5/11: Finding a Therapist

I'm taking my first foray into therapy since high school. There's no one near my office on the poly friendly professionals list (see http://polycat.org/pro).

I did get one nearby recommendation from a friend, but she's not taking new patients right now. So I looked through my insurance listing for the 5 therapists nearest my office, and left messages for them all.

On the messages, I said "I'm looking for someone who is comfortable with alternative lifestyles", or some such, just to let folks weed themselves out right then if they wanted to.

When I got calls back, the first couple did not go very well. The first one was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of poly, and eventually allowed that his own "philosophy" was in conflict. Ruled that one out.

The second one was also unfamiliar with polyamory, and while she said that she was willing to work with someone in that sort of relationship, I didn't get a good feel about it, so I didn't pursue it.

The third person, on the other hand, had exactly the attitude I was looking for. He articulated clearly that he did not bring an agenda into therapy, and that while he was unfamiliar with polyamory he was happy to learn about it and saw no problem with the baseline understanding that poly was not the problem i was there to treat.

I met with him this week, and brought with me the two articles directed at therapists that are linked from http://polycat.org/pro to give him. Our first session went well, and it will be interesting to see what questions he comes back with for the second one.

4/13 How to negotiate poly relationships

From Lisa...

okay, god help all of us, i was just trying to summarize how to negotiate poly relationships with a friend:

(4/11/2007 7:34:22 PM): well i've started a bunch of relationships
(4/11/2007 7:34:24 PM): you flirt
(4/11/2007 7:34:28 PM): you smooch
(4/11/2007 7:34:34 PM): you smooch some more
(4/11/2007 7:34:39 PM): you say, gosh i like that smooching
(4/11/2007 7:34:56 PM): they say, they like smooching too
(4/11/2007 7:35:21 PM): you say, you know, so-and-so's my main smoochee so i'm not available for the grand smoocherino
(4/11/2007 7:35:40 PM): they say, that's cool cause i'm smooching seven other people and my cat
(4/11/2007 7:36:02 PM): you say: no smooching without condoms and a rubber wet suit
(4/11/2007 7:36:15 PM): they say, okay, don't forget the keg o'lube
(4/11/2007 7:36:38 PM): you say, i have room in my schedule every three months
(4/11/2007 7:36:48 PM): they say, i'll see if i can squeeze you in that often

i'm sure i didn't leave out anything important, right?

3/29 New Article

Arnora was gracious enough to let me edit one of her fabulous livejournal posts into an article here. Check it out.

3/28 Two things wot poly people say that really bug me

Rowan says...

Thing #1: "I like to let all my relationships find their own level." This is usually brought up in response to an inquiry along the lines of "So where do you [think this is going | want this to go]?". It is as if the person feels that saying out loud what they want from a relationship will somehow bind it forever to be that thing. Of course, refusing to say what your expectations or desires are is a very handy way to avoid being confronted later about behaving inconsistently with those stated expectations and desires.

It is sometimes accompanied by, "I have no wants or expectations about this relationship," which to my mind is usually, if not always, bullshit. Human minds are finely-tuned machines for churning out expectations; it's how we survive in the world. The likelihood is that they're there, even if you don't want to admit that to yourself or anyone else, even if it's nothing more than, "I expect things will continue on as they have been indefinitely."

Thing #2: "All my relationships are equal." This is equally patently bullshit, or it should be, in my opinion. If you treat and value the person you starting boinking last week the same as your life partner of five years, there is something deeply wrong with that. If you don't, then there is a power imbalance there that should be acknowledged explicitly; your life partner has a greater claim to your resources than your new lover does, and denying that truth is only going to leave everyone drowning in a sea of uncertainty about where they stand and what the boundaries are (and more importantly, when those boundaries have been crossed).

Now, before I start getting flamed all over the place, let me make something clear: I am all for allowing the possibility of fluidity and change in relationships. What I am against is using the desire for fluidity as an excuse to avoid doing The Work -- The Work being: examining one's own wants, intentions, and boundaries; communicating them clearly to all those concerned; finding out that of the other(s) one is involved with; sticking to what you have communicated; and then doing it all over again, and often.

Edit: A further edit to add more clarification on what exactly I object to about Thing #1. ;-) I don't object in any way to the idea of relationships "finding their own level". I like to live this way myself, in fact. What I object to is, as I said above, not doing the work of discussing with the other involved parties what's happening with the "level finding", where you would like things to end up, where they would like things to end up, etc.

I also don't object to the act itself of saying the words, "I like to let all my relationships find their own level." I object to people using that to mean, "I like to let all my relationships find their own level, so I refuse to talk about where it might be going, where I want or expect it to go, or how this relationship affects the other people I'm involved with." There seem to be some people who believe that relationships find their level through a mystical process, possibly involving fairies ;-), and that any discussion or direction of this process with contaminate it with observer bias. Instead of, say, finding the level yourself using introspection, discussion, and negotiation. But that's much less romantic than fairies.

3/16 Site Upgrade

Today we have upgraded the back end code running this site. I'm checking to see if the RSS feed into livejournal is still working.

11/20 Jealousy

I was talking with a good friend the other night, and what I had to say surprised hir, so I thought it worth writing here.

In my experience, if...

1 - Someone wants to be doing doing X activity with hir partner, especially some sort of sexual activity

and

2 - Said partner is not doing X activity with hir

and

3 - Said partner IS doing X activity with someone else

This will almost without exception lead to jealousy and hard feelings.

What do you think? Does this match YOUR experience, of yourself and those around you?

8/3: Fill in the blank

You go to a Special Poly Hell for...

7/14: Guest Blog: Happiness is...

Agaran wrote this piece one day, and I'm pleased to repost it here as a guest blog:

Happiness is...

...celebrating the beginning of a seventh wonderful year with your dearly loved, remarkably generous partner, and then, a few days later...

...celebrating the beginning of a thirteenth wonderful year with your dearly loved, remarkably generous wife.

...having a very cherished but infrequently seen girlfriend over for a rare visit with the whole family, including dinner with them before a wonderful date.

...laying back in a redwood hot tub with your lover with only candelight and our own shared thoughts and feelings for illumination.

...having one lover offer her very private bedroom for you to be intimate with -- and sleep all night undisturbed with -- your other lover.

...seeing the fire and light and joy in your partner's eyes, sharing love with her by candlelight, then falling asleep in each other's arms.

...seeing your visiting girlfriend appreciate your son's guitar performance, complete with gyrating hips and improvised lyrics, then see her tune his guitar, and then play "If I Had a Hammer."

...having your wife make her special Challah French Toast for her sons and husband, her visiting lover, your other partner, and your visiting lover.

...seeing your lover leave, and not feeling too strong a post-date crash, because you know that it was as meaningful to her as it was to you, and that even though you only seldom see one another, you're important and valuable to each other.

...getting to spend time with your wife's boyfriend, and seeing what really great, careful choices she makes, and seeing how great he is with your kids, and how much he, too, loves cats, and how much they care for each other, and how happy they make each other.

I am loved, and I love, my loves love and are loved, my children are safe and well. That's all one really needs to know.

6/28: What to do when your partners don't get along

This falls under the category of "no fun"; having two partners that you care about who don't get along, or one doesn't like another, etc.

There are several aspects of this worth discussion:

Prevention: One way to go, of course, is to try not to get into this situation to begin with. That can sometimes be easy. If an existing partner doesn't like someone you're interested, and you're not THAT interested, then letting it go is not so bad.

Sometimes, of course, that's harder. You may be so attracted to the person that it makes you really unhappy to let it go. Or, you may not *know* that they don't get along; they may not have spent enough time together to tell.

I'm a fan of avoiding "no fun" situations, so I go with prevention when I can. That means (outside of "Festival Rules") getting to know someone socially, with my partners, as part of leading up to dating/getting involved. Even a first impression can help a lot.

Jealousy: Sometimes it's tricky to separate out your existing partner not liking someone new from hir possible jealousy of that person. I have no brilliant advice on this one, except, as usual, "Talk it out." Also keep in mind that some level of irritation with a new person is pretty normal; NRE will cause YOU to gloss over all sorts of annoying little things, but your partner is not also in NRE with this new person.

Separation: One obvious strategy for dealing with partners who don't get along is to limit the amount of time they have to spend with each other. That might also mean watching how you talk about one to the other; reminding hir of the things that annoy hir will almost certainly not help.

Reconciliation: Another strategy is to see if somehow the relationship between the two of them can be improved. that might mean addressing the issues that are bugging them head on, either with your support or with you locked out of the room. :) It also might mean giving those issues less weight, by finding other things that they can do together or interests they have in common.

If you have any other brilliant strategies, feel free to comment!

5/17: Photographs

I've been present recently for some wonderful opportunities for friends to get photographed with all of their partners. Each of these three people has 4 partners, and the photographs were terrific, and joyful.