***************************** Stef's Poly Post Archive, Part 7 ***************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Is it OK to do polyamory without telling your partner much about your activities?] I like having a partnership and several less-emotionally-intense relationships. I call this "primary/secondary polyamory." However, there is some interaction between my secondary partners and my primary partner, and vice versa (I interact with my primary's secondaries). For us, having secondary relationships that we kept secret from one another would not work. I think it works in some cases, and I think it's common for people just entering the world of polyamory to want to do it that way because it's more familiar to them. But in many cases it can be dangerous. It sounds as if you are saying that if you got heavily involved with someone else, your wife would object. True? Have you talked with your wife about the kind of relationship you want? Is she OK with it? Does she want to be told about your other partners or does she want to know nothing about it? Does she want other partners herself? Under what circumstances? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- My subconscious mind knows better what I want in a relationship than my conscious, rational mind does. The last time I asked it to tell me what would be an ideal partner for me, it answered "a panther." Well, finding people who are panthers is interesting. People have a lot of ways of being panthers, and they can't be quantified. I had to keep my eyes and ears open to find them. And keeping myself open kept me from being cynical. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [How do people keep their secondaries from becoming too important to them?] I do it by limiting the amount of time I spend with any particular one... by maintaining a broad social network so that I am not relying too much on any one person. If I start to rely a lot on a particular person, then I sometimes "imprint" on zir in a primary way. I am best at it when I have a primary partner. When I already have one, I have less need to get obsessed with other people. If I don't have a primary partner, and the sweetie doesn't either but isn't ready for a primary relationship with me -- well, in that case, I try to keep busy, date and maintain relationships with other people as well. And I burn candles and repeat 50 times in front of the mirror each morning "I will not get overinvolved with this person..." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Recognizing polyamorous marriages] A popular argument against granting certain rights to additional groups is that it costs too much money. So I'd like to see all monetary benefits of association go away. But the people who are gaining from those benefits won't accept their going away. So the next best thing is to fight to get the government to recognize that contracts among any people and any number of people are valid and should override the marriage contracts written into the law. If more than two people want to make a contract that associates them as family, they should be able to do that. If same sex people want to, they should be able to. And the contract should at least grant those people the right that their association is acknowledged in cases where acknowledgement is important -- right to visit family members in hospital, right to adopt children, etc. Once that is done, smart companies who want to hire good workers will realize that they must uphold those contracts by offering benefits to their workers' families regardless of the makeup of those families. My partner and I are half seriously looking for a lawyer who'd be willing on a pro bono basis to write up this proposal for inclusion on the California ballot. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Recognizing polyamorous families] The company I used to work for gave everybody an equal amount of "benefit dollars" to spend as they wished, and gave everybody the opportunity to save extra money tax free in a benefits account. The problem is not with the distribution of benefits money, it's with the rigidity of what is called a family. One opposite-sex person to whom you must be legally married, children under 18, end of story. (The company mentioned also allowed same-sex domestic partnerships but would not give the family insurance rate to those partnerships.) All the government has to do is agree to uphold contracts among individuals, just in the way it upholds contracts among business entities. How is that too much regulation? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Time management in poly relationships] We schedule time with others at least two weeks to a month in advance. Our first line of defense is to try to set up regular get-togethers with the people we're closest to. We each have a sweetie whom we see every other Thursday, for example. Other strategies: You schedule time with your other loves. Also schedule time with yourself. Don't fit your alone time into the cracks. It's not less important. There is nothing wrong with saying "I need an evening alone." If you don't get it and you're frazzled all the time, you aren't really there for your other loves anyway. Set up regular dates with your loves. Don't start from ground zero every time you try to schedule something. Prioritize. Yeah, it's great to take three classes and have four political action committees to go to and have five lovers to juggle and a full time job. But do you really need to do all that to feel like a worthwhile person? Can you cut back on any of it? I think of all my interests as similar to a deck of cards. Instead of trying to juggle all 52 of them at once, I periodically deal myself a new hand. OK, for these six months I am going to pursue learning HTML and writing a set of animal myths. Then for the next six months I am going to pursue learning anatomy and massage. Etc. I am not doing everything at once, but the interests that aren't active come around again when the time is right. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Recognizing poly families] If I want to be in a relationship with you, and we sit down and write a contract that says "We will each pay such a percentage toward shared expenses, defined as such-and-so, and all our other money will be separate, and we will submit to arbitration if we have custody disputes" and then we add a third person and they sign the same thing -- where is the loophole? Where is the possibility for abuse? But currently the government does not uphold such contracts, at least not consistently. I think they should. That's all I'm saying. I've seen such a contract written for a family of four adults and several children who own a house. It doesn't seem daunting, claustrophobic, and frustrating. And it doesn't offer many options for abuse, that I can see. Incorporating requires a lot of paperwork but it's a good idea if you don't mind that because your personal money is protected (only the business's assets can be sued, not your personal assets). You also get more options for tax free savings than you do through an employer or as an individual. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Recognizing poly families] I think that the legal link between children and biological family should be loosened if there is a specific contract stating that the parents' wishes are otherwise. It's unclear to me what abuses there could be in what I propose. I propose that family be defined by written contracts created by the people involved, not by the government's decree that a family is two opposite sex married parents and their children, end of story. Now, if the government chooses to make monetary benefits available to their version of family, then fine (well, it's not fine, but I'm not going to fight that battle), but I think that other versions created by contract should be granted rights such as deciding how to distribute their property and how to raise their children and how to make medical decisions. Making the assumption that adults can inform themselves on the consequences of writing up such a contract -- how could that be abused? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- How Is Polyamory Different From Swinging? Most people who embrace the label 'polyamory' support the idea that one can have multiple sexual and/or romantic relationships openly (without keeping the existence of any of those relationships secret from the people with whom one is involved). I'm not sure about this one because I have not met many people who consider themselves swingers, but as far as I can tell, most people who embrace the label 'swinging' support the idea that marriage or primary partnership does not need to be sexually monogamous and that having sex in groups of three or more is a fun social activity. Many swingers participate in swinging as couples. Using these definitions, swinging is a kind of polyamory (multiple open sexual relationships). But many people think that swinging and polyamory are very different. So what's the difference? Well, as far as I can tell, there is a difference of emphasis rather than anything else. Love/Sex People who do polyamory tend to focus more on the romantic love aspects of their relationships than on the sex aspects. Swingers tend to focus more on the sex aspects than the romantic love aspects. Of course, many polyamorists have sex with their partners, and some percentage of swingers have romantic love feelings and/or relationships with people they swing with. So the reality itself may not be so different. Sometimes polyamorists will downplay the sex aspects of their relationships and sometimes swingers will downplay the love aspects. But are these so different? One of my lovers expresses affection best through sexual intercourse. Many people have been brought up with the understanding that very little physical affection is permitted outside of a sexual relationship; thus they inextricably connect affection and sex. If a relationship consists primarily of sex, does that mean it is therefore devoid of love? Or is it rather one form of love relationship? We already know that romantic love relationships usually include some desire for physical closeness and often it is difficult to draw a line between what's sex and what's non-sexual physical affection. Long-Term Broad Scope / Short-Term Limited Scope Relationships Many people who do polyamory believe want to develop several long-term relationships that touch many parts of their lives. This does not always work out, and it's not a universal preference, but it's often held up as an ideal. Some swingers seem to prefer situations that are limited in time or scope, perhaps because limited relationships are less likely to bring up the problem of love. (Some polyamorists have arrangements like this as well.) But there are undoubtedly a lot of situations where swingers do develop long-term or broad-scope relationships with people they met through swinging. So again, there is a difference in focus but probably not so much in practice, especially if one can get one's mind around the idea of sex as an expression of affection. How Are Polyamory and Swinging the Same? Both polyamory and swinging challenge standard societal beliefs, but in different ways. Polyamory challenges the belief that people can love openly only one person at a time, but it does not challenge the belief that sex and love should be connected. Swinging challenges the idea that sex is private between two people, but it does not challenge the belief that commitment to one person of the opposite sex is the best form of relationship. Both polyamory and swinging are subcultures with their own sets of rules. The people who consider themselves part of those subcultures, like people everywhere, have different relationships to the rules -- some embrace them, some disdain them, some are in between. Some of the rules of polyamory: communication among partners is valued very highly; acceptance of non-heterosexual orientations and sexual interests is valued; casual or time-limited relationships are not valued (note, I am not saying that all polyamorists believe or practice these rules, but there is a general tendency for people who identify as polyamorists to espouse these beliefs). Some of the rules of swinging: playing as couples is encouraged; male heterosexuality is encouraged; there is a focus on physical attractiveness. (Again, not all swingers believe or practice these.) And of course, both polyamory and swinging are misunderstood by the public at large, those who believe that bringing sex or love outside of a long-term coupled relationship is exploitative and abusive. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Recognizing poly families] I think courts should get out of the business of placing children. The idea I'm advocating could help that to happen (for example, one could place in the contract an agreement to submit to arbitration rather than taking a break-up to court). If there were a severe disagreement about custody and the issue did go to court, I'm sure the court would rule usually for the bio parents (or would take the kids away altogether from those filthy polyamorists). But having something else specified in a contract might help loosen that a bit, and keeping the courts out of the picture as much as possible would be a good thing, I think. I'm not suggesting that everyone who forms a family *has* to sign a contract. I'm suggesting that those who don't want the default if the courts get involved should be *allowed* to sign contracts. There will always have to be a default for the sake of efficiency (as there are defaults if someone dies without leaving a will, for example). People will still be able to form families any way they choose, even without a contract, but only if they don't bring lawsuits on each other. Plenty of companies offer benefits beyond what's required by law, because they want to attract good people. (For example, many companies in the Silicon Valley offer domestic partner benefits.) I can see companies figuring that someone in a family of N>2 adults would be a benefit to them, because the person working for them may not have to spend so much time attending to child care. So they might offer a benefit for such families -- entirely based on economics, not on law. "Benefits" don't necessarily mean health care; it could be something as simple as allowing all family members to come free to company picnics instead of saying only two members can attend. If companies offer such benefits, people may abuse them, but if too many people abuse them, the companies won't offer them any more. So this can be taken care of by itself, without the government getting involved. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Polyamory vs. swinging] I disagree that there would be a lot less resistance to polyamory if there were no sex. A little less, possibly. But the idea of loving N>1 romantically, even without sex, is threatening to many people. I've seen relationships blow up because someone fell in love with another person outside the marriage, even if there was no sexual contact and little physical contact. Just the idea that there were two loves was impossible to accept. Furthermore, there are a lot of ways to draw the line between what's "sex" and what's not. If I lie in someone's arms but never take their clothes off or touch officially designated erogenous zones, is that sex? Possibly not. But I'm sure that if I had a monogamous primary partner and I behaved that way with another person, there would be a good chance my partner would feel threatened. When I was in monogamous relationships, I certainly would not have tolerated any such behavior. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Polyamory vs. swinging] Polyfolks usually include sex in their relationships, so mentioning *only* romantic love is missing part of the point for many of us. (It actually leaves me out entirely, because I don't use the words "romantic love" to describe my non-primary relationships; I use the word "friendship." But I am clearly in the poly community and not in the swinger community, based on where I post and who I know and how I define myself.) That's why my definition of polyamory uses "sexual and/or romantic" rather than simply "romantic." Polyamory: a self-applied label of a subset of people who openly practice, or accept the practice of, multiple relationships including sexual and/or romantic components. Polyamorist: someone who labels zirself as belonging to the polyamory community (see above). Swinging: a self-applied label of a subset of people who openly (?) practice mutiple sexual relationships and/or sexual friendships. Swinger: someone who labels zirself as belonging to the swinging community (see above). If we want to combine them, perhaps we could use "Polyswingers" to describe swingers who engage in romantic relationships (using the roots it should be "amorswingers" or "swingeramorists," I suppose, but those look ugly to me, and I won't have no ugly terms in *my* terminology :-) or "Polysexuals" to describe polyamorists who focus on the sexual aspects (I don't like "polysensuous" because that implies to me poly folks who like to cuddle but not have sex -- which is another subset.) I don't really see the point of coming up with combination forms as long as we understand that the difference is in self identification more than behavior. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Finding polyamorous folks] I have a friend who describes zirself as a "redneck in exile in suburbia." When some people in my poly group wondered how they could ever meet poly folks, since they live in a small rural town, my friend suggested that they should look up the local swinger club. When they protested that they did not think there was a local swinger club in town, zie clucked and said "of course there is." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------