{"id":64526,"date":"2014-03-08T14:00:50","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T19:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=64526"},"modified":"2014-03-07T15:55:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T20:55:00","slug":"the-solo-polyamorist-is-secondary-to-none-thank-goodness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/the-solo-polyamorist-is-secondary-to-none-thank-goodness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Solo Polyamorist is Secondary to None, Thank Goodness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: This column by Maria originally published on Feb. 23, 2013, but the “secondary\/second class” question in polyamory is not going away anytime soon. And if you’re not poly, it’s a good reminder to step back and see if you’re taking anyone in your life for granted and acting out of habit. — Amanda<\/em><\/p>\n

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

About a year back I wrote about a friend who had broken up with her boyfriend and had someone wonder if she was going to make her ‘secondary’ boyfriend into her ‘primary’. At the time, we laughed at how it sounded like bringing a pitcher up from the minor leagues.<\/p>\n

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

Well, the boys are back in spring training, and it\u2019s looking like the concept of ‘secondary’ itself has been cut from the team — and a good thing, too.<\/p>\n

The Solopoly blog (\u201cLife, relationships, and dating as a free agent\u201d) — a really well-designed and very clearly written blog — is the perspective from a solo polyamorist woman who may or may not develop any number of different kinds of relationships at any time. But they won\u2019t be ‘secondary’ ones. She recently created a post that went viral: Tips for Treating Non-Primary Partners Well<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Intended as a ‘living document’, it has already gotten updates and feedback from people all over. It has plenty of ideas as well as ways to become aware of your own bad habits as a ‘primary’. And it doesn\u2019t use the s-word at all. (See? Everything about it says ‘number 2’. That\u2019s not how you treat someone you love.) Does changing the term to ‘non-primary’ really make a difference? To me, it does. <\/p>\n

Solopoly\u2019s author, Aggie, defines ‘primary partner’ as a partner whom you live with, share finances with, and raise (or intend to raise) children with. As with every definition, someone\u2019s gonna hate it, but there\u2019s enough to it to make it a practical working one. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The \u201cTips\u201d include a very important one — \u201cAssume good intentions\u201d (e.g., the non-primary is not out to \u201csteal\u201d anyone!) — as well as simple things such as \u201chonor time commitments.\u201d As another blogger pointed out, the \u201cTips\u201d are at heart just ways to treat someone you love decently — but when there are a lot of relationships going on at the same time, and not too many instruction books on how to do it, people can use a reminder.<\/p>\n

People like me, that is, could use a reminder. I usually spend Fridays with Chris, because we don\u2019t work during the day and my daughter is in school (one of our rules is not sticking anyone with childcare if we want to have a date. It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t like childcare; it\u2019s that it\u2019s not fair. You\u2019ll see how it works out in a minute.). <\/p>\n

But in the bleak days of winter, Tobi, Isaac\u2019s and my daughter, had a four-day weekend; days off school both Friday and Monday. I knew Issac wanted to spend one of these days with Tobi; they have regular days when they go out together and do sports, go to a movie or museum. This isn\u2019t childcare — it\u2019s an active day deliberately spent having fun together. <\/p>\n

We had been chatting as we were getting ready for something, and I was telling him about the whole ‘secondary\/second-class’ concept. We started tossing our scheduling details around, and I asked: \u201cSo, do you want to have a day with Tobi on Monday, since you don\u2019t work during the day on Monday? And then maybe on Friday, you and me and Tobi can do something as a family, because I won\u2019t be able to see Chris.\u201d We both thought that sounded good, and went on to other things, and then I went in to take a shower, and realized what I\u2019d just done.<\/p>\n

I had just assumed that because Tobi was home and Isaac didn\u2019t have to work, I would of course be with them. I had just classified time with Chris as lowest-priority and the first thing to be jettisoned when there was a change in the schedule. Oh, I thought, he\u2019ll understand. <\/p>\n

He\u2019ll understand, all right. He\u2019ll understand that he\u2019s at the bottom of the list. <\/p>\n

But he\u2019s not!<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s how you\u2019re acting, I thought.<\/p>\n

Now, understand that it would be fine for Chris, Tobi and me to do something together one of those days, too. Just because Tobi was out of school didn\u2019t mean I couldn\u2019t see Chris. But the point of our three hours or so on Fridays is to be together as adults, just the two of us. What we choose to do with that time differs depending on what we feel like, but that\u2019s our time. <\/p>\n

Isaac and I don\u2019t get nearly enough ‘date nights’ — but we nonetheless do get our time alone together as adults, when Tobi is asleep, doing her homework, off with friends or, sometimes, when she\u2019s at school. Far more time than three hours on Friday — and then, when we\u2019re lucky, we get date nights too. We sleep together and wake up together nearly every night and day of our lives. <\/p>\n

But I\u2019d sold out the three hours on Friday for a scheduling inconvenience.<\/p>\n

So when I got out of the shower, I sucked up my courage and talked to Isaac. I wanted to spend my usual time on Friday with Chris. And it didn\u2019t seem fair to cancel for our convenience. It\u2019s not the way I wanted to treat him, like a second-class partner. In a way, not seeing him made it seem like the other Fridays were sneaking around, as if it were fine for me to spend Fridays with him as long as it wasn\u2019t obvious to anyone. <\/p>\n

So, could Issac do his daddy-daughter day on Friday, so I could see Chris, and then we could do a family day on Sunday?, I asked. And on Monday, maybe he could do another daddy-daughter day — or I could work something out and handle childcare.<\/p>\n

One of the many things I love about Isaac is his sense of fairness and kindness. Among the three of us, someone has to have been raised in a semi-sane family environment. His childhood left him secure and confident in a way that is rare to encounter. He got it. He understood that it wasn\u2019t the way to treat someone.<\/p>\n

And he really likes spending time with his little girl.<\/p>\n

There have been plenty of times that I\u2019ve skipped my time with Chris, with good reason — and that reason has even been to do something with Isaac or Tobi or both. But this time I was skipping it out of habit — the habit of having his needs come second.<\/p>\n

The ‘primary partner’ model didn\u2019t get that way just because it\u2019s the main relationship form in the places where most of us spend most of our time. It happens because we poly people buy into it, or because we haven\u2019t checked into our own assumptions, or because, hell, we\u2019re busy. <\/p>\n

How a lot of us got into this was through having a monogamous relationship and finding it didn\u2019t work — the old ‘I\u2019m not myself\/coming out’ model. So one or the other or both, having gone a ways down the line as a couple, acts to do things another way. Often this is simply because people didn\u2019t know there were any other options. <\/p>\n

But those kids today! With every college newspaper publishing an obligatory poly article once a month, and every alternative newspaper doing likewise, there\u2019s no excuse for them not to stay informed and up on current events. More and more of them know there are more and more ways to live out there. So the whole problem with couple primacy might solve itself. <\/p>\n

One way Isaac and I have been spending some of our adult time is in watching small chunks of Oliver Stone\u2019s Untold History of the United States<\/em>. When he — Isaac, not Oliver Stone — gets home late at night, it just seems to be kind of relaxing. This is no slam on the show, which is fascinating and done with no small amount of visual flair, as well as a Christopher Walken-esque pacing in the narration by Mr. Stone, but we get so relaxed we usually end up falling asleep. In fact, it\u2019s become a couple-joke: we should get some sleep — let\u2019s put on Oliver Stone.<\/p>\n

Seriously, it\u2019s either laugh or cry. But there are a few things that strike me as I watch the tragedies unfold. One is that for all the stupidities, horrors, evils and running backwards we\u2019ve done, there is one place we\u2019ve really done good: gay rights in particular, and all the rights that radiate out from this place. Whether you think it\u2019s gone far enough (wrong) or not, whether you think other relationship rights and acceptances should radiate from that place, you\u2019ve got to give us that one for the win column. <\/p>\n

Another is how important it was to shut down, buy up and demonize the \u201cliberal media\u201d (oh, and as always, let\u2019s not forget the anti-Semitic undertone to these criticisms, which lives on in the right-wing denunciations of \u201cHollywood liberals\u201d) from the tail end of Vietnam onward. The cameras on soldiers, on Civil Rights marches, on the women, on the student protests, made the difference. Even with censorship and limited media access, people couldn\u2019t avoid some knowledge of current events, and that changed things. <\/p>\n

So even as exhausting, competitive, demoralizing or annoying as the sheer wild numbers of mommy bloggers and poly bloggers can be, I will still draw attention to them, promote them in the small ways I can, and support them and their rights. Enjoy commenting — it\u2019s world-changing.<\/p>\n

Have you tried the Planet Waves premium membership? Sign up for a six-month membership<\/a> and receive weekly and monthly horoscopes by Eric Francis, plus more. Eric’s horoscopes offer perspectives on your relationships, family dynamics, career and creativity like no other horoscopes online.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: This column by Maria originally published on Feb. 23, 2013, but the “secondary\/second class” question in polyamory is not going away anytime soon. And if you’re not poly, it’s a good reminder to step back and see if you’re taking anyone in your life for granted and acting out of habit. — Amanda By … 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\/64526"}],"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=64526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}