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html Revolutionary romance: A primer for polyamory

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We live in a culture that is fanatically invested in monogamy, and does just about everything it can to discourage and punish polyamory. It teaches every one of us from birth that non-monogamy is one of the most horrible things a person can do. For Sadie Ryanne polyamory comes down to the idea that one person cant, and shouldnt, be expected to provide for all of our (emotional and sexual) needs. It is also a political identity marking her opposition to compulsory monogamy. 11 June 2011 Ive been thinking about love, and relationships, and what these things mean to me. (This is probably because Ive become smitten twitterpated, even! with a few new people lately, and Im a bit preoccupied) I guess because Ive been talking a lot about new dates (*cough* like a giddy teenage queen *cough*) and my upcoming wedding, Ive been having to answer lots of questions about polyamory. Monogamous people just seem to be utterly fascinated (or horrified) by it, and they want to talk to me about it all the time. One friend recently called me the most amorous-seeking person theyve ever met. Im a flirty gal, its true But when asked how many relationships Im in (which happens often), I honestly dont know how to answer. Three? Five? A dozen? According to dominant monogamous narratives, a relationship is a special kind of dynamic that is easily distinguishable (because it is the only dynamic that is supposed to involve both romance and sex), and it needs to be fiercely defined and defended. Strict monogamous expectations leave no room for flexibility or fluidity: You are always supposed to be either not in a relationship (and thus sexually available) or in a relationship (and therefore

sexually exclusive). I find that when most monogamous people try to understand polyamory, they still generalize this basic idea. They understand that Im not sexually or romantically exclusive, but they still assume that I have multiple relationships the way they understand what a relationship is. Thus, when monogamous people ask me how many relationships are you in? they expect the answer to be easy. Well, that just doesnt apply to my life. There are people with whom I have extremely deep, loving bonds (even explicit lifetime commitments) that dont involve sex. On the other end, I might have sex with people for money and not care about them at all. In the middle, there are people I regularly have sex with and really, deeply enjoy the presence of. I consider them intimate friends, and care about them a lot, but we have very little contact or commitment outside of sex. And of course, its all very flexible: Someone who begins as a sexual partner often ends up as a platonic best friend. So, how many relationships am I in? Do I count the person who knows me better than almost anyone and who I talk to all the time, whom I used to fuck but dont anymore? Or what about the lover I fuck but only speak to once a month? Do I count both, or just one and if just one, which? Dont get me wrong I still spend a lot of time thinking about how to define my relationships. My partners and I spend a lot of energy discussing how to refer to each other, what we want out of our relationship, and so on. I still get joyously anxious about new crushes when Im not sure where they will go, I still squeal when someone asks me to be their girlfriend, and I still cry when one of my partners decides that we shouldnt call each other lovers anymore. Its not that the labels have no meaning for me. But instead of assuming that there is only one, monolithic way to define a relationship, I see it much differently: There are just many different dynamics between two or more people (Im in at least one triad, by the way), and many different words that they might use to describe their relationship to one another. What poly actually looks like (for me) Top three questions I receive from monogamous people about polyamory: Q: Isnt that cheating? A: No. Mutually consenting to date or have sex with other people bears no resemblance to lying or breaking promises. Q: Is that like polygamy? A: No. Polygamy (meaning many wives) is a sexist, patriarchal religious institution in which one man has authority over multiple women. This is nothing at all like polyamory, which is a system in which people of all genders freely negotiate the terms of their relationships with multiple romantic and/or sexual partners. Q: Dont you get jealous? A: No. (Read on if youre curious) The other most common misconception about polyamory is that it just means having multiple sexual partners. Close but, wrong! I know plenty of folks who are in one committed relationship who also sleep around for fun with lots of other people on the side, with the mutual consent of all involved. I think of this as responsible non-monogamy. And I think polyamory is one form of responsible non-monogamy.

But, for me, being polyamorous is something more specific. The focus is also on the amory part I have multiple loves, not just multiple sex partners. Some monogamous people try to make sense of my situation as an open relationship. But I dont think that really captures it. Yes, my marriage is open; but its different. Im also in love with multiple people. Then, a lot of people go, Oh, okay. So your wife is like your primary partner, and the other people are just for fun. Getting warmer but still wrong. Although I understand the appeal and I respect why a lot of poly people use them, Ive never liked the terms primary / secondary / tertiary partner. I dont like to set up a hierarchy that way. (I know a lot of poly people who do want that hierarchy, and thats legit. But right now at least, I dont.) My fiancee is the person I want to spend almost every day with for the rest of my life, the person who supports me the closest and is like my other half, and with whom I will someday have a house and children. So we use the term wife to describe each other, because that is the closest cultural reference point to help index how we feel about each other. But thats just one way to form a relationship. Shes not the only one who has supported me, and shes not the only person who cares about me. And just because shes my wife doesnt mean that those other relationships are one bit less important to me. My partners each give me something special and unique to that relationship dynamic, whether its spectacular sex or a unique perspective on mental health issues. My fiancee and I have a lot in common. We can talk for days about obscure hardcore bands, and I will listen to her talk about baseball stats for hours. But we dont share everything in common. (She hates giving back rubs, and I reeeeeeally like backrubs.) Its nice to have other lovers and best friends who can talk about other things that she doesnt like, or who share past experiences in common with me that she doesnt have. While I love ranting about rock n roll history with her and getting support for dealing with my madness from her, its also nice to have people who can swoon with me over obscure leftist revolutionary tracts from the last century or other people who also live with panic and anxiety, for example. And just because she and I have one kind of relationship doesnt make my other relationships any less valid. (And Im not even strictly opposed to having multiple people fill that role that is, multiple wives. I have no idea what the future holds.) The types of bonds I have are as diverse as the types of sex I have. One partner and I have weekly phone dates, because they live so, so far away. We barely ever get to spend time together in person. Another hates the phone, but we write each other long, passionate letters every few days. Another hates staying in touch altogether, but when we visit, we immediately talk as openly and deeply as though we had never been apart. This is why monogamy (the idea that sex should only occur within the context of committed relationships, and that this should be exclusively with one person, and they should also be the only person with whom you share a deep emotional bond) does not appeal to me at all. Why would I want to limit myself to one kind of intimate, personal, emotional, bond let alone one sexual partner? And why would I expect those all to come from the same person? For me, polyamory comes down to the idea that one person cant, and shouldnt, be expected to provide for all of our (emotional and sexual) needs. Some people find pleasure from a variety of styles of communication, support, commitment and sex. Sure, we could deny parts of desires and limit ourselves to one person but why? I need the vanilla as much as the kinky! I find happiness from both my partners who need me to hold them through their crises and the partners who just want to stay up all night and party. Theyre

all valid, just different ways to share our lives with the people around us, and I wouldnt want me or my partners to lose the opportunity to pursue new kinds of relationships. Someone recently exclaimed, upon finding out that Im poly, So what, one person doesnt satisfy you? Although she sounded accusatory, well, yes that does just about sum it up. I dont have a set, finite amount of love. My feelings for one person dont diminish the importance or intensity of my feelings for someone else. Just as a mother can love each of her children without having to prioritize only one of them, thats kind of how I feel about my partners. This is a central tenant of my polyamory: Each relationship is separate and doesnt take away from the realness or intensity of the other(s). I can still be heartbroken by the breakup of one relationship while being ecstatically in love with another and brimming with excitement about the possibility of another new one starting. The radical politics of blooming flowers But theres also more to my poly identity than that. Polyamory is more than a descriptive term for a certain type of relationship structure. It is also, at least for me, a political identity marking my opposition to compulsory monogamy. (Which, by the way, is not the same as saying Im opposed to monogamy itself I just think it should be one option among many. I trust people to know whats best for themselves. Ive been intentionally monogamous at points in my life for many, totally valid, reasons. My fiancee and I started off monogamous because, at the time, we werent feeling totally secure in our relationship. But as our mutual trust grew, we eventually decided we didnt need to be monogamous anymore. I just want that option to be there for everyone. Monogamy is fine and helpful sometimes, but I loathe the cultural standard that says everyone must be that way, and that non-monogamous people must be punished for our nonconformity.) Capitalism teaches us to think of everything in terms of austerity, property and competition. Thus, the capitalist/patriarchal narrative of love is something like this: We each have a tiny amount of love, we must compete for the scarce love of another person, the best person for us (our one true love) will win the competition for our hearts, and then we must establish ownership over each other and defend our property from others. Well, in the infamous words of my childhood hero, Princess Jasmine: I am not a prize to be won. (Yeah, I know, Disneys Aladdin was a terribly fucking racist movie, but what little girl wouldnt want to fall in love with petty thieves and have a giant tiger for a pet?) While I certainly think that competition has its place in human experience (I love sports, after all), I dont think economic necessities or love should be subject to it. Polyamory has the potential to challenge many of the entrenched sexist and trans/homophobic social structures notably, the nuclear family. Rather than an unquestioned division of labor along binary, heterosexual gender roles (man as breadwinner with a career, woman as dependent unpaid caregiver), polyamory opens the door to a variety of messy, self-determined, tangled networks as alternatives for creating families, providing for mutual support, raising children and so on. Not to mention, the more we pursue pleasure and love for ourselves and the people around us, the more we eschew the neoliberal imperative to be productive (where productivity is narrowly defined within a capitalist framework). The Puritan work ethic demands that we deny ourselves pleasure and focus on productivity sex, likewise, should only be about producing children, and all other sex is an abomination. Polyamory, at least when practiced intentionally, sows the possibility to imagine other possible ways to conceive of sex, pleasure, and productivity. Contrary to a scarce resource that I should only give to one person, if anything, I have A LOT of love to share. I find so much joy in life from being in love. Why only do it once?

I spent a long time wishing people would show me love and finding out that they never would, and a lot of time having people telling me that Im ugly and weird and undesirable. My therapist says Im like a flower that has been trampled by years of abuse and violence, and am now sharing my formerly-neglected beauty with as many people as I can. I think hes on to something. Sounds nice, but how does it work? This is one question I get asked all the freakin time by monogamous people. They like the idea of having multiple loves, and they dig the politics. But they get caught up in the practical stuff: Where do you sleep? Doesnt someone get jealous? Or, my least favorite: Isnt possessiveness just part of human nature? (The first two are at least legitimate problems that I can have conversations about. The last one is just empirically false.) Being poly is a lot of work. Saying otherwise would be a huge lie. So I get why some people, even those committed to the ideals of non-possessiveness, prefer to be monogamous. Ive been there, too. Although my love is infinite, the one thing that is finite? My time and energy. This is my major barrier. I just dont have enough time to invest in seriously dedicated relationships with more than a few people. One isnt enough, but five is probably too many. Even at the number of deeply invested relationships Im at (three-ish), I sometimes feel stretched thin, overwhelmed, and over-stimulated. While making sure that all of my partners feel like Im giving them sufficient attention, I also have to make sure I get me time to chill out and be alone. It can be a lot to balance. But the bottom line: Its worth it to me. I never planned to date this many people at the same time. I actually had issued a (half-joking) moratorium on new dates at one point! But when I meet really awesome people, I dont want to pass up the opportunity to be happy. It took awhile to figure out how to manage my time (and finances several of my partners live out of town, so travel is an expense), but we get it done. Sure, sometimes its confusing to figure out who is sleeping where, especially because I live with my fiancee. But as long as everyone involved wants to make it work (and we all legitimately do), it isnt dramatic. It just means we have to, you know, talk to each other about stuff. As for jealousy Honestly, I really dont get jealous. At least not about sex. There is really only one time I get jealous: If I want to do something with one partner, and they arent doing it with me, but are instead doing it with someone else. Like, if I want to play a hockey video game with my girlfriend, but we never play video games together, and then she makes a date to play hockey video games with someone else I might get jealous. But if thats the case, I just say Hey, whats up? I wanted to do that with you. And usually my girlfriend will be like, Oh, bummer, I didnt realize that. Sorry, how about we play hockey video games next Tuesday? Problem solved. It really is that simple. Her playing hockey games with other people doesnt mean she cant also do it with me sometimes, and it doesnt make our gaming sessions any less fun. (Yes, this is absolutely a thinly-veiled metaphor. *Ahem*) Ive been a jealous person in the past. In fact, for most of my dating life (I started dating at 13, and have only been cumulatively single for maybe a year or two since then), I was fiercely monogamous and possessive. Jealously was something that had to be unlearned, gradually. And that wasnt easy, either. It took time, and lots and lots of communication. Whenever I feel jealous, I just talk to my partner(s) about it. Usually, there are other issues at play. Like, if I get

jealous that my girlfriend is hanging out with someone besides me, the problem probably isnt that shes having fun with another person its probably that Im feeling neglected or annoyed and it gets expressed through jealousy. Whenever I admit to feeling any jealousy, some monogamous people act like, Ha! See! Told ya, people really are programmed to be possessive! But thats absurd. Jealousy is just one emotion. Love makes me feel many things. Instead of just pretending that I never get jealous (like a lot of monogamous people do), I actually acknowledge it and try to work through it. For sure, jealousy exists and it can be dilemma but no more than any of the other dozens of issues that a relationship involves. Monogamous relationships take a lot of effort to sustain and keep healthy, too. And, like all of the rest of the work it takes to date, managing jealousy when it occurs is well worth the effort. (And, Ive found, gets progressively easier and less necessary over time. Once I got used to it, I started to feel jealous less and less often.) Another question I get all the damn time is, Arent you afraid that your partner will leave you for one of her other partners? (I hate this question.) Simple answer: No. I feel extremely confident and secure in all of my relationships. Otherwise, I wouldnt date them. I know that I provide my partners something unique that they dont get from other people. I can be in love with multiple people, but that doesnt mean that they are interchangeable. When I really crave one partners presence, no one else will do. Heartbreak is a possibility for anyone, poly or monogamous. Its a risk of dating and falling in love. If one of my partners falls out of love with me or just doesnt want or need to be around me, our being poly or monogamous doesnt change that. Plenty of monogamous people end up falling in love with people besides their partner and when they do, it usually leads to cheating, lies, guilt, and other nasty things. So, in fact, Im less worried that my partners will leave me because we are poly. If they fall in love with someone else, well then, awesome! Now they love two people. If we were monogamous, theyd have to chose only one, and it might not be me. But since, being poly, they dont have to chose, theres no worry. By the way, yes, poly people can cheat. Most poly relationships involve clearly articulated rules and pre-determined boundaries. One common and understandable rule many people have is, dont bring home another partner without advanced notice. Other poly folks might not care at all, and some might negotiate how much time is sufficient notice differently than others. But anytime a poly person doesnt respect the agreements theyve made with a partner, its still just as hurtful as when monogamous people cheat on one another. For example, some poly folks want to know if their partner starts sleeping with other people. If they started having sex with someone else, but didnt tell their partner its still cheating. But, on the whole, I find that poly relationships are usually much stronger because we do openly talk about things like jealousy. Ive found that many monogamous people (at least the vanilla ones) have no idea how to negotiate things like safer sex, boundaries, desires, and so on. Hell, most monogamous people dont even know how to talk about sex or romance at all without getting super uncomfortable! If I need some space from my fiancee or just want to stay in for the weekend, I might ask her, Hey, I was really hoping to sleep in my own bed this weekend. Do you think you can either not hang out with your other partner, or maybe spend the night at her house so I can have the house to myself? A lot of monogamous people I know are terrified to ask for space like that, and obsessively worry that theyre going to hurt their partners feelings or something. In my case, my lovers just try to

accommodate my needs and everyone ends up better off for it. Poly people basically have to talk about this stuff. With my poly partners, its totally considered normal to have regular check-ins about our boundaries to see how theyve changed and how were feeling. Acknowledging things like jealousy and talking about what were okay with and what wed rather not hear about and so on means that we have better communication skills, and thus are healthier partners. And theres another emotion that needs to be acknowledged. Jealousy exists, but so does compersion. This is a word that poly people invented to describe the feeling of happiness, satisfaction or fulfillment that is derived from knowing that your partner is happy, satisfied and fulfilled. Its real! Whenever one of my partners starts seeing someone new, I get excited and giddy with them. And when they get back from a fun date, I love to hear about it because knowing they had a good time cheers me up, too. So anytime I start to feel jealous, I just counter it with compersion. I can always tell when a monogamous person is asking me lots of questions about how polyamory works, its usually because they want to be poly but are afraid of it. They listen intently to me and then say, Wow, thats awesome. I wish I could do that, but Im just monogamous by nature. Bullshit. No one is monogamous or polyamorous by nature. Theyre just choices we make, and theyre both valid choices. But if you want to make polyamory work, you absolutely can. Honestly, the biggest barrier to making polyamory work is not jealousy. Its compulsory monogamy. Like queer and trans relationships in most places, poly relationships are not legally recognized and face a whole host of political and social barriers. We live in a culture that is fanatically invested in monogamy, and does just about everything it can to discourage and punish polyamory. It teaches every one of us from birth that non-monogamy is one of the most horrible things a person can do. While we have examples of monogamy in every fairy tale and Hollywood movie, barely anyone openly discusses polyamory. There are few, if any, well-known role models for poly folks. We even have to invent our own terms, because the language to describe our relationships doesnt exist yet in our culture. Poly people face bigtory and discrimination all over the place. Ive had people who totally accepted my being trans and my queer lovers, but who balked at my being poly. Relatives who accept my gay marriage start to question how serious my fiancee and I are only when they discover that were poly. Having multiple loves isnt inherently revolutionary. But in a world that tries to erase our loves and control how we define our relationships, it takes courage to defy the moralistic directives of the dominant social patterns. As a radical poly feminist, Im invested in destroying the culture of monogamy and building a world where we can love whomever we want, as many people as we want, for however long we want. Whos with me? Sadie Ryanne dreams of a world where police, bosses, teachers, pimps, doctors, social workers, immigration agents and schoolyard bullies dont have the power to keep us from being the strong and beautiful people we know we are, and she believes it takes our collective strength and action to move toward that world. She is a member of the DC Trans Coalition, a volunteer, grassroots organization dedicated to fighting for human rights, dignity, and liberation for all trans people in the District. Sadie has also worked with HIPS, a peer support agency for sex workers, the National Center for Transgender Equality and is a founding Steering Committee member of the Trans Advocacy Network. While not pestering the government or giving workshops, she can be found talking to herself and her cats.

She maintains a personal blog at The Distant Panic, where this article first appeared.