The Journal Of The InnKeeper

From a comment I made in another thread about the lesson I learned about metamours:

I am generally friends with my metamours and some of them are closer to me than our mutual partner. 2 of my closest friends are metafores (a metamour from before) where that metamour relationship lasted longer and is closer than the mutual partner who brought us together.

All that said, if I have a metamour who is "a drama starter", that is not a problem between her and me, that is a problem between my partner and me because he would think that it's acceptable to be involved with someone like that.

All relationships bring conflict. I have conflicted with every metamour I've ever had at one time or another. Occasionally the personality conflict is big enough that we choose to merely coexist. The rest of the time, the conflict is like any other - we work it out and get through it.

Think of metamour relationships like in-laws. You don't have a choice who your in-laws are - they come with your partner. If your partner keeps a relationship with them, that's because they see value in those relationships even if you don't have the same value system. You can try to befriend them or you can largely ignore them, whatever you think is appropriate for in-law relationships, but they *will* affect your romantic relationship one way or another depending on how close your partner is to them.

And if you have a problem with your in-laws, then you really have a problem with that partner for choosing to remain connected to them. If the problem is not about how they're influencing your relationship but just about personality differences, then you work through it with them directly until you find a balance you can both live with.

Poly people like to think we're inventing the wheel, that no one has ever done anything like what we do before. But most of the skills necessary to navigate poly relationships are available to us through our other relationships and our other practices.

Metamours are basically in-laws. You can't make your partner choose your in-laws based on your preferences without overriding agency and utilizing coercion so you learn to deal or you recognize that the problem is between you and your partner for having incompatible relationship goals.



"Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

BTW, there's very little that's more poly (outside of poly-specific and/or sex-centric activities) than a swing jam.  I keep talking about how partner dancing is both a good analogy and good training for poly relationships, but a swing jam is about as poly as it gets on the dance floor.

A handful of dancers wait on the floor while everyone else forms a circle around them (usually they're people with birthdays that month or some other special thing that singles them out).  Then the music starts, and someone from the outer circle jumps in to dance with someone inside the circle.  As they dance, another person preps and, without allowing the dancer to miss a beat, takes their partner's place.

It's kind of like a swing dance version of double-dutch jump rope, where kids have to jump in and out of the ropes while they keep spinning, and a line forms with kids who all take turns with one person jumping in as another jumps out.

Some good-natured "competition" can happen between the partners who are cutting in, with one partner cutting in very quickly so the other partner cuts back in almost immediately instead of letting a third person cut in.  But it's always done in fun.  And sometimes a "tandem swing" happens, where one person dances with two partners at the same time.

The dancers in the circle have to all be aware of the other dancers around them and how they impact and affect everyone else.  They are all there to have a good time.  The partners pay attention to who is there before them, so that they don't cut in too soon and cut someone out of a decent amount of dance time.

The partners also pay attention to who hasn't danced yet and they wait before taking a second turn to make sure others have a chance to dance with the person in the circle.

There is so much awareness of what people are doing that affects those around them and of what the other people are doing that could affect their own decisions on where to be and how to move, and consideration for those who came before and those who will come after, and sharing and switching out partners and joyful play and fun competition and healthy cooperation ... a swing jam is really very much like watching polyamory in motion.

I wish more poly people would get into dancing.

(I know there are more poly dancers out on the West Coast and some in the UK, but that doesn't help me here in Florida or, apparently, anywhere else in the world since only those two locations ever chime in to "correct" me when I complain about the lack of poly dancers.  But my point is not that there aren't *any* dancers who are poly or polys who are dancers, but that the greater poly community would benefit from a stronger overlap with the dance community, in general, because of the lessons to be learned through dancing)

This one, btw, is only one person on the floor, but he's someone I happen to know personally. It's his 75th birthday jam and he even has a tandem in there:


I was actually in attendance at this dance, although I did not join the jam (I never do):


There's a dancer in a silver fringe "flapper" dress in this video who does a fucking amazing job of switching back and forth between lead and follow roles, depending on if her partner is a lead or a follow (and not always along strict gender lines either).

There is also a man wearing shorts and a lei I think who also switches back and forth depending on his partners. In relationships and in kink, I am a switch, but in dancing, this is not a skill I possess at all let alone during the same song and I greatly admire those who can.

*sigh* my sister...

So, my family is, like, totally "normal".  They are what we are told we are "supposed" to be: my dad proposed to my mom at her senior prom, they got married right out of high school, are still married, had 2 kids and a series of dogs and raised us in the suburbs.  My sister was "the jock", I was "the brain", my mom came from a lower class immigrant family and moved into middle class, even sent me to private school.  All we lacked was a literal picket fence.

Even our dysfunctions were "normal":  I dropped out of college to work in manual labor, my sister got pregnant in high school and became a single teen mom, but we both mostly stayed out of real trouble and we love our parents.  So my sister is totally not part of any alt communities.  But she really should be.  She has like the most queer-platonic relationship I've ever seen.  Her best friend is the girl who grew up next door to us and they do *everything* together.

After I moved out, when my oldest nibling was a toddler, my sister and our next door neighbor became really close friends, so the neighbor kinda stepped in as an additional parent when I left.  She just adores my niblings and they adore her.  She is unmarried and has applied for adoption.  Even though she has a boyfriend, she is planning on being a single mother.  Perhaps if her boyfriend becomes a husband, he'll also become the adopted kid's father, but she has been planning to adopt for quite some time and is doing everything under the assumption that she will be the sole parent.

Except for my sister.  As soon as my neighbor announced that the adoption application was approved, my sister immediately teared up and shouted "WE'RE HAVING A BABY?!?!"

Once my neighbor gave the go-ahead for my sister to start telling people, she always said it as "*we* are having a baby", and the neighbor seems to be approving, not just tolerating, this perspective.  My sister will be the secondary parent to her best friend's kids, whether she ever has a spouse or not.

And now, my sister is posting pictures from her honeymoon in Cancun.  Guess who's there?  My sister brought her best friend (and her bf) on her honeymoon.

No, she is definitely not poly or bi.  We've had frank discussions of both, and, while my sister understands and accepts both concepts in other people, she says they're not for her.  But she clearly has "alternative" family structures.  Her bestie is also a co-parent and a life-partner, and apparently neither of their straight male romantic partners mind.

I keep saying how all of my alt-family philosophies and skills come from my Christian, hetero, monogamous upbringing.  I also keep saying that very little about polyamory is specific to polyamory.  My sister is proof of both.  She's not poly at all, but she still applies very poly relationship skills and traits to her het-mono life.

Considering that we hated each other as children, have *nothing* in common except a few bands that we like, and are not related by genetics, I think this supports my assertions that there is little about poly that is poly-specific and the sheer diversity of mono families can produce some healthy relationship lessons so that you don't have to be poly to still have decent relationships.

If you just look at a snapshot of our respective lives, my sister actually looks more like the "alternative" one.  I live alone and hardly ever see my partners, so if you only peek at a slice of my life, I would seem to be just a quiet, spinster aunt, while she's the one with tattoos, kids that are not much younger than herself, and what looks like a poly quad and multiple co-parents.

#SeeingPicsOfMySisterPartyingInMexicoApparentlySendsMeOnAPolyPhilosophyTangent #QueerestPolyestStraightMonoWomanEver #ILoveMyFamily #WellMostOfTheTime

So, I'm adopted. I was adopted as an infant. I've always known I was adopted. I met my birth mother more than a decade ago. My mom (the woman who raised me) has always been supportive of me meeting her, but without actually telling me about it, I could always see the insecurity behind her eyes.

So I've always treated this whole situation like "opening up" a monogamous relationship and my mom like an existing partner who is nervous about me hooking up with an old partner. I didn't slow down or put any artificial limits on building a relationship with my bio-mom, but I was considerate and reassuring to my mom about how much she meant to me and how appreciative I am of my upbringing.

In all of these conversations over my entire life, of my mom explaining to me that I am a child of mommy's heart, not her tummy, of my mom showing me the letter my bio-mom left for me when I turned 18, of our heartfelt conversations about whether or not I was curious about my bio-parents and would I like to find them, of mom's tentative conversations about what my bio-mom is like...

in all of these conversations, fathers were almost never present. My dad (the man who raised me) never talked to me about it, although he was occasionally physically in the room when the conversations happened. These are just "mom" kind of talks. My bio-father deliberately chose not to be located by me, which both I and the social worker responsible for finding them respected. He is actually back together with my bio-mom and still does not want direct contact with me, which I continue to respect.

My family had strong gender roles, so it's not like the fathers weren't supportive or were antagonistic or anything. It's that my dad's role wasn't to do emotional labor for the kids. And my bio-father has a long, traumatic history that I've spoken about before but I won't go into here, for which I feel comfortable not having any contact with him. It's like we're doing parallel poly and I'm OK with it.

A bunch of years ago, both mothers got on Facebook and of course I friended them both. A handful of years ago, my mom started asking me about direct contact with my bio-mom. Very tentatively, like, I could tell she was really very curious about her, but also still a little nervous, and also afraid of what contact with my bio-mom would mean to everyone else.

Mom was concerned about how I would feel about it, and also concerned about how my sister would feel. My sister is also adopted, and her bio-family story is not as happy as mine. So, to put it into poly terms, I had a "partner" (my mom) who wanted to meet my other partner, her metamour.

But she has another partner too (my sister) who tried "dating" outside of her, and it didn't go well, and this "partner" (my mom) did not have any contact with *her* other partner's partner.  So she was concerned for how getting along with one partner's other partner would feel to her other partner when she didn't get along with *that* metamour. Follow that?

See, this is why poly relationships are just not very difficult for me. It's all the same skills as any other complex social web of humans. Mom gets uncomfortable every time I say this, but I learned all my poly skills from my Christian, monoheteronormative family-of-origin.

She deeply cares about the effect she has on those around her, and that instilled in me a sense of concern and compassion for how I affect others, and how others affect others, and how we are all interconnected. If you pull on a string in a spiderweb, you tug on all the others. Some of those connections will survive, some won't. Families are webs.

Anyway, Mom started probing a possible direct connection with my bio-mom, which I enthusiastically endorsed. So she started out first by just "liking" some of her posts. When the "likes" were reciprocated, they friended each other (I think mom actually asked me first if I would mind). After a while, bio-mom started commenting on Mom's family posts about what a beautiful family my mom had. So Mom started commenting back.

I wouldn't say that they're *friends* in the more classical sense. But we do seem to have the beginnings of Kitchen Table poly happening here. They're pleasant and appreciative of each other and can speak directly to each other.

So, with all that exposition, I'm finding it hilarious and more than a bit surprising to find that my dad and my bio-mom seem to be bonding. Over what, you might ask?

My bio-mom is very outspoken about Hair Gropenfuhrer and almost all of her posts are political. Since his retirement, Dad has really gotten into leaving CNN on at the house, no matter what he's doing, so he can yell at the TV about the Orange Menace and his sycophants.

When I think about my adoption and my family web and the whole story, the women are the ones who play prominent characters. Because emotional labor is women's work, dontcha know?  But all of a sudden, every post I see on my bio-mom's feed is "liked" by my dad and often has some comment from him. Dad doesn't post much himself, or else I believe I'd see the commenting being reciprocated.

My parents (the ones who raised me) have never been particularly political. They're liberal, but they're liberal *Catholics*. They were more concerned with shielding me from whatever injustices they believed still existed in society than in smashing the injustices.

This is how I grew up to think that sexism and racism were mostly over and feminism was unnecessary, we just had a few odd holdouts here and there that needed to be dealt with, like a couple of rogue squads who refused to believe their side surrendered and were still committing acts of guerrilla warfare.

My activism has always confused and upset them. Mom never liked upsetting the apple cart or making waves or other similar cliches. My beliefs were always more liberal than theirs too, but it was never the difference in beliefs that upset them (other than the atheism thing, but that's a whole other thing), it was that I was driven to action because of them.

And here, suddenly, my bio-mom comes along who pulls no punches and is very politically outspoken (if there was ever an argument for nature over nurture, my bio-family would be it, btw), and coincidentally at the same time my senior, retired father happens to have nothing really better to do than putter about the garden and watch talking heads on TV so he develops strong political opinions seemingly out of nowhere...

and just like that, two "metamours" who didn't seem to express any interest in kitchen table poly become buddies over a shared hatred of the scourge currently destroying our nation.

If I can find any reason to have everyone meet in person, that family reunion is going to be ... interesting.

I just had an ah-ha moment - one of those things that I kinda already know but it somehow crystallized for me in a way that it hadn't before.

I come from an immigrant family.  It's true that both of the parents who raised me are natural born citizens, but my grandparents on my mom's side were immigrants (and POC at that, who never really learned English), and my grandparents on my dad's side were from that sort of white Norwegian immigrant type family that embedded their immigration status into their family identity, regardless of how many generations ago the actual migration happened.  Like, y'know, Minnesotans who still maintain ties with their second cousins from "the old country" and who are still baking the same old family recipes at county fairs and stuff.

Intellectually, I know that not everyone has the same kind of family ties that I was raised with.  I have the kind of family who still gets offended if their great-niece doesn't send her annual holiday letter every year, and the first time I drove across the country, I was required to stop by and meet my dad's father's sister-in-law's brother (who is my great-uncle by marriage) who my mom hadn't even met yet.  It would have been mildly offensive for me to not introduce myself while I was in the neighborhood.  Keep in mind that I hadn't even known of his existence until I announced the trip, but I sure as hell had to stop and say "hi" or risk ruffling some feathers (and as a product of this family, I thought it was kinda neat to meet family I didn't know I had).

I *know* that not everyone has these kinds of family connections.  But I just put it together that this was related to immigration.

I have drawn parallels before between polyamory and "normal" monogamous extended families.  People often ask me about scheduling in a poly relationship, and I always say that it's no more complicated than trying to schedule an extended family event.  When people seem to get stuck on that concept, it's clear that they've obviously never tried to get 3 uncles, an aunt, about 12 cousins, two grandparents who are divorced and don't speak to each other, a great aunt, a cousin-once-removed, two god-siblings and a god-nephew to Las Vegas for a wedding anniversary party.

And people look at me like I've just grown a second head - of course they've never tried to do that, who would try to do that?!

When I tried to explain to Franklin about the wedding guest list and the need for a large enough venue, he kind of boggled at me rattling off my list of relatives.  Why did we have to invite everyone?  Because of the family politics of *not* inviting someone! (Not that he actually balked at inviting people, but it didn't actually occur to *him* to invite second cousins and great-aunts and it certainly didn't occur to him that any of his relatives might get offended for not getting an invitation).

Meanwhile, I had to check in with him after the wedding to see if his sister was even notified that he had just gotten married.  He *thought* someone had told her.  I have no concept for this in my head.  My bio-mom's step-daughter's (from an ex-husband) cousins all heard (directly from me) about us getting married.  I can't even fathom the idea that a *sister* might have been told by someone, maybe.

So, I know that not everyone does family the way I do, but it didn't occur to me that this is, at least in some part, due to immigration.

If you look at recently immigrated families, you'll see some trends.  Often you will see entire sections of town devoted to preserving their culture, like having a "Chinatown" or a "Jewish" district.  Sometimes that's imposed from the outside, to keep the POC safely contained, but a lot of it is also because recent immigrants to a new country can rely on others of their nationality for support.  They might have immigrated in the first place because they already had family here.  Certain foods might be unavailable anywhere other than their own grocery stores.  They can be guided on naturalization, on language classes, on jobs that will hire them.  The schools in the area are more likely to understand and connect with the children who may be bilingual (or not yet speak English) and have different customs and foods and clothing.

To come to a foreign country is intimidating and there are often a lot of obstacles in the way of settling in.  So people who have had similar experiences, both with the immigration process and with their cultural background, often band together to form large extended family-like neighborhoods and communities.  People whose families have been here long enough for the descendants to no longer identify as a hyphenated-American, but simply as belonging to the US, don't have this same pressure to build and maintain ties to people whose ancestors came from the same place.

Not that they *don't* do that - the Daughters of the Revolution, for instance, is a good example of a purely US extended family construct that has many of these kinds of traits - pulling together as a community, pride in lineage, common cultural mores and foods and clothing and thoughts and behaviours, etc.

But if a person doesn't have, as part of their *identity*, the struggle to fit into an alien culture and needing those like them, even if not directly related, for support, that person may have an easier time adopting a "rugged individualism" sort of identity and maintaining ties with smaller groups like a nuclear family, and perhaps even experience a freedom of social mobility to move through communities and even physical locations without a sense of culture shock and loss of identity.

I have been told by several people that white people like to think that they made up this poly thing, but if you look at black culture, you'll see that something like polyamory has been around for much longer than the '90s when some neo-pagans coined the term, and longer than the Free Love movement that inspired them.  Sure, even white people will talk about how some form of non-monogamy has always existed, but talk of historical non-monogamy tends to be mostly made up of other white examples. While my POC friends point out that they've been doing this *in parallel*, not in response to or influenced by whatever it is that white people think is polyamory.

So, while black cultures can seem to be coming almost from the opposite direction as immigrants, seeing as how they didn't "immigrate" while trying to hang onto an old culture but instead had their culture stolen from them when their ancestors were stolen, the response seems to be to come towards the same place as immigrants - which is to build interconnected, dynamic, extended support networks of families. When you have nothing else, you at least have each other and your shared experiences as an unwanted "outsider" in a hostile land that you call "home".

So, when I was pulling out my usual "polyamory isn't any different from monogamy with extended families", it occurred to me that if anyone needed to develop better tools regarding extended family interpersonal relationships (like therapists, for example), one could look at the research on recent immigrant subcultures and communities in the US.

Which then led me to consider, if immigrant families are so prone to this kind of interconnected family networks, could that be where I picked it up?  My mom is from a recently immigrated, Mexican family, so yeah, probably there.  But what about my dad?  Oh, dad's Norwegian whose parents moved here from Minnesota, who are also pretty notorious for their in-group communities.  No matter how many generations have lived in the US, they still act like recent-immigrant communities, kinda like Jewish people do.

So, now this is a connection I have in my head that I can use to explain polyamory better.  To someone like Franklin, the idea of not talking to a sibling for months or years, or even needing to cut a sibling out for "differences of opinion" is an option that's totally on the table.  But for someone who comes from a Mexican family like mine, or a Chinese family, or an Indian family, the idea that, when two people get married, and the new spouse has a problem with the sister-in-law, the idea that the married couple can just stop talking to the sister because the "marriage comes first" isn't even an option.  It's not even considered, unless one is willing to cut ties with the whole freaking family.

You simply Do Not just drop someone who has a conflict with a romantic partner.  You fucking work it out, one way or another.  And, in some cases, it's the romantic partner who gets dumped.

I'm not saying we should stray too far in this direction where toxic and abusive familial relationships are maintained because they're "family" to the detriment of healthy romantic relationships.  But I am saying that this is a model, a framework, where (some) people understand that a romantic relationship is not the pinnacle of all relationships, and that interpersonal dynamics are complex and strong, and good conflict resolution skills are prized because winnowing down to just "the couple" is not considered the healthy option.

In poly relationships, when we make "the family" more important than the people in it, we stray into coercive territory.  But that's not what I'm talking about here - that's a whole other rant (which I've made several times before).  So I'm not talking about making the family more important than the people.

But I *am* talking about making the family at least AS important, if not moreso, than "the couple".  THAT dynamic needs to go.  That's a lesson we can learn from recent-immigrant communities.  The people in the relationships need to be more important than the relationship, but once that is prioritized, the *networks* of interconnected people needs to be at least as important as any given dyadic romantic "couple".

Because polyamory is not something that "couples" do, it's something that people do.  Your metamours are not people you can just drop when you're having your own issues inside your dyad, in the same way that your mother-in-law is not someone you can just cut out of your lives forever when you decide it's time to have a baby, to focus on your own nuclear family, or when you're having a time of stress between you and your partner.  In fact, calling on your mother-in-law when you start having children, or maintaining your connections with your siblings when you're romantic relationship is going through a rough patch are excellent tools for helping people get through those challenging times.

Poly networks can be an incredible tool for the same things.  When someone dies in a recent-immigrant community, everyone bands together to take some of the responsibility off of the grieving widow, for example - it's a trope to bring food to a funeral because, when this practice became popular, making food was a seriously time- and effort-intensive process (still can be) and if the person who died was the "breadwinner", a community can come together and make sure that people who are grieving, and potentially now out of income or labor to support the family, can still get fed.

And when the entire community pitches in, nobody is overly burdened.  When my grandfather died, my grandmother was not able to care for herself, so she got shuttled around from one of her child's households to another, adding an extra amount of food and financial obligation and labor to that nuclear family.  At least she had several children to keep passing her around to.

But if she had a *community*, with someone who could have dropped off a casserole every other day, and someone else who could have come by to play bridge with, and someone else who could have interfaced with the lawyers, etc., etc., none of her children's nuclear families would have been taxed to the point that she was needed to be "passed off" to someone else (the reason she only had her kids and no extended community has to do with my grandfather being an abusive patriarch type, but that's another story).

Or, as many other elderly people who didn't come from the kind of community-based background as my grandmother and didn't have nearly a dozen children who believed it was their obligation to take her in no matter what have had to rely on nursing homes and the kind of kindness of strangers that money can buy.

When I went into my suicidal depression, I had several people I could turn to, all with different ways of helping - the one who could show me love and affection, the one who could help me navigate the complicated medical system while looking for a counselor, the one who could just listen, etc.  When I found a low-income clinic that accepted my application for the most amount of financial assistance they had to offer ($10 therapy visits), and the counselor they assigned to me learned of me being poly, the first thing he asked was if the stress of multiple relationships was contributing to my depression.

I explained to him that my poly network was the only thing that *wasn't* contributing to my depression and, in fact, was actively helping by being my support network.  I could tell that this possibility hadn't even occurred to him (not that he was familiar with poly in the first place, but naturally the first thing he thought of when he heard "multiple partners" was stressful love triangle, jealousy, competition, superficial connections, etc.).

But, to me, it seems obvious that more people to love means more people to support me.  I credit a lot of my ability to grasp polyamory with my adoptive background too.  My parents instilled in me a very strong sense of "family is more than who you're related to, it's who you're connected to through love, not blood".  But a lot of people see adoption as a last resort, and not even that because they want children "of their own", they don't want to raise "someone else's kids".  And it occurred to me that part of my parents' ability to see adoption as "god's plan" for them and their adopted children as "theirs" might be related to the whole immigrant thing too.

The church I went to in high school was predominantly Filipino, with some Mexicans.  I sang in the church youth choir.  All of us choir kids called each other's parents "mom and dad", because, in our church, they were all our "parents" and we were all their "kids".  Lots of people in this area had adopted or raised "someone else's children" - siblings or children who were unwed teen parents that couldn't raise their children so they did instead, young cousins or their own siblings who had some kind of problem at home and needed to escape, their own kids' school friends with similar problems, a relative's child who lived in an area with poor schools so they took in the child to give them an address that allowed them to attend a better school, stuff like that.

For recent-immigrant families, seeing everyone as part of one big family is how we survived.  I think it gave my parents the ability to provide me with probably the most idyllic adoption story possible short of a Daddy Warbucks story, and that sense of family and my positive adoption experience gave me the ability to foster a healthy outlook on polyamory, one that sees the destructiveness and toxicity of couple-centrism and couple-privilege.

In recent-immigrant families, you can't isolate yourself down to just "the couple".  That's where you are in the most danger.  You can't lock yourselves into a "couple" because that leaves no room for family, friends, god, and community, and without those things, you can't survive.

Obviously, within monogamy, a "couple" is still important - you wouldn't want someone to "come between" a romantic couple by having more romantic connections, so the analogy starts to break down at that point.  But, even there, we have some room.  There is some precedence for "the mistress" being part of the family, or at least maintaining connection to the community.  As we see in The Color Purple, black families have had some romantic interconnectedness going on there too.

These things have happened, they're just not talked about in the same way as modern polys talk openly about polyamory.  A lot of times, kids grow up never really understanding that "Aunt" Sarah isn't someone's sister or a friend of the family that moved in to have help raising her kids, but her kids might be Daddy's kids too.  And in certain sorts of communities, while this might not be the norm or widely accepted, it has happened, and people are not thrown out for being "black sheep", because they're *family* and family is supported and helped to the best of the community's ability.

So I think we can look to the complex nature of recent-immigrant communities for some guidance and modeling of large, complex, interconnected networks of family systems.  And maybe all these damn "couples" can learn a thing or two by emulating the healthier aspects of communities with rich cultural traditions of extended families.

Lots of time, the Argument From Antiquity is a logical fallacy - just because it's "old", or "we've always done it", it doesn't mean that it's true or healthy or good for you.  But sometimes things are "always done" because it's a system that works.  Sometimes, it *is* in our better interests to "listen to our elders" and keep certain traditions alive - like valuing the larger family and not prioritizing couplehood over complex family network connections.

Honey, I'd like to talk with you.   Since you brought it up a few weeks ago, I've been doing some thinking.  You're right, I think it's time that we open things up a bit.  I understand that you have needs, and that this is not a reflection on me as a partner.  But I still have some insecurities.  I love you and I don't want to lose what we have.  So maybe if we lay down some ground rules, it'll help me to work on those insecurities, y'know, just until I get comfortable with things.

[deep breath] OK, so when you start going out for job interviews, I want to make sure that you don't choose an employer who is going to come between us or mess up our routine.  So I think I should be present on your job interviews.  You haven't always made the best decisions in the past. I mean, look at some of your former jobs before we got married!  I think you could use an objective opinion.  And, after all, I'm also a manager, so I know what these people will be thinking.  I think that I ought to meet your potential employers so that you don't get caught up in the excitement of having a new job and miss some of the fine print in the job description.

We should also discuss what kinds of things you can and can't do at work.  I know you haven't even started looking for a new job yet, but that makes this the perfect time to decide these things!  That way your future employer doesn't get his hopes up.  I don't want your new boss to have more time with you than I do, so you should tell him right up front that you have to be off work in time to get home before I do.  After all, before your new job, you always made dinner.  That shouldn't have to change just because you have a new job in your life.  That would disrupt *our* relationship.  So, you have to be home in time to have dinner ready for me when I get home like always.

And you can't be in to work until after I've left for the day.  I mean, who is going to get the kids ready for school and have my stuff all organized for me if you're gone early?  That's not fair of him to cut into your time with the children!  They should come first!

Also, the job needs to be far enough away that our friends and neighbors won't notice that you're working for someone, but not so far that it costs too much in gas money.  In fact, I think your future employer ought to pay for your gas to get there.  If he wants you to be there badly enough, he'll see the benefit in paying for your gas.  I would suggest that he pick you up, but then our neighbors might start asking questions.

It's OK to put in a few hours in the evening while I'm out bowling with the gang every week.  You should do something for *you*, y'know, when I'm not around to be affected by it.  Hey, I care that you're getting your needs met, I'm just that considerate of you.  But absolutely no weekends.  That's *our family* time together.  Remember, the kids come first.  And definitely no over-night stuff either.  I would feel lonely without you in our bed, and I don't think I can handle that.  Our marriage was here first, before your job, so it should take priority.

Speaking of priority, if you're with your new boss and I need you for something, I think you should be able to leave him to help me.  Remember, our marriage came first and if your new boss can't respect that, then I don't think you should be working for him.  Your new boss can't be calling you after-hours for anything.  If he needs someone that badly for more than what we agreed to right now, between us without him present, then he should get more people to do the job.

Also, he needs to offer you a decent salary because you're worth a lot, but it can't be more money than I bring home.  I would feel inadequate as a partner if he gives you more money than I make.  But he still has to value you!

Now, while you're with him, I think it's OK to answer phones and greet people at the door, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with you filing things or handling the accounting just yet.  You'll have to just work for him for a while until I adjust before you can work up to that.  I don't know for how long, I'll decide that when I'm ready.

What do you mean, what if the job isn't for a receptionist position?  What if the new employer is looking for a server or a construction worker?  Oh hell no!  There's no way I'm going to let MY SPOUSE do something as dangerous as construction work!  What if you get injured on the job?!  You'll bring that injury back home and everything will have to change!  No, that's a hard limit for me.  I can't handle my spouse working in a dangerous field.  That's a boundary for us.

What?  Of course this isn't unreasonable.  Any employer who wouldn't agree to all this isn't right for us anyway.  He wouldn't be a good match, so it's OK to reject him.  We need to find someone who is right *for us*.  We're supposed to be doing this together, right?  That's what you said.  So we need to find you a job that will make our relationship better.  If the job strains our relationship, it's got to go.  I shouldn't have to accommodate something that's coming into our lives after we've been together this long.  The job is the new guy here, so anyone wanting to be your employer is just going to have to take us or leave us.

And while I'm thinking of "new guy", maybe you ought to just work for female employers.  They tend to be more understanding of relationship obligations, whereas dudes are more territorial.  I don't want to get into pissing matches with your new boss all the time, so maybe just stick to women.

But somewhere, out there, is our perfect new employer. She'll be kind and understanding and considerate and respectful of our relationship and our family and your obligations.  She'll pay decent wages and have excellent benefits even for part-timers, because of course you can't be with her 40 hours a week if you expect to be home when I need you.  She'll never make any demands of us, and if things change, she'll let you go gracefully with a comfortable compensation package because she knew the conditions of hiring you when she interviewed you.  Don't worry, I'll write it all down for her and give it to her when we go to your interview.

Oh, honey, it'll be so great having two incomes and more health insurance!  We'll have so much more money, and you'll have that sense of purpose you've been looking for since the youngest was born!  It'll revitalize our marriage!  We'll go on more vacations together, and I can't wait to come home from work and see you there, waiting for me as usual with a candlelight dinner, and you'll tell me all about your day - every detail!

No, really, I mean every detail - a full play-by-play.  I need to hear *everything* so that I don't feel insecure by not knowing what you did while you were away.  Well, no, I never needed to know every detail while we were apart when you were home and I was at work, but this is different.  In fact, just to make sure, why don't you just text me throughout the day every time you do a new task, that way we'll be sure, and then you can recap it all at night when you get home.  Your boss is just going to have to deal with you making personal phone calls and text while you're on the clock.  That's another boundary for us.

And I promise that hearing all the details of how much fun you're having at your new job won't make me feel left out.  And I promise that I won't make you responsible for my feelings.  I'm totally responsible for my feelings and you're totally responsible for your actions that cause those feelings.  So if I start to feel jealous when I hear *too many* details, you'll just have to quit your job and focus on us for a while.  But since you're *agreeing* to it, it's totally egalitarian.  Because I love you and I respect that you can agree to these boundaries.

I know it's taken me a while to get on board with your idea here, but I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I think our marriage will be stronger than ever for the adventure we're about to take together.  Just as long as we can quit this little experiment if it gets too hard.  But it'll be great!

"But what if two of your partners have an emergency at the same time?!  Polyamory can't work!  You have to have a hierarchy or else anarchy reigns and everyone loses!"

A few days ago, my great aunt, who has leukemia, slipped and broke her hip.  My dad, who is retired and spent 2 months last year out of town to care for her when the cancer got really bad and she was hospitalized, went down again to care for her with this latest emergency.

Today, my mom tripped and broke her ankle while my dad was out of town.

My parents are not poly.  Yet they also have to answer tough questions like what happens when two loved ones have emergencies at the same time.  Who should my dad choose - his wife or his ailing aunt with whom he has previously set a precedent for being her caretaker?

This is a rhetorical question, of course, because the answer isn't anyone else's business.  The answer is between these three people, their specific needs, and the agreements that they all come to after all relevant parties discuss it because no one could have anticipated this exact set of circumstances.

Kinda like polyamory.

We already have these scripts.  We already have these skills.  We already have to face these kinds of challenges.  Ethical and compassionate relating doesn't change just because there is sex involved.



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Honey, can we talk? So, we've been talking about this for a while, but I think we're ready. I think we ought to do it. Our relationship has never been stronger, we're both in really good places right now with work and with each other. Life is perfect, so right now is the best time, I think, to bring in someone new to our family.

Let's have a baby.

I think it'll be great! We're totally ready to take this next step in our relationship. But, because our relationship is so perfect, I don't want the kind of baby that will threaten our existing relationship, so let's talk about the rules. We need to have some rules to make sure that nothing between you and I changes when the baby comes along.

First of all, we have to have a girl baby. I don't want to have to compete with a son for being "the guy" around the house, and you're a woman so you'll have lots in common with a girl baby so you'll naturally get along perfectly. You already know how to handle girls because you are one - you have all the same equipment and you understand women, so having a girl baby makes more sense. I'm a guy, so naturally I understand how to handle girls too, but I don't have any experience with dudes, so I'll be a better father to a girl baby.

Second, we have to do exactly the same things with the baby. I don't want our new daughter to end up loving one of us more than the other, so let's agree to never be alone with the baby and to do all the same things with her. If one of us plays soccer with her before the big soccer game, then the other has to play for the same amount of time the next day. If you help her with her math homework for 2 hours, then I get to help her with her math homework for 2 hours.

Now, honey, I know math isn't your favorite thing to do, but she's going to need help with her math homework, and if I'm the only one helping her, then that leaves you out. And I don't want you to feel left out. Besides, then you might do something with her without me and I'll feel left out. No, it's just better if we only do things with her together, that way no one will feel left out. Of course, we'll also only do the things that you and I like to do. Since she'll be our daughter, she'll just want to do all those things anyway - we wouldn't have a daughter that wanted different things, so that'll be that.

Since a trio is inherently more stable than any other configuration, let's agree to just one daughter that we both share equally. There will not be any accidental pregnancies because we've agreed not to have any.  We don't need to discuss what happens if you unintentionally get pregnant because we just agreed that it won't happen.  

I think I ought to have veto power over your pregnancies too. You can have the same, of course. I know men can't get pregnant, but I'm still giving you the veto power, so it's still totally equal. Also veto power after the kid is born - if one of us doesn't like her, out she goes and we try again. I'm willing to give you veto power because I love you that much, and I trust you not to use the veto power except in extreme circumstances, and protecting our relationship is more important than protecting the parental relationship with the new kid - after all, you and I were here first, way before any kid came along.

We'll work out a schedule for the baby - who gets to change her and who gets to feed her and when. We'll stick to that schedule no matter what because the important thing here is that our relationship with each other doesn't change significantly. The baby will have only the extra-curricular activities we tell her to have, and we'll choose them based on what works best for you and me, not her preferences, because I don't want this new baby to upset our lives too much.

After the baby comes, I still expect sex as often with you as we have it now. I want you to be there for me like you always have been, just as I will be there for you. I still want us to have the time and energy to dedicate to each other that we currently do. Just because the baby will be all new and shiny and she'll want lots of our attention in the beginning, we have to take care not to let that new relationship interfere with our existing relationship.

So we have to promise, before any baby comes along, that none of that will change when we finally do have a baby. OK? You won't stop having sex with me, we'll still have date nights, and we won't give each other only the boring, day-to-day parts of ourselves. Promise me now that we'll both still keep the magic in our relationship just the way it is now and that we won't let any baby interfere with that.

What we have right now is so wonderful, we should share it with another person. A baby will be so lucky to grow up in our lives! We have good jobs and we take fun vacations and we have great friends and a lot of knowledge to pass on, any baby would be fortunate to have us as parents! She'll go on all the same vacations that we like to go on, she'll eat all the awesome food that we eat, she'll play all the same sports that we like to play, she'll take after me in math but after you in music, and she'll just love our lives as much as we do! And as long as we plan everything out in advance, make all kinds of rules for every contingency, everything should work out totally smoothly. It'll be awesome!

Cunning Minx recently did an episode called What Would Monogamists Do? and I have coined the phrase "it's not a poly problem, it's a people problem". The basic premise is that being polyamorous is really not very different from being monogamous. We have to deal with all the same issues that monogamous people do and very, very few issues that they don't.

For instance, "what about the children?" How do you handle nosy school employees and multiple parental figures? Well, the same way my single-mother sister handled multiple parental figures and her kids' schools. I've told this story before - my sister is raising her two kids while living with our parents. Her two kids have two different fathers. So, right there, the oldest kid had 3 adults on his Approved For Pickup & Emergency Contact lists (his father was not in the picture & not allowed to pick him up) and the youngest kid had 4 adults on his lists (his dad is an involved dad).

Then each kid had daycare, so add +1 for each of them. Then I lived at home while the oldest kid was a toddler, so add +1 to his count for me to pick him up. Then my sister's best friend was practically another mother to the kids, especially when she had her own kids and they were sort of a psuedo-lesbian-without-the-lesbian-sex family. So that makes another +1 for both of them. Then there was the other single mother-friend that my sister lived with for a while, to combine incomes and share resources, so that was +1 for the oldest kid, but they "broke up" in a pretty ugly, dramatic manner, so she had to be removed from the lists after about a year. Then there were the 2 or so years my sister lived with her oldest son's grandparents (the father's parents) in another town, who was across the street from our 2 cousins and down the street from another cousin and 2 blocks over from an aunt & uncle and around the corner from our grandfather, so add +8 for him while subtracting all the previous pluses.

So, let's see, that makes 6 adults on the kids' Approved Adults Lists for school, 1 person who was on there only briefly, and 8 adults who were on the oldest kid's list for about 2 years while the other 6 taken off and then switched again when she moved back. Wait, are we talking about poly families again?

My sister is monogamous. The kid-school problem was simple. She just told her schools that these people were allowed to pick her children up and could be called in an emergency. If they insisted on listing a relationship to the children, we were all either listed as family friend, babysitter, or some family name like "aunt" or "grandmother", whether it was true or not. For example, all of our cousins (my sister's and mine) are listed as "aunt" to my nephews, even though they're actually second cousins to the kids. My sister's best friends are also called "aunt" by the boys. I, as the only actual aunt, am called Auntie, to distinguish that there is a different lineage happening. But I also live the farthest away & the boys have more contact with their "aunts" than their "auntie" (although I am my oldest nephew's primary source of tech support).

People like to ask "how will the kids know who their 'real' parents are?" Well, how do my sister's kids know who their "real" parents are, or their real aunts, for that matter? It's pretty simple ... she tells them. The oldest kid knows he has a different father than his brother, and he knows that I am his mom's sister and all his other aunts are actually his mom's cousins or best friends. The younger kid will learn that after he actually masters whole sentences.

My sister and I were both adopted, and we knew who are "real" parents were - they were the two people who raised us and sat up with us when we were sick and helped us with our homework and disciplined us when we acted up. My sister and I both knew that there were some other people out there somewhere who had actually put together our genetic material, and we knew that the two people whose DNA I had were not the same 2 people whose DNA she had. It wasn't confusing at all. In 3rd grade, I actually got in trouble because a kid was teasing me for being adopted and my retort was "at least I wasn't an accident - my parents wanted me!" So yeah, I knew and I understood. It really wasn't that hard. Even after meeting my bio-mom & siblings, I'm pretty well able to keep it straight in my head who is who. Even bonobos can tell each other apart in spite of living all communal-like.

Which brings us to today. I get a lot of questions like "who do you spend holidays with" and "it must be expensive trying to give that many people holiday gifts" and other things that imply that the person asking the question can't fathom how to juggle schedules and finances when there is more than one person who might be the recipient of important celebrations.

Ever since my extended family, the neophytes, got on Facebook, I have started a tradition of posting an old photo of them on their walls related to whatever holiday it is. For example, on their birthdays, I post an embarassing baby photo. On their annversaries, I post an old wedding photo. On Mother's & Father's Days, I post an old photo of them being mothers & fathers. I thought this was a sweet tradition ... until more and more of my family got online. Now I'm faced with three problems - 1) I'm running out of old pictures; 2) I wasn't around or didn't know some of my family long enough to have the appropriate pictures; 3) I have so many people in my family that if I did this for everyone in order to not make anyone feel left out, I'd spend days uploading pictures for each holiday!

I was raised in a monogamous, Christian, non-divided home. If I narrow the criteria to just my most immediate family, I can hopefully escape the jealous "why didn't you post a mother's day wish on MY wall?" from all the cousins and aunts and family friends and old school friends on my Facebook. But that still leaves 2 mothers and 3 sisters. Then, off Facebook, I still have to call 2 grandmothers! And that's only this year, since I recently lost my godmother and my third grandmother (I have a fourth grandmother, somewhere, but she denies my existence so she doesn't get my holiday wishes either).

So who do I spend holidays with and how do I handle gifts for so many people? First, I evaluate who is actually in my vicinity/budget to spend physical time with. Then I narrow down the list to those I have a first-degree relationship with in order to cut down on time & financial expenses. That leaves me with 7 people to do *something* special to acknowledge on this special day.

I'm talking about my monogamous, Christian, bio/adopted family, not my poly family.

Fortunately for me, none of my partners have kids (and they're male) so I never have to wish any of them a happy parent's day, and only one of my partners' other partners (my immediate metamours) has kids, so I actually do not have this problem as a poly person. For me, this whole scheduling around holidays & managing the gifts thing is pretty much exclusively a non-poly issue!

By the time the winter holiday season comes around, and all 6 of us who live within driving distance of each other want to spend the day all together and there are only 2 parents of the group who also live within driving distance, this whole holiday scheduling/gift-giving thing is pretty effortless! Sometimes things can get a little complicated, but any time the complication ratchets up as a poly person, it's really no more complicated than what I had to deal with as a mono person with mono relatives. It's the exact same set of complication and the exact same skill set to deal with it.

"But I'm not having sex with my siblings!" Of course not, but nothing we're talking about here has anything to do with sex. I don't have to be having some incestuous relationship with my sisters to make one feel jealous or left out if I give the others more attention or a better gift than her. I don't have to be sleeping with my mothers to want to tread carefully and be compassionate when doing stuff for the other mother so that each doesn't feel abandoned or excluded or usurped. I'm talking about people's feelings and maintaining loving relationships. Sex is not required to make either someone feel a special connection to you or to make them feel hurt by you. And to manage everyone's feelings and expectations in a reasonable & compassionate manner, those are skills that I learned from interacting with my parents, siblings, cousins, and family friends.

If you think there is some novel and exclusive set of relationship skills for managing poly relationships, I think you are making things way more difficult than they need to be and you are just trying to reinvent the wheel. Take the issue of sex out of the equation and just think, "how can I be compassionate and considerate to this other person without neglecting my own emotional or physical health? How can I be compassionate and considerate to these several other people without neglecting either my or everyone else's emotional or physical health? What kinds of compromises can we find to solve the conflict that will either meet everyone's needs, or at least distribute among those involved the amount of sacrifice & compromise that needs to be made in order to have a resolution?  How can I do this without imposing limits on other people's behaviour or devaluing one relationship in favor of another?"

I can't upload photos for every single mother I know on Mother's Day. I don't have the time, nor do I have the photos. It is reasonable for me to limit my largest efforts to those I have the closest and most direct relationship to - my own mothers & sisters with children - and my extended relatives will not feel slighted because of the nature of those relationships (and not because I told them "hey, you knew the deal when you signed up to be a cousin - you are less important than these other people here" - a cousin is still a person & sometimes it will be necessary to prioritize the cousin if I want to maintain that relationship.  My sister, for example, is very close to our cousins, close enough that she treats them as sisters, but I moved away a long time ago & our cousin relationship just didn't grow in that direction.  The "closeness" is about emotional connection, not about them being "cousins" & therefore relegated to a lesser status).

Because those close relationships are ones that I value, I make it a priority to extend the effort to all of them even though there are still several people left after narrowing the criteria. I get to express my love for them, they feel loved, everyone's happy. Yes, it took more time out of my day than if I only said "happy mother's day" to my own mom and no one else. Even if I only said it to both mothers. That's an exchange I'm willing to make because I value those relationships. Notice that I didn't say "a price I'm willing to pay".

Oh, but wait, was I supposed to be talking about poly relationships? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. And I think that's one of the keys to having successful poly relationships. 

Along the same lines as the last post but totally independent of each other, I had a conversation with my mom (my adopted mom) the other day. See, my adopted sister is *also* adopted. Like me, she was adopted at birth, so other than the lack of shared genes, we are every bit the definition of "sisters". In fact, I even got to name my little sister (well, her middle name, but it's the name we called her for years, and the name I still call her, even though she goes by her first name to everyone outside the family). The reason I located my bio-mom in the first place is because my sister made it her life's quest to locate her own bio-parents, and when her bio-mom was found, the social worker offered to locate mine. I agreed on a whim.

My sister's story did not have the happy ending that mine did, although I believe it had the *better* ending for her. My sister's bio-mom is a mess. The day my sister first saw her bio-mom in person was at her bio-mom's parole hearing. My sister tried to begin a relationship of some sort with her bio-mom, but discovered that she was most important to her bio-mom as someone with a steady job who could bring her the groceries that she couldn't buy for herself due to her drug problem. So after doing so a couple of times, my sister just dropped out of touch with her bio-mom entirely, knowing that she couldn't help her but would break herself trying, and she consoles herself by praying for her bio-mom.

The reason I believe this is the better ending for my sister is because my sister and I have very different views on our adoptions. I knew from the beginning that my bio-parents were teenagers and that's why I was given up for adoption. I knew from the beginning that being put up for adoption was the smarter choice. I knew from the beginning that I was very, very fortunate to have been raised with a stable, middle-class couple who desperately wanted children and who loved me every bit as much as any parent could love their children. I knew from the beginning that being given up for adoption was not a rejection, but the ultimate sacrifice of true love to give one's children a better life than one could provide oneself. I had nothing more than idle curiosity about my bio-parents - who did I look like, who did I take after, who gave me the genes for loving sci-fi books and pets?

But my sister never saw her adoption as the wiser choice. She always saw her adoption as being "given up" by her bio-mom. She always felt rejected and unwanted, no matter how much love and attention our parents showered on us. She sought her bio-parents with desperation from the time she discovered the internet as a teenager. For my sister, life was always a "grass is greener on the other side" sort of situation.

So when she found her bio-mom and discovered the kind of life she could have had, especially when she learned of the fates of her half-sisters who were not fortunate enough to have been adopted out, it gave my sister a newfound respect and admiration for our adopted parents. My sister is much more content now, much more aware of her privileges, and of the love our parents have for her. I think she is finally done seeking some unattainable thing and she is finally making her life really her own life now. That's why I say it was the better ending for her - I think it taught her a lesson she really needed to learn and her life is better because of it.

So all of that is to put into context the following poly analogue story.

My adopted mom and my bio-mom have never met, have never spoken, have never exchanged words except for one letter that my bio-mom wrote as a teenager, basically thanking my adopted mom for taking me. Both have expressed interest in meeting the other, but both have done so in a very passive way, to avoid intruding on the other. On my adopted mom's side, her hesitation was always out of concern for my sister.

My sister's story played out from beginning to end all before I located my bio-mom. So my adopted mom was always afraid that reaching out to my bio-mom would sort of rub it in my sister's face that her story didn't end as happily. Not that any of us *intended* to do so, but that it might unintentionally hurt my sister to be reminded that she was the one who wanted so bad to find her bio-mom, and I didn't much care one way or the other, yet it was I who had the feel-good reunion story of the year and not her.

My adopted mom was so concerned about making my sister feel left out or somehow "less" that my adopted mom did not open herself up to exploring a relationship with my bio-mom. My adopted mom was afraid that my sister's insecurities about who she was and how loved she was would be triggered if my adopted mom developed a relationship with her other daughter's bio-mom, since my bio-mom was so much "better" than my sister's bio-mom. My adopted mom was afraid that contact with my bio-mom would be a constant reminder to my sister of how much her own bio-mom sucked, and that would reflect on my sister as a person. Keep in mind that my sister never once asked my adopted mom to refrain from contacting my bio-mom. My adopted mom is self-refraining out of concern for my sister's feelings.

I realize this is convoluted, but it's a classic poly/mono story. One partner is insecure, so the other partner places limits on himself about the types of relationships he can explore out of concern for the insecure partner. As I continually explain when people ask about the whole jealousy thing - monogamy never solved the jealousy issue as far as I could tell. The only thing that solves jealousy is communication and a desire to rid oneself of the jealousy that puts one in uncomfortable, but personal-growth situations.

I'm not sure how it came up, but very recently, my adopted mom and my sister talked about this very problem. My sister has had some years to heal and to look at her situation from other perspectives now. My sister believes that she will not have any issues if my adopted mom and my bio-mom contact each other. And I think my adopted mom would very much like to do so, but I think she has been burying that desire as deeply as she can. I believe my adopted mom has felt a drive to thank my bio-mom in much the same way that I did when I met her.

So even in my ultra-monogamous, slightly religious, insecure-and-often-prefers-to-remain-that-way family, we had to learn to deal with jealousy, with placing limits on behaviour to protect someone else's insecurities, and to go through emotionally difficult situations in order to come out the other side with a better understanding of ourselves and the security in ourselves and our relationships to allow our loved ones the freedom to pursue other relationships.

It's not a poly problem, it's a people problem. Shying away from these situations, insisting on holding onto the rules and the insecurities under the blanket of "there is no One Right Way, so stop critiquing my methods", not only does not help your poly relationships, but it hinders your other relationships as well. As is often repeated in poly circles, the skills learned in polyamory are not unique to polyamory, but all relationships everywhere can benefit from them.

My sister is much healthier now; my sister's relationship with my adopted mom is healthier now; my adopted mom is now free to reach out to someone whom she has always wanted to reach out to; our entire family dynamic is in a much better place, with more security and more freedom. Funny how freedom and security often go together. When freedom is curtailed under the banner of "security", it usually doesn't make people any more secure, it just takes away their freedom. This is not a poly problem, it's a people problem.

This is a slight departure from my usual movie reviews, and I plan to do a few of them in the future. This is not about poly movies, but about poly analogues for monogamous people. It has always been my opinion that polyamory is really not any different than monogamy, only with more people.

And by that, I mean that there is a wide variation among relationships that fit under the heading "monogamy" and a wide variation among relationships that fit under the heading "polyamory", and the vast majority of questions about "how do you do this in poly?" are answered with "the same way you do it in monogamy," partly because of that variation, so there is no single answer, and partly because the questions are not usually poly-specific.

For instance, whenever someone asks me how to deal with schools handling the issue of multiple parents, I answer "the same way my monogamous, hetero sister deals with them as a single parent." I then go on to explain that, on her In Case Of Emergency sheet, and the list of adults that have permission to pick up her children, she has about 5 or 6 different names, many of which do not have her child's last name and/or are not blood-related to the children. She doesn't explain that Joreth is the auntie and Sally is the babysitter and Jason is the boyfriend even though he's not the father of one kid, but is the father of the other kid, or that Larry is the grandfather and John is the godfather and Crystal is the 2nd cousin and that Sarah is mommy's best friend from high school. She just put those names down on the lists. When asked for familial relation to the child, she just circles something like "family friend" or "uncle" or whatever.

My point is that "how do you deal with schools" is not a poly-specific problem and monogamous people have to deal with that same issue all the time, thanks to single parenthood and blended families. There isn't a single answer, and there isn't a different way that poly people do it from mono people, who find themselves in the same or similar situations.

Same thing goes for issues like "how do the children know who their parents are?" and "how do you keep track of everyone?" and "how do you schedule things?" The same way non-poly folk do. Being adopted, I didn't have any difficulty understanding who my "real" parents were. Kids of blended homes (meaning, divorced parents & step-parents) don't have any difficulty understanding who their "real" parents are. And so on.

Much about polyamory is not actually very unique to polyamory, and even those issues that are unique to polyamory have similar situations, if not exactly the same, in monogamous society. One of the things I like to do is try to find these poly analogues to use as bridge-building stories, in an attempt to help monogamous people better understand polyamory.

The first one I ever noticed was Sex And The City. I originally started watching the show because I have a tendency to feel alien among "normal" women. I don't understand those things that I'm told women are supposed to understand. Now, of course, I understand that there is no such thing as "normal women", just that there is a collection of criteria that various people are told is "normal" and everyone else is therefore abnormal when they don't have all the criteria, even if some of those criteria are contradictory or even mutually exclusive, all with complete disregard to the actual numbers of people who fit or don't fit any given set of criteria.

But, the point is that I never felt as though I really fit in or that I understood women very well because I didn't match what I was told I should match. So I watched the show to get an idea of what this hypothetical "normal woman" was thinking.

SATC is a show with 4 main characters that follows their romantic lives for about 6 years. Each of the women are archetypes, basically a model or an epitome of a personality type that has been repeatedly observed in US culture. By coincidence, the four women also happen to fall into the 4 main MBTI categories - NT, SP, NF, SJ - although they weren't deliberately written that way. That's what made it so popular, though. No matter what kind of person you are, almost everyone could see a little of themselves in at least one of the characters, which is why it was considered such a great examination of "the normal woman". Even men could see a little of themselves in one or more of the male side characters (and yes, the show was very gender binary - that's a complaint for another journal entry).

The show also had witty dialogue, even if you didn't like the topics. But one topic is what brings me here to this review. And that's the idea of multiple loves and intentional family.

This is a recurring theme throughout the entire 6-year lifespan. We do not see much of the girls' biological families, and what we do see is largely negative. The characters have, more or less, left their families and created their own intentional family of each other. They are there for each other in good times and bad, they support each other, they occasionally condemn each other, they squabble and hug, and they build lives around each other. It's true that all the women are heterosexual (except for one 3-episode story arc), so they are not romantically involved with each other (even for that story arc), and if there is any criticism of this as a poly analogue, that is it.

But anyone who has ever had one or more of *those* friends - y'know, the ones you think to call from the hospital before you call your boyfriend, the ones you go to confide in about your wife, the ones who were the first to stand up with you at your wedding and the ones who were first to get you drunk & let you cry after your divorce, the ones who have seen you without your makeup on and still love you, the ones who were there to bail you out of jail after that little misunderstanding and kept it from your spouse, the ones who were there long before you met the love of your life and, just like the love of your life, will be there until death do you part - if you've ever had *those* friends, then you understand just how unimportant sex is as a defining element in what makes a relationship *important* and *meaningful* in your life. Not that sex isn't important, but that there are so many other aspects to what makes a relationship meaningful, some of which matter much more.

When people ask me how I can love more than one person at a time, the answer is because we all love more than one person at a time. Our spouses are not the only people in our lives for whom we feel that deep commitment, that connection as if our very souls have found their mates, that trust that there are people we can count on for anything, that sense of elation at the idea of being with them or that sense of despair at the thought of losing them. The only difference between me and them is that I am physically attracted to more than one of the people for whom I feel that way, and occasionally I act on it.

Sex And The City highlights one of the many ways in which people form lasting emotional bonds with other people. Their friendship is closer than most of their romantic relationships, and has certainly outlasted all of their romantic relationships. They are closer to each other than they are to their biological families, and the men in their life are required to make room in their relationships for the other women.

When the women do find serious romantic partners, each of the men understand that he will have to "share" his partner with the other three women. Each of those men turn to the other three women for help when his partner is going through a particularly rough time and the man is not enough to help on his own. One asks the other three for communication help to patch up an argument with his girlfriend, another asks the other three to console his wife when she has a miscarriage - the men are not in an isolated, monogamous relationship, apart from any other relationships; they are in poly-ish relationships where they "share" their women with three other women, who have been there longer, know each other better, and can often provide a type of support that the men just can't. Any man who sticks around long enough has to accept it, and the good men embrace it.

Long before I ever heard of polyamory, I had friends like this. I had friends who were so close, we gave ourselves our own family name. I had friends who were so important, we made long-term, life-altering plans around each other, like where to go to college, where to live after college, and even sometimes who to date or marry. I had friendships that were so meaningful, that losing those friendships didn't feel any less devastating than losing a boyfriend. I cried for weeks after my best friend stopped talking to me. I felt like I lost a part of myself when we all went our separate ways.

I even felt as though I didn't have any real identity when some of those friendships ended, the same way I sometimes had to re-evaluate who I was and what I wanted out of life when I lost a serious boyfriend and all our future plans were scrapped. It didn't matter that we weren't having sex, those relationships were *important* in the same way my romantic relationships were important - simultaneously equally as important and too unique to be compared to each other.

Not all monogamous people have had these kinds of friendships, of course. One of the wonderful things about the human species is its diversity. But a very common trend, especially among women, is to develop close emotional bonds with other people, or to want to. And for many people, those close, emotional bonds are not restricted to a single bond with one person, ever, throughout the entire lifespan.

Each relationship, and each emotional bond, is different, unique, individual. Even if we had a best friend in high school, and then switched to another best friend in college, those friendships are as non-interchangeable as the romantic relationships are. And if people can just wrap their heads around the idea that sex is not the single defining element in complex emotional relationships, they can see the parallels between monogamous Sex And The City intentional families, and my poly family.

http://www.tangomag.com/2007232/an-affair-to-remember.html

I have mixed feelings about this article.  It's all about how a woman married a man right out of college, who then got so busy with his career as a doctor that she felt abandoned, and started an affair with another man who lavished attention on her.  I think everyone who knows me, now knows how I feel about cheating and lying in relationships - it's wrong under all circumstances.  But the fact of the matter is that people do cheat (myself included) and this often brings people to discover polyamory when they realize they love both their spouse and their lover and don't want to give either up.  So, although it's wrong, some very important life lessons can be learned from a cheating experience.  Such as this one:

"I was also determined, however tentatively, to touch a toe into the waters of what it was to be alone. To be lonely. And as I did, I began to learn that I was … just fine."

When the author told her husband she wanted to separate and that she had been having an affair, she distanced herself from her husband but did not then speed up her relationship with her lover (speeding up one when another ends is always a mistake, IMO, especially when the person doing the transition is afraid of being alone).  She took some time to just be alone.  She had met her husband when she was lost on campus and he offered to help her find her way.  And she continued to use him to "help find her way" ever since.  She was terrified of being alone and it was the feeling that she was alone even while married that drove her to start an affair with someone else.  And she learned that the world did not stop spinning, that she did not stop breathing.  Being alone can be scary, but you will survive - and do more than just survive.

Now, because I am not afraid of being "alone", because I know the world will not end and I will get over my heartache, I am often accused of not developing deep, emotional attachments to people, of withholding, of using my independence as a shield or a defense mechanism.  I don't think that's true.  I know I will survive and even love again after a heartbreak, but that doesn't mean I don't love, I don't have heartbreaks, and that they don't really fucking hurt.  I don't think that love is mutually exclusive of "independence", but I do want, and have, love.  Which brings me to another line from this article:

"It had taken this time apart to realize that my husband was a man I could indeed live without. But I sure as hell didn’t want to."

I think this goes back to my Why I'm A Bottom, Not A Sub post, where I quote from a book in an attempt to explain that being independent does not mean being alone.

The rest of the article goes on to explain how she got back together with her husband, even though she had come to love her lover too.  Many monogamous people think that polyamory is significantly different from their own lives, that we feel differently and think differently.  I don't think that's true.  I think I may be more *aware of* and more *honest* of my own feelings than many monogamous people, but I don't think I'm inherently *different* in how I feel. 

Monogamous people love multiple people and monogamous people can feel sexually attracted to more than one person at a time.  What is different is the social strictures that guide us.  In my life, I am *allowed* to have these feelings and to act on them.  In monogamy, whether one is allowed to have the feelings varies from relationship to relationship, but they cannot generally *act* on them.

In the process of falling in love with her lover, this author also learned that she continued to love her husband.  Here's where my mixed feelings come in.  She ended her affair to go back to being monogamous with her husband, and I don't see why that had to be the answer.  She got very different things from her relationships - of course, they were very different people.  Even similar people will still provide completely unique relationships.  And if two relationships are unique and individual, one can never replace the other because it could never *be* the other.  It will *always* be different.  This is what enables me to feel secure in my polyamorous life - my metamours are not my rivals because it is not a competition.  We CANNOT compete with each other because we do not have the same relationship.

The author continued to develop a very deep, emotional friendship with her lover after they ended their affair.  And that illustrates my point.  These were two unique relationships and one does not have to directly compete with the other.  Here is an example of how a "monogamous" woman has the same feelings as a poly person - we just exhibit them differently.  There is a place in her life for both men, as they enhance her life in unique ways:

"I took what I had learned from Alex [her lover] and his view of the world into my interactions with James [her husband].  ... I used to think that if I could combine Alex and James, I would have the perfect man. I wasn’t wrong. They do indeed fill in each other’s blanks, serving my different needs. Many people in my life can’t fathom how I have fulfilling relationships with them both."

Of course, the problem I have here is the idea of combining two people to make the perfect person, but what I think she's trying to say is that neither man can fulfill all the roles of people she needs in her life and neither should they be expected to, and how her relationship with each man has enhanced, not just her life, but her relationship with the other.  The additional perspectives that we get by relating to different people bring a richer, more complex texture to our own lives and thoughts and personalities and this is true whether the "other people" are lovers or not.  This will affect all our other relationships, not just our romantic ones, and that affect can be good.  

I've also heard people claim that it's not possible to have fulfilling relationships with more than one person, and I'm just totally baffled by that statement.  Especially when those people have both spouses and "best friends", and siblings, children, parents, other relatives, etc.  I mean, are none of those relationships "fulfilling" simply because that person has so many of them? 

Oh, wait, but that person isn't having sex with more than one person, right.  Sorry, but I just don't buy that the act of sex is the one defining behaviour that makes one relationship more fulfilling than any other (I know certain individuals who do not develop intimate bonds with people they are not having sex with, but this is not a universal trait, nor even all that common, from what I've observed). 

Each relationship fulfills a different niche and comparing how fulfilling a romantic relationship is to how fulfilling your best friend relationship or your relationship with a family member is comparing apples to oranges, even though many of those relationships share common activities.  They are all fulfilling, but in different ways even when some behaviours overlap, and sexual relationships are no different.  If you go to the same restaurants, talk about the same topics, even have sex in the same positions, two relationships will never be identical and, the fact of the matter is, no two relationships include going to only and exactly the same restaurants/talk about the same topics/have sex in the same positions.

The other point I find fault with is that the author continues to keep her now-platonic friendship with her lover a secret from her husband.  She claims it's not out of guilt or shame but to avoid reminding her husband of the time she chose another.

I think this is a huge mistake.  First of all, her relationship with her ex-lover is described as "extremely close, unconditionally devoted companions."  This is a SIGNIFICANT part of her life and of who she is that she is forced to keep strictly separated from the man she professes to love.  These kinds of secrets block paths to intimacy and are corrosive to the delicate nature of intimate relationships.  How can she possibly not be doing damage to her marriage when she has to lie about who she is spending time with, how she spent her day, important conversations she had, all those things that contribute to making her *who she is*?  Her relationship with her ex-lover affects *who she is* right now and will continue to contribute to shaping who she is in the future.  And her husband is prohibited from any exposure to that part of her and her life.

Second, if she's not doing anything wrong now, she should have no reason to hide.  If her husband cannot bear her having this man in her life, they have a serious problem.  Either she is not willing to sacrifice for his sake (give up her ex-lover, which, for the record, I don't think she should have to) or he is not dealing with his insecurity over her past infidelity. 

If he *can* bear it, she's treating him like a child who can't make his own decisions for what his life looks like.  This is not fair to her husband.  She is not allowing him to develop the tools necessary to heal from her past betrayal or to become secure enough in their relationship to allow her to fully be the person she is.  She is taking his decision-making ability away from him.  She is also continuing her betrayal, whether she continues to have sex or not.  He is not being allowed to choose, for himself, a life with this woman with or without her ex-lover-turned-best-friend. 

Any secret so big that one feels would damage the relationship if told is probably a secret that most needs to be told.

And third, I think he *should* be reminded of the time she chose another.  Always.  The reason she "chose another" is because she felt that he was not giving her as much of his time and attention as she wanted.  She should have communicated her needs more clearly, rather than cheating, but the fact is that he was willing to make an effort to change some behaviour to accommodate her needs and desires - namely to give her more attention.  If he ever forgets that, he risks losing her again.  He should always be conscious of the fact that his actions have consequences and neglecting your partner can cause your partner to leave.

Now, please do not misunderstand me and think I am advocating that the author use her past infidelity as a weapon to keep her husband in line.  "You better pay attention to me or I'll cheat again!"  This is not what I'm saying.  But the world is governed by actions and consequences.  This is about their *choices*.   He has to choose his own path.  Sometimes, however, some things are not compatible.  He has to find the balance in his life between the time and attention he focuses on his career and the time and attention he focuses on his wife.  It is true that making money and following a demanding dream career requires a sacrifice on how much time can be given to other people.  It's not zero-sum, but there are still some things that just cannot co-exist at the same time and time is a finite resource.  One has to decide just how little time one can spend with another before it ceases to be a relationship.

I was dating someone last year.  He was busy with school, I was still living in Tampa and commuting to Orlando and busy with work.  I don't require a lot of time (in terms of counting hours) from my partners.  Both of us expected the other to respect our dedication to our respective goals.  This seemed like we were compatible.  However, when we had been dating a year and had only actually seen each other maybe 5 times and talked on the phone not much more than that, I had to question whether we were actually in a relationship or not.  When I went 3 months in a row not having heard from him at all, I had to admit that we weren't actually dating anymore.

It's not just the physical time spent together - anyone who has made long-distance relationships work understands that.  It's about how significant a person is to you.  We were not in each other's thoughts very often, we did not make much effort to keep in touch with alternate methods, and we were both low on the priority scale for each other.

So when two people are married and share a home and a life together, *some* amount of effort needs to be put forth to maintain the relationship or it isn't a relationship anymore, merely housemates.  And I think that a person who has a tendency to get caught up in one's career to the detriment of the relationships one has, that person needs to be reminded that there is a choice to be made. 

Sometimes I *have* chosen my career over my relationships.  I'm not suggesting it's an incorrect choice.  But it *is* a choice.  So I think it would benefit this husband to always remember that he is involved in a balancing act and that if he wishes to maintain a relationship with his wife, he has to put forth some effort.  The author is doing her husband and herself a disservice by hiding her continued friendship with her ex-lover.

So, overall, I think this article has some very good points to make about loving more than one person, being independent, and honesty and communication with one's partners.  Unfortunately, there are those couple of points that I think she gets wrong, and they are so very, very wrong.