Here Comes the Judge

This summer, Chris and I were at a gathering at a private campground that seemed like it might have been a place of some rustic luxury in the 1920s. We’d heard that the land was all owned — or had been owned — by a retired and very rich judge. I don’t know what the truth of it was, but as we played over the long weekend — hiking, picking berries, fighting the rain, swimming in the lake, going from camp to camp — he began to spin out tales in the voice he identified as simply “The Judge.” He comes up with various dramatis personae all the time, with different voices to match. The Judge’s stories were like some bizarre amalgam of Philip K. Dick, William Faulkner, Penthouse Forum, and Garden and Gun magazine; he often claimed to be quoting from “Retired Country Judge Adventure Quarterly.”

This kept me highly entertained, but it was also funny in another way — ironically. The emergence of this persona coincided with me beginning to feel very, very judged. Not only by Chris, but by Isaac, by my boss, by the woman behind me in line at the grocery store. I have felt like Saturn has been taking my measure for months, and the sentence is coming in any minute now.

It’s a consequence of living outside the law — the relationship standards everyone else is expected to stay within. Trying to make polyamory work forces continual examination of everything you’re doing: Will this trouble him? Will this disrespect her boundaries? How am I feeling right now? Is my behavior fair? Am I being honest with myself? It demands a lot of weighing and measuring — and judging.

I fall apart under even the prospect of judgment. When you’ve spent a lot of your life feeling like you’re being judged for breathing, even existing, you want to evade that death sentence (or impose it on yourself, in a ninja double reverse attempt to restore some kind of autonomy). Do I get double points for judging myself far more harshly than you could, before you get the chance? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. You get no time off for time served — punishing yourself just compounds the sentence from someone else.

Now add on having a relationship life or gender expression that’s different from what’s sold as the norm. You’re going to be judged. Because, after all, it’s your “lifestyle choice.” You didn’t HAVE to be “like that.” You could change and settle down and be like the rest, because…

Because why? It’s extraordinary how much of this comes down to “why don’t you change your life, because it inconveniences me or makes me uncomfortable.” People don’t want to admit that, so they throw a lot of other judgmental ornaments around the edges and hope no one will see their version of the ninja double reverse.

People judge. Which brings us to a column that appeared this week in XOJane, “How Not to Be a Dick to Your Polyamorous Friend.” I like XOJane, because the writers are witty and bitchy, and I have long admired its editor, Jane Pratt. (Her father was an extraordinary artist and kind to me when I was starting out as a writer.) The commenters renew my hope (one called herself “don’tgiveafuckamous.”) Having Rebecca Hiles write this new column on polyamory is a great move. I’m really looking forward to reading more of her.

This is one of my favorite parts of the latest column, because it gets right to the subtle passive-aggressive judgey tone that comes up pretty often — the “well, I suppose you can enjoy yourself, but just wait until it comes time to pay, young lady.” Applying the judgeyness to matters of parenting is a real knife-twister, because nobody — no woman nowadays, certainly — thinks they’re really doing a good job as a parent, so there’s plenty of guilt and shame wiggle room there, oh yes. Emphasis mine:

I do not currently have children, and thus I may not be the most qualified person to discuss raising children. However, when discussing my life, many people feel the need to tell me that they hope for my future children’s sake, that I stop my polyamorous ways before I have kids.

My future intentions regarding children are not up for public discussion as they are no one’s business but mine and my partners’, however I feel for polyamorous families who do have kids. I’d like to include a point about dealing with your polyamorous friends who are also parents: You may be tempted to raise concern about your friend’s lifestyle in regards to their children. I would suggest that you tread carefully.

No one wants to be told how best to raise their children. Unless you see signs of abuse and neglect, the well-meaning concern that you are raising over a child that may be happy and well-adjusted is the same kind of concern that people have raised about same-sex and interracial parents. If you trust and love your friend, have faith that they are taking care of their child to the best of their ability.

The biggest reason I’m out to so few people is because I don’t want to be judged as a bad mother — and beyond that, don’t want people to act further on that judgment. I can tell you a lot of ways I’m a bad mother, and they have very little to do with being polyamorous. I often let peaches count as a vegetable, for instance. And I let her stay up late on Friday nights and watch movies. Which led, inadvertently, to my being judged and found wanting.

Here’s the backstory. I’ve fallen into a little routine of having Chris over on Friday evenings to join Tobi (my daughter, with Isaac) and me as we have dinner and watch TV. Chris often brings over fruits and vegetables and other raw materials, and I make a lot of food on Friday evenings so I can freeze some and put some away for the weekend, for Isaac to take to work, and for Friday’s dinner.

I’ve always done this on Friday because it’s usually a more relaxed day for me (it’s supposed to be my day off, though I’ve had to work on Fridays nearly every time for the past year. Boo.). Tobi does her homework, she talks with Chris, which she really enjoys, then we eat and sometimes watch a movie. Some Fridays we go out to see some art or something, but usually we stay in. Sometimes Chris goes out after Tobi goes to bed, and sometimes he hangs out with me.

Isaac works until very late on Friday and Saturday nights. He knows our routine. And I know he wishes he were at home with us. He can never get enough time with his little girl, and sometimes he doesn’t get enough time with me. So it’s tough on him, I know, but he also understands that I love to have company. Sometimes he even likes what I cook (he calls it Hippie Prison Food, but he knows it’s better for him than pizza, and it keeps him healthy, dammit).

So last Friday, I made stir-fry at Tobi and Chris’ request, and had to leave the wok to soak, and probably didn’t clean up all the dishes as well as I might have, but I had to do some work after Chris left and I was literally falling asleep at the computer. Isaac woke up and made breakfast for all of us — his breakfasts are ten times better than my dinners. He had to clean the kitchen before he could even get started cooking.

And he called me on it. And he very honestly said that if I had had one of my other friends over, he wouldn’t have minded the mess that much. It added to the annoyance that the mess was because of our Friday night ritual.

What I heard was The Judge. And as always, in the face of criticism, I crumbled, fell into guilt and shame, and heard: If you didn’t have this weird relationship thing, if you weren’t a bad woman, wife, mother, then none of this would bother me.

It wasn’t until we’d talked it out and gone into about five or six other things that we had to work out that I remembered something I’d seen on That Polyamory Show (“Polyamory: Married and Dating,” on Showtime).

My favorite person on the show, Jen, had come home to a big mess. One of her rules, one of her boundaries, had been violated: she specified that she wanted her bed and sheets to be clean when she got home, that when her boyfriend Tal had other guests, that he clean the bedroom and change the sheets afterward. That’s pretty reasonable. Instead, Tal and his girlfriend had gone from the bedroom, leaving behind a lube-soaked bed and condoms on the floor, and fixed a snack, in between making out in the kitchen. Ewww, right? (Except I was a bit distracted by the substantial popup tent Tal was pitching when he stood up in the kitchen to answer to the charges, but that’s another subject.)

Jen was mad, and said so. She was also peeved that her first encounter with Tal’s girlfriend had to be a bitchy mad scene, and said that too. She explained that it wasn’t anything between them that she was mad about — it was simply that she had this understanding with Tal, and he hadn’t lived up to it.

What I realized is that sometimes there’s not a big difference between a wok and a condom. The issue is the mess. The issue is listening to what someone else asks for, and honoring it.

(BTW, Isaac and I have a whole lot of rules about sex in our house, in our bed, and when Tobi is in the house, but those aren’t the issue right now. Just wanted to clear that up.)

To be able to listen, I had to get past the fear and the sense that I was being judged. And I can’t help but think that making and keeping these boundaries would be a lot easier if the judgment from outside wasn’t so pervasive. It would be a lot easier if the internal judgment was less, as well. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about either of those things. But I am going to make sure I clean things up Friday night. I believe I’ll make quinoa pilaf with yellow squash. Care to join us?