#polyampride

Conflict is uncomfortable; No matter how you slice it, emotional responses are mostly inevitable and it takes practice to come out the other side with transformation rather than hurt feelings. I have been staring at this blank screen for 5 days now and my fingers have finally found their way to the keys. Being an individual who struggles with perfectionism, simply the thought of discussing my shortcomings in conflict resolution was enough to stop me in my tracks. Admitting to one's self upon reflection that you could have done better is very different from putting such admittance into practice in real time, especially when the heat of battle has your head and your mouth in a state disconnect. Lucky for me, there is no shortage of opportunity to practice the art of making space for authenticity and acceptance of other conflict styles when relating to people outside of common relationship structures.

When I originally sat down write this I wanted to talk about Karpman's drama triangle (in case your are unfamiliar, you can find it here: https://agile-od.com/mental-model-dojo/karpmans-drama-triangle). Understanding this concept has been integral to my personal growth trajectory, so much so that I have the triangle tattooed over the spot one might refer to as the throat chakra. Interestingly enough, as I proceeded through the mental gymnastics of taking an end concept and working it upside down and backwards towards my internal experiences, I had a realization that left me stunned and steeping a few days longer than expected. My intent for this article was to explore the concepts around my tendency to operate from the position of 'the victim.' This has often been the end point of my own spiral, and something I have come up against recently in the processes of the people around me. As I pulled up the drama triangle and started to read, I clicked a link that brought me to another article called "Radical Candor." Then something happened. As I read, a connection was made to a behavior that I have recently become aware of through working with my counsellor. I had no idea that this behavior had a name: fundamental attribution error.

(I am going to paraphrase what I learned from this article and do my best to link it to my own experiences, but you can read the full article here: https://agile-od.com/reflective-leadership/radical-candor)

When I look back at many of my relationships, I can pin point where this concept has been the first step in a cascade of reactionary hardening in my emotional demeanor, and has very quickly lead to recoil and refusal to be physically touched. In those moments I have always placed the blame for my recoil on my partner's behavior; I truly believed that if they had not acted in a certain way I would not have felt the need to recoil. After reading that article, I can clearly see that while my partner's behavior was indeed a catalyst, it was not the reason for this emotional response at all. I can also see that the intent I had for this entry, to examine myself through the lens of 'the victim,' is no longer appropriate.

If I consider this chain of events through the scope of the drama triangle, it becomes obvious that this recurrent dissonance is not a byproduct of my habitual self-victimization. Rather, this is a consequence of my incomprehension around my own defensive routines where I gravitate to the position of 'the persecutor.' There is a monumental difference between these two positions, and I was mistaken in my certainty that my conflict style was to move quickly through persecution and rescuer and land firmly in victimization. In reality it appears that I have been making assumptions about my partners' internal experiences, and in my hard-headed responses I have been oppressing them rather than working with them to heal.

This is where this dance begins.

The more my partner experiences what I perceive to be self-pity the thicker my shell becomes, especially if that partner reaches to me for comfort. As my emotional plasticity evaporates, the harder it is for me to access compassion and gentleness. This quickly slides into blame in order to justify that the behavior I am observing is a character flaw rather than a circumstantial reaction. Where I should be extending compassion and space for the other side sort through their own healing processes, my defensive instinct is to assassinate their character and blame them for my emotional upheaval. This autopilot setting is not solely attached to conflict either. This can also be triggered situationally; I have had this pattern arise when partners have been struggling with self-doubt or depression, and I am aware that it even showed its ugly face while a past partner was recovering from surgery and struggling to reach the dishes in the top cupboards. How awful! This is something I can never unsee, and realizing this has come loaded with shame and embarrassment. What a terrible way to treat people.

I could take some time and dive into the childhood reasons why I behave this way, but justification seems trivial when I know that I have done damage to the relationships that have lived this with me. If you are reading this, you know who you are. I am so sorry if I have added to your trauma. I lacked the ability to see my own patterns and certainly the tools to acknowledge and navigate them.

Healing is a lonely process full of looking at the undesirable ways that you have treated people, and yourself. I am astounded that I still have people in my life who care to be around me, and I fully understand the reasons why some people have chosen not to stick around. I am also actively working to extend my past self compassion around my complete absence of self-awareness. It is alarming to realize that I have been actively responsible for many of the fissures in my romantic connections. I own that I have caused harm, and I am working hard to implement accountability for that harm. I am making amends where I can and slowing things down to avoid repetition.

I hate that my past partners have had to make sacrifices for my rigidness. I hope to do better.

I am certain that it was a common experience for many through the pandemic to have struggled with isolation, and that isolation looked a little different for every person. Navigating the health regulations as a solo person was tricky and I found myself terrified to ask others for physical contact. Not only did I not want to contribute to the spread of the virus, but I was also aware of the intense level of judgement radiating throughout our community.

As regulations continued to tighten, I leaned into self-discovery and healing practices, of which fetish was a heavy hitter. I had been lucky enough to be in a bubble with a person whose kinky interests were closely matched to my own, but as the year rolled on our emotional load progressively intensified. Eventually, the sheer weight of it all made the vulnerability needed for cathartic engagement feel like too much, and our practice was placed on an indefinite hold. Even though physical touch was never truly off the table, the loss of that framework left me feeling chaotically adrift. This shift gave way to the awareness of my own gluttonous wants for sensation beyond the everyday pleasures of snuggles and sex, along with the fear that I may be shit out of luck for the foreseeable future.

One of the practices I had fallen in love with was rope play. I have always had a sexual fascination with rope and as such it has been present in my bedroom adventures throughout my adult life. Fetish had taken this avocation one step further and given it structure and direction. It presented me with a new type of exploration that was ripe with the delicate flavors of power exchange, and then taken it away just as suddenly as it had appeared. What it had left me with was the understanding that there was more to physical relating than just pleasure; there was pain here, too.

And pain could feel just as good.

I began to search out new experiences. I was well aware that actually touching people would need to wait until the province allowed such activities but now was the time for groundwork. I remember imagining what the world would feel like after the fear of COVID had passed, and I didn't want to miss a beat. When the world opened up, I would be ready.

In my search for loveliness and future indulgence I came across an individual who seemed to know a thing or two, and I must admit my mind immediately paired them with my want for taction. We decided to make the necessary arrangements to share time in private spaces and get to know one another. The more I got to know him the more challenged I felt. There was potential here, certainly, but also lessons to be learned.

This was someone with clear, healthy boundaries which enforced their fundamental core values and needs. Not only had he deliberately been single for a stretch of time before meeting me, but he was also particular about who touched him and when. I was in awe. I found myself in deep states of listening as he would talk about his life. He told me about all the events which had led him to these understandings about himself and the things he needed to thrive in relationship to others. He requested that, for the time being, I ask permission before touching him, and I happily obliged.

I am a firm believer that boundaries are to be respected and am a frequent flyer when it comes to setting them for myself. There was never a moment with this rad new being where I felt that his boundaries inconvenienced me, nor did I ever think to cross them. However. This was definitely a new approach to forming connection for me, and I did struggle with my own comprehension of what made a romantic relationship successful. I was challenged in my interpretation that touch was something I needed rather than something I wanted and had to actively remove my attachment to the idea that the request for physical space would dissolve in the future at some point. Instead, I was choosing to accept that love could grow within the authentic parameters which allowed him to feel safe with me, especially when that meant we did not touch at all.

Over time I began to see how touching the people I love has always been an assumption woven right into the ways I connect. Being asked to refrain from touching without permission became a point of intense focus for me. As it became more routine, I noticed how often people out in the world would touch me without asking. This was the first time I was experiencing societal entitlement to my body with this level of clarity. For weeks this realization was present for me, like I was waking up and realizing I didn't know I had been asleep.

I can honestly say that the lessons I am still learning through loving this new person have come at a time of upheaval in my gender transition. I recently wrote about my realization that I was experiencing bottom dysphoria and my decision to remove sexual interactions from my life for the time being (I explored this process in the posts titled Standing Still and What Is It, Really?) Had I not been learning about how to love free from physical expectations, making the decision to stop having sex would have likely caused me to spiral into uncertainty, self-doubt, and depression.

Life has a funny way of giving me what I need rather than what I want, and it doesn't seem to care if I hold my breath and stomp my feet about it. When it's time to learn, it's time to learn.

When I met you, I thought I knew some things.

Now that I am learning you, I can see how little I know.

TW: Bottom dysphoria, sexual content, finding humor in both.

$250 seemed a bit steep for a closet organizer, but there really was no comparison for the sense of urgency I was feeling after a year of tripping over shoes and piles of laundry. I had just written my last final exam of the semester and my inability to turn off the “go, go, go!” mentality that carries me through my school year was in full force. I thanked my student loans, held my breath, and tapped my life away.

I managed to maneuver the heavy, oblong box out of the car and up the two flights of stairs. As I dragged it diagonally through the abnormally small doorway of my apartment, I tripped over a pair of shoes and went ass over tea kettle scaring my cat and undoubtedly my downstairs neighbor. The townhouse we had moved from had been 1900 square feet with closets in all three bedrooms, as well as coat and linen closets on both floors. This closet is one of only two in the 650 square foot, one bedroom apartment that my 11 year old child and I now share. Small home living requires functionality, often demanding that stuff be two things: the bathtub is also where the cat litter box lives, the kitchen table is also a desk for homework, my bed is also a couch, and this closet needed to contain my clothing, everyone’s shoes, and also all of the household coats and snow gear. I grumbled something along the lines of "I'll show you" to the rogue runners now flayed across the hallway floor, stood up with conviction, and grabbed a handful of hangers.

I made quick work of removing all the items from the standard apartment coat pole and shelf. As I looked over the instructions for the organizer, I realized that not only was it a foot too wide for the space I was working with, but also that the hardware that currently resided here was permanently fixed to the walls. I grabbed my hammer. Demolition ensued. I was swearing and sweating as I pulled the fixtures out knowing full well that returning the closet to its original state would be a future Joey problem, and he would not be happy about it.

The next step was to translate the instructions, make the necessary space adjustments, assemble, and install the organizer itself. This process was tricky. There were many steps taken out of order, requiring many partial disassemblies to include a crucial piece of nameless hardware needed for structural integrity. Sometimes I wouldn't even realize a piece was missing until I tried to insert the new structure into the empty space where it would collapse in on itself and I would need to pick up the pieces and try again.

Somewhere among the rubble of failed attempts I realized that this closet organizer was more than just a home improvement for me. I have often explained that I visualize my gender transition as a house of cards. In the beginning, I had a fully built structure where the cards at the bottom represented a foundational understanding of myself as a woman in society; each one being a different facet of what made me who I knew myself to be. When I began to look closer I realized that one of those cards didn't quite fit, but when I pulled it out the entire pyramid collapsed in on itself and left me with a new sense of alienation and spiritual homelessness, not to mention a stubborn sense of motivation to put the puzzle back together. This has been a repetitive process for me. Each time I examine the foundational cards I find one that needs to be replaced and start the process of rebuilding my identity all over again.

The last time I had sex I cried for three days afterward. The sexual interaction was so lovely that the juxtaposition of how it affected me was shocking. I had been fully clothed. There was excitement, consent, kindness, orgasm, and a very loving goodbye at the end of the evening. When I unpacked the 'big sads' that followed with the help of my counsellor, I connected this feeling to feelings of shame I had experienced as a very young child when I was starting to explore my body. I remember anticipating that I would feel dirty and shameful afterward but also feeling unable to refrain from chasing the excitement of release. I was too young to know that I was not the only person in the world who felt good when I touched myself, and I certainly had no language to help me understand why I felt shameful afterward.

I recently engaged in a deconstructive adventure of my gender dysphoria with the man who was the catalyst for my sexual, and ultimately my gender, revolution. I honestly cannot count the amount of conversations we have had that have entirely changed my understanding of myself and the world around me. On this day, he had asked if we could explore my dysphoria to help him understand what the experience was like for me, and I happily obliged. After an hour of co-creative conversation and weaving of language, my love made a proclomation of understanding that shifted one of my foundation cards.

"So your dysphoria is based in sensation rather than visual representation, which means that your physical sensations remind you of the state of your body."

Down came the cards.

The last time I had sex I had an orgasm. There had been physical contact made with my lower pleasure center leading to the release of that sensation throughout the rest of my body. The 'big sads' had come the next day and lingered with a message I had not been ready to receive. Bottom dysphoria.

I quickly connected the dots to the dirty, shameful feelings I had when I was too young to understand that the body I resided in felt foreign and wrong. In that moment my understanding became the ultimate witness for my 'big sads.'

I stood triumphantly regarding the fully operational closet organizer and became excited to put all my pieces into their new homes. I hung the coats, long items such as overalls, and dress shirts. I placed the shoes on the tower and slid my drawers into place. To my surprise I had not made any space for new items. In fact, I had lost space. Not everything was going to fit back in which left me pulling apart my outward gender expression piece by piece. Consideration was given to each item: does this shirt feel like home when I put it on? Some items stayed, most ended up on the boulevard.

Thank you closet organizer. Installing you has shown me that no matter how messy things need to get, no matter how disassembled I need to be, in order to figure out where the pieces go, there will inevitably be times when I feel validated for my hard work. I find comfort in the knowledge that I am capable of taking myself completely apart to come back together in a more intentional way.

"Would you like me to drop you off down the street?"

This offer was my genuine attempt at minimizing the potential for heated conflict upon my company's arrival back home. We had spent the evening simply enjoying one another perched on a rock face over the ocean, eating a picnic dinner and discussing scary movies. When we got back into the car, the heaviness of what might come next joined us and rudely buckled in for the ride. I have to admit, this was the first time I had ever had to navigate the wrath of a metamour, but not my first experience with this type of situation. In the past, I have been that metamour.

I have always felt a sense of entitlement to my feel my feelings. Knowing that they are not a reflection of who I am has helped me to minimize my fear of what they might mean, and allowed me to explore them with a willingness to learn from them. I am grateful to have experienced safe spaces created by loving partners where we have dug in together to find the roots and pull them out. Every time I got to do this I felt loved, supported, and seen, and in the times where there was no immediate resolution there was always space to return to safety and remember why we loved one another. When I let those memories in, I feel the return to that secure space in every nook of my vessel. Within this structure I am experienced; existing in safety with a person I love, knowing that what we share with one another goes into our vault and is not held in judgement, but seen rather as an opportunity to learn and grow together.

I know how those conversations would have looked to someone existing outside of our private space. Without the years of pre-existing context to lend understanding to my experiences, I can imagine how unsafe I would have felt to a person coming into a secondary-type position in our polycule. It can be so challenging to know what is safe to share and what is not when you are exploring the excitement of a new connection. You want the new person to know you, to see all the wonderful things you bring to the table. You want them to know what makes you who you are, how you practice poly, the struggles you have had and how you overcame them. Show me your resilience, and I'll show you mine.

Four years ago my marriage ended; I felt lost. I was adrift in the nothingness that used to be my life plan, surrounded by confusion and rage, the rug pulled right out from under me. While I was deconstructing the life I had built with my spouse, I was also falling in white, hot love with another person. It was conflicting to hold something so sad and tragic in one hand while also holding something so beautiful and loving in the other. My world was a yin yang, and I was frantic in the emotional upheaval of it all.

I look back at that experience and I know that I failed to maintain separation between the two sides of that situation. I would often have intense conflict with my spouse and lean on my new partner for support and validation. It felt good to have someone see what was happening from the inside and confirm that my fury was righteous. However, what I did not anticipate was the return of my spouse into my life later down the road.

When I leaned on my new partner to support me in my break up, I did not set them up to feel comfort when my spouse and I did not entirely part ways. I paved the way for my new partner's attachment to the removal of my spouse from my life, and when that didn't happen it left a tear in their ability to feel safe in our connection. It also ended in my new partner giving me an ultimatum which knee-capped my freedom to form a new connection with my spouse moving forward.

If I had moved through my separation with my spouse free from that new connection there would have been more space for me to burn through my feelings, learn from them, and proceed in a much more respectful fashion. I was with my spouse for six years. He and I were together through losing a friend to a mystery illness, our child growing and starting school, moving to a different city together, starting new jobs and losing them, living apart in separate cities. . . the list goes on. That relationship deserved just as much of my time and attention in its deconstruction as it did in its creation and duration. Falling in love while coming apart enabled me to disengage from my separation, and pacified me with reassurances that in the end did me a disservice to my personal growth. It also sent the message that our marriage didn't deserve my respect because "it didn't work out."

Relationships end. Badly. Either someone dies, or we break up (Multiamory, 2019). These are things I know. Being the "new partner" gave me front row seats to the turmoil my presence was causing in the pre-existing partnership. Despite my best efforts to remain neutral, I could feel myself becoming attached to the outcome and fearing the possibility that a conclusion may not ever entify. I remember feeling unsafe and punished for existing. It was clear that there was no allowance being made for my presence in the life of the person I was building with, despite their best efforts otherwise. My metamour was actively attempting to remove me. Although there was never an actual ultimatum it felt an awful lot like an attempt at veto.

Being the secondary person was an important experience for me to have. It gave a depth and dimension to my understanding of polyamory that I did not know I was lacking. It is easy to speculate about how someone else might be feeling when you are situationally oppositional; however, it is often much different to actually live that experience yourself. I can say that this one felt especially gruesome leaving me feeling both grateful and wounded.

I am still growing from those lessons. I want to know about other partners; tell me who they are and why you love them. Tell me about what they love to do and what makes them unique. But there is a difference between telling me about a person and telling me the details of a fight your had with them. Perhaps we should keep the inner details of our other relationships out of our conversations. Those things have no place in our connection. They can lead to misrepresentation, misunderstanding, fear, resentment, and can create a feeling of opposition and danger for a new person attempting to take up space. When it comes right down to it, who said what when emotions were running high is none of my business anyway. Instead, let's focus on what I can learn about you.

Tell me about the hardships you have survived and the arguments that you revisit and have regrets about. Tell me about the most difficult choices you have ever had to make and the lessons you have learned from the stories others have shared with you. But leave names out of it.

In the novice stages of learning any new skill the mind is hungry for the wisdom of those that came before. It is common to cling to advice that is offered to help you progress in your practice with very little room left for deviation; this has certainly been my experience with polyamory. Throughout my personal evolution I have made a habit of reaching out to people who were practicing poly with seemingly more success than I was having. Every bit of advice I received came with the caveat that although their strategies were working for them they may not work for everyone. I was instructed to take what worked and leave what didn't, and I have been grateful for every tidbit.

I have done my best to tend to my garden so that my poly plant may grow as it will, but what happens when the practice outgrows itself? My solo heart longs for love without borders, but the current boundaries of my practice are chafing against the sneaky, exclusionary opinions of the community at large. I am left questioning much of the content being created and passed onto those who are just starting out or seeking advice, worrying that the backhanded messaging is doing us a disservice.

The concept I would like to explore today is how monogamy and polyamory are portrayed as a contradictory set of ideologies rather than individualized methods of relating. There are a ton of people who will tell you horror stories about a monogamous person falling in love with a polyamorous person, and then trying to convince them to become monogamous. This archetype is coined “the cowboy.” Many poly people have suffered the disillusionment of the person they are with wishing to returning to monogamy. This happens. I am not going to pretend it doesn’t, but I wonder how often someone actually enters into a poly relationship with this intent versus how often someone genuinely tries polyamory and it just doesn’t fit.

I am privileged at this point in my life to have had experiences where I have loved someone deeply and known that, despite our best efforts, what we were doing wasn’t working. In many of those situations I have tried to change myself or find compromises to save the connection. Just because my compromises were not found within the relationship structure itself doesn’t mean that I wasn’t willing to shift other important aspects if it meant that we could stay together. This strategy never worked for me, but that isn’t the point here. The point is that there should be no shame in lacking the tools, and possibly also the innate understanding, to make polyamory work. And if polyamory doesn't work for you, you should be able to change your mind without being shamefully labelled as having ill intent. Nor should there be shame attached to falling in love with someone who does things differently than you do. Unfortunately, most of the messaging out there reinforces the idea that if someone changes their mind about polyamory the relationship needs to end.

Let's dissect polyamory and monogamy. What are they? They are constructs, ways in which people build loving connections with others. It is common knowledge that within the polyamorous community there are a litany of ways that people practice - so much so, it can be difficult to find other people who practice the same way that you do. Often you will see solo folx relating with hierarchies, anarchists with entire polycules, primary partners practicing secondary relationships in different ways. . . the possibilities truly are endless. The reason this works is because we seem to have an unspoken understanding that just because one person is one way doesn’t mean that their partners need to be. So why do we then carry this belief that monogamy is any different? Why is the fear of “the cowboy” cemented solely to monogamous folx? Human beings are made up of complex layers, and I know from experience that even polyamorous people can change their minds about maintaining these types of relationships. It seems to be contradictory to say that if you identify as poly you are safe to love, but if you identify as monogamous you come with a greater risk of ultimatums and manipulation.

People are just people. They do their best with what they have. If someone practices monogamy it literally has nothing to do with me. That is their relationship structure, not mine. Does that mean that we can still have something beautiful and worth investing time and energy into? Absolutely. I would have a hard time walking away from authentic love with a person based solely on how they build their own romantic foundation. Would it require work? Definitely. Would it require some educating and trial and error to find healthy patterns? Most likely. Does this also sound like every other connection I have ever had? Eerily.

Now what if we turn this line of thinking on its end. If one person has been monogamously relating to you and changes their mind about that relationship structure, where does that leave the original connection? If we are working off of the firm belief that people have the right to change their minds, then there must be room given for the decision to be made in the opposite direction. I read an article once that changed my perspective on opening up a relationship. It attested to the fact that if you are indeed changing the foundation of how you are going to be relating to one another and the people around you, you must be willing to let the original connection come to an end. It is impossible to take the same structure and expect it to work when the rules have changed. The ways in which you have learned to exist together no longer can provide the sense of security it once did, and a new way must be found to come together while making space for other connections to be prioritized and nurtured. Holding someone hostage in an expired way of relating fosters resentment. It stalls the opportunity to come back together and allow for personal growth and autonomy. Refusing to change expectations and being rigid towards new people in your partner's life creates friction for everyone. In fact, it could said that this behavior is similar to that of someone who would be labelled a "cowboy" if the situation was reversed. I won't say that because I believe that labels like this set us all back, but this is definitely something to consider when making judgements about how to accommodate the people we care about in ways that support their growth rather than grate against it.

When it comes down to it, if someone is telling you you're not allowed to changed your mind, that's not love. That’s control.