Defining

Years ago, when I still actively participated in a large Friends meeting, I found that one of the dilemmas that regularly arose was that of social definition.

Friends tend to resist dogmatic or credal statements of belief, prefering instead to allow "spirit" to guide those who are drawn to that particular path. There is a conviction that there is but a single "truth" and that all sincere seekers will come to the same place in the light of truth through a process of common searching. Grounded in that testimony and conviction, Friends are uncommonly welcoming, open, and inclusive where other religious traditions might not be. Many "unformed" spiritual travelers find a home in the sort of unprogrammed Quaker meeting that I attended for many years. So, too, do a fair number of just plain oddballs...

I've spent hours debating how to deal with holding open a place that is welcoming and hospitable and inclusive while still defining enough of a sense of identity that the group knows and values ITSELF as an actual entity that can be differentiated from the amorphous outside that dwells beyond the boundary.

I had a similar experience with the BDSM club that I was part of in Denver. In order to survive financially, we eventually convinced ourselves that it would be good to make the space available to the local goth crowd. They liked our dungeon space because it was so "dungeon-y" -- for them, the opening up of our place worked fabulously. For us, however, that blending resulted in the eventual obliteration of "us" as a community. There were way more of "them" than there were of "us" and we were simply overrun and overruled. Our inability and unwillingness to define who we were and hold our space, ended up meaning that we ultimately had NO space at all.

That may be some of the lesson learned in this last piece for our family. Define. We know who we are at our roots; at the core. We operate on principles of BDSM, and our household dynamics include both D/s and M/s. We are a heterosexual, fMf poly triad. We have been fidelitous -- that does not necessarily mean "closed" but it does mean that we have to this point considered the impacts of opening our relationship further.

The reality is that there are all sorts of interesting and intriguing people in the world, in the lifestyle. Many of them have ideas that we find helpful, supportive, unusual, or even just fun or amazing. Doesn't mean they fit, necessarily. Awhile back for example, we met a very nice, very educated, very literate and articulate fellow who wanted to be spanked. It was somewhere our family had never gone before, and we thought it might be interesting territory to explore. He was willing and we decided there were no real reasons not to try it. He came, we ate together and the spanking event proceeded apace. It was all fine, but just not anyone's cup of tea. We should have learned...

We, maybe, need to be more willing to define our who and what and how. Having done that, we need to be unafraid to honor that without apology. If we find that there is the possibility of someone new in our mix, and that can happen we know, then we need to test and check to see where that fits.

That is not a lack of hospitality. It is not an unwillingness to be inclusive. It is truth-telling. Better, I suspect to say at the outset that this is what it looks like inside our family, and this is who we are, and how far we are willing to bend and/or stretch, than to not say those things and have the match not be made.

Ours is a unique and valuable family. Right now, I imagine there are plenty of social connections being made that align with our family outside the boundaries. So be it. This sort of "us" and "them" dynamic is common in social identity theory. People want, naturally to align with the groups that make them feel the most accepted, the most powerful, the most "like" everyone else. That is not, usually, us.

I think we have, for the first time since we all came together, seriously considered what it might mean to add to our family. That possibility came upon us suddenly and without the opportunity to think about it in any sort of reasonable framework. We were taken by storm and buffeted by a host of emotions and unexpected pressures. Given a different set of circumstances, perhaps we'd have done this differently. Perhaps. Maybe another time. For now, we are healing, integrating the information we've gained, holding on to one another, defining.

swan