WTF is a Polyamorous Orientation?

Like many nerds who grew up in the 80s, I adored Star Wars.  Space battles, lasers, light sword-wielding mystics, villians with crazy lightning hands.  Whole blocks of dialog and reams of esoterica filled my brain.

So imagine my horror when I sat in a theater in Guam in the summer of 1999, watching George Lucas gutting my childhood.  He had already scarred me with the revised version of the trilogy a few years earlier.

I could deal with Greedo shooting first.  I didn't even mind all the background junk that only served to clutter the screen.  I could even barely stomach the creepy racist caricatures.  But midi-fucking-clorians?  He had reduced an energy that bound the universe together and locked light and dark into an eternal struggle down to being a blood-born parasite.  

The lesson here is that searching for a biological component can result in losing the magic and annoying people with needless technobabble.  This silly lesson might apply, though, to the ongoing quest in polyamory for legitimacy through inescapable biology.

But what's the harm in thinking it's biological?  If we make this argument, then can't we finally move toward getting some legal recognition, if not full protections?

Maybe.  But then, if the argument isn't sound, then the whole community looks like a pack of immature nerd swingers using wishful thinking to unsuccessfully justify their actions, like a bunch of furries getting naked in a convention hotel room.

Let's engage in a little thought exercise.  We're poly, as I'm sure you'd know if you read the previous posts or somehow knew how much time we spend on Reddit's /r/polyamory forum.  What I'll bet you didn't know is that we were born this way.  At least, that's the starting assumption of this exercise.

My wife and I were born poly.  Likely from poly parents who themselves had poly parents.  Maybe it's a recessive gene.  Really really recessive.

So that orientation that we both experience takes the form of us both seeking out or at least being open to multiple loves.  But that's where we start to differ as well.

Girl is interested in good looking guys who want to talk about history and pop culture.  And being good lovers doesn't hurt.  There's no limit.  That whole poly infinity symbol with a heart.

Boy is different.  He wants guy third for a polyfidelitous triad.  Sure he's poly, but poly is just more than one right?  That's in the word itself.  He conjectures that mankind evolved in small socioromantic groups for the purpose of resource collection and collectively raising offspring.  He's just building that small close-knit group.

Girl isn't really onboard with Boy's plan.  Her view of her polyamory orientation is about being open to love, not closing yourself off from it.  She points out that boy's social model has no historical support.  She, on the other hand, knows that monogamy in the animal kingdom is rare.  Human monogamy is something people try to force, but that most people will be tempted throughout their lives and putting a yoke and that and saying we can only consort within this little household group is just as contrived as monogamy.

But if polyamory is an orientation, it necessarily must be oriented to something and go beyond simply being the relationship model you want to build.

So what is polyamory as an orientation?  Most would say it's ethical non-monogamy wherein people build serious, loving relationships with multiple people.  That's why it's not swinging or a garden variety open relationship or old fashioned cheating.  It's different exactly because it's ethical and about really loving the partners.  Strip those things away and it just falls back to being swinging or cheating.  So if it's an orientation, it's one defined by ethics and love.  Both of those have to be in the mix for it to be polyamory.

One of the more problematic analogies for poly is that people can love multiple people, just like loving all of one's children or both their parents.  Ignoring the fact that familial love is not the same as romantic love, it also strips loving multiple people away as the defining trait of poly because everyone is now poly.  A distinct orientation can't be something that everyone does.  Therefore, loving multiple people can't be a defining characteristic of being oriented poly.

That leaves us with the ethics angle as the only unique element to poly.  We can put aside the fact that orientations based solely on ethics are not really a thing, but we have to examine the number of people who come to polyamory through infidelity and people in the community who talk about never being able to be faithful in relationships prior to finding poly.  That means that they can't be ethically oriented.  They were driven by being with other people, not by being honest about it.

Once you start to define it, the orientation model goes out the window.  So we're left with the "But I've always felt poly," argument.

"Most of my relationships had something missing." That's true for most.  In our lives, the vast majority of people will have more relationships that don't work out than relationships that last the rest of their lives.

I just feel it.  How is that not religious thinking?  It reduces polyamory as orientation to faith with less supporting evidence.  The Catholics at least have their saints and their relics.  I believe in something that is not in any way proven because of a conviction I hold.  I cannot see God but I know he loves me.  I know I'm poly because I want to be with multiple people.  My friend does it, but he's a player.  We're different because of something I cannot quantify or qualify.  It simply is so in my heart.

None of this is to say that polyamorous people don't exist.  It's just that, like The Force, it's best not to make up a biological component to give it depth it doesn't need.  Poly as an orientation is a tautological sinkhole.  Also, fuck you, George Lucas.  Han definitely shot first!

Stop Romanticizing NRE

As all three readers of this blog know, we here at SoT take a pretty cautious view of what polyamorists refer to as “New Relationship Energy” (NRE), otherwise known as “limerance” in the psychology world and “infatuation” to the rest of us.  We’re certainly written about it enough, and it was clear that in our situation, it was something we were hoping to avoid.

Whoops.  

I’m seeing someone, and yes, fairly extreme limerance on my part is involved.  And it’s just the worst.  I don’t feel in control of my thoughts, I’m constantly distracted, and the extreme highs and lows are exhausting. Even if logically, I understand that I am having irrational thoughts, that doesn’t stop me from experiencing the emotions that said cognitions lead to me to.  Here’s a brief guide to where my head’s been out in the last three weeks:

-Not receiving an email within the space of a day or sometimes even hours?  He’s obviously lost all interest in me.

-Sends me a nice email?  Walkin’ on air for hours.

-I am probably the worst wife ever, I should probably cry about the guilt a lot

-Then I should spend hours asking my husband to analyze what’s going on and tell me that my limerance object is totally into me/not into me at all

-We should probably go to Berlin together as soon as possible even though I have no idea if we share the same travel interests and have had only one overnight to date

-Thinking it’s a good idea to force a “where are we at” conversation way too early into it and freak out and say we shouldn’t see each other anymore before giving him time to respond appropriately

-Time to over-analyze everything he says for signs that he’s totes into me/totes not into me

-Making like 5 mixtapes for him that I will certainly never send

-This is the best/worst thing I have experienced in a while.  Whether it’s the best or the worst thing can change within the space of 5 minutes, for no particular reason.

To make myself feel better, I started doing some research on this state and what I found was not very encouraging.

Psychologists define limerance is defined as “an involuntary state of mind which results from a romantic attraction to another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one’s feelings reciprocated.”  Experts believe it is biochemical in nature, functioning similarly to the way obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction in the brain.  When you read through the symptoms of being in a limerant state, it’s clear to see how irrational, and, well, silly it is.  But remember that involuntary part?  Yeah.  You can’t control your thoughts.

There is a semantics issue here as well.  Polyamorist author Franklin Veaux claims limerance and NRE are actually different things - NRE being just positive, of course, and limerance being a little more of a grey area.  Even some limerance experts make a distinction between being limerant and “true romantic love”.  Frankly, I’m not sure I’m buying it.  Taking the same chemical reaction and splitting hairs to validate a positive outcome of limerance doesn’t help us rationally evaluate the state for what it is.

In a situation where you’re genuinely compatible with the object of your limerance and your feelings are reciprocated, it runs concurrently with the beginning of the falling-in-love process.  Eventually romantic love develops, and that grows stronger as the limerance fades over the months.  Then, in theory, you wind up in a healthy relationship.  That’s certainly been the case for my own marriage.

But even that happy ending doesn’t negate the fact that limerance is irrational and blinds you to reality.  I’m lucky that I experienced limerance for someone who was so perfect for me, but I’ve also experienced it for people who most certainly were not, which lead to getting into relationships that were very unhealthy.  Had I not been blinded initially by limerance, I would’ve been able to perceive that person wasn’t a good partner for me much earlier than I did.

Of course, that sounds like I’m shirking responsibility for bad decision-making, but I’m not.  I’m older and wiser now, and most importantly, aware of what limerance is and how it functions.  And I know I can control my actions, even if in a limerant state I feel almost completely unable to control my obsessive thoughts.  I can logically tell myself that you cannot fall in love in a matter of weeks, or even a few months, because you cannot know someone well enough to truly love them in such a short amount of time..  I can remind myself of what real romantic love feels like and understand that just because my body is telling me one thing my head knows better.  

What worries me is the celebration of this state in polyamorous culture, however.  For starters, limerance is inherently selfish.  It is not unconditional love or genuine regard for another person, although it’s easy to lie to yourself and say that it is.  The state is best evoked by the poets of the band “Cheap Trick” in their classic song “I You To Want Me.”  Note how many times the words “I” and “me” are used in that song.  

Limerance desires reciprocation above all else.  It’s ego-driven, and the opposite of selfless love.  This excellent blog post explains specifically the selfishness of an infatuated person. And yet polyamorist writers say things like “NRE is transcendent,” and “New relationship energy should always be celebrated,” and then avoid addressing the topic in too much detail.  Everyone’s favorite poly book of the moment, “More Than Two” is over 700 pages long, yet spends exactly two pages discussing NRE, and is largely very positive about it, just adding a few cautionary notes to not neglect your existing relationships while experiencing it.  That seems insufficient, given the degree to which NRE both creates and sometimes destroys relationships.

I’m not trying to say that limerance is bad, though.  It just is, and for most people, there’s no avoiding it unless you avoid other human beings.  What is bad is taking this involuntary, obsessive, crazy-making state and confusing it with love, or even with the beginning of love.  Just because limerance is something most people experience as they’re falling in love does not mean that limerance itself is the process of falling in love.  Limerance is chemicals in your brain trying to get you to make babies with another person, basically (no surprise so many safer-sex slip-ups also happen when in the throes of NRE).

It’s often referred to as a drug-like state, and I think we can take that metaphor further.  People can experience great, wonderful feelings while on drugs, and have insights that seem well, transcendent at the time.  (Oh hello, ecstasy!)  But those feelings and realizations are inorganic, they are literally being created by altered brain chemistry.  However, if an insight can actually be taken from that experience and applied fully to your life when you’re sober, that’s great.  But that didn’t come from the drug, that came from you.  When you’re on the drug, you’re not able to distinguish what is real that you’re feeling and what isn’t.  Or you can even have realizations that may be true but simply cannot be applied to your life while sober.  (Which reminds me of the time I decided there was no reason I should ever have to feel physical pain, because it’s simply an electric current being transmitted by nerves that our brains then interpret as an unpleasant sensation.  But with enough brain control you could interpret that signal as neutral.  Great idea!  Except it’s impossible, whoops.)  My point being that you can be limerant and actually falling in love with someone, but because your brain is “high” it’s impossible to tell in the moment whether you are or not.  You just have to wait until you’re “sober” to figure it out because being in limerance is literally an altered state.

The only way to experience this state without neglecting your life, work, hobbies, friends, and most importantly, your existing relationships is to be extremely aware of the irrationality of it - and then do your best to behave as if you are not experiencing it as much as you can (which will probably mean you’re only talking about your limerance object way too much, as opposed to the way way way way WAY too much you would be if you weren’t being self-conscious about it.)

So I’m against romanticizing NRE or at this point, even calling it NRE.  Referring to it as energy that comes from a relationship elevates the crazy to the same level as a love relationship, which it clearly is not.  It’s fine to enjoy it or rather, not enjoy it if you’re a control freak like me, but don’t call it something it’s not.

More Than Two Equals Less Than Null

One of the - if not the most popular and frequently-referenced polyamorous how-to sites on the web is MoreThanTwo, which is largely written by Franklin Veaux, aka Tacit.  Even though Veaux has been a staple in the online poly world for more than a decade, he's only gained in popularity in 2013, due to a well-publicized Kickstarter campaign for his recent book, also called More Than Two, which he is co-writing with Eve Rickert, one of his girlfriends.

Every time I see someone recommending Veaux's advice to a formerly monogamous couple who are in the beginning stages of opening up their relationship, my blood pressure increases.  I'm going to be totally honest here: I think Veaux, while obviously very intelligent, gives advice that is downright destructive to established couples.  He is nearly single-handedly responsible for creating a huge amount of the New Poly Dogma that says that polyamory/open relationships must be conducted a certain way to be correct.

For starters, there can be no hierarchies.  Ever.  An established couple new to polyamory cannot put rules or guidelines or even boundaries on their behavior, because that is inherently unfair to anyone that they might date.  It doesn't matter if the people they are dating is OK with those boundaries -  if it's not what he calls an "egalitarian relationship structure" - i.e. the person you've been seeing for a week is equal with regards to decision making as your wife of 10 years - then it's not OK.

In New Poly Dogma, it's OK to have boundaries, but not rules.  The difference between "boundaries" and "rules" is just a silly semantic game, but it's one that fans of the no-rules approach use to sound reasonable, even when they're not.

Many of the basic articles on MoreThanTwo sound more accepting of more varied types of polyamory and rules than Veaux's acutal opinions.  Recently he said:

"People in their 30s and above who are coming into polyamory because they've seen it on TV or heard about it from talk radio, but whose experience is only with monogamy, are "second wave" poly. They're largely all about hierarchy and rules; a lot of these folks I see come to poly from a place of deep fear and suspicion; they like the idea of having multiple partners, but only if it's not uncomfortable or threatening."

Of course, this is pretty offensive but very representative of Veaux's mindset.  Couples who establish boundaries - or god forbid, rules! - are operating from a place of deep fear and suspicion.  It's not because they are working through at their own pace their own fears and jealousies, or are simply not down with the current poly zeitgiest about "impermanence" - aka, why bother working at a commitment you made?  Relationships end all the time and that's fine!

It is true that relationships DO end all the time, and that's mostly fine if partners are unhappy. But there are those of us who have spent years, or decades, building a relationship that is deeply meaningful to us with someone that we really want to be with.  And we want to preserve that if it's healthy and reasonable to do so.  And we recognize that some aspects of opening up - like NRE - can create situations that, without lots of communication and boundaries in place - can fuck up an otherwise great situation.  If someone told you that you should drive on the wrong side of the road because driving rules are for the fearful and insecure, you might point out that doing so endangers your life, your car and the lives of others.  But fear not, lives end all the time and cars break down.  Embrace the entropy.

Realistically, that's a ludicrous stance to take.  Risking things you value because it's more fun to run without rules is not the way sane adults go through life.  It's a view so ludicrous it could only be embraced in poly, a sphere that has become a dumping ground for rotten ideas about interpersonal relationships and the crackpots who espouse them.

Nobody wants that.  Except maybe Franklin Veaux.

The Elephant In The Poly Room

We here at Sex or Television generally don't advocate for or against any particular relationship style or dynamic.  I'm of the view that, on the whole, the human condition when it comes to sex and relationships is inherently contradictory.  Most people are prone to sexual and romantic jealously, and there's a lot of reasons to believe that this trait is at least partially a biological one.  And yet, lifelong sexual monogamy is unrealistic or unfufilling for most people as well.  Relationship structures attempt to deal with this seemingly irreconcilable issue in different ways, much like economic structures such as capitalism or communism attempt to deal with the need for competition and wealth growth versus morality and concern for others.

What that boring paragraph is attempting to say is that even though we pick on polyamory here quite a bit, we're not necessarily against polyamory.  It's a relationship structure that addresses some human needs quite well.  The problem is, it also tends to downplay or outright ignore other common aspects of psychology.  And there's one big one that I haven't seen addressed in a poly forum for years.

The reality is, most poly people become poly while already in an existing relationship, often one that is highly valued by at least one of the people in that relationship.  There aren't a whole lot of single people who decide they're poly and start dating in accordance with their newfound identity.  (If this was true, poly drama would be reduced by approximately 8567%.)

The problem is, there is inherently less motivation to work on existing issues in an existing - dare we say, primary - relationship when there's another newer, easier relationship on the sidelines.  When you mix in the fact that partner A is most assuredly crying on partner C's shoulder about the problems they have with partner B - A & B's relationship is kinda fucked.

I'm sure you've heard it before from people who ended up breaking up with their long-time partner or spouse after trying poly.  "Poly didn't cause the problems, but they forced the issues we had into the forefront..."  I'm not sure I buy this rationalization.  All long-term relationships have "issues", long-standing resentments, points of contention, etc.  And I certainly believe that attempting polyamory while in an LTR can bring those issues to the surface, but let's look at the reasons why:

NRE.  Regular readers of this blog know we're not fans of NRE, at least, no in terms of how it affects existing relationships.  It takes a really mature, grounded person with a good sense of boundaries and oodles of self-control to not neglect or endanger an existing relationship when experiencing NRE with a new person. If you're experiencing NRE with a new partner, it's not exactly surprising that what seemed like a normal, acceptable level of ongoing relationship issues, communication frustrations, annoyances, and whatnot with your existing partner will suddenly seem far more dire in comparison to the shiny, new, "easy" relationship you have, due to the googly-eyed googles that NRE provides.  The reality is, eventually NRE wears off and you're left with a normal relationship with normal problems, but in the meantime, did you manage to tank your previous relationship?  And are you going to ruin another for greener pastures?

The second issue is what I call the "lifeboat" phenomenon.  It's far easier to exit an existing relationship when you already have another relationship lined up.  We've all probably known a serial monogamist who would cheat to end a relationship they wanted out of, but would never break up without someone else lined up.  This is really unhealthy, but given the structure of polyamory, it's nearly unavoidable.  It's true that an unhealthy or toxic relationship should end, but in theory, a person should be able to come to that conclusion without having the waiting, comforting arms of another to run into.  If a relationship is bad, it should be ended because it's worse than being alone, not because it's less appealing than the next relationship over.

The dilemma, as I see it, is there's no good "solution" to this problem of how polyamory doesn't give a good incentive for someone to work on a difficult existing relationship.  You can't escape NRE in polyamory - the whole point is to fall in love with multiple people, and NRE is the main mechanism by which most people fall in love.  There's no good way to avoid lifeboating either - to tell a secondary that you have to stop seeing them while you work on fixing your existing relationship is considered an extension of "couple privilege" in today's poly landscape.  And it IS unfair to ask a secondary to be put on hold before you can maybe continue your relationship.

There's also the fact that humans bond over shared crises.  If you're a poly guy and your crisis happens to be your increasingly difficult marriage, and your primary emotional support is the girlfriend you're in love with, you will both bond over that shared experience, which will further alienate you from your spouse, as you're creating a "her versus us" dynamic between the three of you.  Years ago, I did see some polyamorous people attempt to head off this issue by having a rule about not discussing relationship problems with other partners, but this seems unrealistic.  If you're in love with and emotionally intimate with someone, how can you not share your feelings, fears, and hopes about every aspect of your life with them?  It's one of those "great on paper, bad in reality" attempts to fix this basic problem.

The fact is, I could do a million posts on the problems and issues inherent in socially-sanctioned monogamy, but let's face it, typical poly bloggers are doing that all the time.  I'm more interested in having the tough conversations about the pitfalls and problems inherent to alternative relationship structures, instead of pretending that they're a panacea to the normal way of doing things.  What do you think?

An Indecent Proposition, or Poly Book Report Number 1

You know that one book about polyamory?  No, not Opening Up.  That's more about general non-monogamy.  The Ethical Slut?  Same deal.  No this one is a work of fiction, except when it spends page after page turning into Ayn Rand-style lectures about the nature of mankind of of human relationships.  No, not Stranger in a Strange Land, though it is an old book.

No, I mean Proposition 31, by Robert Rimmer, the guy who made a fortune off his book, The Harrad Experiment.  Don't know that one either?  The latter's known today as little more than a “Seinfeld” punchline, but in the late 1960s and throughout the 70s, Robert Rimmer's many books were the go-to tomes on free love, polyamory, and sexual experimentation.  For that, he's worth a read by anyone who likes to delve into the often under-appreciated history of sex-positivity and non-monogamy.

While an interesting book from an historical perspective, Proposition 31 is slightly less interesting as a piece of fiction.  It's clear that Rimmer didn't intend it to be a work of fiction, so much as a vision of how the future would look.  He repeatedly has characters wonder aloud how different the world will look in 50 years.  Given that it was published 46 years ago, it's unlikely that his vision of wealthy white people incorporating in order to live in group marriages and realize tax benefits will become a reality by the half century mark.

The plot of the book is far from complicated.  Two well-educated families move next door to each other in sunny Southern California in the late 1960s.  In short order, one of the husbands gets the other's wife pregnant in the course of an affair.  Then through a series of contrived scenarios, they all end up in a in a group household raising their children collectively and saving on taxes.

Yes, tax breaks are one of the selling points to “corporate marriage”.  It's also explained that corporations are constantly merging, harnessing efficiency gains and achieving synergies, but divorces and parental deaths are shrinking families all the time, so why not have us all get naked prepare an SEC filing in the dark?  Yes, families can embrace mergers and acquisitions, grow, and become massive group sex corporations.  Robert Rimmer did indeed have an MBA from Harvard, which is clear by the way this book reads like the exact way Mitt Romney proposed to Ann.

The story is fairly simple for the first 210 out of 280 pages, but Rimmer uses a few bizarre narrative elements that make it tough going well before he drives the plot off a cliff.

The whole thing is presented as an historical narrative written by the colleague/affair partner of one of the protagonists, a sociology professor at a fictional SoCal university.  This means that it changes perspective a few times, with different people telling the same story, without overlap, like some sort of free love World War Z.  One has to keep stopping to remember if this is Nancy's story, or Horace, or Horace's affair partner Sylvia telling the story.  While it would have been nice to have overlap in the narratives of each person as a way to see the same events through different perspectives, that only happens once, and the story is so ludicrous that ones struggles to believe the “true” telling of the story.  Unreliable narrator nothing, this is an unreliable author.

For more than two thirds of the book, it's wall-to-wall sex and speechifying about the flaws in modern marriage.  In several scenes we're forced to put up with someone giving a sociology lecture replete with  substantial block quotes.  In that sense, the book really feels like a cast off from Ayn Rand.  There's a message here, and we have to get through it.  The preceding fluff was all just the author giving us a literary handjob to work up enthusiasm.

Where the book detours to crazytown is at page 211, when it's suddenly announced that they were all hauled off to jail by a stodgy authority figures who couldn't just let them love.  Yet again, The Man is sticking it to wealthy white people; thanks Obama!

The characters fight back in the only way really rich white people can do in California: they rioted in the streets.  Just kidding.  They employ the resources of other, even richer white people to put an initiative on the ballot to allow plural marriage.  This book is the fictional history of how that major legal change occurred.  For fun, look up Prop 13, a real proposition from the same era.

That's it.  Rich white people make poly a legal reality because they have money and influence and want to save money on taxes.  It's not exactly Inherit the Wind.  But is it so bad?  In a nutshell, no.  While I wouldn't recommend the book to a casual reader, it's a fascinating little artifact from the white moneyed portion of the 1960s counter-culture movement.  While we tend to think of that era being about young people burning draft notices and bras, there was life beyond youth culture.

Though not recommending it for the masses, I can't help but push it into the hands of all the poly people I encounter.  This is their history, even if it's a fake history.  The early days of poly are poorly documented and with the recent passing of Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, the origins of the movement are rapidly fading.  And while most young poly folks might not care, they should.  If it's something they believe in, then it's worth knowing where it all came from.  Their predecessors were bandying these ideas around years before their parents first had that twinkle in their eye and Schlitz in their hand.

Again, it's not a particularly good book by any measure.  But it's cheap, silly, and mostly harmless.  At 280 pages, one can make it through the book in the quieter moments of a weekend.  Instead of one more read through a Harry Potter book, this is a not terrible alternative.  It's at least worth it as a means to achieve escape velocity from much of the individual-focused world of modern Internet polyamory.

Is Slate's Take on Bisexuality a Useless Fiction? Yes.

Slate has been on a bit of a bisexuality kick, riding on the coat tails of a ridiculous New York Times piece.  One of the Slate pieces featured a writer acknowledging his bisexuality, vice the gay identity he's been using since he prefers to date men, but isn't physically repulsed by women.  

The real gem is Slate's insultingly titled, "Is Bisexuality A Useful Fiction?".  The question asked by the title is conveniently answered in the article's URL:  www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/03/21/the_bisexual_movement_makes_bisexuality_seem_like_a_useful_fiction.html.  

With that auspicious start, the writer, Mark Joseph Stern, goes on to explain that the bisexuality as an identity has problems, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that there is no bisexual culture as bisexuality is only defined by sexual interaction, unlike the gay community, that has Nathan Lane and Bravo TV.  

Stern ends the piece by flipping the script and informing us that, while sans culture and lacking identity beyond sex, it's the fault of the bisexual movement for failing to come up with a platform.  So if the "bisexual movement" had a platform, such as Free Silver and ending grain tariffs, it could win his approval and maybe get a first round draft pick for sassy spokesperson.  

The entire tone and message of the piece can be summed up with this sentence from the last graf: "If bi activists continue to define bisexuality as nothing more than a more imaginative set of erotic and romantic urges, they'll further forestall the development of a mature bi culture - giving us no more than the completely sex-oriented definition we started out with."  Biphobic, slut-shaming, and ignorant.  

Only two weeks before, Stern wrote a column criticizing an article in a Christian magazine for denying gay identity and reducing to being a matter of the sexual act.  Yes, it's ugly to reduce homosexuality to sodomy.  It's just as shitty to reduce bisexuality to weekend sodomy.

The writer is blessed to be of an age where the gay rights movement was already formed and active by the time he became aware of it.  There was a time, not so long ago, when it was politically powerless and with few achievements to call upon.  He needs to spend the time reading the histories of the movements and the people involved so that maybe he can one day see it as more than a crass marketing exercise.  The effort was put in before he got there and made its way without his help.  In the mean time, he really needs to shut the fuck up about bisexuality.

Dirty in Deutschland

So, dear readers, after three years of de facto monogamy, I can now proudly say I am an international slut of mystery.  “Sexy German” now gets a notch on my metaphorical bedpost.  (Reminder: look into bed frames that will actually work with bondage gear.)

It all started because during sex month and after, The Boy and I started communicating a lot more frequently and with a lot more honesty about our kinks and desires. It turns out that he’s been nursing a fairly strong “hotwife” fetish for a long time now.  (Not to be confused with cuckhold, which involves an element of humiliation)  This gave me the prompting I needed to re-activate my OKCupid profile and begin the hunt for at least some casual sex, although I am hoping to eventually find a friend-with-benefits because I really hate online dating.  

Within a week or two, “Fritz” messaged me.  Because the picture I use on OKC is older and not particularly representative of how I look now for privacy reasons, I suggested immediately that we exchange recent pics to make sure there was mutual attraction.  There’s absolutely no point wasting time messaging back and forth if the guy isn’t attracted to my fat ass, right?  I discovered this with one of the first guys who messaged me, a Swiss who I had long conversations with non-monogamy about, but once I sent my pictures to him, heard nothing in return.  Ouch.  But he looked like Julian Assange and I’m not that into albinos anyway.

Fritz responded that he thought I was beautiful and sexy, and the pictures he sent in return were very promising.  So we arranged first time, public meetup, with no sex on the table.  That’s my standard procedure from the past and it’s always served me well.  Unfortunately the only night he was free, I was also a bit overbooked - I had an early date with a couple of friends for drinks, and then a later meetup with a different group of friends planned as well.  That ended up working out good - the drinks with friends loosened me up and helped with the crazy pit of anxiety before meeting him, and having plans later gave me a graceful “exit”.

Good news: he looked just like he did in the pictures.  5’11, solid build, square jaw and piercing blue eyes.  He was bald, but has one of those heads that looks great without hair.  He’s 36, a bit of a sex fiend, currently single, somewhat familiar with open relationships.  He was a little concerned that I had a military man waiting at home with a shotgun, but I was able to reassure him that The Boy was just as eager as I was to have me get some.  His English was great, and he had an affable, easy-going manner and comes across as quite intelligent.  We talked at length about fantasies and boundaries, but also had fun small talk about the U.S. and Germany, cultural differences, and all of that.

He has a very busy schedule, but we were able to schedule a date at my place for the next week.  I was fine with that until a few hours beforehand, when I started to get incredibly nervous again and was deeply regretting the whole thing.  (I always go through this before any encounter!)  But bourbon helped.  When he arrived, I confessed my anxiety and he said he was nervous too, but within 20 minutes of chatting, he asked me if I could turn around so he could get a better look at my ass.  Somehow I always attract the ass men!  

I don’t want to kiss and tell, but let’s just say that he absolutely loves my body type and made me feel incredibly hot.  A lot of fun, sweaty sex happened for several hours. I was pretty impressed by his ability to just … keep...going.  He’s definitely a high libido kind of guy.  My nerves melted away thanks to his clearly stated desire for me, and I had a great time.  It was even better when The Boy came home after Fritz had left and the sex fiesta continued.

Fritz messaged me very soon after leaving telling me what a great time he had.  My only regret is he didn’t talk dirty to me in Deutsch.  We have plans to meet again later in the month, but this time The Boy is going to be involved too.  Not only do I attract ass men, but bi-curious ass men.  What is it about me?  Whatever, I’m not complaining!  I have yet to have an MMF threesome where I have chemistry and attraction to both the guys, so I’d written them off.  Thanks to Fritz, the idea is much more appealing.

In the end, it’s been a huge confidence boost for me, and while I’m not sure if Fritz will fill the role as the serious FWB I’m hoping to find due to his really busy schedule, I definitely think he’ll be a good match for me and us when the stars and our schedules all align.

Next goal: pick someone up in person.  It’s been ages since I’ve done that, but I’ve got a couple of wingladies and we’re gonna make this happen!

Poly, Weakly: (Not so weakly), or How Poly Slouched Toward Maturity

Have we reached a turning point in non-monogamy?  Has the weight of responsibility tipped the scales against the one-true-wayists who refuse to accept any limitations on their behavior?  

Cunning Minx, who has often inveighed against rules, instead favoring boundaries, and against hegemony of the couple in a relationship when others are involved, has come out against policing others' relationships.  Praise PolyJesus!

That is not a small thing.  Minx has, for better or worse, been an outsized influence on the poly community, lacking as it does for spokespeople.  When she jumped on the "no rules" bandwagon, that take went from being unconventional to being the baseline faster than you can say "divorce court".  When she ranted about couple privilege, that became "a thing", or at least a source of way too much Tumblr whining.  When Minx mashed social justice language into the poly world, it opened up a whole new arena at the oppression olympics and suddenly white, straight, cis Mid-Westerners were streaming to the Web to complain that they had it worse than anyone, anywhere, ever.

 But somewhere along the line, a shift occurred and Minx has decided that we shouldn't judge other peoples' relationship.  Well, I say shift, but truly it was a blog post wherein someone took down Minx's form of poly wherein you ever only date one person.  I wish it was one of ours, but that's doubtful.  No matter the source, she was hurt, and the judgement is off.  And that's a very good thing.  Maybe it represents a long overdue maturing moment in the community.

If Minx missteps anywhere in the episode, beyond going into a little bit too much detail about the kinks that disgust her and shouldn't be judged, it's that she repeatedly uses "poly" as an umbrella term for all flavors of non-monogamy.  She does it so much that is comes across as a fundamental misunderstanding as opposed to simply misspeaking.

"Life on the Swingset" is another podcast about non-monogamy that frequently looks at poly, even if the examination is often no deeper than Shira B. Katz talking about how well she does poly and the shininess of the emotional wreckage she leaves behind her.

This week, "Life on the Swingset", looked at the routes that non-monogamous relationships can take and how to get them started.  As an episode bonus, Shira B. Katz isn't on it to divert attention for long stretches to talk about herself.  Seriously.  Unfortunately, the podcast gets bogged down for way too long on a ridiculously granular debate about whether introducing non-monogamy to a relationship is like turning a cruise ship, climbing a mountain, or fucking an angry gorilla.  

At the halfway point, the Swingsetters managed to right the listing mountain gorilla ship that is the episode and start discussing the difficulties associated with various forms of non-monogamy.  Overall, the episode had some good discussion.

What these two podcasts had in common, besides coming out nearly back-to-back, is that they represent the sort of more mature, serious discussion about poly and non-monogamy is has been lacking for way too long.  It doesn't mean the emotional-bomb-throwing relationship anarchists and secondary-supremacists have been silenced, but it at least shows that the adults are still talking.

Crossing the Shithead Rubicon

I write here not to praise the poly community, but to bury it.

So this mess recently appeared on Reddit's /r/polyamory: Am I delusional to think that anti poly backlash is especially ironic and bigoted?

I grew up in a poly family, and am happily ensconced in a my own poly LTR, stable and happy for years.

I get the normal "oh you must be taking advantage of your poor girlfriends"* thing, but am I wrong to find this especially offensive and ignorant when it comes from a LGBT person? I Mean, Really? It seems like of anyone, I would expect them to understand or at least not be so vocally opposed - but honestly, I get the harshest feedback from these folks...Is it just me?

*(I joined a happy bi fem couple that was looking for a man to play with / be a father, so that couldn't be farther from the truth - if anything, I am the third wheel!)

So it starts out fucked up and quickly devolves, leaving the original post as a high-water mark of poly tolerance an awareness.  And for those who followed the link, yes, the OP really calls himself "I_love_latinas".

One person in the thread is reminded of reading Maus and there being a Holocaust survivor character who was racist.  Someone else suggested that it was a bad idea to compare anything to the Holocaust that was not in fact a genocide.  That person was repeatedly down-voted, because suggesting that polys aren't exactly like the Jews in the Holocaust is as bad as, I don't know, maybe the Holocaust.

The polys then veer off to complain that it's not like Jews and Nazis, but rather like "the black community", and no I'm not making that up, and how they're all hella homophobic, including, I guess, the gay ones.  The polys go on to say that it's even worse when black people are homophobic, as they all are, given that white people have gotten so good at tolerating their blackness.  Hear that, people of color?  You're disappointing white polys.  Get on that.

One guy makes up a conversation he supposedly had wherein he told a gay man that he was thinking of trying out polyamory and the man responded with, I shit you not, this is him quoting the guy, "I don't think I approve of your lifestyle".  Yep, that definitely happened.  That sounds exactly like what a human would say to a person suggesting he might be interested in polyamory.  Wait, no!  It doesn't even sound like something that an alien impersonating a human using only lines of Java code as a guide to human dialog would say.  I mean seriously, who the fuck talks like that?  No one.  Ever.  That's who.

What really gets awful, is that the most fucked up, racist, homophobic posts got up-voted while those very few people dissenting were down-voted dozens of times in single comments.  So the message is loud and clear.  See what happens you social justice types?  If you don't let the polys into the parade, you're probably taking your orders from the homos, the Jews, or teh blacks.  The whole thread rapidly started to feel like it had cribbed the script of an episode of "Fox & Friends", but with 50% more bigotry.

And this is not just an example of Reddit being the gaping asshole of the Internet.  It's the steady state of online poly meeting spaces.  It's a fucking constant.  It's a feature, not a bug, and it's only gotten worse.

Poly is largely white, middle class, and thoroughly clueless about privilege and race.  Want to see how they really feel about the gay community, drop into a poly sphere and bring up marriage equality.  Better yet, do that at in the same post as you suggest that co-opting the language of queerness  while suggesting that a relationship model can't be a sexual identity is maybe not cool.  The indignant sputters will be heard all the way from Minneapolis.  But I was born poly!  It is so a "coming out".  People are killed for being poly all over!

If you really want a fiesta of whining, try suggesting that there's something to the fact that non-monogamy has been super common in the gay community long before poly was a thing, yet the number of gay people identifying as poly is shockingly small.

So many are quick to point out that they can't be homophobic.  After all, the wife is totally bi and hooks up with a bi woman some times.  Also, they know a lesbian who has been to their Saturday munch.  Hell, several of them even have a gay friend or something.  Just kidding.  They don't have friends.  Potential friends tend to scatter when a pack of gamers wearing Three Wolf Moon shirt and kvetching about the gays walks into the room.

No, we're not poly.  The reason we're not now, or ever going to identify as poly comes down to the community and their fucked up baggage.  We date other people, but to call ourselves poly is to stand in solidarity with some really shitty human beings behaving badly.

No, not all poly people are like that, but a quick look at that thread is a clear demonstration that the the bad is a huge majority.  It's also not going to get better any time soon.  Look around and see what serious discussion is going on in the poly community.  Nothing.  Zip.  Nada.  Pepomint used to write some really insightful pieces on it, but now we're just left with people posting about snuggling with their paramours and talking about the great things about poly.  They get mad that the queer community keeps them at arms' length but don't care to understand why beyond throwing out homophobic statements with little prompting.  That is, fundamentally, a function of privilege and a function of poly.

If it gets better, we'll let you know.

It's not getting better.

NRE Isn't Why We Fall In Love, But It Might Be Why We Break Up

For years, my biggest issue with polyamory, or more specifically, poly advice, was that the incredibly destructive, relationship-ending chemical rodeo known as “New Relationship Energy” (also known as “infatuation” if you’re level-headed, “limerence” if you’re a psychologist, or “love” if you’re an idiot) was downplayed consistently.  Many poly problems seemed to stem from bad choices or inconsiderate behavior made by one partner in NRE, while the other partner has to deal with the insecurity and jealousy of seeing their SO acting like a crazy person and showing little interest in them.  Feeling like you’re losing your partner to another is the primal fear that prevents many people from exploring poly and haunts many who do.  When you have a partner in full-on NRE, many of those fears seem to be coming true - because, maybe, they are!

For years, most people have viewed NRE, or whatever you want to call it, as crazy chemical drug that induces people to begin relationships for the sake of makin’ babies.  However, an article on The Quartz brings up the idea that maybe the point of NRE isn’t so much to get into new relationships, but rather to get out of an existing one.

It sounds crazy, but it also makes sense.  You don’t need NRE to start a relationship - it helps, but many solid relationships exist without NRE having ever been in play.  And certainly many relationships end without NRE for another factoring in.  But when one person leaves someone for another?  NRE is always in the mix.

The age old question in sexuality and relationship research was whether humans are fundamentally monogamous or not.  There are extremists on both sides arguing their case furiously, but reality seems to be more complicated.  A lot of evidence is starting to point towards the fact that when the status of the sexes are relatively equal, serial monogamy will be the norm.  This article argues that may be the way nature intended it to be.

I’m wary of the naturalistic fallacy no matter who it’s coming from - Conservatives on one side, Christopher Ryan of “Sex at Dawn” on the other.  From a common sense perspective though, ending an otherwise happy, stable relationship does seem strange, until you consider the idea that NRE might exist to encourage us to do just that.  

If there’s some truth to this hypothesis, it might help explain why poly relationships do seem, on the whole, more unstable than monogamous ones.  I know this will get the poly readers I don’t have huffy, but as much as we all love to hate him (and we do kinda hate him on this blog), Dan Savage famously remarked that he’s been to plenty of poly commitment ceremonies, but not a whole lot of poly three-year anniversary parties.  He has a point, and the point isn’t that polyamory is bad or invalid, but it is an inherently destabilizing relationship model.  Shira B. Katz, formerly of Pedestrian Polyamory (which ended when her marriage ended due to...NRE) and currently of Life On The Swingset and an enthusiastic and proud poly person has advocated that line many times as a positive, as does Franklin Veaux.  Two people who are famous poly experts who don’t put a lot of value in established relationships.  It’s not hard to find monogamous or “ish” people who have been together for 10 years.  It is quite difficult to find poly people who have maintained more than one relationship for 10 years.  (And when you do, it’s often a closed triad or V, which for some reason seems to be a more stable structure than others.)

These musings only matter if relationship stability is your primary goal when navigating an open relationship.  It isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine.  Many polyamorous folk look down on those of us who value that stability as engaging in “couple supremacy” and I say, hey, we are all free to choose what’s most important to us in life.  My current relationship is the most important thing to me outside of my basic personhood.  I know I could survive and thrive without my husband, but I just don’t want to, not if it could be helped.  We know, being in an open relationship, that NRE is possible.  Hell, I found myself in crazy, one-sided NRE with a friend that I simply had a crush on.  Despite my deep commitment to my husband, and the fact that I did not find this guy a good match in any other sense, I found myself indulging in fantasies of running away with my crush object.  It’s crazy, it defies reason, or even what I really want in my life, but that’s NRE for you.  It’s not logical.  And like all NRE, it passed, I’m really, honestly glad that he never made a pass at me, and I kept my feelings hidden from him.   It would have been incredibly destructive to the thing I hold most dear, and for what?  Indulging in a temporary chemical high with someone that I’m fundamentally incompatible with in a way that could have very likely harmed the relationship I care the most about?

I’m not saying that being poly is inherently bad, but I am saying it’s inherently destabilizing.   If maintaining an existing relationship is a primary goal of yours, opening yourself up to the possibility with NRE is risky, no matter what poly advice gurus will tell you.  It’s up to you to negotiate responsibly the line between risk and reward.  Tread carefully.