My Monogamy

Curiously, I think one of the most common problems that polyamourous ideas have today is that they’re touted as “more mature,” or some other code for “better.” In an almost entirely polyamorous scene, I see an immense amount of maturity and will in people who choose to maintain monogamous relationships. In the end it’s simply a different way of thinking.

Re: your postulation as to whether this is an autobiographical truth. I have often found and said that people who practice polyamoury well seem to have it hard-wired into them. There seems to be some kind of instinctual recognition of the ideas. Potentially this could be the result of parental or early influences.

I take all “blame” for using maturity. I’ve never actually read much about it. It was Mistress Matisse’s description of her relationships that caused me to really think about it.

My own maturing has included much increased openness to sexuality that I didn’t originally know I was capable of. Hence, my thinking of it as more “mature.” But that is a strictly personal application.

I’m having a pretty miserable time trying to write my own feelings about this.

Perhaps in this particular case you used the word “maturity” for personal reasons, but I have definitely seen influences of the kind of thinking I’m talking about in public contexts. It often goes hand in hand with that stupid idea that kinksters have better sex lives because we supposedly think more.

The censorship people recieve for being monogamous in the scene is everywhere. It’s another one of those unspoken things that still (I think) damages the culture without being said.

Curiously, I’ve been polyamorous for several years and during that time was in at least one relationship with a partner who preferred monogamy. But he wasn’t the type to simply dismiss my interest. We never did acheive a meeting of the minds on the subject, but we did manage to come to compromises that worked for both of us. It was an interesting (and delicate) balancing act.

A couple more thoughts on that balancing act between myself and the monogamous partner, we’ll call him J.

We were very close, we’d known each other for ages, and I had just decided I was poly, and wanted to practice poly, when we began to date. We were long distance, and he was monogamous. This quickly started driving me crazy, although I realized this wasn’t his intention. It was simply how he thought about himself. We talked about it a lot. A lot a lot.

One of the questions we ended up hitting on was whether it’s possible for one partner to be poly and another to be mono and have both still be happy. It became important to make the distinction between J wanting to be monogamous in his relationship to me and J expecting me to reciprocate this monogamy. They’re not quite the same idea, and this difference was key.

I started asking him why he was monogamous, what he saw as the strengths and advantages of that kind of attachment to someone. A lot of what he talked about was demonstrations and evidence of love and commitment. (This happened to be how he saw it, I don’t think that’s a rule.) I ended up exploring how I could demonstrate those same things to him within a different context. I thought a lot about what commitment means to me, how relationships are balanced, how people experience love. I tried to show him that I didn’t see myself as less committed to him or less in love with him if I was poly.

This took a ton of work. I ran into some hard times when I felt really guilty for trying to push him into this thing he didn’t want, and he had hard times feeling guilty that he was holding me back. Jealousy was an issue, and had to be dealt with very carefully. Again, I kept trying to show him that my commitment was unchanged.

He described it like this: “I think of you being poly like you being a car. If a car makes funny noises, you don’t throw it away. You love it and its funny noises too.” Yea. He was a bit of a silly man at times.

The compromise we struck was that I would pursue relationships that were “casual.” There was some trouble with this term, but it ended up generally meaning having other play partners that I was friends with, but not romantically involved with. This was definitely a hard compromise for me, but it worked. We ran into trouble deciding whether I should tell him about these encounters or not. I demanded a set policy for this and never actually got one.

A lot of this was “playing by the rules.” There are plenty of rules in monogamous and polyamorous relationships. We kind of created a new ruleset, with safeguards built in for both of us to be happy.

I share point three with you very strongly, Richard, and while point two regarding culture obviuosly differs in many ways, the vast majority of all of my polyamorous experiences have been profoundly negative. By this, I am very jaded–as Eileen no doubt will attest. However, while I would hardly call myself a ripe example of a polyamorous success story, I do think that in many ways I am too idealistic to bend to reality and the articulation of love that the polyamorous descriptions showcase are simply too instinctually desireable to let go of.

I’m torn between admiring his ability to accommodate you and being reminded of people who accept things in a relationship that they really shouldn’t.

But from what you say it must have worked out OK overall. Thanks.

Maymay,

While this entry had another primary motivation it was the feelings you reported recently that caused me to start thinking about poly again.

While I can laud it in theory in practice I might prefer to be alone than in something too complicated.

Or my partners would all have to be secondary with no primary. Always a pity one can’t start from scratch again.

I am sort of poly-tolerant but typically monogamous.

I’m not inclined to be jealous or possessive. Right now I’m possessive of my lover’s time because he doesn’t have enough, but I’m not sexually possessive. (I claim no virtue on account of this - I didn’t make myself this way.) I could handle my lover having other lovers, though I do like to be the “prime” relationship. (OK, I like it a lot, and I have no idea how I’d handle real polyamory. But I am not freaked out by dalliances outside the relationship.)

BUT…I tend to only have one primary love myself. If I had another lover, I’d probably only be in love with one of them at a time. And that’s confusing to think about.

Bah.

“I’m torn between admiring his ability to accommodate you and being reminded of people who accept things in a relationship that they really shouldn’t.”

I don’t think this is what you meant to imply, but this particular comment is worded in a way that reminds me of another issue I have with how poly is viewed.

It’s true that he was remarkable and loving in his ability to accomodate me. And that he accepted a form of relationship that wasn’t ideal for him. But both of these things were also true for me. I worked hard to accomodate him. I accepted a relationship model that was not ideal for me.

There’s a common trope (again, Richard, I’m not saying this is what you were writing, just bringing it up) that being polyamorous is like taking a step beyond being monogamous. As such, it seems to make sense that if a polyamorous person and a monogamous person get together, the logical step will be for the polyamorous person to “default” to monogamy.

This simply isn’t true. What’s more, it’s unfair. It’s like saying that if a kinky person got involved with a vanilla person they would be expected to default to being vanilla. A lot of relationships end because of this misconception.

I think the most valuble thing I took away from that relationship was the reality that I don’t have a default monogamy mode. I am poly the way I am kinky. I just am.

I think the term polyamory has been around far longer than you believe. It was referred to in “The Road Less Travelled” by M. Scott Peck published in 1978 when he referred to it’s promotion as a lifestyle by Robert Heinlein.

It’s a concept I grew up with as a teenager and seemed more natural to me than monogamy even then.

You are probably thinking of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. There’s nothing remotely new about the idea of open relationships. E.g., many Christian sects through the centuries have advocated various forms of “free love.” But I think the vocabulary that has evolved around polyamory is more nuanced, hence potentially more persuasive.

Thanks to everyone who has given their input on this so far, everything helps a bit.

Eileen,

I wish I’d phrased that impersonally.

What I was thinking was that it would be an exceptional monogamous person who could actually handle a relationship with a poly person. I suspect the monogamous person might engaging in self-delusion by thinking:

That his or her love would create immunity from jealousy.

That the polyamorous partner would eventually decide that one person is enough.

Some of us tell ourselves the most damnable lies when we are in love.

I’m not mankind’s biggest fan. Even as a reformed misanthrope I rarely make friends. My few are deeply cherished. The web’s banishing of distance warm and collegial feelings for many more people. A man like me is hardly apt to easily find people who inspire passion and tenderness. Groups of people are agony. And even groups of friends are sometimes confusing. I can focus well on a single person. Each instance of intimacy creates its own individual vocabulary. Because of shared experience. Because I tailor my words to the person.

You’ve just wrote my life :) Thanks for the post