The Things You Find Out About Yourself

I had a couple of surprises at last week's FGC Gathering of Friends. One was that one of the highlights of my week was being invited to meet with a group of polyamorous and kinky Friends. A small group of us met early in the week, and enjoyed it so much that we met again a few days later. That second meeting was one of the deepest, most worshipful parts of my week.

I was surprised by how much meeting with these folks meant to me, because I hadn't thought of polyamory as a central part of who I am. If anything, I see myself as something of a poser--Raider and I claim to be in an open relationship, but it's only been actively opened up a couple of times, and that before we had kids.

Indeed, we've spent most of our 19 years together too busy with other things to have relationships on the side. For the first few years, we were so busy enjoying each other we actually thought we were monogamous. Then, one day in the car, we engaged in one of those "what if" conversations--what if you were at a conference and it was someone you'd never see again? what if it was an ongoing relationship with someone out of town? what if it was someone in town and you wanted to date them in a clearly secondary-to-our-relationship way? what if it was someone in town and you got very serious with them?

And we discovered that none of these scenarios was a deal-breaker for either of us. "Huh," we said. "I guess we're not monogamous. Who knew?"

It was another four or five years before either of us acted on it, though. We got busy with figuring out how to stay in a relationship past the first couple of years, and then in dealing with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder I'd had since childhood, and with one thing and another, there was never a good time. For one thing, we were too darn busy to have time to date. For another, it's never a good idea to start a second relationship when your first one is vulnerable. It's too easy to use the new lover as an excuse to opt out of the work you need to do with the old one.

I'm sure some people do it and make it work. It's not a risk I'm willing to take.

And then, after awhile, all the drama and hard work was behind us. We were stable, settled, happy. And over several months in the summer of 2000, we both had some outside adventures, and it was fine. It was fun, and it was fine.

And then, a few weeks later, I got pregnant with the Lego Savant, and there followed another decade of being just too darn busy. Most parents can attest that nurturing your own relationship during the years you're raising young children is hard enough; I couldn't imagine having the energy or patience for a girlfriend.

In general, for the last decade, I've seen myself settling into life as a very conventional middle-class stay-at-home mom. I felt like I clung to my theoretical polyamory the way I clung to my nose piercing--something that signalled that I wasn't boring and middle American. Or, at least, not just boring and middle American.

I need to digress to say that I don't mean to suggest that heterosexual, monogamously married moms are dull or unworthy. I know many women who are, so far as I know, HMMMs, and they are all awesome. They make mothering into a loving art, they like their husbands, they all have something that isn't their children that they are passionate about, whether that's gardening, art, religion, political and social activism, bread-baking. There's no shame in being one of them, and to the extent that I am one of them, I'm proud to be. This is just a holdover from some anxiety from my youth; it's about me, not about them.

It never occurred to me that I clung to my "theoretical" polyamory because polyarmory is actually part of who I am. That I might not be a poseur trying to be more interesting than I am, but a polyamorous person who just hasn't had the inclination or opportunity to practice much these last two decades.

But I had a lot of time to reflect on the long car ride home, and realized that nearly all of my relationships have been non-monogamous. I've done it well, and I've done it badly. I've done it with women whose care and respect for their lovers were a model to emulate, and I've done it with women whose behavior was a red flag I should have let myself see sooner. I've gotten it so badly wrong that I've hurt someone I care about very much (long since forgiven!), and I've gotten it so right that my girlfriend and I could double-date with her lover and her lover's other lover.

But I've always done it. My first woman lover and I broke up in 1988, and I don't think I have committed to be exclusive with anyone since then (that first few years with Raider, when we mistakenly believed ourselves to be monogamous, are a special case).

Anyway, I wanted to say that until I walked into that room for that meeting last week, I hadn't realized how isolated I have felt among Quakers as a polyamorous person. (And as a person with some unconventional sexual preferences, but I'm not going to talk about that in any detail.) It felt good to be in a circle of folks where I knew I wouldn't be judged, though it actually took us some work to get to that point, because you never know. Unconventional people can be just as prone as anybody else to think that everything on their side of some self-defined line is OK, and anything on the other side is just plain wrong. Nobody wants to face that moment when you make yourself vulnerable only to find out that you were not safe from judgment in that space. But we got there. And it was a good, deep, and worshipful place to be.

I might have another post on this topic in me--thinking about this brought up so many memories: good, bad, funny, sexy. I might write about what, in my experience, works and what doesn't. What are some of the common blunders? What are the red flags you should look for in a new relationship? How do people of good will take care of each other in multiple relationships? I'm no expert, but I spent a few intense years in my 20s learning by trial and error, and I might have a few words to say.

I usually do.