What makes a poly person poly?
This is something that came up recently after some great
conversations about the nature of non-monogamy vs monogamy that came up after
the Midwest Freethought Conference in August. It’s been bubbling around in my
brain for a while, particularly after a couple of great (if all too brief)
conversations with a fellow blogger on Storms of Atheos and another dear friend.
(Yes, sometimes we bloggers actually physically get together and sit [or stand]
around and bullshit about important things instead of sitting stumped and
caffeinated in front of our laptops at home [or a coffee shop, or some other
not-home location, as I cannot seem to get jack shit outside of episodes of
whatever-the-most-recent-NetFlix-obsession done at home] to bullshit about important
things.) So, I’m going to try to address that here. We’ll see how that goes.
Being polyamorous has fuck-all to do with one’s marital
status, or who one is dating, or how many (if any) partners one is with.
I am currently single, and plan on staying that way for a while,
for my own sanity. And not even really because I want to be single. (I don’t. I
definitely don’t.) But I need to, because I’ve got some other things that I
need to try to work on about myself, and I need to stabilize some other things
in life before I can let such a potentially volatile and wonderful
destabilizing force as a relationship or relationships come and shake shit up.[1]
However, regardless of my current relationship status, I still self-identify as
polyamorous. Because that’s the model of relationship that (for the moment at
any rate [and that ‘at the moment’ sort of a thing is part of the meat of what
I’ll get to below, I hope]) best describes me.
I have a friend who is married, and is currently actively in a relationship only with a spouse,[2]
who has absolutely zero interest in pursuing any other relationships, either
now or for the foreseeable future,
despite repeated and periodic assurances that it’s perfectly acceptable to do
so. Spouse (we’re using ‘Spouse’ as a substitute formal name/pronoun for now[3])
is just not interested. Which is not to say that, at some point, Spouse may not
be. My friend waffles back and forth. There's the need to reassure Spouse that
if there ever did occur a desire to date, flirt with, kiss, whatever someone else,
that’s really alright; there's also a not wanting there to be any pressure to
do the above (possibly simply to provide a salve for a guilt that things aren’t [on the surface] equitable in the dating/desire to date area - and there's a whole separate discussion available here about self-sacrifice and selfishness in there, I think).
At this point, there’s a little back-story I want to throw
in. At the Midwest Freethought Conference, Amanda Brown gave what I thought was
a fantastic talk on nonmonogamy. She was, especially when pushed a bit, pretty
abrasive and dismissive of the entire idea of monogamy. This rubbed people the
wrong way, even (?) in an atheist audience. (Even among those that have left
religion and gods and that behind, there is still the remnant of those
unexamined stones of ideas that, though they may not realize it, are the
antiquated vestiges of faith. Which I think was part of the point of what she
was saying.) My friend felt shamed by this for being married and in what she
identified as a currently monogamous relationship. But here’s the thing: I
don’t think that she should have felt shamed. Because I don’t think that the
way that she approaches relationships is monogamous. Definitely not in the
puritanical sense meant by most societies whose norms are defined by antiquated
religious expectations of virginity until marriage and then after that only
ever only only that partner ever ever ever. Ever.[4]
And probably not even in the much looser
sense in which most people mean monogamy. And somewhere buried in that is the
rub.
Assuming I’ve got a decent read on what most people have as
a mental referent when they use the word “monogamy,” I think that they mean
fidelity to one person and one person only, with a willfully blind eye to the
future. They believe, even though they know full well that it’s not fucking
likely, that they will stay together forever. The relationship’s functional
day-to-day existence is guided by the cute belief that the two of them will
stay sexually and socially monogamous; that because of marriage the
relationship has been concretized in some magical way that precludes the
possibility of change, the possibility of expansion to include others, the
possibility of narrowing, the possibility of having a terminal point.
And I don’t think that poly people do that. They recognize,
accept, and go with the fluidity of relationships. They are perfectly willing
to address the need for those changes and evaluate relationships on an ongoing
basis, revisiting the status and nature of relationships as needed or desired.
And I don’t think that monogamous (as commonly practiced) couplehood, and
especially monogamous marriage, does that. It assumes a perpetual status of
couplehood, and as such, makes those involved in that relationship blind to the
morphing that any given relationship status can undergo.
And, of course, as with all things poly, communication is
key. My friend is more than willing to address and readdress Spouse’s desire or
lack thereof for further or additional relationships. But the reason that the
communication part even comes into play here is the recognition of the
transient properties of time and relationships. It’s that thing, that openness,
that willingness to talk about desire, dating, relationships with one’s partner
or partners. It’s an open-endedness, a recognition that the terminal point of
relationships has not already been defined and cemented by marriage, or by whatever. A recognition that the whole idea of terminal point may, in fact, be moot.
And that’s not the last word. That may change, too. Which is
part of the point.[5]
[1]
What exactly those things are, I won’t really get into at the moment, but the
totality of the reasons can be put into maybe a couple of short phrases. I need
to become a better person; I fucked some shit up that I need to fix; both of
those aforementioned things are going to take time.
[2] It
was in one of a couple of conversations with this person, and another
conversation with another poly friend that most of this got worked out in my
head.
[3]
Which brings up another interesting point/similarity with the atheist and
LGBTQA communities, that of feeling the need to keep identities secret. To which
I say, FUUUUUUUUCK that’s frustrating. I intend to write about the
similiarities and differences at some point, and how I think things are going
on the OUT fronts in those areas, and what geography and demographics has to do
with that, and just exactly what OUT even means. Somebody remind me to do this.
(sigh)
[4]
Not that this can’t be done successfully and fulfillingly (ß can that be a word? My
spellcheck says no. Of course my spellcheck also says that spellcheck is not a
fucking word). It can. About 1% of the time (being, I think, generous, and if I’m
doing the numbers right, which I grant that I may not be, which is why I need
to actually study those statistics books that someone gave me since I can’t
really afford to take the statistics courses). Sources for numbers: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20061219_95_of_americans_have_had_premarital_sex/;
http://www.catalogs.com/info/relationships/percentage-of-married-couples-who-cheat-on-each-ot.html;
[5]
Sorry for the rather abrupt ending there, dear fives of readers. But this is
one of those bits of writing that I fear I might not put out there at all, but
keep going back to and adding a sentence or two here and there, tweaking a bit
here or there, deleting this or that definite article, if I don’t just say “Fuck
it,” at some point and click the clicky thing on the computer. At some point, I'm going to start doing some actual real writing that requires more careful structure and editing. Just not right at this very moment.
