“Coming Out” October 15, 2009

How much do you tell people? When do you tell them? How? Should you tell them anything in the first place? Why?

I’ve been poly for over a year now and haven’t run into any major issues with my relationships. I’m happy with my partners, they like each other, I like their partners, it’s all good.

But when I talk to my colleagues or to an acquaintance, how do I work in the partners? Thus far, I’ve spoken about my boyfriend/partner to some, about my girlfriend to others and about my husband to most. In some instances I’ve mentioned both my husband and my partner/boyfriend, but generally the persons I’ve been speaking with have assumed I was talking about the same person. Given that these are throwaway conversations with people I don’t intend to have any kind of deep-and-meaningfuls with, that’s not so bad. Flying under the radar and all that.

But what about contacts that are a bit more than that? What about people who, because we see each other more often, eventually mention their kids and what they did that weekend, or the funny thing that happened with their in-laws, etc.? At some level, you’re expected to reciprocate with stories of your own lest you seem uninterested in theirs. And I’m not uninterested. These are nice people who are fun to talk to and while they’re not on my BFF list, I don’t want them to think I’m being standoffish or that they’re boring me because neither is true.

My boyfriend gets mentioned more often than my girlfriend because, as I said earlier, people tend to confuse him with my husband, and that works fine for me. ‘Girlfriend’ however is a word that would draw attention and possibly questions or confusion from people who’d assumed I was straight. Now, on the one hand, so what? They made an assumption and it turned out to be wrong. Happens all the time. They’ll live. On the other, I dread the poly 1o1 conversation because I don’t want to have to explain the ins and outs of my lifestyle, or worse, have to give a summary and then have the person assume a whole new set of things.

But then again, why should I care what they assume? Why not just put it all out there and expect them to catch up on their own? There’s plenty of information out there – why should I have to explain anything? In general, I’d tend to agree with that, but then you could argue that the best way to avoid the tedious task of explaining things is by simply not mentioning them in the first place. It’s a bid disingenuous, after all, to throw something out there that’s clearly ‘out there’ by current social standards and just blink at people and say ‘what?’ all innocent-like when they don’t get it.

In retrospect, it was far easier to come out to existing friends because I already knew who I needed to tell and to whom it just wasn’t relevant. With new friendships, it’s a lot harder because you don’t know what level they’ll eventually find and it’s a bit hard walking the tightrope between full disclosure and oversharing. You don’t want to spring something on them that they really don’t need (or care) to know, but you don’t want to leave it too late and make them feel like you’ve been misrepresenting yourself or just plain lying to them all along.

Throw in other potential issues like professional contact, legal requirements, the likelihood of your lifestyle being used to discriminate against you, the impact of word getting out to whomever it is you’re not all that cool with or with entities or organizations  or communities that might create issues, etc., and it can get a bit worrying. I know there’s no delineated ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to do it, but I wish there were some sort of general guideline, because I really don’t know what to do sometimes.

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.

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!

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.

Bi/Poly or Bi and Poly? September 8, 2008

So we told some of H’s family and got a pretty good response. This time, he did the talking, which I think was a good idea given that he’s the reason they’d be interested in the first place and because, by talking about it, he takes some amount of ownership of it. Even though he’s not interested in finding or forming other relationships, polyamory is something that we made a decision about together and something that we are still exploring and expanding together. Neither of us would be where we are if it weren’t for the other.

I also realize that I need to stop using bisexuality as a reason for being poly. It came up when H told his family about A and someone asked, ‘If she’s doing this because she wants to be with women, what’s with the boyfriend?’ Given how we’d framed the whole situation, I think that was a reasonable enough question. I honestly am no longer sure what I said at the time because I’ve since talked it over with several people, but I’ve basically concluded that while bisexuality was the avenue through which I learned about polyamory, it isn’t the reason I’m polyamorous. I am increasingly sure that even if I weren’t bisexual, I would be polyamorous and that I am both is a coincidence, if an extremely convenient one.

Poly and newly-marrieds September 5, 2008

I feel a strange reluctance to talk about polyamory – to even mention it – to people who are about to get married and want to talk to me, the long-married friend, about it. I don’t know what it is. I personally don’t see marriage as the be-all end-all of a relationship. It’s just another optional step along the way as far as I’m concerned. But I suppose I think that marriage is a much more loaded concept for those about to start one than for most other people and I while I’m happy to discuss marriage and poly as ideas with people who are either single or have been married a while, those on the threshhold seem to have a very emotional, almost brittle, relationship with marriage and I don’t want to stress it any further. Which of course could be a complete projection of my own negative feelings towards the institution and ultimately have nothing to do with the almost-marrieds themselves.

Am I an activist? September 2, 2008

I’m not sure how to proceed. The Poly Old Fart asked an important question a while ago and I’ve been thinking about it since: Why am I blogging?

This is and isn’t a journal. While I’ve outlined my journey from a monogamous to a polyamorous situation here, I’ve left out lots of details, not published a lot of what I’ve recorded elsewhere about each relationship, and attempted to protect other people’s privacy to the extent that I could. I have, however, posted some very personal things that I can’t take back now that they’re out there. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to take them back when I posted them and I’m OK with that. It was important for me to write those things and important for me to know that someone had read them. I needed to get the frustration I was feeling off my chest, as well as the realization that I needed to acknowledge some very basic things about myself – things I had known all along and chosen to ignore or push aside for the time being.

I didn’t expect people to read my blog and then write to me telling me they understood what I was going through or that they were just a few months behind me in the figuring-it-all-out process and that what I’d written had actually helped them along. For me, this was just a space in which to vent, think, and maybe at some point connect with other people in the same or a similar situation so that I could get my head together. The positive comments and support have been wonderful and I’ve learnt a lot from other poly bloggers who’ve been either poly or blogging, or both, for far longer than I have.

I wouldn’t call myself an activist either, but I am a communicator. My instinct upon finding out about something new and interesting and challenging is to broadcast it. Acknowledging that I was bisexual was a big enough ‘event’, if personal, but discovering polyamory and realizing how much potential there was in it was way too much to just sit on. And then, as often happens when one ‘discovers’ something, I found many other people had got there first and were doing a brilliant job of talking about the emotional, political, financial, social implications of being polyamorous. So now I write and I link.

I stop at communication though. I don’t seek to evangelize or convince people that polyamory is the One True Way, mainly because while it is a good fit for me personally, my experience with it is limited. Most of my information comes from the community I interact with, the books I read, and the bloggers I follow online.  I respect experience and knowledge gained through the thoughtful examining thereof and overall, I’ve found experienced poly bloggers do rather a lot of that, which is catnip to this kitteh.

My own poly relationships are going well. A and I are rolling along happily and my relationship with S is growing firmer as we get to know and trust each other. H and I are closer than ever in a lot of ways and his ‘role’ in the community has come as something of a happy surprise all around. We’re all discovering new things about ourselves, our relationships, our feelings, our attitudes, our wants, our insecurities and much more. Everyone’s at a different point, but we manage to communciate over the gaps and even though we don’t have much of a blueprint, we’re building something.

And that is where I reach the next question: what do I write about now? I’m quite protective of all three of them, but particularly of A and S because H at least knows about this blog and that I write about him (the other two know that I have a blog and expect to be mentioned, but that’s it). I want to write about them – about how they make me feel, how we’ve worked things out, who they are, etc – but I want to protect both their privacy and mine. I also get cynical and think, really, how different is any of what I have to say from the millions of other relationships that get started and are built on every day? Just because there are more people involved doesn’t really make it news. So then I think I should take a leaf from the books of the poly bloggers I read and talk instead about the larger issues, the ideas, the conflicts – the learning and the  learning process, really. That’s what’s meant the most to me when I’ve read other blogs and if I’m to do anything with this blog, providing an account of what I’ve learned from being polyamorous is probably what would be most useful, both to others and also to me.