I Don't Recommend It

Pay attention, boys and girls. I am going to do my grumpy old lady bit... You have been warned, so if you don't want to listen to it, just click off right now.

There are people who read what we write about our lives, and get the impression, for whatever reason, that we recommend "poly" as a lifestyle. It just isn't the case.

Living in a fulltime, committed, poly relationship is challenging, and while we make it work, and find it tremendously satisfying and fulfilling for the three of us, I don't recommend it to folks -- and I'm not sure Master or T do either.

First, some definitions: I am not a subscriber to the theory that "poly" means that it is OK to fuck everything that moves and takes your fancy as long as you tell your partners about it. I don't care that you scraped together the cash to buy "The Ethical Slut." I don't even care that you actually read it. That isn't it. It also isn't about who is or is not straight, gay, or bi. Likewise, the geometry of the relational descriptors does not particularly interest me ("quad", "tri-", "V", "web", etc.). Neither does the geography of the sleeping arrangements. All of that is the stuff of the mouth breathers, and the "outside-looking-in" monogamous world that still defines relationships like Noah did: two by two by two...

There are all kinds of working poly relationships out there. They aren't all (or sometimes even mostly) about sex. They are about how people live together -- caring for and with each other. That takes many different forms depending on the situation. Working poly relationships can form with people that live in the same home, as we all do. Or in any of a variety of other living configurations. Some do it with children in the home. Others do it with great extended tapestries of relationships that look like aunts and cousins and who knows whatall. What is germane is how adults come to care for each other at tremendously intimate levels.

With the growing awareness of the IDEA of poly, some have come to use the notion to support what I think is more truthfully described as "polyfuckery." That's OK with me. Maybe even a good thing at a certain point in one's life -- run and play and cavort like healthy young animals. No harm and no foul. Don't promise anybody anything and don't expect anything from anyone. Play safe but play. Get that part of life out of the way.

Save the hard, serious, determined, focused, hang on for dear life, I'm going to love you no matter what, relationship building work of coupling or poly or whatever for afterwards. It's not that there's no romance left for the "adult" years. Plenty to go around. Not that there's no spark, no juice, no life left to live. There is that, but there's a settledness that comes with a few years that simply isn't there when you are younger. Sorry. It's the fact. I was there once. Now I have children who are there. Stages.

But there's a time for everything. I'm old enough. I know this. I can still appreciate the sweet young things that come back through my world a few years after they leave the 8th grade. Grown to almost manhood -- all buff and cocky and strutting: a thing of beauty is a joy forever. Delectable to be sure, but I know enough to know they aren't ready to do anything with in terms of serious life work. Toys. Pure and simple. So says an old enough old woman.

So where am I heading with all of this? I don't recommend poly relating in young adulthood. Actually, I don't recommend marriage or any other serious kind of partnering in young adulthood. Make friends. Try lots of things. Lots of people. Stay open. Recognize that there are way more people who talk about wanting poly than actually do it. Understand that the number of successful poly relationships is miniscule compared to the number of failed attempts. Look around at the statistics that point to the astronomical difficulty of making plain old, garden variety "couple-style" relating go, and then calculate the much more intense levels of difficulty associated with multiples. Go slowly. Not just in the poly-cliched sense of going more slowly than the slowest one, but in the sense of going slowly enough to really know your own insides; your own wants and needs. Figure out what it is that you bring to the table in a relationship (any relationship), and then maybe you can be a worthy partner in building a sturdy and healthy partnership with another sturdy and healthy human or two or more.

I am pretty seriously convinced that this fashion that I see developing of chalking up "poly" relationships like notches on a belt -- of poly "counting coup," is some sort of modern alternative lifestyle status thing that is both sad and harmful. We've gone from a good, affirming push to assert that our sexuality and our identities were deserving of a place right out there alongside all the rest of the so-called "normal" folks in the world, to a kind of locker room scoring system that is decidedly not good or affirming of anyone.

And I don't think that, now that it has begun to go "mainstream" that there is nearly enough good, sound, sensible help out there for people trying to figure out how to do it in any sort of practical terms. We walk around spouting crap like, "Go slow," and "Communicate, communicate, communicate," while folks are smashing on the rocks all around us. The reality is that there is only so far that a set of people can go slow. At some point, you have to take the leap, and leaping is never SLOW! It does no good at all to tell people to "communicate" unless we can guide them in the how's and why's and what's of that communication. The ugly truth is that when someone is in LUST, they are unlikely to go slow, and most probably unwilling to communicate very much unless that communication is leading them directly to where they want to go anyway. We need experts who can guide in REAL and practical ways. What's out there is of very little use -- especially in so far as it makes it all sound simple, happy, easy, and carefree. Horsefeathers!

I don't recommend poly to anyone. I am always bemused by people that tell me they are looking for poly partners or poly relationships. Poly is hard. Damned hard. But then, I think relationships are damned hard. I think people are tricky and unreliable and undependable and unpredictable. Staying in relationship is the most demanding thing a person can set themselves to doing. Not for the faint of heart. Not for sissies or wimps. Not for the self-centered, the self-serving, the whiney, the demanding. Not for children or adolescents or probably even youn adults. Grow up. Get over yourself. Then, if you are still nuts enough to think you want to try this kind of stuff, if you think you can find one or two or even more competent, decent, stout-hearted grown ups, have a go at it -- but don't say I didn't warn you.

How's that for grumpy?

swan