Yesterday, I joked that I was going to write a pamphlet that would focus on reassuring the vanilla and monogamous by focusing on what we have in common. Today I find myself thinking about one of those things.
A quick note about terminology: I do not want to get bogged down trying to either describe every option or find the perfect word that covers everything. I'm going to keep it simple and sloppy. I'm going to use "monogamy" to mean people who choose to be only in exclusive coupled relationships. I'm going to use "non-monogamy" as an umbrella term for all the wide variety of ways that people have non-exclusive relationships. And I'm going to use "dating" as an umbrella term for all the wide variety of ways that people relate to each other sexually and romantically, whether as one-night partners on a first-name-only basis, or as people in a long-term relationship who don't live together, or whatever. I'm going to use "they" as a generic singular pronoun. I'm going to start a lot of sentences with "for me," because my experience is just one example, not a rule book.
If you are a monogamous person thinking about non-monogamy--either as an option for yourself, or as a theoretical exercise--you might find yourself concerned that a new relationship could destabilize an older one. An older relationship can feel secure, and imagining one or both partners dating someone else can feel like it will threaten that security.
The first thing we have in common: Non-monogamous people worry about this, too! There is such a thing as New Relationship Energy, that mix of excitement and limerence and sexiness and unlimited potential that you can get swept up in with a new person In fact, the book on open relationships I read recently, Opening Up, devotes a section to talking about it.
One way to deal with NRE is to know it can happen, and be smart enough not to make any big decisions during this time. Wait until you've found out your new sweetie's flaws and annoying habits--wait until you've found out that they have flaws and annoying habits, just like your old sweetie--before you consider changing living arrangments or adding them to the checking account or breaking up with that dear old sweetie who's stood by you for so long.
Another way to deal with it is to not have New Relationship Energy when your current relationship is vulnerable. This has been my strategy, and is one of the reasons that my own non-monogamous nature has been so little acted on during my relationship with Raider. Preserving my good relationship with him has always been my highest priority, and as a result I have been extremely conservative for a person who is basically promiscuous.
Sometimes our relationship is being hard work because we have something to figure out. Sometimes, life is just stressful in general--nobody's getting any sleep because a Child Who Will Remain Nameless didn't sleep through the night until he was almost three; or we're so busy with the kids and our jobs that we're struggling to find the time and energy for a private conversation (let alone sex); or my chronic headache is acting up. During these times, I don't date.
From the time I got pregnant with the Lego Savant, in September 2000, until about two years ago, I didn't think about dating at all. It wasn't just on the back burner. The back burner wasn't even lit. We were busy: having babies, caring for babies, learning to nurture our own relationship as a couple while having all those children. (If I were doing a "myths about nonmonogamy" post instead of a "what we have in common" one, I'd say that my experience counters a kind of prevalant assumption that nonmonogamous people are always having multiple relationships, or are indiscriminate in their relationships. But we'll set that to one side for now.)
But we have something even more important than that in common, which is that even monogamous relationships can be destabilized by the Energy of the New. Certainly, one form that takes is infidelity. But any time one person changes, it can also change the relationship. Two of the women I dated when I was in grad school in the late 80s had left homes they shared with long-term partners to attend grad school hundreds or thousands of miles away. Both of those relationships ended during the first year apart. (My lover went with me to grad school, and our relationship as lovers ended during that year, too.)
You can agree not to have other sexual or romantic partners, but you can't ever be sure that your postal-worker girlfriend won't decide to go to med school, or your office-worker boyfriend won't decide he wants to study gender theory at the graduate level, or your artist wife won't realize that if she doesn't move to Europe soon she never will. When I decided I wanted a baby, that could well have been a deal-breaker for me and Raider, had he not somehow found a way to access the very very buried, hitherto completely unknown part of him that wanted to be a dad. We have friends right now whose loving, long-term relationship is threatened because of one's dream to live in particular place--and the other one's strong desire to live somewhere else.
Needing something the other can't give you; finding that there is something you want more than your relationship; someone changing, for good or ill, in ways that make you incompatible: these can happen in any relationship. It takes courage to be open to the new things coming into your life, whether that's a new love or a new religion or a new hobby that takes you away from home every Saturday, because the changes that come with these things are unpredictable. It takes courage, too, to turn away from the new for a time because the relationship matters more.
We all have to find this ever-shifting balance. This is one of the things we have in common. It's not the only one. I may tell you about some of the others sometimes.
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3 comments:
I like it! Of course I'm coming from the non-monogamous side of things, but I think it's really important that people who are good at stringing words together (like you) take the time to attempt to explain what the heck is going on and how it's really not all that amazingly odd. We had the same experience of monogamy while the kids were young. In the past few years we've opened up our relationship again, even though I though we might never do that at one point.
One other quick thought, trust is something that is universal in relationships and I don't think you mentioned that.
I have a whole other thing brewing on trust, honesty, knowing how to watch for red & green flags, dandelion lady. And, wow, the things you learn about people when you are honest about yourself. I was saying to Raider the other day that my tendency to have not ever yet encountered the thing that I would call Too Much Information means that I am usually the first one to blurt out a particular thing, but nearly always people I wouldn't have expected say, "Oh, hey, now that you mention it: me, too."
Sometimes "friend love" can be a source that same kind of New Relationship Energy - that's something I've seen more than once over the years, both in my own relationship and others. "Friend love" can segue into romantic or physical love, but it doesn't always.
Once you add "friend love" into the mix, there's a lot more commonality, I think, between monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. It's hard to support a partner during a breakup, for instance, whether it's with a lover or "just" a friend.
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