The Polyamorous Misanthrope was supposed to be a weekly column.
It was for awhile and then I started drying up for topics. Why? Well, as I study polyamory, I see more and more that the advice I give, the lessons I’ve learned and the observations I make are less about having good multiple relationships and more about having good relationships in general. Believe it or not, how people interact has less to do with the slippery bits and considerably more to do with what goes on between the ears.
I’ve said for years that there’s very little about being polyamorous that’s truly poly-specific. The website about poly families was a lot more about household management, and my advice here is a lot more about maintaining good relationship boundaries than almost anything else.
I think the reason for this is because we often give sex and romance an inappropriate focus. Please note I’m not calling sex and romance unimportant. It’s not. But we do give it a weird place in our lives and I think it causes a lot of trouble. We might use romantic relationships as a ranking system. We often use sex or romance as a proxy for something else — usually actual intimacy. And again when I look at this to analyze it, I can’t say that it’s polyamory-specific.
It makes being topic-specific difficult. The same communication principles that make my romantic life joyful interaction rather than unpleasant drama are principles that help my parenting, for goodness sake! They’re the same principles that let me have a decent relationship with my own parents.
That being the case, yes, I can write about a topic and hook it onto a romantic situation, but it’s just as likely to float through my mind because of the way my son responded to a request to empty the dishwasher, or how I’m encouraging him to speak up when he feels uncomfortable with something.
I want the columns I write to be useful in relationships, but useful relationship examples are hardly ever unique to polyamory.
I’m as monogamous as they come, and I’ve frequently recommended your essays to other people in monogamous relationships for this very reason.
Possibly the poly specific examples help apply and make it more real as we deal with these human issues?
Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever come across the phrase “using romantic relationships as a ranking system.” Can you perhaps elaborate on that one in a future column?
I’ve noticed the same thing, too.
Even things that seem poly-specific at first, for instance dealing with “caught in the middle between your two partners” situations, occur fairly frequently with other sorts of relationships, for instance a friend feeling caught in the middle between two friends.
Honestly, I would love to also hear how these thoughts apply to parenting, monogamous relationships, and friendships, as well as to polyamory. Poly people also have these other aspects to their lives and maybe we have figured out how to be good in the poly relationship but not yet realized that the same skills are applicable elsewhere…. Some of us are dense, I know.
I’ve been reading for a while, and it would be interesting to hear what you have to say about relationships in general. It’s still nice that this is a poly site though, since it helps to know that there’s a wider community out there for us.
I find your insights very helpful to me and my loves relationships…I don’t think it matters how its couched good advice is good advice.
two different “poly” counselors have told me that 90% of the issues their poly clients bring up in their counseling sessions are actually inter-personal/relationship issues, not specific to polyamory.
as someone who has re-negotiated a marriage from monogamy to polyamory, the many, many concepts, behaviors, and advice applicable in monogamy carried over into polyamory, and issues that were supposedly poly-specific have been useful in my marriage, parenting, employment.
i want to really hear my loves, my kids, my managers, my co-workers, my friends and relatives. i want to say what i mean and mean what i say, and be receptive to input, and identify whether i’m reacting to an emotion or to an actual behavior, or some combination. in each type of relationship, i want my feelings to be a catalyst for self-introspection and possibly change; not a catalyst for lashing out or other drama. i want to behave kindly and effectively with each set of people and dyads that i am part of.
the polyamorous aspect of my life is very, very important to me. otherwise, i would not have risked everything to re-negotiate a happy 12 year monogamous marriage.
but when i think about the polyamory aspect of my life, it’s like this john muir quote: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
for me, the good advice on this blog spills over to be useful just about everywhere! thank you!