Monday, September 23, 2013

other people's husbands, other people's kids

After completely rocking out to this weekend's amazing Ian Hunter concert at the amazing City Winery, I spent Saturday morning sulking, rudely sending work emails in the last moments of my parents' visit, yelling at my husband (battered by wine and reduced to a sad sprawl in his bed) and losing-then-finding my last student loan check.



But also! I did: use essentially my entire first full paycheck to make a massive credit card payment, so I can start paying down my student loans; spend the rest of Saturday feeding my child, napping, building the Best Stack Ever of library books for the week; and volunteering first at a nursing home for kids and then as a group home for young moms and their babies/toddlers. Mac made an older friend and ground cake into their couches; I tried to sympathize with a woman attempting to parent a three-year-old and a three-month-old simultaneously.

I also read about, then argued with my husband about, the latest post on the ever-intriguing blog Polyskeptic. Which, in turn, generated its own navel-gazing about my own marriage, one, and my general skepticism about polyamory, two.

I don't really know why this is something that interests me. It's not the kind of lifestyle choice that has any bearing on my own life; I have the remarkable luck of having married the best person on the planet. I imagine kids who use their Columbia acceptances letters for the purpose of attending law school at Columbia, for example, probably don't spend a lot of time wondering about the road less taken. Over here in Brooklyn, I never get a bagel at Bergen Bagels and then wonder if I needed to play the breakfast-carb field more. (Although if that field exists you must call me now oh my God). Or go to the library and then wish I'd been more openminded about how to spend my afternoons. I have simple tastes: just give me the Platonic ideal of breadstuffs, weekend diversions, spouses, and I don't want anything else. If we had world enough and time, I'd still be hard pressed to explore the world beyond BPL, bagels, and my boo.

But you know. I do find it helpful, sometimes, to think about why I want such different things from other people, and how those differences inform my understanding of my own choices.

Fundamentally, for me, the benefit of being married isn't that it makes my life better. That it does is undeniable: I'm less lonely, more human, more happy, more functional. But the mechanism by which most of that happens has to do with the fact, now that I am married, there exist these shimmering and rare little moments in which my own well-being is no longer my priority. 

In my best moments -- in the moments that demonstrate to me that marriage and life and my efforts, chaotic and ambivalent as they are, to live my life in accordance with my value system, occasionally bear fruit -- I find myself capable of wanting things one way, but actively working to make them another way, in an effort to make life easier or more enjoyable or more comfortable for my partner. To some people, I can only presume, this comes easily. Those people should write blogs! I would certainly read them!

For me, this is the difference between marriage and other kinds of relationships, the ones I'm able to control more easily by remaining peripheral: I don't get a break to go be selfish and then return to the relationship later, when I'm in a better space. I don't get to decide that I'm taking my damn toys home and leaving if I'd really rather have things my way than play well with others. I don't get a pass on checking out when my husband gets sick or drinks too much or loses someone and is nearly-destroyed by grief. Unlike when I was dating, there's this imperative to behave well even when it's not getting me what I want, even when the people around me aren't behaving or responding how I would want. Whereas, in every other relationship of my life, when I don't want to be a brat, but I also don't want to pull myself together, I can just bounce, like I do.

So much of that is 1) exhausting and 2) predicated on being reliable, which is not a sexy value or a marketable value and therefore is pretty entirely overlooked, not least by me, at least most of the time. It makes sense to me that if I'm to put someone else first, always, then I can't making that commitment, simultaneously, to more than one person.

Some people can give that kind of love to multiple people, I gather. I'm not one, and not really interested in being one. It seems to me that one of the talking points of polyamory advocates is that this way of relating to others forces everyone to be super honest and get over "baggage" like jealousy and neediness.

To me, when I hear this, it sound like this: just effing deal with, and learn to be a grown up about, the fact that ultimately, you may need someone and that person may not be there. Which is a truth, yes -- but a shitty, hard truth, one I'd like to encounter as infrequently as possible, and from which I'd like to shield those I love as often as I can.

This, I think, is a fundamental difference between myself and most of the (few!) people I know, or whose writings I follow, who prefer to commit to multiple people at once, and most often conditionally (I think that most polyamorous people are also advocates of leaving "non-functional" relationships, though I could be wrong about that. I'm not an advocate of this, in part because I play fast and loose with phrases like "non-functional" and would have left my own marriage about fifteen times by now if I let its future be determined by how I feel about Things at any given point in time.)

I don't want my spouse to need me, and to not be there, because I have my hands full with someone else who has a similar claim on me and who also needs me -- or (and I'm not saying this happens more in polyamorous relationships, only that, my view of human nature being what it is, I think the opportunity that polyamory provides for this is something of a moral hazard) because my other Most Important Person wants to provide me with stimulating conversation and delicious wine, and all you want is for me to sit with your stifling and ugly grief over tasteless sandwiches three weeks after everyone else has moved on. What happens when your two or three or four most important people have losses back to back? Who gets to find someone else to see them through that?

Most of all, my primary interest at this point in my life is getting over my pervasive selfishness. I am so self centered that the most innocuous and unrelated enterprises have a way of fading into the Amanda Show. The reason that new relationships feel fun and good, often, is that you're suddenly a star, every aspect of your precious self new and amazing and novel.

The parts of me that crave that are not the parts that I want to cultivate. I'm sorely in need of practice in loving people whose function in my life is more substantial, and less immediately gratifying, than fixing me in their fuzzy gaze, a la every poignant-wistful mid-nineties cultural reference ever, and reflecting a sexy/vulnerable/insubstantial image of myself back to me. Dating, for me, is the lowest common denominator of social interaction. I love being married not only because it happily precludes dating -- the biggest, shiniest get-out-of-jail-free card ever -- but also because the experience of withholding from myself the cheap gratification of That Guy Thinking I'm Pretty is the glorious antidote to the soul - crushery of dating.


4 comments:

  1. Mandy,

    By your discussion here, I feel that you may have some fundamental misunderstandings about what polyamory is, and how it works. I completely understand having those misunderstanding. Mononormativity being what it is, it's really difficult to understand nonmonogamy when you're not living it every day. Add to that the fact that there are infinite varieties of nonmonogamy (some of the looking suspiciously like monogamy-with-more-people), and I totally understand the assumptions you're making about How It All Works and Why People Do It. That said, I take issue with a number of things you've said.

    "Like the way kids who go to Harvard probably don't spend a lot of time thinking, oh, what if I'd explored all of my options? (I mean, I guess they might, but honestly, this girl can't see it). Or I never get a bagel at Bergen Bagels and then wonder if I needed to play the breakfast-carb field more."

    This comment reflects the pervasive attitude that loving multiple people is somehow just "playing the field." It's not. Poly* is not about being dissatisfied with what you have, or thinking that something else may be better. It's not at all like eating a bagel, but wondering whether you should have had a different bagel. The analogy would be like - eating a delicious bagel, then realizing that your stomach does not in fact have a limited capacity, and is a black hole into which you can ingest an infinite number of bagels and never actually be "full." Also, assume that the bagels have agency and feelings and all that, and some of them want to be eaten by you and are really sad when they can't be, and also that they can be eaten an infinite number of times. Do you see how this analogy is breaking down? If not, I can keep going.

    "For me, this is the difference between marriage and every other relationship: I don't get a break to go be selfish and then return to the relationship later, when I'm in a better space. I don't get to decide that I'm taking my damn toys home and leaving if I'd really rather have things my way than play well with others. I don't get a pass on checking out when my husband gets sick or drinks too much or loses someone and is nearly-destroyed by grief."

    This paragraph seems to imply that when I'm spending time with a partner who is not my wife, that somehow I'm not married in that moment. This puzzles me. I don't understand why a person would make that assumption. If I'm with a partner, and my wife communicates that she needs me, most likely I'll be on my way to her within five minutes. In the same way that monogamous people can spend time with their friends without abandoning their spouses, poly people can spend time with other partners without "taking a break" from their marriage.

    The other thing to remember is that partners can, and often are, friends with each other. If my wife needs support, she will most likely be getting it not just from me, but from my fiancee as well, her other partner, and his wife. When talking about meeting a person's needs, the assumption that the best way to do that is in a dyad relationship makes no sense. It's like saying people shouldn't have families, because how can you care about your mom AND your husband at the same time? Like, duh - my mom cares about my wife, so if my wife needs something, I can be like "mom, Gina needs us" and away we go.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "But in my best moments -- in the moments that demonstrate to me that marriage and life and my efforts, chaotic and ambivalent as they are, to live my life in accordance with my value system, occasional bear fruit -- I find myself capable of wanting things one way and actively working to make them another way, in an effort to make life easier or more enjoyable or more comfortable for my partner."

    This brings me to my principle objection with your post - namely, that you see polyamory as an inherently selfish act. Certainly, it can be, but polyamory doesn't have to be all about you. I'm not poly because I want to date more than one person. Almost everyone wants to date more than one person. I'm poly because I love my partners enough to want them to date more than one person (if that's what they want). The difficult part of poly is not dating other people - it's watching your partner date other people. In your entire post, you didn't mention your husband's desires a single time, and this was in a post about trying to be less selfish. Polyamory is not something *you* do, unless you're single. It's something *you and your partners* do. You can be poly and only date one person. You're not required to go get yourself a second boyfriend the minute you slap an infinity heart on your bumper. You are, however, consenting to your spouse dating other people. I don't see how one could consider that a selfish act.

    "As there is with the kids I serve, there's this imperative to behave well even when it's not getting me what I want"

    This is equating polyamory with misbehaving. Thanks.

    "It makes sense to me that if I'm to put someone else first, always, then I can't making that commitment, simultaneously, to more than one person."

    This begs the question - what does it mean to "put someone first"? I run into this concept often, but still don't have a clear idea of what it means. Does it mean that you always do what they want? That their needs are paramount to your own? What if meeting their needs would harm you? What if it would harm others? What if meeting their needs would be unethical? What if your feelings change? What if you just don't have the energy? My point here is that it's not only impossible but unethical to put someone else first in all things. The world isn't that simple. The other part of this is that having multiple partners often makes it easier for you to meet each partner's needs because you have help! Your attitude seems to assume that multiple partners will be the jealous, catty rivals that are depicted in media-favorite "love triangles;" not caring, loving, mature people who are committed to having everyone's needs met. My experience aligns much more with the latter.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "But it seems to me that one of the talking points of polyamory advocates is that this way of relating to others forces everyone to just effing deal with, and learn to be a grown up about, the fact that ultimately, you may need someone and that person may not be there."

    To which polyamory advocates are you referring? I read a number of poly writers, and while this idea gets mentioned sometimes, most writers focus on how to make sure you CAN "be there" for multiple partners, and good strategies to make sure that nobody is abandoned in their hour of need.

    "And I don't want the reason why I'm not able to be there for my spouse to be that I have my hands full with someone else who has an equal claim on me"

    Again, this is reliant upon mononormative assumptions. Mainly - the idea that ANYONE can "stake a claim" on another person's time or attention. Nobody has a "claim on me." My time and attention are spent where I choose to spend them. If my close partners have emotional needs at the same time (which happens often), do you think I just pick one and let the other suffer alone? Really? Do you know what actually happens? We all support each other. Nobody's needs are neglected because my partners are ethical people and don't want to deny each other the support they need. Your vision of one partner being an emotional vacuum which sucks up all of the support so there's none left for anyone else might happen, but that's an issue with that partner, not with polyamory.

    "Most of all, my primary interest at this point in my life is getting over my pervasive selfishness. I am so self centered, y'all, that I can turn the most innocuous and unrelated enterprise into the Amanda Show."

    Polyamory =/= selfish.

    "I'm sorely in need of practice in loving people whose function in my life is more substantial, and less immediately gratifying, than fixing me in their fuzzy gaze, a la every poignant-wistful mid-nineties cultural reference ever, and reflecting a sexy/vulnerable/insubstantial image of myself back to me."

    That's what you think of when you consider dating? Have you been monogamous so long that you forget what dating is actually like? I promise you, it's not all roses and sunshine. It's a complicated mess of emotions, insecurities, miscommunications, and angst. You know this. The fact that you view the person you're dating as "insubstantial" just suggests to me that you've forgotten what it's like. As someone who's actually dated you, I know you don't feel that way in the moment.

    In sum, you seem to be rejecting a straw man, a caricature of polyamory that you've put together based on some tangential contact with the idea (and/or from watching a certain Showtime series). Poly doesn't work like that in my house. In my house, it's about expanding the amount of love you have, not only so it can cover people outside the relationship, but also expanding the amount of love you have for your current partner, to the point where that person's societally-disapproved desires no longer seem like a threat, and instead are something that add to the joy of everyone in the household.

    I think that there are very good reasons to be monogamous. I just do not think you've identified any in this post.


    *as there exist the aforesaid infinite varieties of nonmongamy, many of which are referred to as "polyamory," for the duration of this comment, all references to polyamory should be taken to mean "polyamory as I practice it."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Wes, thanks for your thoughts! I don't think a lot of the thoughts you're attributing to me are actually in my post, but I appreciate your taking the time to write this.

    ReplyDelete