If there's one thing that points out that life is uncertain, it's relationships; polyamorous relationships especially.
I have recently been taking a hard look at my relationship with May (I'm not in any other romantic relationships right now) and also her relationship with her boyfriend, Don, from the perspective of, "what if?" Where are May and I going? Where are Don and her going? What will happen when I do meet someone and a relationship develops? What if? Will I be able to handle it?
These are unsettling questions, because possible answers include some scary things happening, like May and my relationship ending, May and Don's relationship ending, and taking down our relationship with it, me falling in love with someone, and getting deranged with new relationship energy (it wouldn't be the first time, lol). It also contains possibilities like being hurt, or hurting the ones we love. Of course, it also contains the possibilities that things will continue to go basically well, that we ride out the rough patches, learn and grow together, and do what I hope will happen: grow old together with our poly family.
I think many relationships, especially traditional "marriage" type ones, have a flimsy facade of certainty, of security. Marriage is forever, isn't it? Once you find "the one", you'll live happily ever after, won't you? Or at least our society says so, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When I was monogamous, I held that same unexamined belief, despite a plethora of examples to prove it wrong, including my own parent's divorce. But mine, like many people's I suspect, was a most superficial faith, a thin covering hiding my true but impossible-to admit-to-myself insecurities about the permanence of relationships. I avoided facing the reality at all costs, because the implication was just too hard to look at: that ultimately we are alone in this world.
The awkward reality is that the future of relationships are completely uncertain. Any, or all of the above predictions, or none of them, may happen, and we have no way of knowing what will come to pass.
I have been meditating on how to be happy while living with this understanding. Faced with the reality of uncertainty, I believe we have two choices in how we approach our life:
1. Run away and avoid any situation where there is not complete, total, absolute guarantees about the outcome (when you find that, can you let me know?). I have been there, done that quite a bit.
2. Accept the fact that things change, and take some appropriate risks in going after what you want.
Since I became polyamorous, I've had to confront head-on a lot of the fears that I had when I was monogamous. I think I've also come to see and begun to accept the uncertain reality of relationships and also life in general.
When you're married and monogamous, many people I believe don't think they need to consider questions relating to the permanence of their relationships, so it's convenient to avoid doing so. In meeting and getting to know other polyamorous people, I've noticed that a lot of them live their lives the opposite way: they throw themselves right in the middle of all of the possibilities that life and relationships offer, both joyful and heartbreaking, confront head on the fears that life's uncertainties create, and go for it anyway. They choose option #2.
It's been a scary but also empowering process working towards living my life with more acceptance that there are no guarantees, and that by pushing the boundaries I will get bit on the ass more than if I stayed in a cozy, stable, yet ultimately unfulfilling life. In doing so a few approaches have helped me to feel certain within myself that no matter what comes my way, I can handle it. For many of these ideas I must thank Susan Jeffers, whose book, "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway," has been pivotal in these changes.
1. Build a "whole life"
Build a life that is rich and diverse. If you build your life focused on just your romantic relationships, and one or more starts to fall apart, you will feel like you have been left with nothing. If you create diversity and committment to many different areas of your life, including friends, family, work, spiritual practice, hobbies and so on, if a piece is removed, there is still a great deal there.
2. Have "high intention, low attachment"
When you want something, create a vivid, real picture of what you want, and put it out into the universe. Intend for it to happen; but then, let it go. Accept that it may or may not happen, or it's unknown how long it will take. Be open to the fact that you might get what you want, but in a way that is different that what you intended or expected.
3. When there are two or more possible ways something in your life could turn out, consider that each of the possibilities is a win
If you seek growth, deep experiences in this world, and self-knowledge, then recognize that, while some possible outcomes will be happy ones and others sad or challenging ones, that each outcome will bring you new understanding, growth, and new things to your life. Looked at this way, there isn't really a "bad" outcome and a "good" outcome, but rather simply outcomes which will give us different experiences and teach us new things. The challenging outcomes will make us stronger people; the happy outcomes will bring us new joy. Either way, we are getting something out of it.
4. Live in the now, taking nothing for granted
Appreciate what you have today, because it may not be the same tomorrow, or may not be there at all. Give 100% commitment to what you do have in your life right now: your relationships, your work, your children, your friends, your family, your self.
5. Look for the good in the change
Things changing or ending always creates spaces in our lives for new things to come into existence. Without those changes, those spaces would not exist. They free us up to begin another relationship with someone who we've always been interested in but never had time to pursue, move to a new city that we've always wanted to live in, or spend time working on ourselves, reading, studying, and meditating.
I find it intriguing that uncertainty exists not only in the human experience but is woven into the very fabric of the laws that govern our universe. At the subatomic level, quantum mechanics describes the behaviour of particles, and fundamental to these laws is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
This principle states that a particle's position and momentum cannot be both known at the same time. But more interestingly, until the particle is actually observed in some way, the position and momentum do not exist in a definite state: they exist only as a fuzzy cloud of probabilities, and the best we can say about the particle before we actually probe it and it figures out what it is going to do is, "it's somewhat likely that when we observe the particle that it will be in this position and traveling at this velocity, it's slightly likely it will be here and going this speed, and it's very likely it will be there and going this fast."
At a very real physical level, until a definite state, or situation if you will, is solidified, only uncertainty, along with the probability of certain situations becoming reality, exists.
It's time to embrace that uncertainty is fundamental to living, find happiness within it, and even celebrate it, as we celebrate other laws of nature.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
piece on "open relationships" in psychology magazine
There is a very small piece on open relationships in the current issue of a popular psychology magazine. It was part of a column where people write in with their relationships questions, and some sort of a relationship psychologist writes a response back.
The gist of the writer's question went something like this: "I'm married, and both my husband and I have had affairs, and find ourselves attracted to other people. Do open relationships work?"
The (should be expected) answer was more or less: "No, at least not in the long term. Either eventually one person will have a relationship which threatens the marriage, or someone will tire of hearing about the other's experiences."
At first, as is often my reaction, I kind of freaked out emotionally. On NO! My polyamorous relationship is doomed to fail, she says it is! What am I going to do? Ahhh!
And then I thought about it for a while. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "Huh?"
Let's pick the answer apart into three pieces. The first piece was that open relationships don't work "long term."
How long is "long-term?" Relationships don't last forever. Even the formerly-believed-to-be-invisible traditional monogamous heterosexual marriage has a pathetic rate of surviving "'till death do us part." Try more than 50% is what I've seen and read is the "failure rate." But who says for a relationship to be considered successful, or valid, that it has to last 30 or 40 years. Sure, there is something to be respected in that, in the amount of work the two people have put into making it work for that length of time. But let's be real about it: relationships don't have to last a long time to be "good." It all depends on what you get out of them - what did you learn? How did you grow? There's nothing to be celebrated in staying in a relationship for many years that isn't giving you what you need. Relationships, like jobs I think, have expiry dates, some of which last longer than others. I'm not convinced that poly relationships have a significantly higher failure rate than monogamous ones.
Second piece is why it won't work long term, which is because the primary relationship will be "threatened."
I will have to assume what she meant is that, as much as you love someone already, if you're in an open relationship, at some point you're virtually assured of finding someone who is totally superior to your primary person, and you'll ditch your primary relationship in favor of this new relationship, lickedy split!
In other words, you'll behave like a serial monogamous person, and give up on polyamory after finding someone "better."
It kinds of kills me because it's such a monogamy-centric view of relationships. To be fair, I'm sure this does happen sometimes in polyamorous relationships. Heck, it happens *all the time* in monogamous relationships. In fact, the sure fire way to kill a traditional, mono relationship is to admit that you've got a crush on someone else – I would know, it happened to me. So, at least sometimes I'm sure it does kill poly relationships as well.
But, I have a really hard time accepting that secondary relationships "threaten" primary relationships as a rule of thumb. "Poly" means "many," and doesn't that imply adding relationships, not switching relationships to more desirable lovers as in serial-monogamy?
I like to think polyamorists understand and use their heads about the stages of relationships, and how, with new relationships and all the new relationship energy floating around, new relationships tend to be experienced as more exciting than long established, mature relationships. But new relationship energy wears off, and you are left with – you guessed it! – just a plain old relationship. And I think, for the most part, every relationship tends to be simply different (read: in some ways better, some ways worse) than other relationships. They're just different. Like children. Very rarely after a similar establishment period, would someone be able to say that their secondary relationship is completely, in every way, better than their primary relationship. I'm sure it happens, I just don't think it's the rule.
Now, I think that having multiple relationships can add complexity and stress to the primary relationship. But let's be real, so can buying a house, having a career, having children, finances, parents of your spouse, and just about everything else. There's a lot of ways that relationships can implode, even in mono situations. Let's be realistic about the fact that relationships of all sorts end for a whole myriad of complicated and intertwined reasons. Poly relationships end for many of the same reasons mono relationships end.
The third point barely warrants discussion. One of the people will "tire of hearing about the other's experiences?" Huh? That's the part that's just hard to understand what the relationship expert is trying to say. OK, I admit it, I don't usually want to hear all the gritty details of the great sex my primary partner had with her lover last night. Some people do. But really, this is a huge problem that would make an open relationship fail? Please. There are a *lot* more significant ways that it can fail. Give me a break.
I think it would have been a good warning for the couple who wrote the letter to let them know that *monogamous* relationships don't work in the long term often. Oh, and open ones too. Relationships are difficult, complex, living, changing, things. Keeping them healthy requires work, flexibility, and learning.
So, here's my response for the couple who are wondering about their relationship and what to do:
"It sounds like you have had a number of issues in your relationship, with both of you having had affairs. It sounds like there are some major communication, trust, or other issues that really need addressing. While an open relationship may work, it will not "fix" a relationship in trouble, which is what yours may be. Spend some time thinking about if you really want to be in your current relationship. If you are, and you're serious about wanting to explore an open relationship, spend some time reinforcing yours; after all, open relationship are all about, well, relationships, and you need to be good at having and maintaining ONE relationship before you can hope of having and maintaining MORE THAN ONE."
Rant over ;)
The gist of the writer's question went something like this: "I'm married, and both my husband and I have had affairs, and find ourselves attracted to other people. Do open relationships work?"
The (should be expected) answer was more or less: "No, at least not in the long term. Either eventually one person will have a relationship which threatens the marriage, or someone will tire of hearing about the other's experiences."
At first, as is often my reaction, I kind of freaked out emotionally. On NO! My polyamorous relationship is doomed to fail, she says it is! What am I going to do? Ahhh!
And then I thought about it for a while. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "Huh?"
Let's pick the answer apart into three pieces. The first piece was that open relationships don't work "long term."
How long is "long-term?" Relationships don't last forever. Even the formerly-believed-to-be-invisible traditional monogamous heterosexual marriage has a pathetic rate of surviving "'till death do us part." Try more than 50% is what I've seen and read is the "failure rate." But who says for a relationship to be considered successful, or valid, that it has to last 30 or 40 years. Sure, there is something to be respected in that, in the amount of work the two people have put into making it work for that length of time. But let's be real about it: relationships don't have to last a long time to be "good." It all depends on what you get out of them - what did you learn? How did you grow? There's nothing to be celebrated in staying in a relationship for many years that isn't giving you what you need. Relationships, like jobs I think, have expiry dates, some of which last longer than others. I'm not convinced that poly relationships have a significantly higher failure rate than monogamous ones.
Second piece is why it won't work long term, which is because the primary relationship will be "threatened."
I will have to assume what she meant is that, as much as you love someone already, if you're in an open relationship, at some point you're virtually assured of finding someone who is totally superior to your primary person, and you'll ditch your primary relationship in favor of this new relationship, lickedy split!
In other words, you'll behave like a serial monogamous person, and give up on polyamory after finding someone "better."
It kinds of kills me because it's such a monogamy-centric view of relationships. To be fair, I'm sure this does happen sometimes in polyamorous relationships. Heck, it happens *all the time* in monogamous relationships. In fact, the sure fire way to kill a traditional, mono relationship is to admit that you've got a crush on someone else – I would know, it happened to me. So, at least sometimes I'm sure it does kill poly relationships as well.
But, I have a really hard time accepting that secondary relationships "threaten" primary relationships as a rule of thumb. "Poly" means "many," and doesn't that imply adding relationships, not switching relationships to more desirable lovers as in serial-monogamy?
I like to think polyamorists understand and use their heads about the stages of relationships, and how, with new relationships and all the new relationship energy floating around, new relationships tend to be experienced as more exciting than long established, mature relationships. But new relationship energy wears off, and you are left with – you guessed it! – just a plain old relationship. And I think, for the most part, every relationship tends to be simply different (read: in some ways better, some ways worse) than other relationships. They're just different. Like children. Very rarely after a similar establishment period, would someone be able to say that their secondary relationship is completely, in every way, better than their primary relationship. I'm sure it happens, I just don't think it's the rule.
Now, I think that having multiple relationships can add complexity and stress to the primary relationship. But let's be real, so can buying a house, having a career, having children, finances, parents of your spouse, and just about everything else. There's a lot of ways that relationships can implode, even in mono situations. Let's be realistic about the fact that relationships of all sorts end for a whole myriad of complicated and intertwined reasons. Poly relationships end for many of the same reasons mono relationships end.
The third point barely warrants discussion. One of the people will "tire of hearing about the other's experiences?" Huh? That's the part that's just hard to understand what the relationship expert is trying to say. OK, I admit it, I don't usually want to hear all the gritty details of the great sex my primary partner had with her lover last night. Some people do. But really, this is a huge problem that would make an open relationship fail? Please. There are a *lot* more significant ways that it can fail. Give me a break.
I think it would have been a good warning for the couple who wrote the letter to let them know that *monogamous* relationships don't work in the long term often. Oh, and open ones too. Relationships are difficult, complex, living, changing, things. Keeping them healthy requires work, flexibility, and learning.
So, here's my response for the couple who are wondering about their relationship and what to do:
"It sounds like you have had a number of issues in your relationship, with both of you having had affairs. It sounds like there are some major communication, trust, or other issues that really need addressing. While an open relationship may work, it will not "fix" a relationship in trouble, which is what yours may be. Spend some time thinking about if you really want to be in your current relationship. If you are, and you're serious about wanting to explore an open relationship, spend some time reinforcing yours; after all, open relationship are all about, well, relationships, and you need to be good at having and maintaining ONE relationship before you can hope of having and maintaining MORE THAN ONE."
Rant over ;)
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
scheduling "fun"
Arrrgh! Sometime I so hate scheduling. How to fit it all in? All the negotiating, trying to meet everyones needs. It always starts out frustrating. Today it finished a completely win-win situation, which is how it should be, I think.
Someone told me once that she things scheduling is one of, if not the, hardest aspects of polyamory. Not sure if that's totally the case, although it feels that way some days.
Forget the high-powered business executives; poly people got scheduling woes for sure.
Someone told me once that she things scheduling is one of, if not the, hardest aspects of polyamory. Not sure if that's totally the case, although it feels that way some days.
Forget the high-powered business executives; poly people got scheduling woes for sure.
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