From about 1997 through 2003, I identified as poly. Ah, labels. I suppose I was sort of a bi-poly-sub. I kind of prefer to be label-less. Anyhow, it was all fairly awesome being poly for the most part. I did find that I was really more of a serial monogamist within poly, where I had one main interest at a time, at least sexually. I did play quite a bit non-sexually with more than one partner at a time though, and was happily friends with my partner’s partners. I met my best friend in the world, to this day, because we shared a partner.

Around 2001, it started going off the rails for me – I found that I had zero contentment. Sometimes if you view the world as everyone being “fair game” (or at least most of them) it’s worse than being single. At any rate, I was unhappy, antsy, just discontent.

When I met Elliott, we talked about the options quite a bit. We went to a couple of swinger parties, we went to a few events in my former sex-pos circle. We decided though that we were happier being monogamous, at least for now. Well, that “for now” has now been 8 years. Every once in awhile we revisit the idea, only to find that we still would rather carve out more time for each other in our busy lives, than to put that energy elsewhere. This always remains open to discussion in the future, of course, by either of us.

So I made the flip comment on the way to the airport for Momentum that it’d be “more interesting” if I was still poly. We laughed about it a bit, and I sort of thought I meant it. I was surprised, however, to find that it was just the opposite. I LOVED being monogamous at the con. With no desire to “cruise”, and no expectation to have anything happen, I actually found myself enjoying both the people I met and the conference itself far more than such things in the past. This isn’t to say that I didn’t find people attractive, I did. A couple of people in particular. But I find that I really enjoy getting to be around people I like and find attractive, with no expectation or need for a physical connection to actually occur. I can focus more on them, on the conversations, and so on when part of my brain isn’t wandering off to “what if?” land.

Is that weird? If it is, I’m ok with that.

I also found it interesting to read blog posts from other attendees after the con. Who felt insecure, who had tons of action, etc. Here’s a note: I believe pretty much everyone feels some insecurity. I know I did, just with introducing myself to people and trying to mingle. The rules are a bit different in this community than in the one I call home. I found myself accidentally touching people in conversation, say on the arm or whatever, without permission. A big no, but one I’ve become accustomed to not being a big deal in my current life. I apologized for it when I caught myself doing it, but it was still interesting to me that something so commonly accepted in my current social circle was something to keep checking myself on. I liked the other huggy/touchy people (here’s looking at you, Reid and Jamye) because that is my comfort zone.

I also realized that I have the same hard time reading people that I’ve always had in this community. I’m shy, yet my actual personality when I’m even remotely comfortable with people is effusive and chatty. I felt sometimes that people were looking at me like I had two heads when I’d act like myself. In short, I have a hard time feeling like I fit in most of the time. But that’s ok, it’s nice to be outside of my comfort zone occasionally for two reasons. The first is growth and experiences, the second is appreciating more what I have created for myself in my current life.

and look at me blogging, a whole two days in a row. :)

~Jane

If your spouse wants you to swing with your neighbors, you ARE headed for divorce.

The thing is (well, the first of many things) I don’t think most spouses bring up swinging with their actual neighbors. In fact, in my (albeit limited) experience, most people new to swinging want to keep that activity fairly separate from the rest of their lives, and might go to a neighboring city for their swing activities. Sure, some people want to do it in the same city, especially if it’s a big one, but again not usually with their friends, business acquaintances, or the neighbor they see while taking out the trash in the morning.

I’m not at all offended by the post, though, because while there are tons of happy swingers, there are also tons of marriages that are at the beginning of the end when this comes up. If you read the post, she goes on to talk about one spouse wanting to swing and the other NOT wanting to. Well duh! If you have to coerce, sweet talk, bribe, etc. your partner into something that drastic in life/lovestyle change, if it isn’t a desire for BOTH people, then yes I fully agree, it’s the beginning of the end. And if the “spice” is being introduced when the marriage is kinda sucky already, or lacking in intimacy, or respecting each others boundaries, then yes, ginormous red flag.

I don’t think it’s a knock on swingers, or consensual non-monogamy. I do think it’s a good warning that pushing your partner into a lifestyle they don’t want is often the beginning of the end. Yes, it was a short column that didn’t explore the issue in a lot of depth, but her other 9 red flags were similarly short. Pretty much all of them could be summed up by a lack of true partnership or trust. I think if I’m going to be offended about people knocking non-monogamy I’ll put that where it should lie, with the true haters.

Anyhow, in response, here are my top rules for SUCCESSFUL non-monogamy:

1. Don’t switch from monogamy to non-monogamy during a weak point in the relationship. If your communication, intimacy or sex life is already lacking, that’s not a good time to start.

2. Both partners should be, at the very least, curious if not outright enthusiastic about the possibilities. If one or the other is being dragged along for the ride, well…. bad.

3. The biggest issue ever, in my humblest of opinions, is to figure out where on your priority scale non-monogamy will lie. Is it a “we’ll go swing if we have a free weekend here and there”, or is it a “I want to be fully involved in multiple day-to-day life relationships that encompass far more than sex.”? That is kind of a big issue.

4. If you’re really new to non-monogamy, either as a couple or with one individual within the couple, have the conversation about how you’ll handle things if it IS tried and doesn’t seem to be working out. It’s a take on #3, but more along the lines of “when do things become deal breakers.” That one is also good for negotiation with potential playmates. If you are just getting involved in non-monogamy and are unsure of how things will go, you’ll be better at communicating with a potential interest what your boundaries as a couple are.

I don’t have 10 rules to counter with, but those four are a good start.

I was reading Swinging Advice’s recent column, what to do when one partner wants to “close” the relationship. At the end of the day, there wasn’t much advice there except the biggie: talk about it together and figure out how big a deal it is to you. And understand that where someone is one year isn’t going to be where they always are. I then read a column on ebbs and flows of poly, and what priority to give it.

I like that there is so much more conversation going on now, more than just the tired old “how to avoid jealousy” conversation. I’m still not a sexually (or emotionally) jealous person. I adore sharing Elliott with friends, I encourage him to have his own time, own interests, etc. The first article mentioned above was sort of unclear, because the advice seeker didn’t actually say whether his wife wanted to close the relationship entirely, or just stop participating in it herself. That is a huge difference. Elliott would be totally open to swinging (in fact, he’d prefer it) and I have no problem with that. My problem is that I’m not all that interested in joining in on the fun, and last I heard it’s still pretty damn difficult to show up as a single guy and get in on the action. In this instance, it’s not that I care about an absolutely “closed” relationship, it’s rather that I’m not inclined to participate myself. On the other hand, I still lean towards poly in that I’d love to have bdsm playdates again, that weren’t necessarily sexual. I would check that in the polyamory category, just ’cause doing intimate things whether tab A is inserted into slot B or not, seem to count to me.

I think the biggest hindrance to figuring out how Elliott can have his swinging, and I can have my bondage playdates, has to do with the second column I referenced above. Where do you prioritize it in your life? In our case, every time we start to seriously even have the conversation, there are a zillion other things we put first. Whether it’s going out sailboat racing on a weekend instead of attending a bondage class by Max, or making time for elderly parents or friends who are moving, there is always something we put before that. Right now I’m ok with those priorities, so long as we still make time for each other. I do think though that when our schedules and life circumstances change, we’ll have the conversation again, and maybe again after than in a few more years.

You rarely see writing on the subject of going from poly back to monogamy, only the opposite. I’d like to see the conversation open up even more, to accept that a person, or a couple, can be happy moving fluidly from one to the other, so long as their ultimate priorities are in sync.

Been reading blogs and this and that. Read MM’s Stranger column, about the familiar and never-resolved hotbutton topic of jealousy. As interesting as the column, were the comments afterward. I think the topic is so difficult to discuss because everyone brings their own stuff to the discussion. I bristle whenever I hear suggested that jealousy is an inherently negative emotion, but if I look at why that is, I think it’s because I felt unfairly painted as “the jealous one” when my poly relationship came to a close. At any rate, everyone wants to be thought of as enlightened and rational, so it gets personal really quickly.

For me, now in a monogamous relationship, I will say that small flares of “jealousy” have happened a couple of times, but I think in a positive way. With experience, I was able to stop, assess, and move forward in a reasonable way.

Case in point: over the years of my marriage to Elliott, more than one girlfriend from the past has resurfaced wanting to reconnect. Sometimes it was natural, just bumping into each other again. There were a couple though, who engineered meeting him alone, or just tried to find ways to ignore the fact that he was married. I then made a reasonable request: if this person is just after friendship, invite them over, or out for drinks, or whatever with BOTH of us. Then if the phone rings, I at least know the person on the other end. We know each others’ friends, it’s kind of part of sharing a life. Funny how the couple of people who raised red flags with me magically vaporized once Elliott suggested that they should meet me too. To me, that is the positive aspect of jealousy: to be able to recognize when something isn’t quite right. In this case, it wasn’t his motivation I was calling out, rather it was theirs. Elliott is a sweetheart who thinks everyone means well. I know enough so-called monogamous people to whom a wedding ring is an aphrodisiac to believe everyone is sweetness and light. I don’t think it 99% of the time, but I pay attention the 1% of the time that I do. Is that jealousy? I think so, because I think it’s the trusting your instincts part of it. If we try to talk ourselves completely out of jealousy, and ignore our gut when something isn’t right, that is taking it too far the other way. Kind of like the book “The Gift of Fear“, which points out the same issue, but regarding fear instead of jealousy.

Then there is the other end of the spectrum, people who ARE with super-controlling and jealous partners. Elliott’s most recent ex before me was that way. She leaves in her wake a train-wreck of negativity. We still see her in our social circle, wreaking havoc with whichever person is unlucky enough to fall into things. Usually it’s someone who does romanticize jealousy, and at the start, finds it “passionate”. Yikes.

What I would say of this column is that perhaps a different letter would have better served the answer. To me, this was more a question of doubt as to whether or not this was the right lifestyle choice. It wasn’t someone already in an open relationship asking for help on how to deal with things. It wasn’t someone contemplating it because that would be their first choice of relationships. It was someone trying to figure out how to make her heart conform to her partner’s wishes when it’s not what she would choose for herself.

I don’t have any good advice for that. While I have ultimately decided that poly is not the right lifestyle choice for me, I see as invaluable the lessons I learned during those years. They’ve served me well, not just in my current relationship, but even in friendships. I grew up a lot, and I honed my own beliefs and values in the crucible that was poly, and for that I am grateful. I can’t even say I’d do it differently, if given the chance for a do-over. I just don’t think I’d do it again. I went back and re-read what I wrote about poly/monogamy choices 2 1/2 years ago, and I have to say I feel essentially the same.

Oh, another interesting side note: I noticed that sex educator Sarah Sloane is actually teaching a class on monogamy within the sex-positive community. Interesting to see that, and honestly glad that it’s starting to be talked about as a sex-positive choice.

~Jane

I am looking forward to him finishing the evening class he’s been taking for the past two months. 3 nights a week, 3 hours a night. See, after that it gets to be MY turn to do something new. I’m trying to decide what. I was going to take a course in letterpress printing in Seattle, but it’s already started so now I need to wait for the next course. I might do some more metalsmithing classes. I took a week-long intensive metalsmithing course several years ago, and have wanted to continue things. OR I could take art classes again. I did watercolor a couple of years ago, but I’d love to do just basic figure drawing. My art obsession has mostly manifested in buying other people’s art for the past few years, but I’d like to start actually creating my own again.

It’s weird getting to this stage in life, where the girls are mostly independent and I actually have guilt-free time for myself again. Not quite sure what to do with it yet. :)

Anyhow, I’m out of here for the day – lunch with a friend, then time at my shop.

~janie

I found that I couldn’t do poly. I’ve written about that before, but not extensively because so many people I respect and admire are in those relationships and I didn’t want to be seen as knocking a lifestyle. Yet at the same time every time I read platitudes about how much work it is to be poly, and how great the rewards if you do the work, I bristle. I suppose it’s because it somehow feels implied then that monogamous relationships don’t take as much work, or are for somehow less valid rewards, and I don’t think that’s true at all.

I believe it can take as much or more work to listen and work through problems with someone long term, when it’s just the two of you. There is no escaping to an outside relationship when things get tough, which is certainly what I experienced in poly. Actually, it’s not even when things get tough. It’s the little bumps that you ignore instead of working through, because it’s easy to push aside seemingly small things on your way out the door to another. We became roommates because instead of dealing with issues in our relationship, we’d be amicable with each other, then schedule time with others that we actually wanted to be with. We used marriage like many monogamous couples do, as a safety net or security blanket, there in the backs of our minds but never attended to. The work is done, we’re married! Time to attend to the rest of life.

In some ways I did more emotional work when I was poly, although probably poorly. I felt like most of my time was spent trying to juggle schedules, and sometimes to talking with the then-husband about his other relationships or potential partners and issues they were working through. I was never very able to talk much with him about my other relationships, primarily because I could never get over the feeling that I was betraying him by being deeply in love with someone who was not him. It was that experience, and having to end that outside relationship not because I didn’t still want him, but because I wanted him too much, that made me realize I didn’t ever want to be in a poly thing again. I seem to be incapable of the compartmentalizing required. When I was with my outside relationship, I was happy, but I had an inability to be present then in my marriage, and I realized that.

I don’t think my then-husband had the same experience at all, but his primary outside relationship was much more entwined in our day to day lives than mine was, or at least in the obvious ways you can see: hours-long phone conversations every day, visits usually once or twice weekly. He managed to live with both of us, while physically living with only me. It certainly helped that I liked his other partner very much, since she was a presence in my life, if only on the periphery like that.

At any rate, one of the things I do agree with when it comes to poly lines is that no one person can be everything to another person. But I’m not asking that of Elliott, nor he of me. I have many needs met by various friends of both genders. I just don’t need to be sexually and romantically entangled with them all. I read an interesting theory in one of the marriage book essays, on adultery. The writer (a woman) theorized that the motivation for affairs had more to do with whatever inner creativity and needs we are stifling in ourselves, than they do with sexual/romantic needs. i.e. a woman who longs to be a painter hooking up with an artist, instead of working on fulfilling her own deeper needs.

I can see that, I suppose. I know that I’m often stifling inner creation when I come home, relax and have a glass of wine. It’s to shut off the constant stream in my head that wants to create, but is afraid of the process, or of starting one more thing I can’t finish. Or something. It bears deeper introspection, but I’m not ready to do it yet. :) And I know that sex endorphins can be a much better drug than wine. heh.

But getting back to monogamy: to sustain it and nurture it and even make it grow, I would argue that it takes all the work of poly. It’s just a different benefit at the end of the day. Or at the end of a life, if hopefully we make it that far. Almost certainly I won’t have as much sex throughout a lifetime as I would if I was constantly falling in love with new people. Definitely, I won’t get as much of the heady “new relationship energy”, but in my experience marriages do get some of that over the years, with the ebb and flow of things. You end up falling in love anew every so many years, with comfort and friendship in between.

There was a woman who wrote me a long time ago, when I was writing passionate entries about my then-partner. She said she enjoyed reading my accounts, they reminded her of her own days when she’d done the same. She’d chosen a more contented path, and she didn’t regret it, just liked the nostalgia. I remember thinking at the time (as I did of many people) oh HOW could they do it? How to get through life if potential love and conquest wasn’t lurking around every corner? But I get it now, I feel like that woman. I tried the rollercoaster, but I’m way more happy with sailing along in the deep waters of monogamy.

One of the other things I’ve learned over the years, of course, is that this is how I feel now. I reserve the right to have new experiences that change my outlook in other ways. I know enough to know all that I don’t know, in other words. :)

~Jane