Dear Friend and Reader:
Hello from the Poly Living conference, just outside of Philadelphia. Poly Living is created by a magazine called Loving More, one of two conferences they sponsor each year. Today I managed to get myself up and going to attend a 9 am session on polyamory and families. Parenting is hard work, and until very recently it did indeed take a village to raise a child. Polyamory can offer the potential for having additional help and support and can — if done well — provide a far better environment than many single-parent households, or two-parent households where the parents have no time to be with their children.
Before I get into that, here is a one-paragraph definition of “polyamory.”
Basically, we are talking about any form of relationship other than exclusive pair-bonding, that is consciously and honestly experienced. There is no set definition, but we know what it is not. If you’re married and you have someone “on the side,” that is not polyamory. If you are married and you have someone on the side and you speak openly with your partner about it, that is polyamory. So, poly is not so much as what one does as how one does it; and most of that “doing” involves communication.
In another post I will get into how and why this pushes so many buttons, but I can pretty much sum it up in a few words: honesty is challenging; it seems easier to either suppress your needs, or to lie. So most of being polyamorous, besides the same challenges navigating the complex realm of human emotion that we all must navigate anyway, is about learning how to be honest and holding space for others to be honest. Or, looked at another way, aspiring to maturity and integrity.
As for families. The presentation this morning was given by Carol Morotti-Meeker, a family therapist from the Philadelphia area who is affiliated with the Institute for 21st Century Relationships, National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. The questions she covered, such as bringing new adults into the family, compatible parenting styles for non-biological-parent caregivers, and how to handle changes in the lives of adults that affect the kids, are questions that everyone with children has to face.
10 minutes into my umpteenth polyamory conference since 1997, I noticed again that the people who really need to be here are the ones who consider themselves monogamous, because the presenters here are asking the questions that everyone wrestles with. The US Census Bureau reports that first marriages last an average of eight years. That is an average; many last a lot less. So being married obviously does not protect children from change or instability. We all know this from personal experience.
In a situation where other adults are going to be introduced to the picture, the conversations have to be had well in advance, and focus on consequences and limits: who is going to set the policy and who is going to enforce it. The biological parent or parents (or someone with legal custody) can be the policy setter, and then any other partners can function like aunts or uncles, and follow that policy when the parents are not around.
If there are kids, particularly girls, in the 8 to 12 range into teenage years, the discussion of appropriate touching has to happen and the boundaries need to be understood. (Once again , this applies to monogamous families. Of the hundreds and hundreds of cases of sexual abuse I have worked with as an astrologer, none has involved a polyamorous situation.)
All children need a place to own, and a place they feel they belong. They need to know that what they say matters. And they need routines. These are top-level concerns for poly families.
Children need routines, and anyone participating in parenting needs to be part of, and support, those routines. When routines change, this needs to be done consciously and gradually: partners need to be phased in and phased out, which (once again) many of us did not have the courtesy of in “monogamous” situations where our parents, newly divorced, went through a plethora of lovers and partners without our having appropriate opportunity to get to know them, or to say goodbye when the relationship ungracefully ended.
Poly people constantly come under scrutiny from the neighbors that is not afforded to anyone else; and so they need to understand how to respond. This includes taking preemptive measures such as anyone involved in raising the child or children having established relationships with teachers, school administrators, scout leaders and so on. With those relationships established, people in positions of authority will figure out that whatever apparent differences exist in lifestyles, the people taking care of this kid are indeed doing so, and they are simple folk, just like the rest of us.
From Poly Living 2009, this is
Note to self: Hold off on travel plans till neice and nephew reach 18. Plenty of time to pack.
Note to self: put condoms in backpack.
Mystes – think we got on to topic here through VL’s interpretation of your comments re monogamy sample of which as follows…
‘“choose” monogamy? Okay, then those who love in this manner might want to restore its natural dignity by delisting its punitive enforcement from the civil code.
….De-criminalize marriage, and I will believe it is a choice. Until then, it is –like any other single-choice election– cultural coercion.’
Thanks for the clarification. Here there is common law too, however, and unless it’s changed recently, doesn’t give either partner much of a say in anything. And we’re not considered married if we share an account (which we don’t anyway) or reside at the same address etc.
PT…I’m not sure how we got from reading the Tx Family Law code to an assumption of marriage between live-in partners, but across the board that is NOT the assumption. See aforementioned list of stipulations.
In Texas there *is* common law marriage as well, that has a three-criteria test, but is subject to the same stipulations as licensed marriage.
If you and your partner share a bank account, an address and present yourselves as married for a period of 6 months, you are de jure married here.
Mystes – are you saying that if my partner and I (not married) come out and live (oh the liklihood of it given how hard it is to emigrate to USA!, but this is hypothetical) in Texas, we are considered legally married?
PT writes: ” monogamy is synonomous with legal marriage? eh? not sure that’s true…”
It is here in Texas. I recently re-read the state family law code. The marriage text is fairly innocuous (unless you are gay, bisexual, in love with more than one person) and simply states that mawwage is between one man and one woman, stipulating the number and kinds of persons that one cannot marry – quite a list.
The teeth come out in the divorce code. . .
kristenb – for me, you’ve captured it beautifully.
monogamy is synonomous with legal marriage? eh? not sure that’s true… the institution of marriage (IMO) is bollocks. as dear long lost contributor Jane’s D once put (at least I think it was she), it’s just some anachronistic ‘patriarchal property sorting device’. monogamy, in my view is not the same thing. however, like VL, I appreciate the restrictions that can arise with both scenarios, should folks be making a prison out of the relationship, or a prisoner out of the partner.
the shit that goes on in (so called) monogamy, goes on in any relationship (minus the sex – actually change that, sometimes with) – boss, co-worker, friend, family where strings can apply any day of the week if someone in there is being an arsehole and trying to control out of fear.
I have to agree with everyone, and not just because I do not know my own mind, my own experience, or my own needs. Rather, it is a matter of personal integrity and personal honor and personal choice. There is much to be gained from all kinds of experiences. I think Kelly is saying there is a depth of authenticity in one on one interaction through thick and thin, and I totally agree. And, I think what Eric is trying to say is that there have been so many lies in the conventional “monogamy” that that form is a joke.
And, I would add having been to a few poly events, that there are just as many “kids in a candy shop” in poly fucking up their current partners, or wanting to flog their scared partners off onto other poly people who are angry, resentful and full of jealousy which serves no one either. It’s about communcation, time management, and love, the kind of love that embraces freedom, not Feb 14th pink and red.
To me personally, time is a major factor, and energy level, and most poly people at some point, if they are in truly intimate relationships come to realization that beyond two or maybe three lovers, if commited to life happenings in addition to work and family and friends and activities just doesn’t work. Someone always ends up empty handed, hurt in a critical moment. So, it comes back to personal responsibility. Once one finds out the “game”, one chooses to play or not.
Fact is, everyone is POLY, everyone loves multiple people and has multiple pulls on their time and energy and chi and psychic space. The addition in the open in Polyamory movement is being honest about actually engaging in sexual relations with more than one partner.
I would ask people, are you even honest with your friends about how you feel about things in your life, their life? Suspicion is healthy, keeps us questioning, and we should so the shadow can be exposed. The biggest shadow is saying one thing, and doing another, otherwise known as HYPOCRISY. We all do some of this as we stretch and grow, question is, are we stuck there? Are we hearing the same lament? Or are we continuing to try new things?
I’d rather see and hear about us all being single and having liasons as we desire than some tax benefit/social statuses rule our lives. If a liason lasts 79 years, hooray. If one last 8 hours of mind melting, body transforming love, hooray. Sigh.
Mystes~ Monogamy is synonymous with legal marriage? I wasn’t looking at it that way. If you’re talking about legal marriage, I agree (and I have first-hand knowledge).
VictoriaLynn… “choose” monogamy? Okay, then those who love in this manner might want to restore its natural dignity by delisting its punitive enforcement from the civil code.
Have it serve as a contract, with remedies that are commensurate with other agreements where one party or the other decides to withdraw before the ‘natural term’ (in monogamous marriage as it is currently defined, that’ll be death). Where else do you find such penalities running to 85% of one’s assets?
One to three year custody battles do not dignify monogamous love. Divorce proceedings that can financially destroy the breadwinning partner do not dignify it.
De-criminalize marriage, and I will believe it is a choice. Until then, it is –like any other single-choice election– cultural coercion.
I am sure my response to this post reflects my own current struggles, but I wonder about the question of honesty and whether we need to linger a bit on what that means. While nothing would please and relieve me more than to have an absolute sense of it, I think in its fullness it is complicated. The question of monogamy is painfully relevant for me now, and the message that I must choose one or another pole: having someone “on the side” or “honesty,” reduces a situation that is both absolutely precious and unbelievably scary to a set of labels. Can there be some discussion of an honesty that incorporates the karmic debt of deeply hurting another person by forcing them into the same relationship to honesty that I am trying valiantly to have with and for myself? Is that a separate debt from the one I will bear for not putting all the cards on the table?
Some people really, honestly choose “monogamy,” even if it is what is commonly called “serial monogamy,” and that is what is healthy and right for them at the moment. I don’t understand why moving from one monogamous relationship to another is any “less” or worse than polyamory (which is the feeling I’ve gotten through some of the readings).
I do not know a lot about your personal experience, Eric, but from the few articles of your that I’ve read, you seem to have had a lot of pain surrounding your parents “monogamous” marriage and subsequent relationships. I would have to agree that if you base monogamy on what you experienced, then you would have to say that monogamy isn’t healthy. But, that is an individual experience. I am sure there are just as many unhealthy polyamorous relationships.
I’m all for people expressing themselves positively; whatever is right for you, is right. I don’t think polyamory is any healthier for a person than monogamy, per se. Again, it is up to the individual to be honest with what they want and need, accept those wants and needs, and live their own truth.
Kelly, I would ask, if you have a truly deep relationship with yourself, why would you need an intimate relationship at all? Wouldn’t you then be equally close to everyone, loving everyone the same way, because you are in harmony with yourself? It is true that polyamory (more often, cheating) is sometimes a hedge against intimacy with one other person, but expressing our truth in a relationship does tend to bring people closer. Yet monogamy is just as often a hedge against doing what we want to do; being who we want to be. How many times have you or your friends said, “I can’t, I have a husband/boyfriend” when you really did want to do something (not necessarily sex?). And there are people who would not want to associate closely with me, or be my lover, because I identify as something other than conventionally monogamous — when they want to; even though they don’t really know anything about my personal life. I think that monogamy and polyamory are thought forms that give us many excuses to avoid closeness with others. Anything can help us embrace or avoid truth. A form is just a form, it is not the content. A tool or paradigm is defined by the purpose we bring to it. — EFC
Kelly writes: I am always suspicious of polyamory. While I think it can be a road to greater self-actualization, I am always wondering whether or not the person seeking additional intimate relationships truly has a powerful and profound intimate relationship with their Self.
When you have a truly intimate and complete relationship with your Self – and then the same with an Other – is there even time in the day for an additional intimate relationship?
And if you truly have a deep intimate relationship with your Self – and with your Other – what needs are not being provided for such that you are seeking fulfillment of those needs else where? Is this really a signal that you are not truly in touch with your own needs? Or that you aren’t willing to be wholly responsible to meet your own needs?
And if there are needs that aren’t being met within one truly intimate relationship, is it an authentically intimate relationship? Isn’t it more challenging to your own personal growth and development and evolution – with your Self and with the Other – to engage with your Self and with the Other in exploring those unmet needs, rather than adding another person to the mix?
Seeking to go deeper within your Self, or seeking to go deeper with an Other, rather than seeking another person, isn’t that what will profoundly – physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and sexually – expand you? Deepen you?
Or is that just too scary? If that’s the case, then you don’t have an authentically intimate relationship with you to begin with. And, if you don’t have the most intimate and complete relationship with you – you don’t have it with your Other – you cannot share what you do not possess. So, tell me again, why are you seeking another?
There’s more, lots more…about what defines an intimate and complete relationship with Self to begin with. But, I will wait to hear more from your conference…Kelly Grace Smith
i would have to agree with the “human sensitivity centric.” one of the things i spend time stressing with my son is respecting people’s personal space – not moving into it unless asked or given permission. this is such a huge thing, not just on a physical level, but on a psychic level as well.
as for the rest of the article, it strikes me as interesting that all of these things being mentioned need to be discussed no matter what the dynamics of a family are. once again, just another affirmation that poly/non-poly – we are all simple folk, indeed.
Have fun! I would add, as women give birth to men, boys need to hear from women, honestly, and men too, about appropriate touching, not just pubescent girls.
We can’t keep blaming abuse on one side or other, need equal discussion for all people entering into and in sexual response arena, n’est-ce pas?! If done so, then maybe we sensitives (women and men) wouldn’t feel so burdened by enforcing the “boundaries” in such chaotic ways, everyone would take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, be expected to uphold it, whether sensitive or not.
So, let’s change the language away from being girl centric to kid centric, okay? *very friendly smile herein* Better yet, just “human sensitivity centric” … That’s the honest, honest truth, isn’t it? I’ve held in my arms or with my eyes several scared, teary men too.