Tag: #love

Letting Go of “Primary”

“Collaboration has no hierarchy. The sun collaborates with the soil to bring flowers on the earth.” – Amit Ray

If you have been following my journey, you will know what a struggle this one has been for me. When I made the move from solo-polyamory to partnered polyamory I made a lot of assumptions about what that move meant. We both did. And we have been learning over the last several years that some of those assumptions weren’t the same, and that some don’t fit how one or both of us want to operate now. 

The most basic definition of hierarchy is “a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority”. Hierarchy exists everywhere. From political or religious structures, to families, to nature, everything has a ranking system. Even our own bodies are hierarchical, from cells all the way up to organ systems. We are surrounded by it, born to and raised in it, and it is such a consistent part of our lives that most of us don’t even question the need for it. 

But does that mean hierarchy should also exist in our relationships? 

170 years ago the world I live in would have looked very different. My parents would have found a man for me to marry (probably in exchange for some kind of livestock or other trade goods) and I would have moved from their home to his. Instead of answering to them I would answer to him. We would have had children, and possibly farmworkers, who would answer to him, and then only in his absence, to me. I would have lived my life as part of a hierarchy based on sexism, racism, and socioeconomic status and never would have questioned if there was another way. 

The world has changed a lot since then. It still has a long way to go, but it is trying. And one of the areas that is changing the most is relationships. 

I was lucky enough to be raised by parents who taught me that women are equal to men, and that the value you bring to a relationship isn’t your money or status, it is who you are as a person. My parents ran our home together, and if anything my mom was the authority, not my dad. Yes, my dad had a higher income and my mom spent my younger years at home raising kids, but it could not have been more obvious that my mom never felt or acted like she answered to my dad in any way. The concept of rank never entered their relationship, and because that is how I grew up, the idea of hierarchy within a two person relationship has never existed for me. My relationships are partnerships, and always have been.

So why is it so difficult for me to apply that same principle to polyamory? 

The best answer I can give is fear. Fear of being superseded. Fear of not having a say in decisions that are being made. Fear that my wants and desires will not be as important as someone else’s. Fear that I will not be as important as someone else. Fear of being replaced, discarded, or ignored.

The exact same fears a secondary partner feels in a hierarchical relationship. 

Are my fears more valid because I started dating my partner first? Should they hold more weight because we live together? Or spend more time together? Or sleep together most nights? Am I entitled to demand more from my partner than they give to any other partner simply because we have been together longer? Do I get to put rules and limits on their relationship so that I can feel safer in my own? Should my vote count for more, just because I’ve had one longer? 

The answer to all of these questions is no. 

We have already made huge strides towards egalitarian polyamory. I have no decision making power over my partners other relationships, and he has none over mine. We express our thoughts, opinions, and feelings, sometimes very emphatically and dramatically, but ultimately the decisions we make are our own, and are the ones we as individuals feel are best for each relationship. Sometimes one of us is hurt or left out in the decision, and sometimes the metamour is. There are no vetoes or hard limits, and we continue to push the boundaries of what each of us is comfortable with. It isn’t always easy, and some boundaries have moved faster than others, but it is a constant work in progress, and blanket “no”s never enter the picture. Do we choose each other more often than we choose others? Yes, for now at least. But it’s not because of a title we’ve given our relationship, or a set of rules we’ve imposed on it. It’s because as individuals that’s where we are choosing to focus our time and attention. 

I haven’t been practicing hierarchical polyamory for a while now. So why is the title that comes with it still so important to me? I have already let go of the control and privileges that come with it, so why do I still need the word, even knowing that it holds no meaning? Is the appearance of status and authority still important to me, even though the actual status and authority doesn’t come with it? 

Apparently. And now it’s time to let go of that too. 

What Are You Looking For?

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” – Carl Gustave Jung

“What are you looking for?” I get this question a lot. From people who don’t know me at all to people who know me very well. It is a great question, and I often answer it a little differently depending on who is asking.

I have a fantastic life and I am the happiest I have ever been. I have a good career, own my home, and have successfully ushered my offspring into early adulthood. I have a decent relationship with my family, have amassed an impressive collection of books, board games, and hobby supplies, and so far have avoided any long term debilitating illnesses or injuries. I have a sexy and supportive primary partner, a truly beautiful group of friends, and am part of a community of people that embrace me for who I am. Life is very, very good. 

So what am I looking for? 

A big part of getting to where I am now was learning a few things along the way, and those things are as valid and important now that I am in a wonderful place as they were when I first learned them.

  1. It is unreasonable to expect one person to provide everything you need. This is true no matter what the relationship – romantic, friendship, or family. People are beautiful complex creatures, and we all come with a mess of needs, wants, and issues that are more than some of us can handle on our own. How is it fair to expect only one other person to be able to help us with all of that, when all of us can barely help ourselves? Western society likes to tell us “it takes a village to raise a child”, but why does that stop once you grow up? If anything your needs are more complex and diverse, so it only makes sense that it will take more and different people to meet them all. 
  1. I want to continue to grow and evolve as a person. Life is great right now, but that is the way it is because of all the work I did and all the changes I made to get here. It didn’t just happen overnight, and it won’t stay this way if I just leave it alone.  Everything changes, whether you want it to or not, so trying to stay the same means getting left behind. That doesn’t mean racing forward and leaping into every new thing that crosses my path, but it also doesn’t mean slamming the door on anything different or scary. I want to grow and evolve and see what else I can see/do/accomplish, not just stagnate where I am. 
  1. I crave new input. New experiences, new ideas, and new people. I firmly believe that who we are as people is made up of the things we have experienced and the people we have experienced them with, good or bad. Every person we share time with becomes a piece of us, shapes us, and ultimately determines who we are going to be next. Allowing new people in means getting to see the world through a new set of eyes, being introduced to new activities or ideas, and having the opportunity to learn new things about myself. 

So what am I looking for? I am looking for people who bring something new and worthwhile to my life, be it a romantic connection, a friendship, or an experience. My hope is that these will all be positive additions, connections that increase the size of my “village”, but even if they aren’t they are still things that I can learn from. They will still become a part of me, either treasured memories to bask in later or painful moments that teach me something new. 

Dating Depression

“You know, you can only actually help someone who wants to be helped.” – Jojo Moyes 

My first experience with dating and depression was when I found myself dating an old high school friend while I was battling depression. I was not aware that this was what I was going through at the time, but looking back at it now I was smack dab in the middle of what turned out to be a 10 year fight I didn’t know I was fighting. 

Large portions of that time and that relationship are gone from my memory, and the ones that remain are jumbled and confusing. I know we connected again through facebook, that he was living out of town at the time, and that he was the one who made all the effort to try and make things work. I don’t think it lasted very long, or that we saw each other very often, and I can’t remember what words or feelings we exchanged. I know I hurt him badly because he won’t speak to me now, but I can’t remember how or why. 

Depression, in all of its forms, is a mood disorder that affects the ability to function in day-to-day life. For many this includes feeling empty, hopeless, or numb; feeling restless, irritable, or anxious; thoughts of death or suicide; having low self esteem or feelings of guilt and worthlessness. For others it can mean difficulty concentrating or making decisions, low energy, changes in appetite or weight, headaches, sexual dysfunction, aches and pains, digestive problems, and unusual sleep patterns. It can result in agitation, irritability, an increased use of drugs or alcohol, self destructive behaviour, isolation, loss of control, and uncontrolled rage. 

My depression lasted a long time because I wouldn’t acknowledge it, and if you won’t acknowledge something you can’t deal with it and get better. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I started to see how much life I was missing out on living under this blanket of confusion and pain and fear. I’m sure there were people along the way who tried to help me, to talk about what I was going through, but I was so tightly wrapped up in it that ultimately I was the only one who could find my way out. So I reopened the old trauma wounds, explored all their dark and painful pockets, and did the work to clean them out enough that they could finally heal. The scars will always be there, and occasionally show in unexpected reactions or behaviour, but now shiny new skin has grown over them, and I can live and love as a whole person again. 

Not everyone has a type of depression that can be “healed”. My depression came as a result of unresolved trauma and is commonly known as situational depression. Some people suffer from clinical depression, which can still be caused by trauma, but can also come from physical factors, genetics, or from disturbances in the levels of certain chemicals in the brain. Clinical depression can last for a long time, and can even be a lifelong diagnosis.

Several years ago I entered into a long term relationship with a man who masked his depression very well. So well that for a long time he was even able to mask how bad it was from himself. He was a writer, a performer, and he presented himself as a high energy, social, excited about life person. And at the beginning he was, because that was who he wanted to be. He knew he had lots of issues and trauma to deal with, and sometimes they would come out as bad days or short periods of isolation, but those were on the ‘one day’ list of things to work on, not something he wanted to or was ready to deal with now.

The longer they stayed on that list, the more they affected him. We were very much in love, but in the end that didn’t really matter, because love isn’t the answer to depression. Our relationship became about me giving, and him taking. Not because he wanted to take, but because he was so knotted up inside that it became impossible for him to free up anything to give, and taking was all that was left to keep us connected. Our life became about what he needed, what he wanted to do, and what he was capable of. Our relationship stopped moving forward, and I ran out of things to give. I started pushing for the things I wanted and needed, and eventually he ended things. There was simply no energy left for me when it was all being used to hold his demons at bay. 

I took some time after that relationship to do some work on myself, so that I wouldn’t let another person put me through what I had just gone through, and so I could support the next person a little better. That was when I started to learn what was in my power to control, and what wasn’t. I went back to dating and kept picking the same guy I always had – the performer/musician/actor, or the funniest/loudest/most popular guy in the room. I have always been a sucker for charisma. But this time I recognized something common in all of them; they all had depression they weren’t dealing with. The charm and noise and show were all just very loud versions of masking, to hide from themselves and from the world all the shit they weren’t dealing with. This doesn’t stop me from wanting to be with them, or even from falling in love, but now I know enough to know what I can help with, what I can’t, what is because of me, and what has absolutely nothing to do with me, who I am, or how they feel about me. 

4 years ago I began a relationship with a man who continues to amaze me by showing me what living with long term depression can actually look like. He received his clinical depression diagnosis over a decade before we met and will most likely live with it for the rest of his life. He doesn’t try to pretend it isn’t there, doesn’t blame the world because he has it, and doesn’t demand that others make accommodations for it. Instead he continues to test the limits of what he can do and handle within it, pushes those boundaries as far as he can and as often as he can, and acknowledges and asks for help when there is something he can’t handle. He quietly and persistently fights a battle every day that most people don’t even know is happening, and he does it with a graceful strength that I hope one day to achieve. He has taught me that it isn’t wanting to help that is important; it’s being there when a person is ready and able to ask for and accept help that is what’s needed. That lesson is a gift I will never be able to thank him enough for giving me. 

I wish I could apologise to that friend from high school, that I could explain to him, with all of the knowledge I have now, what I was going through, why I couldn’t deal with it at the time, and why I wasn’t ready for the help he wanted to give. But that is not how life works. All I can do is forgive myself, forgive the people who have and will hurt me while on their own healing journeys, and hope that one day he might forgive me too. 

Marriage

“Happiness is only real when shared.” – Jon Krakauer

Historically marriages happened for a lot of reasons, most of them cultural or financial. Sometimes the couple in question had a choice and sometimes they did not, but very seldom did it matter to anyone if they loved or even liked each other. It was expected that at a certain point in life you would fulfill the social contract and enter into the transaction known as marriage. 

Today in most western cultures marriage is seen as the ultimate sign of love for your partner. In many cases there are still legal, social, and economic benefits involved, such as enlarging your family, combining resources to purchase and maintain property, or having the financial support to stay home and raise children, but those are now seen as the benefits of finding someone who you love enough to marry rather than the reason for marriage itself. It is no longer an obligation; now it is a desire. Plus you get to have a big party with presents and cake, and who doesn’t want that, right? 

I have been in love a few times, and at least once in love enough that I did everything in my power to be with that person for the rest of my life. It didn’t work out, but even when it still looked like it would somehow the topic of marriage never came up. Not because I was waiting for him to bring it up, but because it never really crossed my mind as something we needed to consider. We chose each other every day, we made plans for the future, we were happy, and that was enough for me. What could marriage give me that I didn’t already have? 

Over the last couple years a few very close friends have gotten married. These marriages did not occur because my friends are planning to have children, need financial support, are particularly religious, or felt some kind of cultural obligation to tie the knot. They happened because they wanted to be married, not because they needed to be. Because they love each other, and because expressing that love through marriage was important to them.

I love my partner. The reasons I love him could fill a blog post of their own, so I won’t go into that here. Our relationship is the healthiest one I have every been in; we support each other when it’s necessary, make room for independence when it’s not, question and challenge each other to ensure we keep growing as people, plan for the future and accept our pasts, live and own property together, talk about everything, explore new things, and have a fantastic sex and social life. I genuinely can’t think of anything we are missing, and I feel like the very best version of myself when I am with him. Looking ahead I can imagine situations that will present us with challenges, but if we continue as we have been I can’t imagine anything we can’t get through if we try. 

Does all of this mean we should get married? I honestly don’t know. I find the idea of marriage intriguing in a way I never have before. In the past it looked like a trap blocking a person from experiencing new things with different people. Being polyamorous any marriage I entered into couldn’t fall into the standard rules marriages have traditionally followed, which I think on some level is why I have never really wanted it. But what if we could write our own definition of marriage, and make our own rules about what that looks like for us? Create something that makes us both feel protected, loved, and heard, that still involves choosing each other every day, and that leaves room for us to have experiences outside of the two of us. Definitions and rules that grow and change as we do, evolving as our relationship does, supporting and nurturing each other without limiting one another. 

I don’t know if it’s possible, or if it’s different in any way that what we are doing right now, but it sure is interesting to think about. 

Is Love a Drug?

“Might as well face it, you’re addicted to love.” – Robert Palmer

New love is an amazing thing. It’s warm, fuzzy, comforting, and makes you smile at the most random times during the day. You will find yourself humming miscellaneous Sarah McLachlan songs, replaying romantic comedy scenes in your mind with yourself as the lead, and endlessly googling to find just the right pet names to describe your person. Colors are brighter, food smells better, and regardless of how shitty your mattress was last week now all you want is to be in bed with your partner. You feel wanted, cared for, desirable, and happy, all the time. It becomes hard to remember a time before you felt this way, and difficult to relate to people who don’t. And all you want all the time is more of that feeling. 

This kind of obsession and preoccupation with anything else would be considered an addiction, and something to be avoided, treated, or cured. Physically ‘falling in love’ triggers exactly the same feel good hormones as many drugs; dopamine, oxytocin, opioids, and serotonin. Relationships follow a similar path as addiction. In the beginning everything feels great, like your first dose of something wonderful. As relationships develop we build up a resistance to those hormones, and it becomes harder and harder to feel the same hit that we did at the beginning. When the relationship ends and the break up happens we suffer withdrawal symptoms, which combined with stress hormones make us feel sick and leave us looking for our next fix. We do everything we can to find that ‘feel good’ feeling again. 

Despite all of this evidence we as a society are in love with being in love. Countless books have been published on how to find it, endless songs have been written trying to describe it, and there are always new movies coming out telling us stories about it. We spend our lives chasing it when we don’t have it, and wallowing in it when we do. So does this mean love is a drug that we misuse and abuse, or are we smart enough to know a good thing when we see it and hang on?

We have all seen the people out there who react to falling in love like an addict does to their drug. Take a look at the short term serial monogamist. They meet someone, fall in love, are deliriously happy, and yet a short time later the relationship ends, and they are on to the next ‘love of their life’. They are addicted to that initial dose of love, but lose interest when the hormonal reaction starts to drop off, and they go out looking for something similar but just different enough to count as new. Or look at those couples that are so wrapped up in each other that they forget about everything else in their life. They become completely dependent on each other for their happiness and have difficulty finding it anywhere else, much like an addict becomes dependent on their elixir of choice. Their only positive emotion comes from their partner, and it becomes an unhealthy obsession and attachment that can be extremely difficult to break.

Does this mean we should all start avoiding love, out of fear of developing our own addictions? Of course not. Love doesn’t only feel good; it can also be very good for you. It can help you build a more positive self-image, introduce you to new ways of thinking and living, and give you a feeling of security and support that you may not be able to find anywhere else. These are all good things. So how do you know if this love is a good one, or an addictive one? Keep in mind a few key points. A healthy relationship isn’t possessive and is based on mutual respect; encourages growth and serious interests outside of the relationship; leaves you feeling improved by the relationship and not stifled by it; and is a part of your life, rather than separate from it. There are millions of healthy, loving relationships out there, and like anything else we cannot let a few negative examples destroy our image of them.