triangulation, and a sense of false stability
Lerner's Dance of Intimacy was my first detailed introduction to the concept of triangulation in relationships; it was something i had encountered briefly in readings years ago, a little more in depth with gloria when we started exploring the fact that i don't select my intimate relationships for exclusivity.
the essential premise is that a relationship of two is inherently unstable (in the way bipedal locomotion is ultimately unstable and only works because of a vast system of compensatory peripheral actions), because the members of the relationship have only each other's focus, so tension and anxiety can escalate exponentially when there's nowhere to disperse it. as soon as you add a third party - specifically an emotionally engaged one; be it a child, a sibling, a parent/in-law, or lover - then some of the anxiety between the two in the primary relationship can dissipate because there is now a third party on which to focus, drawing some of the tension away from the core relationship.
NRE is a great thing. it's a huge, complex sweep of emotional and hormonal responses to something new and exciting, a series of sensations that can become all-encompassing. we can't get enough of them. but what happens if this NRE is directed at something outside an existing primary relationship? at the very least, even in reasonably astute, effectively-communicating, well-grounded relationships, there's a distraction factor and a diversion of energy. no matter how transparent the reasons for these diversions are, there's still an adjustment that has to happen in the primary relationship in order to accommodate this siphoning-off of resources into the newly-opened channel.
imagine how poorly that will go in any relationship that *isn't* already stable, reasonably astute, effectively-communicating, and well-grounded.
one of my biggest personal beefs with poly relationships is how communications break down so quickly when someone in the primary gets distracted by NRE. the distracted party forgets to communicate things, the other half of the primary is left to fend for one's self in finding information in the absence of explicit communications, and sometimes the third party gets involved *between* the primaries in an effort to augment a communications process, effectively becoming the monkey in the middle, or the tin-cans-on-string between two parties who should be communicating directly with each other.
it's ineffective at best in terms of communication, but it does have the short term effect of seeming to stabilize the structure, because now the primaries don't have to worry so much about communicating with each other, so long as they have a willing third party to do the work for them. they can each focus on meeting some of the needs via the third leg of the triangle, which reduces the urgency of having those needs met by the primary partner. and in the short term, the temporary stabilization looks like a great idea. the problem (because there's always a problem that often only becomes apparent over the longer term) is that these new patterns of focus and communication can become ossified, rigid. expectations and dependencies can form that completely undermine the need for those clear two-way communication channels in the primary relationship itself. and over time, any ongoing lack or obstruction of those channels will just continue the buildup of anxiety and tension in the primary relationship. i've got a personal suspicion, based on the poly structures i've known to implode in my own social spheres, that this is the most common underlying issue to pervasively haunt poly structures. it becomes a big hot button somewhere along the line for a lot of people i know. it's become a hot button for me, in the past. some of the perspective i speak from is my own.
the additional risk to the external party in triangulation is that, should s/he become involved in trying to "fix" issues with the primary relationship, there is an increased risk of over-function in someone else's relationship, and underfunctioning in one's own head or own relationships. in short, you spend so much time trying to fix someone else's problems and soothe someone else's fears that are likely not even about you specifically, that you stop doing your own homework. i've been this person... well, honestly, i've been all of these people: the primary partner reacting to my partner's NRE; the lover on the outside watching things unspool for my lover and his/her primary partner; and i've been the unspooling partner trying to manage two angles of the triangle simultaneously.
in their own inimitable ways, they all suck.
for myself and my relationships (as always, i expect YMMV), as the external lover adjacent to someone else's primary relationship, i've come to believe that it's not my job to intervene in other people's communications. i don't like getting involved, although i've done so on a couple of occasions when i have judged (and i use that term deliberately) that one party is being a complete bonehead and is in jeopardy of losing something s/he claims to value. mostly i try to stay on the outside of that primary relationship and provide some perspective when asked, advice on "how to proceed" when asked. i refuse to be the monkey in the middle - it's not my relationship, not my responsibility. i aim to be aware and respectful to the best of my abilities; not to rock the boat, and certainly not to take on other people's responsibilities to communicate.
when i bring a new lover into my primary relationship, i have to balance the distraction and investment factors against the resources i have available to my primary relationship. falling back on Spoon Theory for a moment, i only have so many spoons in a day; if i'm consistently spending more on a corollary relationship than on my primary, then something's wrong. over-investment above and beyond previously stated intents is one of the foremost flags matthew and i have when watching each other get involved in a new relationship. i don't ever want or expect an external lover to intervene in how matthew and i communicate with each other about our relationship, or about the relationships we have with our lovers. (there is a different set of rules about D/s relationships that get explained to those who need to know them, but that tangent doesn't belong here.) if matthew and i fail to communicate with each other, that's *our* problem, and while yes, it may affect our corollary relationships, it's not an issue with those relationships but rather one of communications between he and i, and anyone else seeking to intervene in *our* process is likely going to get dealt with harshly (if only because we'll likely be in a post-explosive repair state and a little short of patience while being long on anger; consider this a blanket warning...)
i am developing a hard-line rule (in 3ravensringo's terminology, possibly a manifesto) about communications: if i am the third party, don't expect *me* to talk to *your* partner for you about issues you're having with him/her; your relationship is yours to manage, and if you can't, i'll take myself out of the picture until things are under control, or completely if lovers seem incapable of managing in ways that i perceive will not affect my participation. also, i explicitly expect (and will tell people so) that it's the primary partners' responsibility to talk to each other about plans being made and confirmed, seeking permissions from each other before making plans with me. making plans with me then cancelling or having to shuffle on me because you failed to clear it with your primary first is fast becoming a big no-no in my world. likewise, i expect to have to clear things i do with matthew first, before i confirm any plans with anyone. it's an issue more of respect than anything - if you show me you consistently fail to respect your own primary relationship (insofar as i can perceive it), then really, on what am i going to build any faith in the corollary relationship i'm hoping to have with you?
a lot of this ties into the manifesto of "Don't Date Anyone Crazier Than You Are", or, as i wrote somewhere else recently, "Don't Date Those Who Bring the Dramarama". i refuse to do other people's homework for them, and i refuse to let them interfere in mine. one unexpected side effect of three years with matthew is that the bar of expectations for how well my lovers function as self-aware people and effective communicators is now uncommonly, possibly irrationally high. i don't always get what i want, and sometimes opt in the short-term for things that are bright and shiny when i don't necessarily expect them to meet my increasing standards... and i generally regret it to some extent when i do, because i wind up doing more work than i really have the spoons to cover. i'm trying to pay more attention up front so i avoid the crazy/drama factor, and i admit it's hard. bridgeoutahead made the comment last week that "not everyone is matthew", and i know this (not that matthew's perfect by a long shot, don't get me wrong; i live with him, i should know :). and i know that i may be pricing my expectations out of the reach of my likely pool of lovers, but there it is. i'm setting my standards based on my need to manage my spoons effectively and avoid the pitfalls of the triangulation issues: not getting so distracted by the Bright/Shiny that my primary relationship suffers, not getting drawn into someone else's primary relationship wonkiness, not let other people intervene in the managing of my primary relationship.
if my relationship with matthew becomes wonky, we shut down everything else to fix it, including external relationships. that's simply a fact of who we are and how seriously we prioritize the primary relationship. we're both plenty aware of our internal destabilizations where triangulation occurs, and if adding a third angle to the construct looks to make things worse instead of better - either actively by introducing an overtly destructive influence, or passively because we stop dealing with each other as we have been - then the third angle goes away, or better yet, gets avoided before things develop. matthew and i don't have a veto arrangement in our relationship; we have respectful trust instead. if one of us airs concerns about a potential lover who is perceived in some way as being a potentially destabilizing factor, and the other opts to go ahead with pursuing a relationship there anyway, there has to be some compelling argument as to *why*, and there will almost certainly be changes in the other primary partner's handling of that relationship.
this has all come out in discussions begun at home this past weekend, and will continue to develop as we look at our respective needs. in the short term, it almost certainly means changes in how we evaluate potential lovers and their perceived impact on *us*, how we communicate our perceptions to each other, who we're willing to introduce into our structure and who we are not. evaluating the potential for ineffective and destabilizing triangulation becomes one more yardstick in the tool box for doing pre-pursuit risk analysis; since it's one i can visualize fairly well (at least so far in theory, and a little bit thus far in practice), i imagine it will be one that stays around for a while.
sometimes, it *is* easier to stick to the "short, blunt human pyramid" instead of adding a third point to the triangle. that's the downside of having potentially unrealistically high expectations for people, myself included: it limits my options something fierce.
the essential premise is that a relationship of two is inherently unstable (in the way bipedal locomotion is ultimately unstable and only works because of a vast system of compensatory peripheral actions), because the members of the relationship have only each other's focus, so tension and anxiety can escalate exponentially when there's nowhere to disperse it. as soon as you add a third party - specifically an emotionally engaged one; be it a child, a sibling, a parent/in-law, or lover - then some of the anxiety between the two in the primary relationship can dissipate because there is now a third party on which to focus, drawing some of the tension away from the core relationship.
NRE is a great thing. it's a huge, complex sweep of emotional and hormonal responses to something new and exciting, a series of sensations that can become all-encompassing. we can't get enough of them. but what happens if this NRE is directed at something outside an existing primary relationship? at the very least, even in reasonably astute, effectively-communicating, well-grounded relationships, there's a distraction factor and a diversion of energy. no matter how transparent the reasons for these diversions are, there's still an adjustment that has to happen in the primary relationship in order to accommodate this siphoning-off of resources into the newly-opened channel.
imagine how poorly that will go in any relationship that *isn't* already stable, reasonably astute, effectively-communicating, and well-grounded.
one of my biggest personal beefs with poly relationships is how communications break down so quickly when someone in the primary gets distracted by NRE. the distracted party forgets to communicate things, the other half of the primary is left to fend for one's self in finding information in the absence of explicit communications, and sometimes the third party gets involved *between* the primaries in an effort to augment a communications process, effectively becoming the monkey in the middle, or the tin-cans-on-string between two parties who should be communicating directly with each other.
it's ineffective at best in terms of communication, but it does have the short term effect of seeming to stabilize the structure, because now the primaries don't have to worry so much about communicating with each other, so long as they have a willing third party to do the work for them. they can each focus on meeting some of the needs via the third leg of the triangle, which reduces the urgency of having those needs met by the primary partner. and in the short term, the temporary stabilization looks like a great idea. the problem (because there's always a problem that often only becomes apparent over the longer term) is that these new patterns of focus and communication can become ossified, rigid. expectations and dependencies can form that completely undermine the need for those clear two-way communication channels in the primary relationship itself. and over time, any ongoing lack or obstruction of those channels will just continue the buildup of anxiety and tension in the primary relationship. i've got a personal suspicion, based on the poly structures i've known to implode in my own social spheres, that this is the most common underlying issue to pervasively haunt poly structures. it becomes a big hot button somewhere along the line for a lot of people i know. it's become a hot button for me, in the past. some of the perspective i speak from is my own.
the additional risk to the external party in triangulation is that, should s/he become involved in trying to "fix" issues with the primary relationship, there is an increased risk of over-function in someone else's relationship, and underfunctioning in one's own head or own relationships. in short, you spend so much time trying to fix someone else's problems and soothe someone else's fears that are likely not even about you specifically, that you stop doing your own homework. i've been this person... well, honestly, i've been all of these people: the primary partner reacting to my partner's NRE; the lover on the outside watching things unspool for my lover and his/her primary partner; and i've been the unspooling partner trying to manage two angles of the triangle simultaneously.
in their own inimitable ways, they all suck.
for myself and my relationships (as always, i expect YMMV), as the external lover adjacent to someone else's primary relationship, i've come to believe that it's not my job to intervene in other people's communications. i don't like getting involved, although i've done so on a couple of occasions when i have judged (and i use that term deliberately) that one party is being a complete bonehead and is in jeopardy of losing something s/he claims to value. mostly i try to stay on the outside of that primary relationship and provide some perspective when asked, advice on "how to proceed" when asked. i refuse to be the monkey in the middle - it's not my relationship, not my responsibility. i aim to be aware and respectful to the best of my abilities; not to rock the boat, and certainly not to take on other people's responsibilities to communicate.
when i bring a new lover into my primary relationship, i have to balance the distraction and investment factors against the resources i have available to my primary relationship. falling back on Spoon Theory for a moment, i only have so many spoons in a day; if i'm consistently spending more on a corollary relationship than on my primary, then something's wrong. over-investment above and beyond previously stated intents is one of the foremost flags matthew and i have when watching each other get involved in a new relationship. i don't ever want or expect an external lover to intervene in how matthew and i communicate with each other about our relationship, or about the relationships we have with our lovers. (there is a different set of rules about D/s relationships that get explained to those who need to know them, but that tangent doesn't belong here.) if matthew and i fail to communicate with each other, that's *our* problem, and while yes, it may affect our corollary relationships, it's not an issue with those relationships but rather one of communications between he and i, and anyone else seeking to intervene in *our* process is likely going to get dealt with harshly (if only because we'll likely be in a post-explosive repair state and a little short of patience while being long on anger; consider this a blanket warning...)
i am developing a hard-line rule (in 3ravensringo's terminology, possibly a manifesto) about communications: if i am the third party, don't expect *me* to talk to *your* partner for you about issues you're having with him/her; your relationship is yours to manage, and if you can't, i'll take myself out of the picture until things are under control, or completely if lovers seem incapable of managing in ways that i perceive will not affect my participation. also, i explicitly expect (and will tell people so) that it's the primary partners' responsibility to talk to each other about plans being made and confirmed, seeking permissions from each other before making plans with me. making plans with me then cancelling or having to shuffle on me because you failed to clear it with your primary first is fast becoming a big no-no in my world. likewise, i expect to have to clear things i do with matthew first, before i confirm any plans with anyone. it's an issue more of respect than anything - if you show me you consistently fail to respect your own primary relationship (insofar as i can perceive it), then really, on what am i going to build any faith in the corollary relationship i'm hoping to have with you?
a lot of this ties into the manifesto of "Don't Date Anyone Crazier Than You Are", or, as i wrote somewhere else recently, "Don't Date Those Who Bring the Dramarama". i refuse to do other people's homework for them, and i refuse to let them interfere in mine. one unexpected side effect of three years with matthew is that the bar of expectations for how well my lovers function as self-aware people and effective communicators is now uncommonly, possibly irrationally high. i don't always get what i want, and sometimes opt in the short-term for things that are bright and shiny when i don't necessarily expect them to meet my increasing standards... and i generally regret it to some extent when i do, because i wind up doing more work than i really have the spoons to cover. i'm trying to pay more attention up front so i avoid the crazy/drama factor, and i admit it's hard. bridgeoutahead made the comment last week that "not everyone is matthew", and i know this (not that matthew's perfect by a long shot, don't get me wrong; i live with him, i should know :). and i know that i may be pricing my expectations out of the reach of my likely pool of lovers, but there it is. i'm setting my standards based on my need to manage my spoons effectively and avoid the pitfalls of the triangulation issues: not getting so distracted by the Bright/Shiny that my primary relationship suffers, not getting drawn into someone else's primary relationship wonkiness, not let other people intervene in the managing of my primary relationship.
if my relationship with matthew becomes wonky, we shut down everything else to fix it, including external relationships. that's simply a fact of who we are and how seriously we prioritize the primary relationship. we're both plenty aware of our internal destabilizations where triangulation occurs, and if adding a third angle to the construct looks to make things worse instead of better - either actively by introducing an overtly destructive influence, or passively because we stop dealing with each other as we have been - then the third angle goes away, or better yet, gets avoided before things develop. matthew and i don't have a veto arrangement in our relationship; we have respectful trust instead. if one of us airs concerns about a potential lover who is perceived in some way as being a potentially destabilizing factor, and the other opts to go ahead with pursuing a relationship there anyway, there has to be some compelling argument as to *why*, and there will almost certainly be changes in the other primary partner's handling of that relationship.
this has all come out in discussions begun at home this past weekend, and will continue to develop as we look at our respective needs. in the short term, it almost certainly means changes in how we evaluate potential lovers and their perceived impact on *us*, how we communicate our perceptions to each other, who we're willing to introduce into our structure and who we are not. evaluating the potential for ineffective and destabilizing triangulation becomes one more yardstick in the tool box for doing pre-pursuit risk analysis; since it's one i can visualize fairly well (at least so far in theory, and a little bit thus far in practice), i imagine it will be one that stays around for a while.
sometimes, it *is* easier to stick to the "short, blunt human pyramid" instead of adding a third point to the triangle. that's the downside of having potentially unrealistically high expectations for people, myself included: it limits my options something fierce.