Polyamory Observations #3

One of the hardest things to do in talking about "poly" is to get through all the variations in terms of language and perception. We have found, as we've done this, that there are relatively few people who define themselves as "poly" AND mean stable, committed, long-term, multi-partnered loving relatedness. Many people use the term to mean creating intimate (read sexual) relationships with lots of partners, and everybody's fine as long as everybody knows about everybody else. Often those situations are shorter term and multi-directional. I don't have a problem with that, but it isn't what we mean when we talk about poly. We tend to find that our sort of live in, longview, lifestyle arrangement tends to make other poly folk nervous. We're not naive and we're not prudish. We understand that poly implies sexual relatedness TOO (or at least potentially) -- it is just that we tend to insist that there must be more to intimacy than how many people can be added to the "team" roster in that arena. We keep harping on the need to create "connections" as a prerequisite to making sure all that "friction" is really sustainable; and then watching people's eyes glaze over. Talk about feeling "old!"

There is an adage among poly folk. It has become almost cliche' to tell one another that "more love makes more love," and there is some validity to that. It is the clever phrase that we use to refer to the potential for multiple and additional relational dynamics to add to the love within poly interactions rather than "diminishing" in some way. We use it to assure (or perhaps reassure) one another and ourselves that there is no need to be fearful of new loves in the lives of our partners; that those new relationships will add richness and joy and potential to our own relatedness, and will not result in threats to our own love and happiness. That is all true as far as it goes.
What we've discovered is that, unfortunately, more love does not make more time. More love does not make more energy. More love does not make more space. There is only so much time, energy, space. Relating is time consuming. It requires work. Building a stable, committed, enduring relationship that will withstand the vagaries that life can pitch at us, does not happen overnight, or even over the course of a few breathless "dates."

We tend to not think too much about how we do the dance of accommodation for our demanding schedules -- all the various kinds of juggling and holding up of one another that allows us to keep it all together. And we don't keep "score." We simply give as we need to, trusting that over the very long haul that is our life, it will all come out in the wash. But, then, we've been together long enough to have survived the early going. We aren't caught in the heat of the early days of romantic infatuation when being together demands a very great deal of attention to keep it alive and healthy. We know there will be tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. That kind of knowing comes only from miles traveled together.
What that means is that tonight, we'll eat leftovers from the weekend in shifts so that we can shuttle cars to and from the repair shop and get to the nursing home to visit Grandma. It means that T and I buy Christmas, Valentine's day, anniversary, and birthday gifts for each other (and cards) so that "Mr. Romance" is never left in the awkward position of not having the appropriate gift to give one of us. It means that we do each other's laundry. She keeps the social calendar and I pay the bills. We each shop for the household groceries and we pick up everyone's prescriptions at the pharmacy and we all go to each other's medical appointments by times and we cook and clean for each other... mostly I do the weekday meals and she does the weekends, but that shifts depending on scheduling. We haul each other's trash, and we clean and we worry in fluid and shifting patterns. We try to never, ever, ever make life harder for one another, and we gently nudge when we know somebody is feeling tired or strained or tender -- and we interpret for each other (and go to bat for each other) when the need arises.

The truth is that we know each other so well that it is pretty seamless for us to just ebb and flow with whatever comes up. We do it without much effort and without much thought. We understand the economics of it all. We know that while it may not be true that "time is money," it is surely true that it is a currency that we exchange between us, and we work hard (with intent) to keep the balance of trade equitable.
These are hard realities when a brand new and exciting potential relationship comes into the picture and a poly person or a poly family/group (like ours) is confronted with the sometimes touchy business of dealing with what to do about limited energies and limited time. A new love doesn't diminish the love between partners, but it will (inevitably) shift the time/energy/space economy. We've smashed head on into this once or twice, and it can be really tough; especially in the beginning stages. It is tough on a couple different levels.

New folks, who are sincere, do not want to "upset the apple cart." Those who are less than sincere generally claim that they don't want to upset things. AND they can't help but do so anyway. They will change the dynamic. The demands on everyone will be there. It requires open acknowlegement of the benefits as well as the costs in terms of time and energy to incorporate new relational directions in existing flows. The new currents take time to settle in. On the other side of the equation, existing partners have to be able to distinguish between feelings and words that convey the sense of change and reactions that look like jealousy. The two are not the same thing -- although they can look similar.

Brand new, shiny, exciting, hot relationships bring with them an intense kind of energy, often referred to as "New Relationship Energy" or NRE. NRE feels like the most wonderful thing in the whole world, and the tired, old, mundane routines of the tried and true can pale in comparison. It is normal, natural, and entirely human for folks caught up in NRE to want to be where the bright lights and glittery glamour of the new and exciting shines so enticingly from the arms of the newly discovered shores. That's the thing we've dealt with from internally.

Of course, the new partner coming in from the outside is all excited too. They have all sorts of NRE as well, and they want lots of time to get to know their new love -- it is all romance and hot sexy fun... In our experience, the business of keeping demanding schedules, and picking up the car and making it to the doctor appointments, and the late night meetings and the nursing home and on and on and on... are almost never the things that new loves get all hot and squishy about after a couple of iterations. And so things get dicey. Quickly. In the beginning at least, it is usually the new love that gets a lot more of the goody, and the rest of us pick up the slack. That can be sustained for awhile, but sooner or later things have to shift back to something closer to normal. That, we have found is when new ones either prove their mettle or stomp their feet and start making demands. So far, no one has stuck it out through the passage.

Love. Yes.

Time, energy, space. Those too.

swan