{"id":45609,"date":"2013-09-21T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-09-21T18:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=45609"},"modified":"2013-09-22T22:59:02","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T02:59:02","slug":"me-myself-and-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/me-myself-and-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Me, Myself, and I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: This column by Maria originally published Sept. 17, 2011 — coincidentally, the first day of the Occupy Wall Street movement, just days before the equinox two years ago. How much has evolved for you since then? — Amanda <\/em><\/p>\n

By Maria Padhila<\/strong><\/em> \u201cAre you a collection of attributes that make you a desirable object, or are you something more?\u201d <\/p>\n

This is the question the acupuncturist put to me the other night. Hearing something like that, you can understand why I rarely go to any other doctor, and never to any other therapist anymore. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We talk, often for far more than 50 minutes, before she even gets started with any kind of treatment. And last night, she explained that it was time I made up my mind whether I was going to be real about all this — whether I was going to be a self, and regard myself as a whole. <\/p>\n

Both marketing, the field I work in for a living, and the relentless push of social marketing urge us to think of ourselves as collections of attributes. Marketers call it that, right on the form we fill out when people want a product marketed — we begin to make a list of ‘brand attributes’. And people pay a lot of money to uncover these attributes, to find out whether the brand they\u2019re trying to sell is one that people can trust, or that people find exciting, whether it\u2019s homey and comforting or sophisticated and cool. What are your favorite movies? What are the five things you can\u2019t do without? Are you Windows or Mac? <\/p>\n

Of course, one\u2019s brand attributes are part of the conveniences without which no one would have a conversation at the PTA or a first date. But what is the whole underneath these lists of features? <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A young woman artist was talking with me about her husband and about my design for living. There are things about her that her husband didn\u2019t understand, or that she didn\u2019t feel like she could reveal without upsetting him. She was thinking about what I was doing, and said that it would be good to have someone else to soak up some of her intensity, someone to relieve the coziness of daily life, someone who \u201cwants to have sex standing on our heads once in a while!\u201d <\/p>\n

That\u2019s one way to see it. Sex and relationship columnist Dan Savage<\/a> has been making the rounds talking about monogamy and its discontents recently. (And it\u2019s pretty interesting that he\u2019s being so frank even when he doesn\u2019t have a particular product to shill; I\u2019ve gotten used to hearing from some thinkers and writers only when they\u2019re being forced into promotion mode.) And most of his argument is from this perspective. The New York Times Magazine cover story feature on Savage, for instance, included this: <\/p>\n

I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,\u201d Savage told me [the NY Times writer], \u201cwhen it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted. \u2026 “The mistake that straight people made,\u201d Savage told me, \u201cwas imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitarian and fairsey.\u201d In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women \u201cthe same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,\u201d we extended to men the confines women had always endured. \u201cAnd it\u2019s been a disaster for marriage.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love that he included \u201cbeing taken for granted\u201d in that list of sins. And \u201clack of variety,\u201d which I fear I am sometimes guilty of. And \u201csexual death\u201d — the drama and legitimate gravity dwelling together in that phrase. But in essence, his argument goes that you can keep your solid, secure, marriage, and go outside of it if you have sexual needs to fill. This makes a lot of sense. People don\u2019t always know who they are or what they need sexually going into a marriage. People change. People discover things. On top of that, marriage perhaps shouldn\u2019t be made to bear such a heavy load — it can\u2019t be everything to a relationship or to a person. <\/p>\n

It can\u2019t be everything to a whole self, much less two of them. But the approach also has a way of dividing people — not from each other, but in and of themselves. X is my daily life partner, and Y is my kink sex partner, and Z is the partner I take on ski trips. <\/p>\n

Yes, it makes sense. It could even do a lot of good if people were honest and open about their needs and gave each other the freedom to get them filled. It\u2019s a good way. But my way is different. I believe I\u2019m having an experience where both men are whole to me. Am I bringing my whole self? <\/p>\n

I\u2019m curled up next to Isaac on the couch as we watch a movie. I like to put both arms around his chest and feel how I have to stretch a little to do it, how solid and strong he feels. I like to pet his furry arms and put my face in his crisp short hair. This is part of the collection of his attributes, and these are desirable. This is how I can describe him to you, and make you feel as if you\u2019re part of this scene and that you understand part of the pleasure of being with him. But the whole self that I love is not something I\u2019ll ever be able to evoke. Writers create a part of a character, and readers complete the imaginative leap that makes that character come alive. Isaac is alive. He requires no completion by anyone else. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that there are things I do and places I go with one man where the other would be bored or bewildered. That\u2019s just part of life — people\u2019s personalities and likes are different. But I don\u2019t have the sense of dividing myself and my life in half, or having separate parts that each person addresses. I don\u2019t think each sees a significantly different me. And each of them is \u201csomething more\u201d — a full self, not a collection of attributes. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou like your alone time, don\u2019t you?\u201d Chris is lying with his head in my lap, as I\u2019m admiring his features, smoothing his eyebrows, stroking his remarkably soft hair. As much as I\u2019m loving being with him, he\u2019s right. I\u2019ve been talking about all the friends he has, how he moves from gathering to gathering, always lightly in touch with some thread of a person in the large, loose web of people he knows. He remembers people\u2019s names. He ends up helping people, often. I\u2019m talking about how I wonder if my remoteness, my apartness, is dull or frustrating to him — especially coming right out of environments where everyone is wide open. <\/p>\n

\u201cI do,\u201d I admit. \u201cI\u2019m also too invested in being an outsider.\u201d It\u2019s both a habit from childhood that comes from being unwanted and kept outside of things, and a result of being a writer. Artists tend to be comfortable outside and often stick with it to keep their perspective and powers of observation. Writers and artists spend a lot of time alone. Probably why so many of us drink and go crazy. I guess I\u2019m willing to claim ‘writer’ as part of my Self and not just as another brand attribute, as pretentious as it seems. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m used to being alone, and I like it as well, even crave it. Writing is a lonely activity (which accounts for some of my compulsiveness about it — look, if I write in enough places, I\u2019ll get back proof that someone besides me is out there). I run alone, for long stretches of time and distance, at the very least a half-hour, or up to three or four hours. You are very alone running on trails in the woods. <\/p>\n

Shortly after I had my daughter, I remember reading about a phenomenon known as ‘touched out’. After holding, cleaning, rocking, and nursing a baby all day, some women can\u2019t abide being touched by a lover. She wants her body back. She wants it all to herself. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve realized that with all my eagerness to be with both of them — and also our daughter — I\u2019ve forgotten to put in some of that time for myself. Once I joked in an email to the editors here that I promised to someday write a column entitled: \u201cI\u2019m Poly and I STILL Masturbate.\u201d Just to stay in keeping with the values of the enterprise, you understand. But the truth there is that yes, each self benefits from a full relationship with that self, whatever the other relationships may be. Giving your sexual self to other people only is a lot like splitting part of yourself off from a marriage. It has little to do with how many orgasms you\u2019re ‘getting’ from other people — or how much of anything you\u2019re getting from others. Other people, whether that means one, two or 12 other people, can give you a lot, but unless you\u2019re bringing a whole self to the relationship and recognizing another whole self, I think you\u2019ll be only partly satisfied. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s gotten cold suddenly. Chris is out at work in the cold. Isaac is biking home from work, in this same cold. I\u2019m warm inside, with my daughter. I\u2019ve just finished making dinner, feeding Tobi now and putting the rest aside for when Isaac gets home, and now I\u2019m trying to make some sense of this question. It will be the equinox soon, my birthday, and a year since Isaac gave me the gift of freedom to follow love. I feel I should be farther along in this, should understand more, should have more clarity about what I\u2019m doing. But the equinox impels balance and grace, and I must have been born on that day for a reason — to learn these.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: This column by Maria originally published Sept. 17, 2011 — coincidentally, the first day of the Occupy Wall Street movement, just days before the equinox two years ago. How much has evolved for you since then? — Amanda By Maria Padhila \u201cAre you a collection of attributes that make you a desirable object, or … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}