However, I’ve been hearing about it for the better part of this year and it has piqued my curiosity. Today, I came across a post by Emily Nagoski on the subject, which is why it’s in my head. Her post was interesting, as always (go read it), and I’m writing this post mostly because I liked her negative take on it (seriously, go read it) and because I wanted to record my comment here.

I said

[snip]I’m polyamorous and quite a few people I know have been telling me this book is fantastic because it ‘proves’ that we were ‘meant’ to be polyamorous. I haven’t had the time to read it myself yet, but statements like that set off my BS sensors.

I agree with the statement above (actually I agree with all of them) that this is the good old appeal-to-authority fallacy in action. If it’s ‘natural’ then we can’t help it, which means we are not the “bad” people that flouting convention makes us. Way to get yourselves off the hook.

Personally, I’d rather take active responsibility for my life and choices.

The breathless buzz about this book, specially in poly circles, irks me. It suggests that people are desperately hungry for justification and validation and that their own ability to reason isn’t good enough. Now, everyone has a different level of confidence in themselves and a lack of confidence is not really the worst thing ever. I can have all the confidence in the world and still make a stupid decision – it’s not about that. What pisses me off is that people aren’t prepared to own their decisions.

I think that polyamory is right for me. I made the choice to be polyamorous after a lot of thought and a lot of discussion with H. We decided that it sounded reasonable and was worth trying. Then we read some more and talked to more people and got to know the community and kept checking in with each other to make sure it was still ok. Now, years later, I can say that it worked. I’m happy, H is happy, my other partners are happy. There have been ups and downs, of course, and not all my relationships have lasted, but that’s life.

But I also know that for all that effort and reasoning and care, I may yet fall flat on my face. Knowing what I do and knowing myself, I can only say that I don’t think that will happen, but I have no guarantee. And that’s ok. I’m doing the best I can to the best of my knowledge. I don’t need someone to pat me on the head and tell me that I’m doing what I’m ‘programmed’ to do (unless that happens to be reasoning, thinking and acting responsibly. And even then, you pat my head at your own risk.). That is patronizing and deeply offensive. But more importantly, this kind of biological determinism is also potentially harmful because it effectively absolves us of responsibility for our actions. It suggests that we can’t help doing these things and that we have no control over our own lives and inclinations. From where I sit, that’s a whole lot of hooey.

(To be updated once I’ve read the book. Probably next year.)

I really hate it when person A describes a holiday or food or a fun activity to person B who didn’t participate and the latter responds with “I’m so jealous!” or “I hate you!” or “You suck!”

Mostly, the person making these statements doesn’t actually harbor any ill-will towards person A, and is only trying to indicate that the activity in question is something they like and wish they could do too. I don’t have a problem with that bit. I do have a problem with the phrasing though, because it’s such a negative way to express yourself. To me, it sounds like you’re saying you’re the center of the universe and how dare somebody else get to do something you don’t? Why not just a ‘good for you’ or ‘that’s so great’ or ‘have fun’ or ‘you deserve it’? I know in most cases the person who says ‘I’m so jealous’ probably feels all those things. Why not say them instead of something negative-sounding?

I suppose the j-word particularly irks me, specially in the poly context where we’ve actively worked to process and understand jealousy. You could argue that trivializing it in this way helps de-fang it – it’s just a word – and, intellectually, I’d probably agree. Generally, its use every now and then isn’t a big deal. But lately it seems that it’s being used ALL the freaking time, to the point that person A in the example above will now say ‘I’m doing such-and-such. Aren’t you jealous?’ or ‘Ooh x! B is going to be SO jealous!’ and I really don’t like it.

That kinda sucked, now that I think about it.

Recently though, I found Clarisse Thorn via her posts on Feministe and remembered again why I liked listening to smart women talking about their sexuality, their politics and their experiences. Her excellent post dismantling the idea of inherent female submission was what really hooked me on her writing. Not only was she clear and thorough, she also linked to a whole bunch of blogs by dominant women when debunking the idea that all women are naturally submissive. That particular blog post was something of a turning point for me personally, but I’ll talk about that later.

For now I want to talk about the blogs I found through her (thank you!) and totally fell in love with.

Like Domme Chronicles, by Ferns, for instance. I wanted by now to have a few favorite posts to point to, but honestly I think it’s just better to go to the beginning and just read the blog from beginning to end. I’m not quite caught up yet (I have to work, sadly), but it’s such a pleasure to read that I find myself not minding having to put it away because that means there’s more to come back to. And while the writing alone is worth going back for, I find that hers, of all the other, similar blogs I’ve read in the past, is the one that resonates most with me.

I’ve already talked about Topologies, one of the blogs Clarisse Thorn linked to directly in her post and the starting point for my return to the world of dominant women who blog. It’s gone a bit silent over there at the moment, unfortunately, but I really enjoyed their writing and hope they’ll be back soon.

Tales of a Domme, by Dishevelled Domina  is another smart, well written blog that I like reading. Her series interviewing submissive men has been interesting and she keeps doing things like that -asking questions about aspects of BDSM that interest her (and me!) and inviting people to have thoughtful discussions about how kink ties into other things, and so on. Her tumblr (NSFW) is pretty damn awesome too.

Then there’s Stabbity at Not Just Bitchy. The blog’s only been around since June this year, but I think it moved onto my favorites list pretty much immediately. Stabbity – and let’s pause for a second to admire that handle – talks sense. Not that the others don’t, mind you, but she does it in rant form and that just warms my heart. That she (and we) have shit to rant about isn’t so great, but at least it results in good reading and discussion.

Then there’s maymay’s blog Maybe Days. It consists of shorter posts, quotes, and photos and is, like most of maymay’s work, political. That’s a broad term, but it’s hard to find a succinct way of describing someone who’s done so much and put himself out there so often for the kink community and particularly for our side, i.e. submissive men and, by association, dominant women. I know that whenever there’s an update, it’ll be something worth reading and reacting to (and usually sharing).

So in all, this is a group of smart, thoughtful, passionate people who, very fortunately for the interwebs and the kinky people on it, happen to blog. I’m delighted to have found my way to them.

a) women don’t like sex as much as men and so having two or more men to ‘satisfy’ is difficult for the poor little darlings

or

b)men are horndogs but women like fidelity and get ragingly jealous (extra points for the ‘hell hath no fury’ line) so the idea of their men having other partners would drive women out of their minds

I’ve never understood that particular (set of) argument(s). I mean, let’s talk basic genital biology for a second. Men need a helluva lot more time to recover from orgasm than women do. Now, there’s lots of individual variation, but technically speaking, I can totally see how a woman could have sex with two men consecutively, but I have a harder time seeing how a man would manage to get it up without a break (or ‘medical’ intervention). Even allowing for an extremely short refractory period, superb health and preternatural horniness, and all of them coinciding, we’d still be talking about a very small number of men.

And let’s be clear here. In these conversations,  sex is usually assumed as men wanting to stick their penises into women. Personally, I think sex encompasses far more than that, but I have yet to come across someone concern trolling about, for instance, all those poor women who struggle to satisfy their male partners’ need for cunnilingus all day, every day. Something tells me that the oft-lamented female distaste for sex – if it exists at all – may have more to do with men being rubbish at it than women not liking it. I mean, I love chocolate cake, but if you screw up the recipe,  I won’t want to eat it, you know?

As for b), I’d like to point to the societal imperative placed on both men and women to mark their territory when it comes to sexual partners. For women, the competition is meant to be more passive – we have to be more attractive/alluring than the competition in the hope that our men will continue to choose us over them. For men, the competition is meant to be – and can become – much more active and aggressive. Take this ad, for example:

Yes, it’s very silly, but that silliness speaks to how normal we find it for men to be violent towards other men when competing for a woman’s affections. (Note also that nobody asked the woman in question who she would prefer. Her job is to stand there, look pretty and be the prize.)

This doesn’t mean that jealousy doesn’t happen between women by any means. It just means that people constructing women as exclusively jealous are basically just talking out of their asses. People get jealous. Some people get extremely jealous, and some only mildly, if at all, and all of them are normal. Besides which, jealousy isn’t some sort of permanent, inescapable state. If you’re a mature adult, odds are you can figure your shit out and deal with it successfully, or at the very least try to.

So not only is b) yet another example of the gender essentialism that plagues our societies but it also infantilises women by implying that they can’t act like adults and deal with their jealousy, should they encounter it in the first place.

But of course, these people don’t mean any harm. They’re just looking out for us poor females because gosh we’re so silly to think we can keep up with the manly men and their manliness.

*eyeroll*

So I met this person. Or rather, this person met me and decided they were interested. I didn’t object – they’re cute and sweet and only here for a short time, so why not?

This person is not polyamorous, but knows all about me and my setup and says they’re willing to give it a shot. We’ve talked a lot, met a few times, things are good.

Except that even at this early stage, I’m having flashbacks to my relationship with A and the thoughtless things he did when it came to dating other people. I have no expectations with this new person and am frankly happy that they’re meeting other people and having a good time at it. If nothing else, it takes the pressure off me since I don’t feel like their only source of entertainment.

And yet…I don’t know. I don’t suspect any ill-will, but in describing new and exciting people, I can’t help but hear an indictment of myself. If other people are too interesting to be interested in them, then what does that say about someone who IS interested? Like A, I don’t think they’ve thought their statement through and unlike with A, we’re not even in a relationship of any kind so I don’t get why I feel vaguely ill when they say that.

But I do.

With A, I eventually spoke up and informed him that saying crap like that was insulting to me. With this person, I don’t feel like I have any business saying something like that. We kid around, flirt, talk about random crap and that’s it. So they think somebody else is exciting. So what? So do I.

I guess I feel like they’re hedging their bets and I don’t like not knowing where I stand. I also suspect that the comments are not as innocent as A’s – this person has given me reason to believe they’re a whole lot more savvy than A ever was about this stuff. But then again, maybe it’s just me projecting my own insecurities on someone who’s only sharing how they feel because I’ve been happy to listen so far.

…

Upon further thought, I’ve decided that next time something like this comes up, I will point out the implied criticism in the statement, but with the assumption that it was unintentional. Hopefully a simple ‘ouch’ will suffice.

And if that doesn’t work, it’s off to the reject pile for this one.

Briefly, the blog is about BDSM from the points of view of three “women who top/dom”. I use their phrasing since not all of them use those words as identifiers so much as descriptors for what they like to do.

The three women in question are Cal Stockton, Ivy O’Malley, and Delilah Wood (these links will take you to a list of their posts on the blog). Each one writes thoughtfully and carefully and it just makes my heart happy to read what they have to say. I love that they don’t necessarily have One Truth to impart (see their ‘Convoluted Terminology‘ posts, for an example.). Instead, they present their sometimes differing opinions like civilized adults (It’s a sad comment on general discussion online that such an approach stands out, but there you go.) and the discussion that arises from that is genuinely engaging and interesting.

It is also SUCH a relief to read the perspectives of dominant women (or women-who-top) from a non-pornified perspective again (it’s a word now, dammit). I loved Bitchy Jones and have missed her since she closed up shop last year. Having found more smart, feminist women who make with the ouchy-hurty AND critique general BDSM culture is awesome. And inspiring.

Also, the name makes me smirk every time. Love it.

I don’t think she’s wrong, but what Franklin said echoes my own view better. Personally, I don’t trust NRE. I enjoy it, certainly – the giddiness, the butterflies in the stomach, the obsession, the very high highs and the crazy hot sex. But all the while it’s happening, I know that I’m not being rational and that I should avoid making any long-term decisions until it wears off.  This isn’t a bad thing, really. I think, in a way, knowing that the rush will wear off makes me savor it all the more. But, like Franklin said, this isn’t the real ‘good stuff’.

For me, it’s what happens when the chemical rush wears off that really matters. Sometimes, the fog clears and you realize that the person causing it is someone you genuinely like, get along with, want to be with and can build a relationship with. Sometimes, not so much.

Neither result is fundamentally bad, really, but for me, the real relationship begins after the NRE ends. It’s when you’ve regained control of your faculties that you can make a real decision regarding how, or even whether, you want to proceed with a relationship.

Of course, if it turns out the person is every bit as awesome as I thought they were, I can’t help feeling a little smug in a I-knew-it-all-along sort of way. I’m only human.

And it doesn’t make it any less sad when a potential relationship doesn’t work out. Just because I have a macro lens in my head doesn’t mean I don’t actually feel all the emotions I’m going through at the time. I just also have a bird’s eye view of the process as it happens. FSM knows it doesn’t stop me being stupid about it all, hence the no-major-decisions rule.

The reason I’m thinking about all of this, aside from having listened to the podcast, is that I broke up with NP this week. Chalk that up to the NRE wearing off and us realizing we speak completely different languages, relationship-wise. I am not sure when exactly I’ll get the many many crossed wires straightened out enough to actually process it. At the moment, it feels more like it’s still spitting little sparks of “oh so that’s what she meant when she said x” and “so she thought y meant z – no wonder”.  What a mess.

But reasonable as it may sound in my head, I don’t know how to actually do it. Instead, I put up with minor annoyances until I can’t stand them any more. At that point, my desire to not hurt the person annoying me gets outweighed by my irritation, and I let fly, often with far more force than the original annoyance warranted, often damaging the relationship irreparably. This is bad.

I need to find a way to flag things before they become problems. Often, it’s hard to spot, what with it being a tiny thing here, a little overstepping there. Or, if I do spot it, it’s hard to bring attention to without making it a huge deal.

I’ve thought of various ways I could soften the ‘no’. There’s the ‘Honey, I love you, but could you please not do that?’ or ‘Hey you know, that thing you did wasn’t cool. Not a big deal, but just, yeah, could you not do it again please?’ or the ‘me’ statement approach ‘I don’t like such and such much, so if we could avoid that, that’d be really nice.’ or even ‘Hey, when I hear that kind of thing, I feel …’ with perhaps a few bits of ‘I know you don’t mean it that way/wouldn’t do something deliberately’ thrown in for good measure. I don’t know if those are actually good statements or not – they’re just what have come to mind. I  like the advice I got once of focusing on what the person did rather than making it about who they are, and I’ve tried to do that in the statements above. I have yet to use any of them though.

What I think I’d like, really, is a warning sign. I’d like to be able to say, ‘Hey, what you just did is not a big deal, but if it gets any worse, we’re going to have a problem.’  Does that sound like I’m picking  a fight? It does to my ears, so I don’t use it.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

At first, as is usually the case, things were lovely. We spent tons of time together, couldn’t get enough of each other, couldn’t wait to see each other again.

I should have seen the problem coming though. While I did definitely get swept away, I continued seeing my other partners regularly. I may have been a bit quiet and a bit tired when we got together, but I like to think that they know I love them regardless of my energy levels. I suppose it helps that they’re introverted and have generally lower energy levels than I do anyway.

My new partner, on the other hand, did not have the same kind of relationships. NP’s partner was both glad of the time off and expected to feel rejected and lonely at times, because hey, that’s what happens when your partner starts a new relationship. Consequently, NP had all this time for me and while I made time for NP, I was aware that at some point I’d have to get back to work.

My fault. NP was sometimes hostile towards my work, and I’d let it slide. This was new and, I thought, not a real problem. H had been there since before the project started, and S had come in at the very beginning. Both of them have always been supportive and have always understood that sometimes, my work means I can’t spend time with them, can’t get to things I said I’d get to, or simply can’t pull myself out of work and engage day-to-day stuff. They are awesome about it. Rather than give me flak about being absent, I get praise and support for working, getting stuff done, etc. While it’s hard for me to be without them – or be with them while not really being there – and I’m guessing it is for them too at times, it is something they accept and work around. They have plenty else to keep themselves occupied, be it other partners, work, or their other myriad interests.

NP has other interests, but doesn’t seem keen on any of them. The Relationship seems to be it. And that is a big problem, because I simply can’t give it and NP the amount of time and energy that seems to be required. It’s just not possible – or at least, not sustainable in the long term.

It is also now that the sex-induced haze has lifted that I am starting to wonder what kind of staying power the relationship has. I am beginning to think that our admittedly amazing ability to communicate sexually does not actually translate to the other areas of our lives. We seem at cross purposes so often when it comes to talking about  things, mostly because NP’s model for communication seems mostly composed of hints and subtext and guilt trips, while mine tends more towards jus saying what you mean and being as honest as possible about why you want what you do. It’s not that NP’s fundamentally dishonest or that I am fundamentally honest or the ‘better person’ or any of that. NP’s other relationship has been going for a long time and that is their primary mode of communication. It seems to work well enough for them, so even though it would drive me completely insane, I can’t really say it’s any worse than what I do.

But as I said, it does drive me completely insane when I run into it. I don’t think it is appropriate for an adult to scold another adult, I don’t think it is ok to guilt people into doing things, I don’t think it is realisitic to expect people to know what you want without being told or reminded, and I definitely don’t think it is ok to be passive aggressive. And yet, not only do I have to deal with some of this, I am expected to behave in this way. This means that some of the things I say or the questions I ask are read as passive-aggressive or controlling or guilting when there is no such intent behind them. This means that the response I get to such questions are therefore fake apologies or sarcasm or other nastiness instead of a straightforward response. Since I don’t expect all this crap, I get thrown off and wonder what went wrong, why NP is upset or feeling attacked or attacking me. It fucks with my head.

I don’t know what to do, really. We’ve had a couple of talks about the whole communication style thing and NP’s taken on board the fact that I don’t do manipulation and passive-aggression. It’s not totally ok yet, but NP’s making an effort and has started to see where and why our conversations go off the rails.

But the clinginess. What do I do about that? Showing up at my place unannounced, showing up at my workplace unannounced, showing up when I’m working from home…it all makes me very uncomfortable. I don’t want NP to feel unwelcome in my home, but sometimes I really want my keys back. I live with H and my home is our space. S is welcome in it, as are her partners, my friends and other family are welcome, and NP is too, but all the time? And without warning? I feel completely at home in S’s house, but I wouldn’t just let myself in uninvited and sit there all day.

I know I’m making NP sound creepy, and that’s not what I actually think. I’m just irritated that my spaces are not being respected and that I am not being left the hell alone to do my work or just be alone. I wouldn’t put up with this in a monogamous relationship, and yet here I am struggling with it in a poly relationship.

At least I’ve learnt something. Once upon a time, I thought that constant, unregulated contact with someone I loved wouldn’t be so bad. I was very, very wrong.

Her latest post, in which she tries to help a reader cope with her anxiety around a budding relationship, is both hilarious and actually very good advice. It cracked me up because I recognize myself in both the question and the answer, saw how silly it all was, and realized I was probably not going to get over the silliness any time soon.

Her two very practical suggestions are, well, very practical: