Mulling something over

[treeskin]

sidhe612 made an interesting comment last time we talked on the phone; it's been floating in my head since, trying to crystallize. Let's see if this gets anywhere close.

A lot of our friends are poly, in one form or another. A certain group of our friends were beginning to explore poly, and it developed into a very long, messy crisis. sidhe612 suggested that perhaps part of the crisis came from the examples of poly practices he had noticed within our community. This made me think about choices By & I had made, and how they might look from outside our head space.

For instance, at Laid-Back Labor Day, 2002, I had a fling with one of the guys in our camp, and By took advantage of the time to enjoy one of our female friends. We both knew about the arrangements ahead of time, no big deal to us, much fun was had by all. And again, at the same event this year, By spent some quality time with friends of ours who'd made a long trip to see us, and I'd picked up a new "pet".

Now, of these four connections, only the one with Pet was a spur-of-the-moment, he's-cute-why-not sort of thing; and I've made an effort to build more of a connection with Pet since (hence my head cold this week). But I can see where the others, if you didn't pay attention to time we spent with the various people beforehand, could look like sport-fucking. (Yes, for the record, the first night with Pet was sport. )

So now, I'm wondering if we should change our behavior so our intent is more clear. Not just because of our friend who's having the crisis, but I wonder if others in our community are seeing the same things in our behaviors.


Something else our friend in the crisis hasn't seemed to catch is the concept of boundaries and permission. He's looked at both as control issues, and seems to me to be very defensive about them. He didn't notice, before my sport with Pet took place, that first I talked to Byron, then Pet talked to Byron--in public, in front of the whole camp. I've been told others in camp noticed, and applauded Pet's manners. But our friend doesn't seem to have caught the lesson that a few simple questions, and honest answers, can keep feelings from being hurt.

Guess I need to think some more.

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

My thoughts.

You have absolutely no control over people who are going to watch what you do, perceive it wrongly, and use that as justification to behave in ways they want to anyway. If you start worrying about how people are perceiving what you do, you'll end up never doing anything. People who know you know what you're like and how your relationship works, and that's really the important part.

If you start trying to be stand-up guys "for the community", well, A) you're not going to succeed, because the community is nothing like monolithic, and B) because you'll be compromising personal and pair-bond values, you are more, not less, likely to really screw up and doing things that might hurt your relationship.

If people want to know, they should ask. If they don't want to ask, they shouldn't pretend to know.

And the idea that X and Y are justifying their behavior in their marriage based on what they think they saw you guys doing is ridiculous. First of all, they have nothing like your time-on-task, and second, they started out not communicating, cheating, and doing things foolishly or deliberately (or both) that would damage their relationship.

There is no single set of rules that can comprehensively promise success in a poly relationship, because every person is different, every circumstance is different, and while there are a few guiding principles that can help a couple (or more) establish a firm foundation that will let their relationship seek its own level while remaining healthy, open, and intimate, these are guiding principles,not rules. The rules come from how a couple apply those principles to their own relationship, and are individual and personal for a couple.

I will touch briefly on boundaries and permission, and Y's view of them as control. I think I need to take some serious thought before I make a long post on them, but I will say two things. First, this is a really common view in the poly community right now. He'll find a lot of supportive writing on the subject, which will give various reasons in support of this outlook that boil down to a selfish refusal to not do anything you really want to do, no matter what. And second, I think it's a copout.

[draco-kc.livejournal.com]

I'm with classicscat on this one, I think.

I'm wondering if we should change our behavior so our intent is more clear.

This sentence was puzzling me, until I read your response to classicscat. I wasn't not sure exactly what changes you were talking about. OTOH, maybe I'm just being unusually dense this afternoon [*chuckle*]

I think that the kind of communication and negotiation skills that underlie your relationship and how you deal with outside partners aren't things that one can effectively learn by observation. Plus, there's no way of ensuring that people see and understand that process. They'll see it through their own sets of filters, just like Y has.

I'd say about the only thing one can do is to freely talk about how you two go about dealing with such situations to those people who show interest or curiosity. You're not going to reach the people who aren't ready to listen.

Of course, take anything I say with a grain of salt. While soxnboxrs and I have an open relationship, I really wouldn't consider us poly. [Probably the best way I'd have of describing us would be emotionally monogamous but sexually non-monogamous.] So, I think our perspectives are a little bit different.