Poly Communication, Part II: Managing Expectations

Though I've been poly for over four years, I still don't feel like I have a lot of poly "cred." I mean sure, I have a wonderful, stable relationship with my primary partner Joel (Boyfriend), and by witnessing chaos around us we're reminded we're pretty healthy, even if we don't have serious relationships talks on a regular basis. But because I was pretty comfortable in my relationship with him, and because grading a bazillion freshman writing papers takes up time and energy, I hadn't done a lot of outside dating.

Then a month ago, I started dating New Boy (or for simplicity's sake, Adam*), and my life abounded with new-relationship energy (or NRE, in poly-lingo). I know that it sounds like a non-problem, but as awesome as NRE is, it can be channeled into anxiety as well as happiness. There are a lot of reasons for this, I think - all those lovely things I talked about in my jealousy post, for some - but one of the biggest reasons for me was trying to manage expectations. And not just manage expectations, but manage realistic expectations for Adam specifically that weren't based on past experiences.

That's hard, because by definition, an expectation is a belief that something will happen in the future and is based on what's happened in the past. The last few people I had significant connections with before Adam (other than Joel) were temporary: when we started dating it was made clear that they were leaving town, and that our relationship time was running out. So accompanying the typical NRE I felt with Adam, I constantly had an anxiety that everything had to happen at once. It wasn't until I could tell him about this anxiety that it started to subside, especially when he reminded me that he wasn't going anywhere.

Now I've realized that part of managing expectations is realizing why I might have certain expectations that I do, and deciding whether they're realistic for someone new. Like most things in poly, this means talking early and talking often. It sometimes feels like wandering into an emotional minefield to have a conversation about where things are going and what each person wants (and frankly, can handle) in a relationship. There's nothing quite more exposing than putting your heart out there with the possibility for rejection; it really makes me want to go back to the toss-a-note-and-run methods of our youth (Do you want to be my boyfriend? ...a casual sex thing? ...just friends? ...blissfully unlabeled because The Man can't tell us what to do? Check one).

But even beyond those big, scary questions, trying to manage even the smallest expectations have made a big difference. Asking questions like, "Will you be able to chat later tonight?" can be just as important as "Where do I fit into your life?" As simple as that sounds, I think there are so many "rules" to dating that we forget we can just ask. ("He hasn't answered your IM in a few hours? He's playing hard to get. Turn the tables and don't answer him for a few hours." Or, you know, maybe he's in a meeting. Maybe he's cooking dinner. Maybe he has a date. Maybe you should chill out.)

A friend of mine has a tattoo across his chest that says, "I'm not afraid to ask." I feel like an entire world opened up to me when I realized that instead of wondering things like, "Does he like me?" "What are we?" "Should I send that extra IM tonight or will I be imposing?", I could just ask. And not only could I ask, but things would actually get better (even if it's only in the long run), if I did so instead of remaining silent. There are many hurdles to getting over silence - I'm not saying it's easy, even just to toss that note and run away - but it's freeing to know that it's actually an option.

The more expectations we can manage by asking, the fewer times un-met expectations cause positive NRE to be channeled into anxiety (or, on the flip side, the fewer times we drag out something that is really not what we want in the first place). We poly people throw far more notes at our crushes than the monogamously inclined, so it's important for the potential benefits to outweigh the potential rejection. Does he/she like me? There's no way to know for sure except getting out the sparkly gel pens and practicing our football-note folding skills.

*We've decided not to change names to protect the innocent, because neither of them are really very innocent. 

Bruised Apples

Sometime in the mid-90s, I taught myself to juggle. A lot of people would have thought, let's watch someone else juggle first. Let's rent a VHS tape. Let's buy one of those trendy Klutz books about juggling. But not me. Did I start out with silk scarves that fall slowly? Hell no. I started with tennis balls, and compensated for not having enough time to throw one before catching the next one by throwing them ten to fifteen feet in the air. It was months before I figured out technique and was able to juggle indoors.

But I never could get past juggling three. At some point, I got too frustrated to go back and learn another way, so I polished what I knew (and know to this day, to the sadness of all round fruit that passes through my kitchen).

When navigating poly, I should have thought about my past juggling limitations when deciding how much dating I could handle at one time. There was a month-long period back in 2009 when I regularly saw three different guys. This might have been okay if I felt the same level of casual connection with all of them, but there were two I felt quite fond of (one of whom was Boyfriend), so my dates with the third started to fill me with more guilt than joy. My mind was off with one of the other two while physically with the third, and that was when I realized I might not be as good at juggling as I thought.

For a long time after that, after it was down to just Boyfriend, I didn't date very many other people. I was trying to get my career going and became more involved in organizations. I went through a brief period after I came out as bisexual when I wanted all the ladies, but even that, after a while, calmed down to a quiet, "I'd like a lady, if she happens to come by."

But now, life has thrown me more tennis balls, and I'm trying to juggle again. Only this time, I know what it feels like when I'm taking on too much. I'm already feeling like I've reverted back to tossing them fifteen feet in the air. I like expanding my life to new people, but I need to be realistic, so I have two choices: lay down some juggling implements or start over and learn how to juggle properly. 

To get away from the metaphor for a second (and I know, I'm quite attached to it at this point), practicing polyamory requires the ability to manage time. If Rule One is Communication, Rule Two is Time Management. But even beyond scheduling, I feel lousy when I don't think I'm giving my attention fairly to someone. When New Boy suggested I write about juggling new partners and time management, he said the first thing should be, "Don't drop them on their heads." Of course he was trying* to be funny, but he was right. 

So what do I do? The solution depends on the situation of course, but the first thing I've learned to do is be honest. That conversation sucks, especially if you're talking to someone who you like and who likes you back. Letting that someone know you might not have as much time or as much attention to give them is hard. But what sucks worse is not saying anything and fading away over time, possibly leaving the other person wondering what they did wrong. I still might eventually realize that I can't give that person the attention they deserve, but at least I didn't drop them on their head.

I should also probably learn to juggle properly, to be honest. I should look at past experiences and realize how much I should attempt to take on in the first place. I should factor in the mountains of grading, the volunteering, the writing, and the social engagements, and more than anything else be realistic, so instead of having to limit the tennis balls, I don't pick up as many in the first place. The ideal results are less hurt feelings, fewer bruised apples, and more sanity, the last of which I need most of all.

Oh, and if anyone has one of those old Klutz juggling books laying around, I wouldn't mind reading up a bit this time.

*Okay who am I kidding, it was funny. I like funny. Funny is sexy.

Five Years Ago

Five years ago today, my friend Kristi and I set out from my parents' condo in Ohio with a packed 2001 Volkswagen Beetle. We were destined for Boston with a stopover in Niagara Falls, both on our own journeys: Kristi, to Canada and Boston for the first time; me, to a semester-long internship in Cambridge. 

I told everyone that this trip was an opportunity for me to get experience and make connections in the publishing world. I told them that I needed my own adventure before coming back and settling down. I told them this would be temporary. I told myself it would be temporary. But I lied. 

When I had left Michigan a few days earlier, I left that life: a husband, two dogs, and a person who I barely recognize now as me.

It wasn't a bad life. On the surface, I had a lot to envy. The economy was bad but we were doing okay, Tom having just started his emergency medicine residency and me working part-time at a bookstore. We had friends. We had a new house.

What I didn't have was a sense of self. I was just starting to figure out what I wanted to do after years of unsettled decisions: the recommendation letters my undergrad professors had written to apply to an MA program in literature went unsent, and the LSAT registration fee I paid, refunded. Twice. I had finally decided to continue my studies in creative writing, something that had always brought me joy. But instead of making me feel more settled as myself in the life I already had, it made me more anxious to get out. This internship was the perfect opportunity to see what it was like on my own, and if I didn't like it, I could always come back.

At first, Kristi and I had a great time being tourists. We wandered the crowded sites of Niagara, we rode the Maid of the Mist, and we sang embarrassingly loud songs as we drove on to Massachusetts. When we got to Newton, where I was renting a room for the semester, we unpacked my Beetle into the first place I would ever live completely on my own. We rode the commuter rail into Boston, ate at Fanueil Hall, and wandered the Public Garden. I TA'd my first course at school. We ate Indian food and drank Guinness in pubs. I knew the city was already affecting me in a way that would make moving back to the middle of nowhere, something my ex-husband and I had always agreed upon, nearly impossible.

When Kristi left a few days later, I came back from dropping her off at the airport and took a look around my rented room, a strange mixture of freedom and loss filling my chest. I started realizing what it meant to be me, totally alone. I was there less than two months before I admitted to myself, and then to my ex, that I wasn't going back.

The next few months were hard. I missed the stability, my friends, the dogs. I learned how to manage my own finances, something I'd never done before. I learned how to cook for one and eat at my desk every night. I learned what it really meant to be lonely. I learned how to live by myself. But I also learned how to live as myself.

On October 13, 2008, I wrote:

I hope I never regret any of the changes I make to my life. I hope that throughout it all, I can still look back and see that I became happier, or wiser, after it all. But it is the nature of change to blind you to all but hindsight. And I cannot say how any of it will turn out.

Me in 2008 would have never guessed that by this time, I'd be employed doing something that I love, that I'd have so many amazing friends in my life, or even that I'd be dating not one but multiple people who care about me. But I was right about having become happier and wiser. If I could time-travel, I'd have to try really hard not to tell past me what mistakes to avoid. But I would definitely tell her it would be all worth it to make them anyway.

All of the Above

There are a few things I'm positive I know about myself: I will never be five feet tall without shoes I refuse to wear because they're uncomfortable, I will always be right-handed despite that week in sixth grade I tried to switch, and I will never settle for either/or. In most areas of my life, I will choose letter D. All of the Above. And I've come to realize this is not a defect, but a feature.

A few months ago, I wrote an article for a local bi newsletter called "Now What?" The focus of the article was to talk about what I did once I realized I was bisexual, and to explain, I discussed my history of poor follow-through. I chalked up the year and a half it took me to realize I wasn't straight to thinking it was perhaps something else that was fleeting, like my half-finished short stories or half-eaten bags of frozen vegetables. 

I thought of my poor follow-through as me being unable to finish something, but now I don't think it's that at all. I think it's me being unable to resist starting something, because in reality, I want to do everything.


And just like my desire to do everything, which sometimes means I don't finish everything, I've always wanted to be everything. Growing up, I played softball, volleyball, the piano; I wrote, sang, drew, and painted. One of the hardest decisions of my childhood happened in seventh grade when they made me choose between visual arts, choir, and band. The answer to the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" changed from veterinarian to comedian to gym teacher to police officer to coffee shop owner to high school speech coach, then finally to writer. I didn't want to be one of those, I wanted to be all of them. I wanted to dabble.

But "dabbling" sounds so negative. It sounds like, "Hey you, why are you farting around? Pick something and go for it." But I don't want to pick something. Just like I don't want to pick one gender I'm attracted to, or one person to be with forever, I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing just one thing.

We spend so much time worrying about what we're going to be, which can be overwhelming for someone like me who doesn't want to choose. We think about the issues of stability versus variety, but in all honesty those things don't have to be mutually exclusive. I get asked all the time, "When are you going to get that full-time teaching position?" and I answer as expected: "Whenever I can publish a book. Whenever I have more experience. Whenever I start applying for one." When really, I want to say, "Maybe never. Maybe I don't want one."

I like being an adjunct professor: I can (mostly) pick and choose the classes I teach, how many I teach, and am flexible with the rest of my time. If I want to try and get a part-time job doing something else in addition, I can. If I want to save up money over the school year and do little-to-nothing for three months of the summer, I can. If I want to spend entire days switching back and forth between blogging, writing fiction, painting monsters, and grading, I can.

I used to feel insecure about how, as a person with writing degrees, I wasn't an expert at anything. But now I realize I can be knowledgeable in a little bit of everything, which, I think, makes me better equipped at teaching brand-new college students who might be a little lost themselves. It definitely gives me the power to say, "You don't know what you want to be when you grow up? Good! What do you want to be right now?"

There may be a time when I focus a bit more on one thing professionally, but I am almost positive I will never stop leaving the last few pages of my journals blank, hone in on one artistic pursuit, or resist opening that new box of cereal before the last one is finished. What I need to do right now, however, is stop listening to that pesky voice that keeps asking, "When are you going to be a professional something? When are you going to be more secure?"

"I'm a professional everything," I'll say to it, "I'm All of the Above. And there's nothing more secure in knowing what you are."

Healthy Poly Relationships Rule Number One: Communication (with Ourselves)

I wish I could title this "Healthy Poly Relationships Rules Numbers One through One Hundred: Communication," but that sounds a little clunky.

While I think that most people new to (or curious about) nonmonogamy are at first the most concerned about jealousy, even more important (and usually more useful) is learning how to be a communicator. And not just a communicator, a super-communicator. Communication is a huge topic in any form of interpersonal relationships, not just romantic and/or sexual ones, but people who practice nonmonogamy (or for the sake of my typing sanity, "polyamory" or "poly"*) need to make it even more of a priority.

Take, for example, this almost exact word-for-word conversation I had with my boyfriend the other day:

Me: New Boy and I are going to get ramen on Thursday night.
BF: At the new place?
Me: Yes....wait! Was that a you-and-me thing?
BF: I was kind of thinking it was.
Me: I'm sorry! I don't know why but I thought you'd already gone.
BF: No, I haven't.
Me: New Boy and I can totally change our plans.
BF: Thanks, love.

Okay, I'll admit the above example is simple and possibly even a little gag-worthy, especially if you have much bigger issues than what restaurants you and your partners try together first. But think about what might have happened if Boyfriend hadn't spoken up: New Boy and I could have gone to the ramen place and had a fabulous time, and even though Boyfriend isn't generally an envious person, a little resentment could have formed. Little resentments can build into bigger resentments, and then grudges, and then all of a sudden you're angry at your partner for something that could have been made better (or even resolved) with a little communication.

But Boyfriend couldn't have communicated that he wanted to be with me for our first slurp-tastic new ramen experience if he hadn't known that it would bother him if I went with someone else. Before we can communicate with our partners or potential partners what we are feeling, we have to know what we are feeling and admit it to ourselves. This is especially true when our feelings are less on the uncomfortable side and more on the dark-and-painful scale.

Authors Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy, in their book The Ethical Slut, put it this way: "Silent suffering and self-deprecation have no place in this lifestyle. Pretending that you feel great when you're in agony...will make you bitterly unhappy, and it may make those who care about you even unhappier." (I will point out that "[s]ilent suffering and self-deprecation" don't have a place in any lifestyle, but for ours they are especially destructive.)

Admitting to our own feelings (and allowing ourselves to feel them) is the starting point to being a better communicator, because then we can address issues that arise from an "I" place rather than a "you" place. Boyfriend said, "I thought we were going to try that place together," not "You said we were going to try that place together." He was saying, "I don't feel so great about you trying that place with someone else," not "How can you do this to me?" When we communicate from a place where we know what we are feeling, or even that we know we have no idea what we are feeling, we take ownership in the communication instead of placing blame and, ultimately, building resentment.

The first place to start is by checking in: what are we feeling? What made us feel that way? As with allowing ourselves to feel jealousy if (when) it arises, we need to allow ourselves to feel whatever else it is we are feeling: envy, shame, resentment, guilt; but also joy, happiness, love. Because communicating the good is just as important as communicating the bad. It's not only, "I felt envious about you going to the ramen place with New Boy" but also I'm happy that you checked in with me about the ramen place. I'm happy our relationship is important to you. Communication of the good is the end-goal of sloshing through all that other stuff. It is, in my ramen experience, the sweet pork and slippery noodles in the bowl of broth.

It is only after we have checked in with ourselves about how we are feeling that we can bring those feelings to our partners, and I want to explore challenges associated with doing so in a future post. But first, I have to find a time for Boyfriend and I to get ramen, because for some odd reason I have a craving for it.

*Not everyone uses these terms interchangeably because they're not always exactly the same. If you're curious about terminology in general, check out this glossary.

The Jealousy Monster and Me

Jealousy is not a big green monster. I mean, it could be for some people, but my jealousy is tiny. It grips the folds of my ear, just inside the external auditory canal, and whispers to me. I've never put it under a magnifying glass, but I'm assuming if I did it would look like a tiny green fuzzball with menacing, jagged teeth, meant to gobble up emotions and spit back hurtful and sometimes irrational things. I know when it's there - it starts as a weird feeling of unease, and the longer I let it hang around the more my brain listens to it.

Everyone might not have a fuzzy green ear-dweller, but everyone experiences jealousy. Those who practice nonmonogamy are not somehow magically excused from it; in fact, we probably experience more of it simply because more people equals more possibilities for it to crop up. Sure, there are some lucky ones out there who say they've never felt jealous, but they are few and far between (and, I'm going out on a limb here, probably lying).

So how do we battle our monsters, no matter which form they might take?

I start where I start with most things: with the idea that knowledge is power. Information about jealousy in nonmonogamous relationships can be found in many sources, from books like Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy's The Ethical Slut to a myriad web articles, blogs, and forums. However, the discussion about jealousy that rings truest to me can be found in the book Opening Up by Tristan Taormino.

Sources agree that jealousy is not a cause, but rather an effect: a result of something else. Taormino outlines what some of these causes may be, including envy, insecurity, possessiveness, feeling excluded, and fear of abandonment.  My Jealousy Monster feeds primarily on envy, insecurity, and feelings of or fear of exclusion. Once sated with these emotions, it whispers things like "He's closer to her than than he is with you" (envy), "You'll never please her like he can" (insecurity), and "They're at the top of the Eiffel tower while you're just sitting at your desk surfing Reddit" (feelings of exclusion). Realizing the roots of the jealousy, or what it is that your Jealousy Monster feeds on, is the first step to weakening it.

After that, Taormino urges readers to allow themselves to just feel it. She writes, "Don't criticize yourself or pile shame and judgment on top of [the jealousy] -- that will just make you feel worse." If my Jealousy Monster's first course is envy and insecurity, shame and self-judgement are like its dessert.

So where to go from there? Just as Taormino suggests, I turn to friends and partners for support. Today, in fact, just as I was typing this post, a friend admitted that her Jealousy Monster had been a particular glutton for envy and insecurity, but also enjoyed a particularly big helping of fear. In addition to venting, she just needed to know that her feelings were valid, and that's something that we can all provide for people: the reminder that what we feel is what we feel, and it is only after we have admitted and found the root of that feeling can we move on to try and get past it.

As for my Jealousy Monster, it grows weaker when I replace feelings of envy with focusing on what I have that others don't; when I replace insecurity with doing something I'm good at and really love; and when I replace feeling excluded with getting up from my desk and creating my own adventures. I work on all of these by addressing the roots one by one, and most often talking about them with my partners, both the ones I'm jealous of and the ones whose partners I'm jealous of. It doesn't happen right away, and not usually without help, processing, blogging, journaling, and lots and lots of communication, but with time, the monster has little to nothing left to eat (at least, temporarily).

But I don't kill it nor forget it's there. Everyone's Jealousy Monster will reappear at some point, even if it's much weaker than it was before. It could feed on insecurity again, related to my relationships, but it also could feed on the insecurity that I don't fit into those jeans anymore. The key is to not forget it, but keep it distracted with other things.

I distract mine with marshmallows.

It likes marshmallows.

The Monopoly Metaphor: Ethical Non-Monogamy and Playing by Our Own Rules

When I first learned how to play Monopoly, it was from people, not the instruction booklet. Let's say for the sake or argument it was my parents, or perhaps even my aunt and uncle who like to recall a particularly silly game during which I said I was "property poor" and eventually degraded to wearing my headband across my forehead, shouting, "RAMBO!"

Yeah, let's say it was them. 

When Aunt and Uncle taught me to play Monopoly, I knew the basics - I could buy properties and if someone landed on that property, awesome! I got money. (By now you've realized that little me sucked at buying properties.) I enjoyed Monopoly for about as long as anyone who can play longer than an hour enjoys Monopoly. Life was good.

And then my friend Molly from next door filled me in: How had I not known about the Free Parking rule, and if you landed there you got ALL THE MONEY people had been paying for luxury tax, or getting out of jail? So when I played with Molly, we played Free Parking. I was still horrible at it, but happy to realize there were other rules. It was like a whole new game!

Apparently, there are many variations to the rules of how to play Monopoly, and since it's been around a long time, different families and friend groups have probably always made up their own rules to make the game a little more interesting (or, you know, not take five hours).

I like to explain ethical non-monogamy (or in my case, polyamory) by talking about Monopoly. When I played with family, I played differently than when I played with Molly. But in neither case did anyone cheat at the particular rules we played by. Everyone agreed to the rules, so everyone had fun. Relationships can be the same way.

There's this societal idea (for the sake of this metaphor, the official Monopoly instruction manual) that two people have to be monogamous to be committed, to have a healthy relationship, and to be a family (not contingent upon having a family, but that's a discussion for another time). But what if we want to play by our own rules? What if we want to toss the manual and make up something new? And, as long as everyone playing (i.e. everyone in the relationship) is playing by the same rules, why do we have to feel we shouldn't be able to enjoy the game just as much as those die-hard official Monopoly rule-followers?*

In any given game, I might have slightly different rules with each other player. For example, maybe when I land on Boardwalk, I don't have to pay the owner the full rent but rather half-rent and also stand up and do a little jig. But when I land on Indiana Avenue, I have to pony up the full amount. This silly example translates into real things: maybe I share every detail with X about Y, but Y and Z would rather not know about the details of each others' "turns." It sounds like a lot to keep track of (and trust me, it can be), but that's why being very clear and consistent about communicating** our rules is vital to everyone's happiness. 

My intention with this metaphor is not to say we should treat our relationships as games. But rather, to say we should think of the camaraderie we feel with each other when we're all having fun and following the same rules. Being clear about what rules we're playing by is the first step, and after that...well, this is where my Monopoly metaphor breaks down. Because unlike the frustration I felt from losing game after game of Monopoly as a child, the ideal objective of ethical non-monogamy is that everyone wins. 

*Who are, in fact, perfectly wonderful people and I'm sure are also having fun. What works for you works.

**Dear god do we poly people talk a lot. We probably talk more than anyone else, because we have to. But this is a more in-depth discussion for another time.