Community v Individual Solutions to Jealousy

This post is inspired by a recent read, Jealous of what? Solving polyamory’s jealousy problem.

Basically, the author argues that all modern polyamory resources offer solutions to jealousy based on an individual’s responsibility for taking care of themselves. In my public health program, we often talked about “portrait” versus “landscape” stories: in a portrait, you see one person. In a landscape, though, you see not only the person but their environment. This framing of stories and the problems within them pushes the reader to understand a specific set of solutions. This is my long-winded way of saying: if you see jealousy as an individual problem, you are likely to see the solution as individually specific.

The author offers an alternative: viewing jealousy as a structural and community challenge means we have the opportunity to see structural solutions to managing jealousy.

This article was a complete breath of fresh air to me. And not because I dislike the typical advice offered by poly advice folks, but because it offers a broader lens from which to view jealousy. It reminds me, too, of my brief counseling program experience and learning about the importance of how both people in the dyad shape relationship function. One person can never be 100% responsible for what happens in a relationship; the division of responsibility is inherently divvied up as there are multiple people shaping expectations, communication, “rewards,” and “punishments.” To say that jealousy management is 100% my responsibility has definitely left me feeling overwhelmed, disheartened, and lonely at times. I agree that I am responsible for how I respond to my thoughts and emotions and how I behave, but I appreciate the space this view allows for looking at how and why jealousy manifests in poly relationships.

The author’s thesis that intimate social networks build trust which alleviates jealousy makes a lot of sense to me. The more distance and unknown there is with regards to my partner’s partners breeds doubt, uncertainty, fear (for me, anyway). The more closeness, the more I am able to understand.

Quote of note:

“My hypothesis is that the more shifts that occur within a polyamory network, the more jealousy that occurs, which then requires higher degrees of individualistic emotion management.  In other words, individual freedom in relationships has an evil twin of individual constraint of emotion.

For those for whom individual freedom in relationships is the highest value, it may be worth the individual jealousy management that results from putting love on the free market.   But for those who don’t want to be faced head-on with the green-eyed monster, the advice literature is in denial about which approaches to polyamory lead to a higher or lower probability of jealousy.  There are no tools provided beyond individual emotion work for how to manage jealousy for those who want a communal, less individualistic approach to polyamory. “

What do you think?

Kindness, Beauty, Poly

The importance of kindness and “turning toward” in maintaining healthy and positive long-term relationships: Masters of Love

Conversation-starter and thought-provoking ad campaign to address the messages we send about what “beautiful” is: the review on HuffPost and the website itself- Stop the Beauty Madness Ad Campaign

Fearless self-love: My “Naked” Truth

Older article, but well written and articulated; on how polyamory is bigger than coupledom: Polyamorous Relationships Are About More Than Just Couples

 

Life is Full and Delicious

Crazy past week: life is zooming ahead!

I am starting a new job soon- with the same agency but in a different role. It’s going to be far busier than what I have been doing and I think it will be a positive shift in my day-to-day. I hope I can manage a full work load and school in the fall.

I had a major freak out last week. I found out that somehow I had linked my blog (yes, this blog) to my main Google plus profile. Which means I had been sharing all of my blog posts with people in my circles- some random acquaintances from college and grad school, some family members, some friends. So Mom, Dad, other family, and people on the periphery of my life: if you’ve been following me along, that is totally fine. The irony of this situation is not lost on me. If you ever want to talk to me about stuff you’ve read on here, I am happy to talk. If not, that’s fine too. But I know that you know. So we’re good.

Some old news: that poly speed dating event J and I went to was cool! It was super well coordinated and there were about 100 people there! I definitely recommend going to the next one.

I’m excited about my next open women’s group. We are doing an activity where we will feed one another in silence for a little while- I think it will be a nice, intimate thing to do with one another. And I am looking forward to a new kind of touch and intimacy with some of my best woman friends.

My bestie and her fiance were in town this past weekend with us! It was fabulous, especially since I hadn’t seen her since October. We even took them to our fave nude beach, and they even got naked. I was extremely impressed- they had never been around any other naked people before. Wahoo, vanilla friends gettin’ a little spicy!

[My crummy part of the week: getting totally triggered by a comment a friend made yesterday about someone's "perfect breasts." No one is perfect, right? I vented to J several times throughout the evening, and told myself last night as I was trying to fall asleep that I would wake up feeling better. And I did. So I am making some progress on managing my negative thoughts.]

Stay cool this week; it’s warming way up!

More Than Two & Independence

Happy Independence Day! How are you celebrating your freedom today? Do you feel free? How can you if you don’t?

I finally finished Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert’s Book More Than Two. Whew. That was a journey for me. Read on for my quotes of note and other impressions. (And please! Someone else read this soon so I can discuss it with someone!) My favorite quotes are bolded.

The most useful parts of this book for me:

-Distinguishing among boundaries, rules, and agreements. Having a really clear sense of what each of these things are and what they mean is really helpful to me. Boundaries are those things you get to set for yourself: you get to decide how and when others enter your space, mind, heart, and body. Rules are about controlling someone else: rules are about you telling someone else how and when others enter their space, mind, heart, and body. Agreements are broader and more general, and as such, allow you to have flexible and negotiable conversations with a partner. Ready for some examples?

  • Boundary: I will only have sex with you if we use a condom. I will only date someone once they have met my partner.
  • Rule: My partner is not allowed to spend the night with another partner. My partner is not allowed to have condom-free sex with another partner. * Rules are, according to Franklin and Eve, acceptable if they are time bound and specific and allow you to process yucky emotions before moving on without the rule. An example of this might be: My partner won’t spend the night with his other partner for two weeks. In two weeks we will check about how I am feeling; likely, they will spend the night together at this time. (This looks much less like a rule, and more like compassionate negotiation and agreement setting. But because you are controlling someone else’s behavior, it is still effectively a rule.)
  • Agreement: We will discuss what it would mean for one of us to have condom-free sex with another partner, and agree to get tested before that happens. If one of us wants to date someone, we will let each other know before anything sexual happens.

-Having a reminder that my personal boundaries (or lack of) and who I have given power to, deeply impacts my sense of agency and ability to stay happy, regardless of what is happening in my relationships. This is related to this quote:

“There are many signs of a harmful relationship dynamic, but the most unmistakable one is fear. Why am I so afraid in this relationship when there’s no imminent physical danger? If you find you are asking yourself this question, check your boundaries. Do you know where they are? How much power have you given to others to affect your well-being, you self-esteem, even your desire to live? Remember, when you give someone the power to affect you and to come into your mind, you are only loaning what belongs to you. If you are afraid, you have given too much. When you look forward, do you see choices? Is leaving the relationship a viable option? Is changing the relationship a viable option? Is setting new boundaries an option? What happens if you say no?” p159
-And, for the first time for some reason, being really deeply hit with the idea that my self esteem, confidence, and self efficacy (the belief that one can do something) is what is at the core of my insecurity in my relationship. My BDD has played a large role in this, but so has a generally low self esteem. I have heard that working on one’s self esteem is the number one thing you can do to increase your sense of security within a relationship for a long time, but for some reason, it finally hit me somewhere much deeper. They also hammer home the idea that truly believing that one can “do” polyamory is more than half the battle: do you truly believe you can do it? Because if you do, then you are far more likely to succeed in working through difficult situations while giving your partners space to be them and have the relationships that they want and need, and giving yourself the space to be yourself, too.
Quotes of note:

“Nor is happiness actually a state of being. It is a process, a side effect of doing other things…happiness is something we re-create every day. And it comes more from our outlook than from the things around us.” p9

“Polyamory is not right for everyone. Polyamory is not the next wave in human evolution. Nor is it more enlightened, more spiritual, more progressive or more advanced than monogamy. Polyamorous people are not automatically less jealous, more compassionate or better at communicating than monogamists.” p12
“It’s useful to think of polyamory as an outgrowth of a certain set of relationship ideas. Rather than asking, ‘Am I polyamorous?’ you could ask yourself, ‘Are the tools and ideas of polyamory useful to me?’” p12
“This cookie-cutter way of looking at relationships is so ingrained that we often try to hang onto it even when we discover polyamory” p18
“Above all else trust that you don’t have to control your partner, because your partner, given the freedom to do anything, will want to cherish and support you. And always, always move in the direction of greatest courage, toward the best possible version of yourself” p39
“Minding the gap is being aware of where we are now and striving to move in the direction we want to go. That’s part of living with integrity” p55
“Compassion means coming from a place of understanding that others have needs of their own, which might be different than ours and extending to them the same understanding, the same willingness to appreciate their own struggles, that we would want them to extend to us” p83
“We recognize that the work it takes to become secure and confident is hard. In some situations, rules that are specific, narrow in scope and, most importantly, limited in duration can be valuable tools for problem-solving. If you’ve found that something your partners are doing just absolutely drives you crazy, asking them to temporarily stop doing it can give you the emotional space to process whatever’s underneath” p172
“If we’re setting these rules because we are afraid, deep inside, that we aren’t good enough and out partners might replace us, a self-reinforcing cycle can develop. We feel low self-esteem, so we make rules to feel safe, and then we don’t want to develop self-esteem because if we do that, we won’t need rules anymore, and if we don’t have rules, we won’t feel safe!” p235
“Simply being in a relationship with someone is not a commitment to the traditional relationship escalator. A pattern is not a commitment—and an assumption that it is can lead to a feeling of entitlement on one side and confusion on the other” p263
“…when you understand that time spent with a partner is a gift and not an entitlement, this will help you cultivate a sense of gratitude for it, and gratitude is a powerful shield against jealousy and fear” p287
“If you love someone, set them free. If they fly away, they were never yours to begin with. If they come back, be grateful and sweet and happy they are near you, and recognize that they can fly away any time, so just don’t be an asshole, okay?” ~Edward Martin III p296
“Surely the most ubiquitous misunderstanding of love it ‘love hurts.’ Loving never hurts—it’s wanting others to be different from how they are, and not getting what you want, that we find so painful” ~Christopher Wallis p313
“In an ideal world, we poly folks could be sure that all our partners would always be thrilled with each other and enjoy spending time together. In such a world, leprechauns frolic with unicorns under trees that blossom with cotton candy. The fact is, sometimes people just don’t like each other. Columnist Dan Savage has said that all relationships have a ‘price of admission.’….In the poly world, sometimes a person’s other partner might be that price of admission” p410

What didn’t I like about this book?

I kept getting the sense that the authors see “good”, ethical polyamory operating in one way. I felt defensive reading a lot of the book, and I know it’s from experiences I have been through in which I didn’t behave in ways that I liked. So I’m not sure if it’s just me feeling defensive, or if there really was this theme that there’s “one right way” to do polyamory. For instance, the authors are pretty anti-hierarchical polyamory. I totally understand that it is disempowering to say to another party, “Look, you don’t get any say because you’re a secondary partner. If my wife wants to veto our relationship, we have to break up.” I get that that sucks… and I also would like to think that hierarchical polyamory can work well for all partners involved, as long as it is done in a compassionate, transparent way. But I don’t know.

Check in if you’ve read this one! I’d love to hear your thoughts. It’s really thought-provoking, clear, and directed in its approach, and I definitely recommend it to folks exploring multiple intimate relationships.

Ginger at atheist, polyamorous skeptics just recently reviewed the book as well, and she clearly didn’t have the same, strong emotional reactions as I did- so it’s definitely worth reading her in-depth and lovely post here.

Attachment & Sex

How do you limit attachment to other people that you form intimate sexual relationships with?

I think this question comes with an assumption: that one wants to limit attachment to other sexual partners. I don’t necessarily operate that way in my relationship with other people. If I want to explore other connections with a sexual partner, whether that be emotional or social or spiritual, I would consider it, depending on how such a connection fits in with my current relationship(s) and other life stuff.

But, if you are operating from a foundation that says you should or want to limit those attachments and connections, these are my (philosophical, perhaps not super helpful) thoughts:

-Investigate your feelings toward what sex, love, and lust all mean to you. If you know that you are highly unlikely to enjoy casual sex, or that having sex at all with someone leads to deep feelings for someone else, and you’re trying to stay away from such feelings, perhaps casual sex isn’t your best route for connection with others. Perhaps, though, making  boundaries for yourself around what those different things mean will make a difference in your ability to stay clear about how your experiences impact you.

-Similarly, being able to parse out your emotions clearly will help in compartmentalizing your sexual experiences from your romantic-sexual ones. If you can identify your feelings of lust and know that those are different than the feelings of love for a long term romantic partner, that may help in giving yourself a reality check on what your emotions are telling you.

-If you are already in new relationship energy (NRE) bliss, then it might also be a good time for a reality check: think the relationship and connection through. It’s hard to do when you are over the moon about someone and their energy, but as best you can, try to keep a level head and put the connection in perspective to the rest of your life.

-Define what “intimate” sex versus “casual” sex is for you. Perhaps try reframing some of your sexual experiences one way or another to see how it makes a difference in the attachments you feel.

-Define your boundaries. Boundaries are the things YOU get to set for yourself. Who gets access to your space, mind, heart, and body? When? Why? How? If you don’t want to let someone into your emotional world, you don’t have to. You can still be kind, but you don’t have to grant anyone and everyone access to your heart, including sexual partners.

-Think about why forming attachments to sexual partners is an undesirable consequence of the relationship. Forming an attachment doesn’t necessarily mean you owe that partner a commitment of some kind (except for those you have discussed and negotiated). Sure, it can hurt to have someone we are attached to leave or hurt us, but that is a risk we take through forming relationships, being vulnerable, and becoming attached to others.

-Conversely (or perhaps not), consider the Buddhist teaching that attachment leads to suffering. How can you love deeply, connect authentically, and yet also free yourself from expectations that a relationship look, act, or be a certain way? (I find the work of Byron Katie to be extremely helpful here)

Does anyone else have any other suggestions, insights, etc.?

Back Online

I stopped writing for a little bit, but I’m back now. I had an internally tumultuous couple of weeks, and the thought of sharing all of that felt far from helpful. Things are better now and I’m back online :)

Life highlights:

J graduated from his work training program!

My little sister graduated from college!

We now have a bathroom mirror!

I make rockin’ kombucha!

We’re having a party with all of our friends soon!

I had pizza last night!

We are getting so close to ripping up the disgusting carpets!

Sex and relationship highlights:

J and I had yummy, rough sex this past weekend. Throat, tit, leg- all roughly handled. Dirty talk. Delicious.

The anxiety and uncertainty related to relationships that had been building for the past couple of months has faded away over the past week or so. I’m not sure what or how- but it has largely melted away. J and I have had some clear conversations about my anxiety and about where we’re both at, and I feel at ease and happy with everything.

I’m reading Franklin Veaux’s book, “More Than Two” and it’s really great. At times I have felt on edge and defensive reading it, because I have oftentimes felt like a shitty poly person. Other times, I have felt secure and excited reading it. But there are many gems within it, and I look forward to writing a more full review soon.

The relationship I have to myself is coming into clearer focus. I articulated today, talking with my counselor, that the vast majority of the insecurity I have felt before in my relationship with J is due to the insecurity I feel with myself. And the vast majority of the insecurity I feel with myself is BDD related. So I am fucking excited to get my BDD even more under control.

My commitment to masturbation helped me immensely last week. Keep masturbating, yo!

J and I are going to a poly speed dating event tomorrow. I’ll report back.

How is your June going? Has anyone else had a noticeable shift in mood and attitude over the past week?

Domestic Violence & Open Relationships

I have had the thought for quite some time, as I think many in the open relationship community have, that the values inherent to the open relationship and polyamory communities can go a long way in preventing gender based violence and domestic violence (here is the most recent piece I’ve seen). Those values go a long way in promoting egalitarian relationships and empower all partners involved to speak up about what they want and need. Nonviolent communication is one of those practices that many people in the open/poly communities practice.

But, I have also long wondered where the intersection is between domestic violence and open relationships: do those egalitarian and nonviolent principles mean that there are not any poly/open folks experiencing domestic violence? I can’t imagine that that is the case, although I am sure it is a tiny pool of people.

And today, at work, my supervisor got a call that very much sounds like a triad torn apart by domestic violence. When my supervisor was describing the call, she said “Yeah, she said it’s her and her partner- another woman- and it’s the guy they were dating that’s being abusive,” giving me this “what the heck” kind of look. The guy THEY were dating? It’s possible “dating” was code for a relationship with a pimp, but otherwise, the situation still made sense to me. I responded with, “Yeah I’ve wondered about that intersection for a while- the one between DV and open/poly relationships.” Her response: “I guess you’ve found it!”

I guess so, unfortunately. Assuming that one community has communication and boundaries down pat and flawless mental/emotional health is a recipe for disaster: nothing is perfect, and no one is perfect. Assuming that wealthy people never experience DV or that poly people can’t possibly experience DV or that the queer community never experiences DV is all highly problematic: domestic violence cuts across all demographics.

I don’t feel excited to have heard about this caller- it is saddening and troubling, like all of the calls I receive or hear about. But I do feel satisfied knowing that at least there is someone at my agency who is poly aware and kink aware, who won’t be weirded out by a call like this one (me!). (I do know several other queer and sex work aware advocates, and several advocates who understand poly and kink, at other agencies. Yay!)

Abusers abuse, and I think it can be unfortunately easy to be manipulated and hurt in even a relationship that was once marked by honest communication. And while open relationships and poly relationships are marked by an intense level of honesty, openness, trust, and personal awareness, any relationship can be damaged by one person trying to gain power and control through violence and abuse.

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