My friend Poly has a hobby, which in itself is not unusual, it’s just that her hobby is having sex.
The transformation in Poly has been remarkable. When we first met she was just ending her relationship with a long term partner, and took a brave step which was rejecting the myth that once you have a partner, then a mortgage, then a baby yada yada yada…, that once all the standard boxes had been ticked, then you should be happy. But Poly wasn’t happy, in fact the existential misery of all this just seemed to grow the more the boxes got ticked. It was courageous to reject the gilded cage of her own making and step out in a different direction, but she did. It took a few years and there were lots of mistakes along the way, but now Poly is engaged in multiple parallel connected relationships, some that fail in time, but some that seem to be stronger and some may even be more enduring.
The radical departure from a checkbox existence has been difficult. The first and immediate obstacle to overcome when moving to be polyamorous is that those people who are around you, and those people who know you will sometimes try and put you back on the checkbox assembly line. Like coming out as LGBTIQA, there will be those who are just going to struggle with the change they see in their friend or family member. Poly has stated a few times to me that it feels like Polyamory or an open relationship way of living is where the LGBTIQA community was about 30 years ago. It is such a contradiction to how we are “supposed” to be, so different from the norm, that it will probably not be accepted for some time.
The second obstacle was Tim. Tim was around for about a year, in and out of Poly’s life because he would only be in the country for 1 month out of every 4. This may have been OK, except for the fact that Tim did not really want to share Poly with anyone else. Like it was his decision to make anyway.
Like, right there, see!
See how the very language and subtext of monogamy ends up being a way to control someone else. Poly agreed with Tim to be exclusive, however this was mostly Tim making the decision, Poly was still in the process of emerging into the person she always knew she was.
But eventually Poly moved on and found her way into the Sex/Play scene. To begin with it was the invite only nightclubs or the private parties where couples would hook up. And being a single sexually confident and attractive female meant she got invites more readily than others. Here there was a reposition of the dynamic between men and women. It surprised me more than anything else that in the play scene, the power dynamic is reversed so that women are definitely in control and a great deal of emphasis is on consent. Men, it seems are welcomed because they make interesting play things, but they have to leave the macho bullshit at the door. Well, at least that’s how I understand it from hearing Poly talk about it.
At a one to one level, Poly found herself connecting with guys who, for the most part, were not coming from the same place. Which is to say, they were lying. These guys would say, “oh yeah, I’m absolutely into open relationship, and yeah, I’ve discussed it with my girlfriend and she’s cool with it”. This is a form of language used by guys who are trying to get laid called “bullshitian”. To translate from bullshitian what he is saying is, “you mean we can have sex without the hassle of commitment, awesome, but so long as my girlfriend doesn’t know and if she were to find out, then perhaps we could have a threesome.” The men from the mono-hetero-normative world were lying to Poly, lying to themselves and more importantly they were probably lying to their other partners.
For Poly the misleading of others, the hiding and the deceit is contrary to the person she wants to be. The connection may still be there with these men, but as we’ve come to understand, this connection is based something like an addiction, where these “bad boys” only enforce the idea that “If I can’t have it, for whatever reason, then I really really want it.” This theme continues to play out where the drive increases the more the availability reduces.
Then the hard work of scheduling followed. Endless swiping on numerous apps, followed by seemingly endless texting, the initial screening to see if they want to have sex with each other, then the getting to know each other in bed, then more texting. Scheduling in events when she could be free but then having the everyday world of work and travel and family constantly disrupting the diary. Add to that a cocktail of adrenaline, dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin, with less and less time for sleeping and it all of this ends up in a compromised immune system, susceptibility to contracting a cold and just basically being really fucking tired.
Throughout all this is the constantly recurring themes of Jealousy. Poly has stated that she doesn’t really get jealousy, and I have maintained that jealousy is just a placeholder for some other emotion that people are feeling, but which is so overwhelming that they do not have the capacity to call it out and see that emotion for what it really is. I feel jealousy all the time. It’s like and exposed nerve that makes it incredibly difficult to function sometimes. For me jealousy is about regret, and about unmet desire and about frustration. It’s a percussion grenade on my psyche as I work with issues of self-worth. But jealousy could also be hurt, or loss, or frustration, or shame, or grief, or guilt or any of a number of emotions that are sometimes too difficult. By labeling these uncomfortable emotions as jealousy we are trying to push the problem so that it is “out there” rather than “in here”.
A person often only gets jealous in a relationship, so therefore part of the responsibility lies with the person out there. It’s easier to call it jealousy because it denotes that the ultimate cause of the problem/behavior is in someone else and not me. As I reflect on what this means, jealousy itself just seems ridiculous. For example, imagine a person is “jealous” because their partner has be found to be “cheating” on them. They react and act out in a jealous way, but the cause is always seen to be THE OTHER PERSON. Internally the unspoken monologue from the jealous person is essentially “HEY! I am feeling hurt, so why are you not looking after my emotions?”
Just fucking grow up!
If you’re feeling hurt (or whatever) then that is YOUR FEELING! Expecting everyone around you to behave so that you’re feeling OK is just laughable. But the dominant paradigm of monogamy is saying this exact thing.
You’ve probably noticed that I’m attracted to Poly, and it’s true, I am. But she is not attracted to me, and our relationship is a friendship and no more, where we can talk about all this. If I feel bad (hurt, loss, envy… or whatever), because of my unmet desire, then that is my shit! That is what I have to deal with. The reason why I’ve continue to catch up with Poly is because she has understood this and she has allowed me the space to work on my stuff. And whilst it’s hurt, for this I am extremely grateful.
Relationships, in all their forms, seem to create fertile ground where growth is possible, provided that you are willing to do the internal work. For me personally, this is the most important part of Poly’s emergence. There are some people who marry the person they first met at school. They live their lives together, raise a family and live a stable and full life, and that’s great. But it’s not for everyone. Some people crash into and crash through or crash out of relationships all the time, bludgeoned by this thing we call “love”, but which we don’t entirely understand. But, when you are willing to do the internal work, all of this can lead to understanding yourself better.
For me the internal work is tied to a growing sense that I am a sex and love addict, and more specifically someone who is anhedonic, anorexic and avoidant. I avoid being intimate with people whilst at the same time feeding into a narrative about the world “out there” where everybody seems to be getting some, but not me. Because I am intrinsically unlovable. The dynamic between myself and Poly is what has allowed me to really see this for what it is, and this is the form of the internal work I am now embarked upon.
For Poly, as she mentioned to me the other day “I’ve never been happier”. There is a new guy in her life who has been around the open relationship for longer than most and is genuinely cool with it. In life, he seems to have his shit together, and he doesn’t seem to be the flake that so many others are. They are attracted to each other, the sex is really good and to hear Poly describe him, it’s clear that he may end up being a much longer term playmate than the rest. He seems perfect.
Then Poly says “It’s like it’s too perfect, and there must be something wrong.” Being “perfect” raises the most difficult of all existential dilemmas, which is best described in Poly’s own words “I’m waiting for it to end”. When I ask why, she replies “because it always ends”
I think this sense of impending loss is also connected to another question that Poly asks from time to time which is “Where does love fit into all of this?”
“Waiting for it to end …. Where does love fit into all of this?”
More on that next time.