[poly] perils and pitfalls of parity
i keep tripping up on the internalized expectation that what's good for the goose must also be good for the gander, with no room for differentiation, or we're doing something wrong. even as i keep reminding myself, "it's like we're two different people", i keep expecting that the things that bug me and want specific behaviours to redress, are also bugging matthew, and require the same behaviours from me to redress the sense of discomfort i assume he must also be feeling.
hello, i'm 'nora, and i own other people's shite for fun and profit. well, not so much profit, alas.
the biggest (recurring) disparity i find between matthew and i is our respective comfort levels with interacting with each other's other relationships. in comparing notes with a new lover earlier this week, i can take some comfort from the confirmed fact that my particular approach isn't entirely singular. (in case anyone else is wondering, yes this post is related to, but veering somewhat tangentially, from this post i wrote in march about compersion.)
i know that matthew has lovers; i know who they are, some of them are also friends of mine, at least one of them is something more to me as well. but i'm *really* uncomfortable being confronted with the evidential presence of those relationships, be it the inadvertent leavings of props and whatnot from dates at home (or in the pavilion, or...), or watching relational snuggling at social events where i'm both present and operating under an assumption that he and i are at said event together, even if that assumption is a de facto default rather than something explicitly decreed. that discomfort is entirely me. i own it. i know (mostly) where it's rooted, i know what it triggers. i understand it; i feed it, i walk it, i tuck it into its bed and blankie at night.
matthew, on the other hand, is either more comfortable with, or at least more willing to accommodate, being around while i'm interacting with a lover (no, not explicitly limited to sex). he's not totally comfortable either, but his sense of accommodation seems greater than mine, and i find that i have some innate reactions to a perceived need for parity that... well, "complicate matters" is one way of looking at it. "drive me fucking bug-nuts" might be another.
somewhere along the way, i got the impression that there was some degree of discretion at work in how we present the poly aspect of our lives, especially with regards to professional spheres, family spheres, and select social spheres (the SCA being one of them, though we've both been openly poly in the SCA context in previous relationships, so i'm not sure where i got this assumption from for this relationship). matthew has at least one relationship that i had always understood to operate on a specific discretion requirement, even within the Tribe - amongst whom i've given up trying to keep relationships discrete, except insofar as i seem to be accumulating relationships and potential relationship that are outside the Tribe; when you date within the Tribe, it's generally been safest to just assume that the Tribe knows. or will know. or is at least making semi-edumacated guesses. or won't care. or some combination of all of the above. so there are certain operational expectations i have developed regarding managing those relationships that dictate the behaviours i associate with those relationships.
i don't have any relationships that require that kind of discretion (if i do, someone had better clarify that for me PDQ, BTW, FWIW). so there is, in my head, a disparity in expected behavioural associations: i expect matthew to be discrete in his behaviours, in part to meet my ostrich-headed needs and in part because that's what *his* relationships (as i understood them) required; i had no such requirements, so my behavioural expectations are different: respectful certainly, but less concerned with discretion.1
so what happens, then, when something changes, or appears to change, in the underlying requirements of matthew's relationships, such that behavioural displays change in a way that makes the (external) discretionary requirement seem no longer applicable? well, you get a very confused me, first of all, and a very uncomfortable me, secondly. matthew's relational behaviour is nothing short of on par with my own... but because it's both new and unexpected, it's got my weasels in an uproar, and we all know how much fun that can be.
it's a profoundly awkward place to get stuck: we're taught from first breath that equality is good, that parity equals equality, and therefore parity must also be good: we each get, and do, the exact same things in the exact same portions, because that's fair, and fair is good, right? but what does that mean for relationships in which the involved parties are in fact two rather different individuals, with disparities in their respective needs for comfort? it means you have to find ways to achieve balance that doesn't involve parity, and let me tell you... that's an exercise and a half of Not Much Fun. in the previous post linked above, i wrote about my opinion of the Brave Little Toaster theory, and trying to be good with something you're not good with (in my case, trying to be comfortable with an extremely uncomfortable situation when confronted by evidence of things i know exist, but don't necessarily want to have to look at).
this is the biggest parity issue i keep hitting in myself: because matthew has consistently been decent with accepting the overt presence of my lovers and our relationships, i feel like a turd when i can't extend the same degree of decency. i keep trying, and i keep surprising myself with failure; what's the classic definition of insanity, again? oh right - repeating the same actions time and again while expecting different results, okay, gotcha. hey, kids, if this is thursday, it must be Turd Time again! (or, y'know.... maybe not.)
the only other immediately-visible option is the standard relational power struggle response of, "what you're doing is making me uncomfortable, please stop what you're doing so i stop feeling uncomfortable", which looks like a decent approach on paper, but in honesty really sucks. matthew's behaviour isn't the issue, just as his other relationships aren't the issue; as we say in counselling, "the problem isn't the problem." matthew's behaviour is simply a trigger for those ancient insecurities, so i keep getting caught in the loop that if they're my issues, i'm the only one who can make them go away, using my Stupor-Powers of Unweaselled Self-Awareness, and my Big Girl Panties2.
except, you know... it sometimes doesn't work that way, and when you can't unravel the underlying issues sufficiently to get out of the emotional knee-jerkiness of survival mode, you *have* to come back to symptomology, and deal with the issue at the triggering, "GAH! Fuck!" level. unhooking the expectation of parity becomes a major hurdle at this stage; in the language of Virginia Satir, this is a couple of levels below the waterline of the personal iceberg, where i've got visible behaviours, feelings (discomfort and other knee-jerkisms), and now i'm introducing feelings about those feelings, namely guilt at asking for something that increases disparity, and frustration at myself that i can't get good with this stuff.
sometimes, disparity just is. the only way to get out of the internal emotional loop between responses and feelings-about-feelings is to keep breaking back down to the point of looking at my needs, and, honestly, sometimes you just have to ask for what you need, disparities be damned. matthew always has the right to respond with, "i'm sorry, i cannot meet that need for you", at which point we can look at what the implications will be for me, for us, for how we handle this disparity and the relationships involved. he could also so, "yes, i can meet that need for you," or "i can meet you part way, here, here, and here", to give us a starting point for trying to collaboratively solve the dilemma. the root issue may be all about me, but the inevitable solution will be all about us.
no, we don't have that solution. we're still at the "i've acknowledged disparity, and i'm asking for it anyway" stage, with the explicit understanding that i was asking under duress, and may not still feel so horrible with time to reflect on what my needs are, out from under the urgency of the moment. my job since tabling the issues has been to keep myself out of that emotional loop and try to get down to perceptions and needs (a few levels further down the Satirian iceberg metaphor). i think i'm doing an okay job of communicating the perceptions; the needs probably still need some bashing around before i'll know what it is, exactly, i'm trying to address in my reactions to matthew.
it leads to some interesting general poly-cultural questions:
do you assume a state of parity must exist between partners within a relationship (as opposed to across all your relationships3) for the relationship to be healthy?
can disparity exist without throwing the relationship into chaos?
what are your identified keys for managing healthy disparity?
how do you identify disparity issues which can be brought on par, and how do you know when you've hit one that can't?
is "suck it up, Brave Little Toaster", ever really the right answer?
1 - it's worth noting: my issues with parity/non-parity don't apply to my other lovers' lovers; it seems to be unique to my relationship with matthew, and is heavily rooted in ancient insecurities feeding possessiveness around the primary. just in case anyone is doing the math to think of how many other lovers some of my current lovers have, and wondering why my head doesn't just explode and take us all out with the shrapnel...
2 - assuming i wore underwear, that is.
3 - for example, parity might be a requirement between you and your primary, and between you and your boytoy, but need not exist as an equalizing factor between your primary relationship and your non-primary relationships. otherwise, the assumption would be that what the primary gets, all the non-primary lovers must also get, and that's not how i understand most hierarchical or near-hierarchical poly relationships to work; there will always be *more* (defined however you will) going to the primary than to others. but does the same "more" go between primary partners? or can the relationship still be healthy if one primary partner demands more discretion, for example, than the other primary partner?
hello, i'm 'nora, and i own other people's shite for fun and profit. well, not so much profit, alas.
the biggest (recurring) disparity i find between matthew and i is our respective comfort levels with interacting with each other's other relationships. in comparing notes with a new lover earlier this week, i can take some comfort from the confirmed fact that my particular approach isn't entirely singular. (in case anyone else is wondering, yes this post is related to, but veering somewhat tangentially, from this post i wrote in march about compersion.)
i know that matthew has lovers; i know who they are, some of them are also friends of mine, at least one of them is something more to me as well. but i'm *really* uncomfortable being confronted with the evidential presence of those relationships, be it the inadvertent leavings of props and whatnot from dates at home (or in the pavilion, or...), or watching relational snuggling at social events where i'm both present and operating under an assumption that he and i are at said event together, even if that assumption is a de facto default rather than something explicitly decreed. that discomfort is entirely me. i own it. i know (mostly) where it's rooted, i know what it triggers. i understand it; i feed it, i walk it, i tuck it into its bed and blankie at night.
matthew, on the other hand, is either more comfortable with, or at least more willing to accommodate, being around while i'm interacting with a lover (no, not explicitly limited to sex). he's not totally comfortable either, but his sense of accommodation seems greater than mine, and i find that i have some innate reactions to a perceived need for parity that... well, "complicate matters" is one way of looking at it. "drive me fucking bug-nuts" might be another.
somewhere along the way, i got the impression that there was some degree of discretion at work in how we present the poly aspect of our lives, especially with regards to professional spheres, family spheres, and select social spheres (the SCA being one of them, though we've both been openly poly in the SCA context in previous relationships, so i'm not sure where i got this assumption from for this relationship). matthew has at least one relationship that i had always understood to operate on a specific discretion requirement, even within the Tribe - amongst whom i've given up trying to keep relationships discrete, except insofar as i seem to be accumulating relationships and potential relationship that are outside the Tribe; when you date within the Tribe, it's generally been safest to just assume that the Tribe knows. or will know. or is at least making semi-edumacated guesses. or won't care. or some combination of all of the above. so there are certain operational expectations i have developed regarding managing those relationships that dictate the behaviours i associate with those relationships.
i don't have any relationships that require that kind of discretion (if i do, someone had better clarify that for me PDQ, BTW, FWIW). so there is, in my head, a disparity in expected behavioural associations: i expect matthew to be discrete in his behaviours, in part to meet my ostrich-headed needs and in part because that's what *his* relationships (as i understood them) required; i had no such requirements, so my behavioural expectations are different: respectful certainly, but less concerned with discretion.1
so what happens, then, when something changes, or appears to change, in the underlying requirements of matthew's relationships, such that behavioural displays change in a way that makes the (external) discretionary requirement seem no longer applicable? well, you get a very confused me, first of all, and a very uncomfortable me, secondly. matthew's relational behaviour is nothing short of on par with my own... but because it's both new and unexpected, it's got my weasels in an uproar, and we all know how much fun that can be.
it's a profoundly awkward place to get stuck: we're taught from first breath that equality is good, that parity equals equality, and therefore parity must also be good: we each get, and do, the exact same things in the exact same portions, because that's fair, and fair is good, right? but what does that mean for relationships in which the involved parties are in fact two rather different individuals, with disparities in their respective needs for comfort? it means you have to find ways to achieve balance that doesn't involve parity, and let me tell you... that's an exercise and a half of Not Much Fun. in the previous post linked above, i wrote about my opinion of the Brave Little Toaster theory, and trying to be good with something you're not good with (in my case, trying to be comfortable with an extremely uncomfortable situation when confronted by evidence of things i know exist, but don't necessarily want to have to look at).
this is the biggest parity issue i keep hitting in myself: because matthew has consistently been decent with accepting the overt presence of my lovers and our relationships, i feel like a turd when i can't extend the same degree of decency. i keep trying, and i keep surprising myself with failure; what's the classic definition of insanity, again? oh right - repeating the same actions time and again while expecting different results, okay, gotcha. hey, kids, if this is thursday, it must be Turd Time again! (or, y'know.... maybe not.)
the only other immediately-visible option is the standard relational power struggle response of, "what you're doing is making me uncomfortable, please stop what you're doing so i stop feeling uncomfortable", which looks like a decent approach on paper, but in honesty really sucks. matthew's behaviour isn't the issue, just as his other relationships aren't the issue; as we say in counselling, "the problem isn't the problem." matthew's behaviour is simply a trigger for those ancient insecurities, so i keep getting caught in the loop that if they're my issues, i'm the only one who can make them go away, using my Stupor-Powers of Unweaselled Self-Awareness, and my Big Girl Panties2.
except, you know... it sometimes doesn't work that way, and when you can't unravel the underlying issues sufficiently to get out of the emotional knee-jerkiness of survival mode, you *have* to come back to symptomology, and deal with the issue at the triggering, "GAH! Fuck!" level. unhooking the expectation of parity becomes a major hurdle at this stage; in the language of Virginia Satir, this is a couple of levels below the waterline of the personal iceberg, where i've got visible behaviours, feelings (discomfort and other knee-jerkisms), and now i'm introducing feelings about those feelings, namely guilt at asking for something that increases disparity, and frustration at myself that i can't get good with this stuff.
sometimes, disparity just is. the only way to get out of the internal emotional loop between responses and feelings-about-feelings is to keep breaking back down to the point of looking at my needs, and, honestly, sometimes you just have to ask for what you need, disparities be damned. matthew always has the right to respond with, "i'm sorry, i cannot meet that need for you", at which point we can look at what the implications will be for me, for us, for how we handle this disparity and the relationships involved. he could also so, "yes, i can meet that need for you," or "i can meet you part way, here, here, and here", to give us a starting point for trying to collaboratively solve the dilemma. the root issue may be all about me, but the inevitable solution will be all about us.
no, we don't have that solution. we're still at the "i've acknowledged disparity, and i'm asking for it anyway" stage, with the explicit understanding that i was asking under duress, and may not still feel so horrible with time to reflect on what my needs are, out from under the urgency of the moment. my job since tabling the issues has been to keep myself out of that emotional loop and try to get down to perceptions and needs (a few levels further down the Satirian iceberg metaphor). i think i'm doing an okay job of communicating the perceptions; the needs probably still need some bashing around before i'll know what it is, exactly, i'm trying to address in my reactions to matthew.
it leads to some interesting general poly-cultural questions:
do you assume a state of parity must exist between partners within a relationship (as opposed to across all your relationships3) for the relationship to be healthy?
can disparity exist without throwing the relationship into chaos?
what are your identified keys for managing healthy disparity?
how do you identify disparity issues which can be brought on par, and how do you know when you've hit one that can't?
is "suck it up, Brave Little Toaster", ever really the right answer?
1 - it's worth noting: my issues with parity/non-parity don't apply to my other lovers' lovers; it seems to be unique to my relationship with matthew, and is heavily rooted in ancient insecurities feeding possessiveness around the primary. just in case anyone is doing the math to think of how many other lovers some of my current lovers have, and wondering why my head doesn't just explode and take us all out with the shrapnel...
2 - assuming i wore underwear, that is.
3 - for example, parity might be a requirement between you and your primary, and between you and your boytoy, but need not exist as an equalizing factor between your primary relationship and your non-primary relationships. otherwise, the assumption would be that what the primary gets, all the non-primary lovers must also get, and that's not how i understand most hierarchical or near-hierarchical poly relationships to work; there will always be *more* (defined however you will) going to the primary than to others. but does the same "more" go between primary partners? or can the relationship still be healthy if one primary partner demands more discretion, for example, than the other primary partner?