Lessons From An Ex

So I think I finally figured out what bothered me about my ex-boyfriend being interested in a particular person while I was dating him. I knew it bothered me, but I didn't really know why because I actually liked her as a friend. I had a complete emotional panic and I couldn't explain why it was so important to me that he not get involved with her, although I could give plenty of rational justifications why a relationship with her was probably not a good idea, all of which he agreed with. But in the end, those were rationalizations made after the emotional panic, and I knew it, and he knew it.

Part of the problem was something I knew at the time and I tried explaining to him, and, to his credit, he did attempt to soothe that fear ... at first. The problem was that the ex-boyfriend just before him had displayed to me his unwillingness to consider the feelings of his existing partners when making relationship choices.

Oh, he said he "considered" our feelings. But what that meant was that he thought about what we might feel about the situation, and then went ahead and did what he wanted to do anyway. What we (me and one of his other partners) meant by "consider our feelings" was to self-limit his potential partner selection down to girls who would get along with his existing partners, knowing that choosing someone who was not compatible with the whole group was asking for drama and heartache, and we were asking him to place a higher value on maintaining the peace and happiness of his existing relationships than on exploring new ones, if he actually intended to keep his existing relationships. This sort of "consideration" is incompatible with the Free Agent style of polyamory, where a person wants the "freedom" to choose his partners purely based on what he gets out of it, and his existing partners should just "trust" his "partner judgement" and accept the newcomer automatically. I put the word "freedom" in quotes there, because, ultimately, we are all free to make whatever choices we want, and it is only our empathy and consideration of other people, and perhaps thoughts of consequences, that might make us choose not to do something we might otherwise want to do.

So, this prior ex-boyfriend had already shown me that he did not place any higher value on his existing relationships than on potential relationships, and that left me feeling disposable and interchangeable, even though I'm the one who initiated the breakup. So partly I was in a vulnerable place where I was feeling concern and I wanted some kind of evidence that my new partner would not do the same thing. It's probably not very fair to test a current partner based on a past partner's failings, but we all do test our partners to make sure that they are people we can feel safe putting our trust into. That's part of the gradual falling-in-love process. We don't give our housekeys out to some guy on a first date, we get to know him first and see if he's trustworthy before giving him access to our homes.

So I was feeling particularly vulnerable at that moment anyway, but there was another reason I was so upset.

Even though I liked the other girl, what bothered me most, I think, about his romantic interest in her was what it said about him. It said some things I really didn't like, things I was desperately trying to ignore, things that ended up biting me in the ass anyway. With some perspective of several years' distance and some relationships with people who are completely different, I can see some things about my ex that I wasn't facing at the time and that it's really probably a good thing that we're no longer together. I'm trying really hard to not make this into revisionist history, so I've gone over old letters and conversations with people *at the time* to discover that the things I'm figuring out now are not things I'm making up or exaggerating to feel better about the breakup, but things that other people saw back then that I refused to see, or that I did see but refused to acknowledge their importance.

What his interest in the other girl said about him is not really important, just that it said things about him that made him very incompatible with me. He is not a bad person, he is just someone that I should not be in a relationship with. And I think that's what I was afraid of. I was afraid that, if he dated her while he was dating me, I would be forced to acknowledge those things about him, and once I had done that, I would not be able to be with him. And I wanted so badly to be with him.

That's one of the benefits of polyamory that so many people see as a drawback. Inviting more people into the relationship invites more opportunities to see ourselves, and our loved ones, through clearer eyes with more perspective. It's much more difficult to hide in poly relationships, and it's much more difficult to go along with our eyes closed and just accept things as they are. That is both a terrifying and a liberating thing. Being forced to confront yourself, and the reality of your partners, may mean that our relationships don't last as long as monogamous relationships do (and I don't really believe that poly relationships are shorter-lived than mono ones, but for the sake of argument, let's say that it's true). But it also means that a relationship where the participants have been forced to confront themselves, their fears, and the reality of their partner rather than the ideal of their partner, and survives is a stronger, more honest relationship. That goes for monogamous relationships too, polyamory is not the only way to do this, it's just a relationship style that doesn't allow you to not do this.

So I think I could have remained in a relationship with him for a long time, if we had both been monogamous people. I really did love him, even the scary parts of himself he thought I didn't know about. But I think that my emotions were trying to tell me something when I panicked about his new interest, and it wasn't that she was a horrible person. It was that he and I were ultimately not compatible in some very fundamental ways, and that I was refusing to see that. And I think that I am better off for not having remained in that relationship with him for as long as I could have if my panic button had been safely walled away behind a monogamous border where it couldn't be pushed when it was.

I think my only regret is that I didn't recognize the problem for what it was at the time, and that I gave him the opportunity to do to me exactly what I was afraid of with the first part of my fear - to dispose of me when I was no longer convenient and to take up with the next pretty little thing that turned his head. As with most "rules" made out of fear, the thing I was trying to avoid by asking him not to date her was exactly what happened. But I learned my lessons. Eventually.

Poly Movie Review - Y Tu Mama Tambien

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Y_Tu_Mama_Tambien/60023237?trkid=496624 - Netflix
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245574/ - IMDB Database

I'm not sure which poly movie list this was on, but I don't think it was poly. It wasn't a bad movie, and it was definitely about multiple sex partners, but I don't think it was poly.

The summary at Netflix says "When rich teenagers Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) meet the alluring, older Luisa (Maribel Verdu) at a wedding, they try to impress her with stories of a road trip to a secret beach, and ultimately convince her to come with them. What follows in director Alfonso Cuaron's Oscar-nominated film -- one of the most talked-about pics of 2002 -- is an escapade involving seduction, conflict and the harsh realities of poverty."

The two main characters, Julio and Tenoch, each have girlfriends that have gone to Europe for the summer. The teenagers meet Tenoch's cousin's wife, Luisa. They find out that she is interested in visiting a beach, so they make up a mythical perfect beach that no one knows about and invite her to come with them to find it, hoping to score with her but ultimately knowing that they never will.

Luisa visits a doctor, and later that night gets a drunken phone call from her husband, telling her that he cheated on her. So she calls up Tenoch and asks if the offer to visit the beach is still open. The three of them take off across the Mexican countryside to find a beach that doesn't exist.

Along the way, we discover that the boys have each slept with each other's girlfriends, and that Luisa seduces them both. Each revelation sets off a spark of jealous rage, culminating in Luisa jumping out of the car and attempting to ditch them both. She only returns after they agree to her long list of demands, including that neither boy fights, contradicts her, or even speaks without her permission.

Eventually, they find a beach and spend a couple of days frolicking in the water and getting drunk, which seems to repair everyone's friendship. Luisa seduces them both again, only this time at the same time and they have a threesome, including some guy-on-guy activity. But the boys wake up the next morning, appearing to regret it, or at least, regretting the copious amounts of tequila they drank the night before.

Luisa decides to stay at the beach with the new friends she's made among the locals, and the two boys go back home. There's still a little more to the story, but since I watched it for its poly content, and that is the end of the possible poly content, I'll stop there.

I didn't like the characters. The two boys are rich, spoiled, entitled, potheads who spend their entire time drugged out of their heads, drunk, and masturbating. When they're not actively masturbating, they're talking about women's body parts or insulting each others' body parts. They don't seem to have any other interests at all besides pot, beer, and tits. I'm not even sure how they got girlfriends in the first place, except I seem to remember being a teenager and not really having much in common with some boyfriends except that we liked to fuck.

They were jealous and hypocritical and boastful and deceitful and, well, teenage boys. Luisa seemed the most complex of the characters, but she just wasn't quite enough to carry the whole movie by herself. Her motivation for randomly accepting an invitation to spend a week driving around a foreign country with a couple of boys she didn't know, and to further seduce them both with no lead-up and no prior interest or attraction, makes sense in light of the glimpses we did get into her life. It's just that the scenes were too filled with the boys cussing at each other and generally being obnoxious teens, that I couldn't really like the movie.

I will say, though, that foreign films can do sex scenes better than American films. This movie opens with the two boys fucking their girlfriends, and although the dialog is terrible, the scenes feel realistic. Maybe it's the use of handheld cameras, or the lack of cheesy music and soft filters, or maybe it's the frantic teenage-boy fucking, but I thought the sex scenes, for all that they were softcore, were the best parts of the movie. Even awkward sex, done right, is better than smooth sex done wrong.

So, it was an interesting film. It was a sexual exploration movie. If you're into that, you might want to see this film. But it wasn't a poly movie. It wasn't about relationships or love. It was about sex. Which has its place, just not on a poly movie list.

Poly Movie Review - Summer Lovers

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Summer_Lovers/60025215?trkid=2361637 - Netflix
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084737/ - IMDB Database
http://amzn.to/2igHfLe - Amazon

If you want to see a poly movie, I can think of no better example than Summer Lovers. This movie stars Daryl Hannah and takes place in the very early 1980s in the romantic and exotic setting of a beach-side villa in Greece. Cathy and her boyfriend Michael decide to spend the summer in Greece, lounging around, soaking up the sun, and seeing the sights. Until Michael sets his sights on Lina. Lina is a French archeologist working in Greece for the summer and renting a villa within sight of Cathy and Michael's villa. Michael runs into her one day and follows her to the beach, while Cathy is off exploring on her own. With what seems to be very little setup, Michael and Lina have sex.

Michael, feeling guilt-ridden, immediately confesses to Cathy, who, understandably, leaves him in a fit of anger and hurt. Michael seeks consolation in Lina's arms that night.

The next day, Michael and Cathy attempt to reconcile, but it's difficult. Cathy wants to understand why Michael would cheat on her and what he sees in Lina. So she seeks Lina out. Cathy arrives at Lina's villa, and they have a little chat. Cathy discoveres tha she actually likes Lina and invites her to dinner with the two of them, much to Michael's surprise and discomfort.

What follows is the tale of a couple, damaged by infidelity, opening their minds and their hearts to another woman. We see the growing pains as Cathy struggles with her feelings of betrayal that war with her interest and appreciation of Lina. We see Michael, caught between his long-time love and a new, intriguing woman. We see tug of war between Lina's desire and love for Michael and Cathy, and her independence and freedom.

This movie takes us on the whole ride, from a very common beginning that starts with an indescretion and leads to a family. We see the good times and the bad. This movie does not gloss over the bumps in the road as three people attempt to adjust to a non-traditional relationship, but it is also not a morality play against the evils of sex and non-traditional love. I think a lot of people can identify with this movie because I think a lot of people come to polyamory from very similar situations.

I think this is probably the best example of polyamory in film out there. It shows us the whole range of emotions and gives us characters we can relate to and situations that we can understand how the characters got there, probably because most of us have been there ourselves. No poly movie list would be complete without this film on it.