Shame from an external love interest’s place), though I’m certainly more than happy to. 

It makes for some interesting scenarios, such as temporarily living apart from my spouse so that we could each focus on careers for a while (and that’s not even so unusual a decision for academics).  Or recruiting potential full-time (statistically, probably monogamous and therefore likely to kick me out of the hypothetical triangle) lovers for my non-spousal primary.

As an advanced skill, I prefer love that’s been developing long enough for me to be able to predict and act accordingly on what would make my lover happy.  That takes time, and study, and thought (or, you can just be my non-spousal primary who reads minds, and you’re good to go).  Or at least a lover who’s very willing to explain the protocol for getting along with them, possibly multiple times.  That said, I can’t think of a single lover I have had that I’ve completely figured out, or even come close to figuring out.  I certainly get a burst of joy when I correctly predict an idiosyncrasy in a lovers’ behavior (bonus points if I poked at them to effectively provoke the response), but I’m also continually surprised. 

If love at an A+ level involves correctly predicting behavior and response, maybe I’m averaging a barely-passing C by acknowledging surprise, asking about unexpected words or actions, and refining my understanding of my lovers as people with unique thoughts, preferences, and personalities.  And repeating the process.  Maybe I’ll advance to the B-range with skills improvement.  Or maybe part of long-lasting passionate love is a constant curiosity about the complexities of another person, and I’d get bored as soon as I figured them out.

When I expounded on my definition of advanced love with predictive ability, the lover listed above expressed dissatisfaction because one might be able to very effectively predict an enemy’s actions simply through getting to know them sufficiently well because of a number of forced and unpleasant interactions (the advantage of a poly blog: you get multiple opinions and can choose your own adventure).  One can in fact be intimately aware of someone’s thoughts, actions, and opinions in the complete absence of love (does a correct prediction result in the same burst of joy in that case?).  I accede my lover’s point; knowing someone well is not sufficient to love them.  And unless I’m willing to admit my own poor talent at love, I’d also point out that it’s not necessary.  It’s just a lot of fun.

Something that strikes me in my definition of love is that there is no mention of need.  Sure, there’s desire.  And longing in their absence, which happens a lot as I’ve never seen all four of them at the same time.  But I don’t get the same feeling of nonfunctional desperation that’s so common in fiction and art.  That said, I am not happy about the prospect of any of them leaving me, even with a built-in support network of the other ones.  I’m polysaturated, and happy about it.

*****
Questions, comments, or concerns?  Try me!  I’m polysaturated@rocketmail.com.

Love to Travel

When my spouse or I go out of town, the other of us is usually pretty excited to have a few days off to be a bachelor(ette).  Sure, it’s often a good excuse to spend more time with another lover, but even in the absence of that, it’s a great time to get minor priorities that have been piling up taken care of.  Or eat food that they don’t like.  Or do anything they don’t like but that brings us joy.  It’s a feeling of being able to have it all, just not all at the same time, and of rediscovering independence.

Having lovers scattered throughout various cities, my spouse and I find we get temporary alone time a fair bit, and that brings a bit of an extra spark into the still normal everyday interactions we have with each other.  But there’s a transition between bachelor(ette) times and fully reconnecting.  The longer one of us has been away, the longer the transition takes.  From what I hear, we’re not the only ones who have noticed this.

My spouse and I, even before we were open, would call each other about 10 minutes before we got home to give whoever was still at home a few minutes’ warning to get mentally prepared for the presence of another person.  This could involve cleaning up a mess, getting to a stopping point in a project, coming out of deep introversion, or just getting to a point where the door opening wouldn’t be a surprise.  For shorthand, we’d say, “I’m coming home--be sure to kick out your girl/boyfriend!”  This became funny when there was a lover over, and there was no need to kick them out just because a spouse was coming home.  Some couples I’ve talked to give similar warning, and some don’t need it.  Some even find that annoying; picking up the phone gets them out of flow in a way that a spouse coming home doesn’t.

As for my spouse and me, after we’d get home, we’d still want about 10 minutes after the initial hug to take off shoes, put stuff away, and sort through mail before any interesting discussion started.  I’ve never talked to a single couple for whom that didn’t also somehow become part of the protocol, even if it took a while to negotiate.

After a longer trip of a few days to a few weeks, we find ourselves at disequilibrium for a day or so, before I remember to use the bigger teapot in the morning, or that he hasn’t heard about all of my experiences yet and therefore is confused about some of my stories that get out of order.  Plus, one of us is usually in need of an immediate nap.  So we don’t really reconnect until a day or two later.  But then we’re back in flow.

My spouse and I had the relatively unusual experience of living apart for a year.  We did see each other frequently, but the vibe of those trips was much more of a temporary visit than living together, so there was no point in wasting time maintaining living spaces or organization when we were together.  And we found that we had very different preferences on how to live day to day when we weren’t around to influence each other (I got to keep our original home, and it was disconcerting for my spouse on the day he come back three months after the move to discover that his drawers were empty, and he couldn’t find any of the common tools).  I won’t say that made moving back in together easy.  But like polyamory, the difficult process of communication, if done well, resulted in a far super situation than simply going with the everyday flow, effortlessly and thoughtlessly, ad nauseam.  To really get back into the swing of things after that long of an absence took a couple of months.

The happy news is that the process of getting used to each other again feels familiar.  And it always works out in the end.  So I’m willing to put up with what other people might see as an uncomfortable situation with a lover--that feeling of getting used to each other again--with the faith that thoughtfully going through the situation will cause it to improve.  Usually, after the initial regrouping time, we interact better than ever.

If I’m leaving town to visit another lover, I don’t have the same need for transition.  I think it has something to do with the very temporary nature of the visit (after all, this worked on my spouse when we lived in separate cities and visited each other, too), along with the clear boundaries of space ownership.  I don’t share property with any of my non-spousal lovers, and though they all tell me to make myself at home, I’m darned well going to put their knives back where they belong when I’m finished with them.  Even if I might have designed a different home for them myself.

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

Trust

Love is based on trust.

Blah, blah, blah, how many times have I heard that one before?

Right now, I’m thinking about trust for my lovers to protect their own boundaries.  The bottom line is I can’t trust someone who doesn’t say no when that’s the right answer.

It’s fun to please a lover.  But sometimes it’s done at one’s own expense.  At what point does the pleasure of having a happy lover overcome a personal preference, and at what point are boundaries best enforced?

There are consequences for me if a lover has boundaries that I don’t know about and that are not effectively communicated beforehand, or at least in the moment.  It’s amazing how effectively a fantastic memory can be ruined by a comment, “you know that awesome fuckaree we had a while back?  Well, I wasn’t cool with it.”

How do we get into such situations in a lifestyle that values a culture of consent?

One of the first friends I had to describe his open relationship to me called it, “open but lazy.”  In theory, he and his wife were perfectly all right with extracurricular sexual activities.  In practice, they just didn’t get around to it.  What they did get around to doing, though, was describing possible scenarios and gauging each other’s reactions to them.  They spent years describing hypothetical situations, thinking about their boundaries, and communicating them.  It was really an exercise in communication (or fantasy play, which can be sexy in itself), but the result was that by the time any possibility for extracurricular sex came about, they were each so clear on the others’ expectations, desires, and probable reactions that there was no need to check in.  Unless, of course, the expressed boundary was to the effect of, “I’m fine with that, as long as you check in.”

But sexual opportunities, at least for me, tend to be a complete surprise (maybe this would be different if I were specifically engineering them myself), and there are usually a few people whose reactions I’d like to get before deciding how to proceed.  In an effort to be GGG, the answer I get from my lovers when I ask about a novel situation is usually, “yes.”  If you’ve got an opportunity, go for it!  That’s fun in the moment, but with very few exceptions, a novel or unusual sexual experience isn’t worth a later admission by a lover who was not happy.

What is more fun is to hear is, “no” before things get out of hand.  Or at least “not yet.”  That leads to clear expectations and protocols and an experience that everyone’s happy with.  Or at least reasonably happy with.  I’ve found it’s a lot less painful to not get what I want (there are a great many things I want that I don’t have) than to be forced to put up with what I specifically don’t want (a rare and strong discomfort).  Plus, honoring a lover’s wishes is sexy.

So my friend’s policy of communicating boundaries ad nauseam, while it may seem impractical and have very little basis in defining actual opportunities, is a good one for getting effective and clear consent.  It’s much harder to actually know what your--or a lover’s--boundaries are in the exact moment an unexpected and time-sensitive opportunity arises (“quick!  Tell me if I can do it now!”).

As mentioned, it’s hard for me to trust a lover who doesn’t say no.  If I know my lover is strong enough to not let me run them over with my request, I have the freedom to ask interesting questions, plan unusual scenarios, and feel out opportunities.  The result can be some fantastic and memorable experiences.  This might take asking for feedback far enough in advance to really allow my lover to think about their boundaries before giving me an answer.  Or it may take a lover who’s exceptionally self-aware, which is convenient but hopefully not necessary for a great connection.

Based on my previous experience with implied consent that’s been rescinded, I’ve overcommunicated to my girlthing what sorts of things I’m interested in trying out.  She calls it “pushing her boundaries” (although she’s very nice about it).  I may call it planting ideas that may happen very far in the future, so she’ll have plenty of time to think about what she does and does not want out of me.  That way, I can act accordingly before I tick her off.

The other option, if I don’t know where my lover’s boundaries are, is to play conservatively.  There’s nothing wrong with that kind of approach, and it’s the idealized approach favored by a society that values monogamy or the appearance of monogamy.  The only danger in that case is missing a great opportunity.  Or at least an opportunity to learn something.  We miss opportunities all the time, so that’s not a terrible consequence (usually).  It’s just that life seems to be better if hard decisions are made well with adequate input and good opportunities are taken without regret.

So good thing most “monogamous” coupled people I know are well aware of the celebrities they’re allowed fun times with.

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