So I’m a fan of Greta Christina, as you might have gathered by now. Here she is in an internet radio interview on the Feast of Fools podcast titled Living Outside Religion. Not only did I enjoy the discussion, which ranges from talk of atheism within the queer community and atheism in general to how to interact with sex workers (hint: treat them like human beings) and Greta’s book on the topic, I really liked her voice. This is important for me because I seem to have finicky ears and people’s voices, particularly when recorded, can grate horribly even when I like their ideas and writing. There’s no way I’d be able to sit through some of my favorite podcasts if they were 55 minutes long. But the content of this interview was made all the more enjoyable because I could listen to it without fidgeting.
Pass Go. Collect $200. January 8, 2009
Happy 2009, people.
I always feel one should have something terribly profoud to say at this time but I can’t quite bring myself to wax lyrical about the newness of the new year and all that because you know as well as I do that once the tipsy excitement of it all wears off, you’re going to go right back to living mostly just as you were before the year changed. Luckily for me though, that’s still pretty good. Way better than the beginning of 2008, when I was insecure and lost and frustrated and all those other nasties. While life is rarely completely free of such things, there are other things – love, work, friendship, community – that can mitigate their effect and those things I have received in handsome measure over the past year. So even though most of them do not read this blog, I still want to thank my loves, H, A, and S, for being in my life and for teaching me so much about life, love, relationships and how not to screw it all up. Here’s hoping that this year is just as exciting as the last for them and for everyone reading this.
Restricting Language December 24, 2008
Sometimes I find language incredibly confining, particularly when expressing affection. It’s all very well when you’re speaking directly to the object of your affection, but when you speak in the same manner about them with another partner, it’s hard not to sound like you’re making comparisons. It seems the more affectionate you get, the more exclusive you sound. If, when speaking to S, I say something affectionate about A, I immediately feel that I have to reassure S that I do love her as well because the I find that the language I have access to implies exclusivity of affection even though I mean no such thing.
As a result of this, I rarely discuss my feelings about one partner with the others*. If I did, I think I’d probably have to establish first of all that anything I said about my feeling for the partner in question has no bearing on my feelings for the partner with whom I’m speaking. That sounds tedious, but it’s something I think I need to bring up with my partners anyway, and with some more than others. I don’t know if I’m just being paranoid though. Nobody’s actually brought up that they feel threatened or insecure – it’s just a feeling I get when, in the presence of one partner, I address another partner with an endearment that I’ve used for the former, or with an endearment that I use only with the other partner. Either way, the (usually innocuous) word suddenly seems laden not just with affection but with all this other meaning, all of which could be construed as detrimental to my relationship with the partner listening in.
Am I overthinking this?
*I generally do not discuss my partners, beyond incidental stuff, with anyone at all because I think that would be a breach of privacy.
Family-the-series December 8, 2008
There’s a new comedy on YouTube called ‘Family’ about what seems to be the life and loves of a polyamorous triad. The first episode just serves to introduce the main characters, Gemma, Ben, and Stuart. They’re a bit wooden at the moment, but judging from the second episode, they’re already settling into their roles better.
Episode 1:
Episode 2:
I’m still here November 23, 2008
I am indeed still here and still working much stuff out, but work, deadlines and life in general have been taking up all my time. I have quite a few bits and pieces so, as a way or sorting through them and getting myself organized and writing on topic, here are some of the things, in no particular order, that I want/plan to write about in the (near) future:
- Further issues with ‘ordering’ in relationships – This time from the practical standpoint. Yes I loathe the terms ‘primary’ and ’secondary’ but I suppose they do have some practical application.
- Living arrangements – What I’ve seen, what I like, what I think I want/could handle, what I couldn’t deal with.
- The mandatory jealousy post – Just about every poly blog seems to have at least one post on jealousy and while I suppose it is something of a cliche, it’s also just plain useful when jealousy does strike to have all these different perspectives, accounts, and advice out there. Given how similar and yet how varied everyone’s experience of jealousy seems to be, I hope my account can in turn help someone else get through their own battle with this particular bugbear.
- Partners’ partners – How close can metamours get? What if you can’t stand each other? Is it important to meet them at all? If so, when? Why? Why not? Does one particular policy tend to work better than another or should it be completely ad hoc? What do/can you expect? What should/shouldn’t you do when you meet? etc.
- Forays into ‘kink’ – Honestly, I don’t know where kinky actually begins and I suspect it’s different for different people. I’m not very easily shocked and I don’t consider most things ‘weird’ anyway, so my world is more divided in to stuff I will do and stuff I won’t, and my willingness or otherwise is decided by how interesting or appealing I find something, not how extreme or challenging or strange it is. I also deliberately didn’t use the term BDSM because it feels far too big and clunky for someone who’s only just taking the tiniest of tiny baby steps into the wonderful world of sadism.
- Sexuality – Specifically, how mine has evolved, how I’ve been growing into it and getting comfortable with expressing it personally, socially and in some instances politically. I’ve begun to see coming out not as the end point or arrival, but the announcement of one’s departure on a kind of expedition into completely uncharted territory. I’m not done exploring yet by any means, but I’ve certainly learnt a lot already.
I think that’s it so far. Hopefully I’ll get at least some of these written before I start adding to the list. Thanks to the people who’ve been stopping by regularly. With more efficient planning, I should be able to offer up some new stuff for you to read soon!
This is not really my issue October 28, 2008
In that I am not an American and do not live in the US, nor plan to, but I did spend a decent amount of time growing up there and I do read a lot of US-based blogs, so I’m not indifferent to it either. The issue in question is Proposition 8, which will be voted on come election day in the US and which, if successful, will effectively dissolve all the same-sex marriages that were made possible only a few months ago in California. In other words, it’s a huge steaming pile of shit that the Right wants to add to all the other shit already piled onto the LGBTQ community. Greta Christina has written about it already, as have others including the lovely, and recently married, Lizzie and Jade, and hippiemeg, but this post at Gone Feral is my favorite so far because it points out just how ridiculous the whole anti-same-sex marriage argument is by pointing out how stupid the institution and the social assumptions that govern it are in the first place. It’s a refreshing read.
Fear of communication October 6, 2008
I’ve been listening to the Polyamory Weekly podcast pretty regularly for a while now and I found the latest show on communicating ‘fearlessly’ with one’s partners quite timely and relevant. Mainly because I don’t do it.
Oh I do communicate some. I’ve learnt to tell my partners when I’m not comfortable with something or how I feel about things and all that. Sometimes I’ll even bore them with why I feel the way I do and they, bless their hearts, will listen. I love listening to them and discussing how they feel and what they want too and I love that they feel safe enough to open up like that. But me? The way I hide what I want, you’d think it was the secret code to bringing about Armageddon.
I have my reasons. And yes, they’re all about mommy and daddy and their unique brand of Let’s-fuck-up-the-kids. (Issues springing from childhood, you say? My, what a novel concept.) But the trick is realizing not everyone is my parents (thank you, unspecified, non-denominational and utterly fictitious deity) and that not everyone is a lying sack of shit that manages to consistently disguise itself as a lovely human being.
Basically, I hate being told ‘no’. And not because I’m a spoiled brat. I hate putting myself in a position that allows another person the power to decide whether or not I get what I want. (Control issues? Ya think?) So when it comes time to fess up to a partner that I feel like crap right now and would like some attention, I turn into an all-singing, all-dancing treasure trove of information on the weather, politics, movies I want to see, movies I hate, that funny website I’ve been meaning to tell people about, something stupid a colleague said, that sudden itch on my left foot – anything at all, basically, to avoid the issue.
Yes, I know. Not the healthiest of approaches. As Minx points out in the podcast, by not bringing it up at all, you remove all possibility of getting what you want. When you speak up, there’s at least a 50% chance – and probably more – that you’ll get it. And it’s not like staying quiet feels all that great. If it did, there would at least be some justification for it. But not speaking up doesn’t actually stop you feeling scared or worried or insecure. In fact, it can compound it because on top of feeling like crap, you feel alone and unsupported, and isn’t that just what you need? Well done, you, for retaining control and keeping things…er…controlled.
Even if your partner(s) can’t give you what you want or be there for you in the way you want them to right that minute, telling them how you feel gives them the opportunity to at least express support and remind you that you are loved. And that may actually end up being pretty much all you really needed anyway.
So to hell with the I-must-always-be-invulnerable schtick (which wasn’t really convincing anyone anyway). Part of being a grownup in any kind of relationship is getting up the guts to express your needs and understanding that a ‘no’ does not mean that you are a worthless human being undeserving of love, specially when all it might actually mean is that your partner’s stuck in really lousy traffic.
“Primary” and “Secondary” September 29, 2008
Lately, the terms ‘primary’ and ’secondary’ have been popping up rather more often than usual in the Poly blogosphere (at least in the part of it that I read) as well as in some of the recent discussions I’ve had with people in the community.
In essence, I understand the usefulness of the terms ‘primary’ and ’secondary’. Not always, but often enough, a polyamorous setup will include one pair that has had a longer relationship with each other than with any of their other partners, and this older relationship will include shared finances, kids, property, etc. Often, but again, not always, this relationship will have started out monogamous and then become polyamorous over time. With the shift to poly will have come some questioning and reassessing of the time spent by the original couple with each other, shifts in responsibilities, and adjustments of different kinds within the relationship, all of which will have been dealt with in whatever way seemed best to the couple at the time. One way of dealing with it is to set up the original relationship as the ‘primary’ relationship and to count all other relationships as ’secondary’.*
On the face of it, that’s pretty reasonable – the older relationship seems the most ‘real’ or even ‘grown up’ one given the presence of financial investments in housing and other kinds of property, shared living space, shared family, shared children, shared goals, and the mutual support that all of this entails. This casts a newer relationship as less ’serious’ because the people involved are only just starting out and can’t really say for sure whether it’ll last or end up filed as a pleasant diversion. The amount of time invested in each relationship is also (usually) in proportion to the number of places where the lives of each pair intersect – the more points of contact, the more time given to (and needed by) the relationship. This then also leads to the conclusion that the first relationship – the primary in this case - is more important, more worthwhile, more permanent, more serious, etc. than the second – or secondary – relationship.
This bugs me for a number of reasons – some of which I realize are specific to me and my situation. I’m sure the above can and does work for many people and I don’t mean to imply that there’s something inherently wrong or bad with they way they do things. It’s just not, I’m beginning to understand, the way I want to do it.
First of all, in this kind of situation, one relationship will always be older than the other, but I think casting one as less serious and one as more based solely on that is a mistake. Eventually (however far down the track) I think the relative ages of the relationships in question cease to matter very much. Using the sibling analogy, there’s a bigger gap between a two-year-old and a four-year-old than between a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old; by the time they’re reach twenty-two and twenty-four, the gap has shrunk even more, and so on. Each relationship grows and matures at its own pace, but, assuming it lasts, it does get there.
Another thing that puts me off the terms ‘primary’ and ’secondary’ is the implication that one must maintain this dichotomy and pull back if the ’secondary’ relationship starts to stray into ‘primary’ territory. Privileging one relationship over the other, while perhaps reasonable at the outset, can soon start to limit the ’secondary’ relationship unfairly. Obviously, not all relationships automatically bloom into always-and-forever type scenarios, but assuming a connection that feels lifelong is made, I don’t think it makes sense to deliberately stop it from developing. As I understand it, the whole point of polyamory is the ‘many loves’ idea, ie, the freedom to have multiple committed relationships. A primary-secondary setup seems, to my mind, to limit that unnecessarily.
Speaking of privilege, there’s also the assumption that primary partners have a say in each other’s secondary relationships. Again, while that may make sense at the beginning when you’re only just beginning to figure out your desires and boundaries – and is probably very useful in some cases – I don’t think it’s sustainable in the long term. Once begun, relationships can and do take on a life of their own and are intensely personal and specific to the individuals involved. Interference from a third party is just that: interference. To give a third party veto power over the relationship after a certain point is grossly unfair as well as disrespectful to all involved.
No two relationships are identical so you can’t really expect them to be equal in all respects, but you can value each for what it is. Terms like ‘primary’ and ’secondary’ are unnecessarily limiting and impose a structure that may not actually suit the nature of either relationship. I’ve heard over and over that each relationship finds its own level* and I have found that to be true. Sometimes, relationships move levels quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes not at all. And sometimes they end up at the same level quite unexpectedly and it can be something of a challenge to figure out how to make it all work. But I’d rather have the challenge than put relationships into artificial cages and not allow them to grow as they will.
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*That may be a quote or a paraphrase from The Ethical Slut.
Coming Out Interview September 22, 2008
In the comments on my last post, bentcrude asked me to do the interview on her site. I did it, though now I’d like to add a few things to the ‘other words that describe you’ section since Polyamory didn’t get much of a mention. I also don’t know why ‘What did you come out as?’ is repeated or why the second says ‘gay’ since I never said I was no longer interested in guys when I first came out – just that I’d also like to date women. Anyway, I’m sure that’ll get sorted. In the mean time, enjoy reading about all the different experiences on there.
