This was an ask on my Tumblr, but I just had to repost it.
Hi there! I have a bit of a dilemma at the moment. I’m in a long term poly relationship (together 6 years, poly for 1.5) I’ve recently found myself very attracted to a professor at my school- I’m 21, he’s 30. The attraction seems to be very mutual in that there is chemistry and some flirting, but never anything inappropriate. But, he’s married. I have never been with anyone that much older than me, much less had experience asking a person in an assumed mono relationship if they are poly. Help?
You bet I have some advice.
Don’t be a fucking idiot.
A) He’s a professor, for pity’s sake. Even if he is not YOUR professor, that’s a bit of an ethics violation.
B) You have no reason in the world to believe he’s poly.
There’s literally millions of suitable men in the world that would be great for you. Pass this one by.
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* Rule One is “Don’t be a fucking idiot.”
I’d like to see a list of the rest of the rules, please.
LOL.
Honestly, once you’ve got Rule One down, you’re kind of covered. That’s the beauty of it.
I likes me simple things, I does.
A good rule 2 might be something to the effect of – don’t live by assumptions or preconceived ideas about how relationships are supposed to work: think through everything to figure out what works for you and your partners. And that goes just as much for preconceived ideas about how poly relationships are “supposed” to work too, or assuming a new relationship with a new person fits your preconceived ideas about how “your” relationships work.
It’s terribly easy to fall into those kinds of traps and not notice you did it until you get a painful wake-up call.
We have two, Chez Fabulous.
Rule One: Don’t be a dumbass.
Rule Two: Don’t be an asshole.
Pretty much everything falls under one or the other, I’ve found…
1. Though hot, dating professors is a bad thing.
2. When lookingfor new partners, try random single people BEFORE married ones
3. When looking for new partners, try the local poly or sex positive , scifi, pagan or geek communities before dating married college professors.
I completely disagree, actually. I think she should wait until she’s not the professor’s student, but other than that, *it doesn’t hurt to ask*. As poly people, we’re already breaking social conventions by not agreeing to be monogamous. Where does it say we have to keep the social conventions of a. assuming others are monogamous by default b. not dating someone older or senior to us in a hierarchy? It’s perfectly possible that these two people are eminently well-suited to each other and that they could have a great relationship. It’s also perfectly possible that her professor is poly or open to such a relationship. Maybe not likely – but possible. I’m closeted, and many other people are closeted too, due to their situation in life.
Bottom line – as long as she waits until they’re not in a weird ethical situation of him teaching her, I say why the hell not ask? You only live once, and while there may be “many other suitable people out there” it hardly matters if you end up passing by one of the only ones who truly fits.
I get where you’re coming from, but I consider that someone that’s flirting with his student already enough of a red flag, ya know?
Completely disagree that if he’s not your professor, it’s a-priori an ethics violation. That is a remarkable ceding of responsible thought to a highly blunt rule. If there is a likelihood that one person can have a structural (non-negotiated) power-relationship over another (boss, professor), then it is not, a-priori an ethics violation, it’s an ethics concern, and it needs to be addressed. But “as a rule, don’t do it” isn’t addressing it, it’s punting. Either postpone the relationship until there isn’t a power-dynamic of that nature, or register the conflict of interest and have someone else proctor/grade the student, etc. This happens all the time in industry, and the answer isn’t to keep people from relationships, it’s to structure the power relationship to ensure fairness and the appearance of fairness.
It CAN be problematic, and therefore it might be to someone’s interest to abstain from such, in order to avoid the complications and down-sides. But the starkness of the rule as stated, and even the “if he’s flirting with his student that’s a red flag” are just too sweeping for my taste.
In my own firm, if someone has a relationship within their chain of authority (or in an organization where it seems very likely that such a chain of authority might be esablished) you know what happens? They don’t make them break up. They move them to different parts of the org so they can have a relationship without ethical concern. It’s discussed rationally and considering all interests.
That said, rule #2 is good, sound rational thought. Don’t assume.
Thanks, Christian, for the clarity on punting, and thanks, Jen, for the issue of being in the closet. I’m a closeted poly AND a prof. I also happen to have had a student approach me, and sure as hell lied to her about it – even as it became clear that she was poly herself. There’s a reason I’m in the closet.
All this gets way complicated. I think we each have our own work to do in figuring out how to negotiate the details.
But my real question was: what Tumblr?! I had no idea! Yay, more reading…
Some thoughts:
1) Just because, being poly, we are already bucking the societal norms, that does not mean that it is OK to discard ALL the social niceties. There are good reasons that teachers do not engage their students in intimate relationship. Transference is a real and potent factor. And crossing the power lines is a risky business.
2) It is entirely reasonable (from a purely mathematical sense) to assume that the married professor is ” monogamous.” That is still the heavily predominant relationship model. If there is mutual flirting going on here, then it is reasonable to posit that the professor has issues with boundaries and/or integrity.
swan
There’s also good reasons that teacher’s partners don’t generally engage said teacher’s students (and recently-ex-students) in intimate relationship. Not to say that it can’t work. But the dynamics of a classroom relationship changing to whatever kind of personal relationship it ends up taking the form of is a minefield to navigate.
Rather different problems where it is an ex-high school student vs a university student, of course… Either way, much easier for everyone involved if the student has been not-a-student for long enough that the teacher doesn’t think of them as a student, and so the relationship(s) and meta-relationship(s) can evolve on their own terms.
original tumblr question-poster here. Thanks everyone for the responses, they’ve given me a lot to think about over the past couple weeks.
I feel like I should clarify a point: by “flirting,” I actually meant we’ve engaged each other in casual conversation quite a lot. No touching or compliments or being cute or anything like that. It’s just been an atmosphere of mutual interest, and I could very well be conflating that for romantic interest, but the only way I can really find out is to ask. My plan is to wait until the end of the semester, and just come out with it and ask if he’s poly and if so, if he’d like to get coffee. I’ve no illusions that that is a probable outcome and am not terribly concerned one way or the other. It is very, very rare for me to click with people, so I figure I might as well give it a shot.
I also don’t see why I should be looking for single people exclusively. Sure, there’s a very small chance that the person in question is in fact poly, but that can be mitigated by keeping your romantic feelings in check until you know for sure. Just like with your prototypical monogamous person looking for a partner, you have to be ready for rejection. “Sorry, I’m mono” doesn’t seem all that different from “Sorry, I’m not interested.” I don’t believe it is inherently offensive to ask a partnered person if they’re poly, and if it is, that should change. Nothing should be held so scared that questioning it is forbidden.
I personally do not find the power-structure issue a problem- this would not take place before grading, and I think I have enough sense of self respect to know when I am not being treated as an equal. Any decisions as far as the impact it could have on his life is up to him, my concern ends one way or another after ensuring I’m not getting into it with someone who is cheating; liars are not my favorite people.
At the end of the day, as with any relationship, it’s risk vs reward. Even if we’re both interested and end up going out a few times does not automatically mean we’d enter a relationship, as we’d both need time to assess the risks and figure out what the reward would actually be, seeing as we would still need to get to know each other, including our boundaries and what we would want out of a relationship like that.