Recently, Marc and I went out on 4-way date with another
couple. The plan was to meet at a
local watering hole for cocktails and conversation. The afternoon before the date, Marc posted this on his
Facebook wall: “Looking forward to
a date tonight with a lovely couple and Mimi.” He tagged me, so it went up on
my FB wall as well.
I hadn’t told Scott about the date. He and I had a sort of “don’t ask;
don’t tell” policy when it came to my seeing other people besides Marc.
When Marc’s comment about the date went up on my wall, I
received a text from Scott that read, “Is this a “date” date?” I replied “Yes.”
We were smack dab in a three-way kerfuffle. Marc’s post was about him and me and
the couple we were going to see that night, but by tagging me, he made it also about
Scott and me.
Needless to say, Scott was angry, but he was also hurt. He had made it very clear to me that he
didn’t want to find out about my dates…let alone on Facebook! Also, the last time we were together,
we had a long talk about our open relationship. I told him that I’m not at all interested in adding another
relationship to the mix right now, but that in the future, it’s entirely
possible and likely that I will. I
also said that there wasn’t anyone on my radar and that, for now, I’m not
interested in having another lover.
He told me that he felt the same way. We were in an open relationship, but neither one of us was
especially anxious to put it in to practice.
This was before Marc and I met our new friends.
Marc and I went on the date and ended up in bed with our new
friends. The next day, Scott and I
spent a long time on the phone talking about what had happened, why it
happened, and what each other wants and needs around the open aspect of our
relationship. Marc and I
also had a talk about FB etiquette and about what Scott and I decided about how
to do our open relationship.
All three of us had to deal with the challenges of this
situation and come out the other end with new strategies and new goals. Since
this was a three-way kerfuffle, in addition to including my and Marc’s take on
things, we’ve asked Scott to guest blog about this situation from his angle as
a third coming in to an existing couple.
Mimi:
When Scott and I first got together, he made two things
clear to me in no uncertain terms.
1) He doesn’t want to change me and loves the part of me that is
polyamorous and committed to doing open relationships, and 2) He doesn’t want
to know about other lovers.
At the time, I agreed and said that I’d rather not know about his either.
Our relationship was new and, to
be honest, I wasn’t at all secure in it.
I just assumed that eventually some kind, lovely woman who wanted to be
in a monogamous relationship with him would come back or come along and he and
I would go our separate ways. And
so the thought of him dating others made me feel jealous, and I just didn’t
want to deal with it.
As time passed and he and I got closer, however, the
prospect of him choosing a monogamous partner over me became less likely, but,
at the same time, more and more scary.
I had a lot to lose. I
didn’t want to get blind-sided, so I told Scott that I don’t want to know about
casual sex, but if he starts to have a relationship that could potentially
affect our relationship, I’d like to know. He agreed and reiterated that he doesn’t want to know
anything.
So, for a while, that’s how we did it. Scott doesn’t want to know; I do.
As you’ll read below, Marc was always really uncomfortable
with the don’t ask/don’t tell agreement between me and Scott, but I felt
strongly that it is our relationship, and how we negotiate it is between me and
Scott as long as our agreements don’t have an impact on Marc. But to be honest, I wasn’t entirely
comfortable with Scott’s request to be completely in the dark either. I worried that it was a kind of denial
and that maybe he was not willing or able to really do an open relationship.
And then I fucked up.
I don’t know if it was an unconscious effort to push the issue with
Scott or a desire to be open to the world, but about six months ago, I posted
on Facebook a status about going on a date with Marc and another couple. The chances of having sex with the
other couple were remote, but Scott couldn’t have known that. On top of that, Marc and I were on a
trip together and I had requested some space from Scott. Not only did I post about the date, but
Scott and I hadn’t talked for a couple of days, and I wouldn’t be returning
home until 2 days later. Needless
to say, Scott was rightly upset.
He angrily reminded me of his strong desire to not know about it. I apologized and promised him I would
never post a status update like that ever again.
When I made this promise, I felt a little twinge of
discomfort. There are so many people
I know who are on the “down low” about being open and poly because there could
be real and dire consequences if they were out. Since I am not in that situation, I want to be as open about
how we’re living our lives as possible.
This includes waving my poly flag on Facebook. Scott’s request felt like a step backward into the closet,
but I didn’t say anything. At the
time, no one was on my radar, and as long as I wasn’t dating anyone else, I could
avoid dealing with it.
When Marc and I made the date with our new friends, I felt
the conflict between my desire for full disclosure and what Scott said he needed.
I wanted to tell Scott, and I really did NOT want him to find out "accidentally" later. I resolved to tell him afterwards and request that we discuss doing things
differently and more openly with each other.
Then Marc posted the status about the date on FB and tagged
me. I’ve told Marc on several occasions that it is not okay for him to expose
personal things about my life on Facebook without securing my permission first.
I was napping when Marc posted, and by the time I woke up,
Scott had already seen it. Needless
to say, he was very hurt and angry, and I had to do a lot of emotional work
with Scott up front before the date.
The next day, Scott and I talked for a long time about what
happened and how we might avoid the situation in the future. I told him that I’m very uncomfortable
with the don’t ask/don’t tell policy.
I said that I want to know everything about his interest in or sexual
activity with others and that I want to be able to tell him about mine. He said that it’s really hard because
we’re so far apart, we can’t reconnect with each other the same way Marc and I
do, and it’s all so new to him. He’s
never been anything but monogamous.
I remember those first couple of times Marc slept with someone else, and
I totally understand how Scott was feeling. Scott and I agreed that I would tell him after the fact and
not before and see how that goes. Marc
has agreed to not post personal information about me on my own Facebook wall
without checking with me first.
In the end, here is what I learned from this experience: 1) Don’t ever let your lover(s) find out about your trysts through
Facebook or in a blog. 2) Remember that it’s really hard for everyone in the
beginning. As a newbie, Scott is
doing great, but it’s his first time and he hasn’t had a chance to develop the
skills and strategies Marc and I have built over the years. 3) No one is perfect and every poly
relationship is an ongoing process without a blue print. The key to doing polyamory is being flexible
and willing to adjust and renegotiate when something isn’t working. Rather than hold on to anger or
throwing in the towel when something goes wrong or someone makes a mistake, we
have to learn from the situation, make adjustments to avoid similar problems in
the future, and move forward. Scott
and I realized that don’t ask/don’t tell isn’t sustainable over the long run
and we made an adjustment to ease into a more open arrangement. Marc realized that his post hurt and
angered Scott and violated my privacy, and he promised it wouldn’t happen again.
You know that saying, “forgive and forget?” I really think it
should be, “forgive and renegotiate,” and always remember relationships are an
ongoing, ever-evolving process, not a fixed set of rules and roles. In the immortal words of Kevin Cronin,
you just gotta “roll with the change-as-ah.”
Marc:
It's true, I've never been comfortable with the "don't ask,
don't tell" policy. In my mind, that seems like Mimi and Scott are
establishing a monogamous relationship.
One of the most difficult parts for me about polyamory and an open
relationship is dealing with insecurities and jealousies around Mimi sleeping
with other people. Judging by Scott's request for a "don't ask, don't
tell" policy, these aspects are also difficult for him. The main
difference would be, then, that I have to do the work around these issues, but
because of Mimi and Scott's policy, Scott does not have to do the work, since
he does not have to know about Mimi sleeping with other people (besides me).
That has always seemed fundamentally unfair, but then again, it's their
policy, and they should have a right to set up their relationship the way that
they want to do so.
I have consistently and reluctantly gone along with this policy.
That said, I am in a polyamorous relationship, and when I am excited
about an upcoming date with either an individual or a couple, I want to be able
to post on Facebook about it. I'm not in the closet about my desire.
So when I tagged Mimi in the posts about our upcoming dates, it was for
Mimi. I wanted her to see that so that she would know that I am also excited,
just as she was.
I realized that Scott might see the post, but had no idea that it
might make him angry. I assumed that he knew that we occasionally date other
people. For the last 1.5 years, it really has felt as though Mimi is in
an open relationship with me, but in a monogamous relationship with Scott.
This has always been due to the fact that they haven't told each other
about other lovers they have. It really has always felt to me like if you
are going to do an open, polyamorous relationship, you need to fully embrace
it, and accept the difficult parts with the fun parts.
Whenever I have brought this up with Mimi, she has pushed back, and
told me that the real problem here is that I'm not being compassionate enough
towards Scott. I totally understand what Scott is going through. He is in
love with Mimi, and Mimi was in a relationship with me when they met, so the
relationship between Mimi and I is something that he knew about and had to
learn to deal with from the very start. I can be compassionate and
understand what Scott is going through, while at the same time feeling as
though the arrangement is unfair, as it allows him to avoid much of the work
that I have to do around Mimi being with him and with other men. I assume
that there was a subconscious "here, deal with it" layer to my
tagging Mimi in my post about our upcoming date.
I've made a promise to Mimi to follow the Facebook rule to the
letter from now on, but, in that negotiation, I was glad to discover that Mimi
was more on the same page with me regarding the "don't ask, don't
tell" policy. I am hoping that the end result of me tagging Mimi in
my Facebook post will be that all three of us come to a better understanding,
and that Scott and Mimi finally come to a realization that in order to truly do
polyamory, there needs to be transparency and openness.
Scott:
O.K. Where to start?
Perhaps a brief bit of
background.
My name is Scott. I’m an
artist, and I live in Chicago. I’m currently in the middle of a divorce after a
decades long relationship and this is my first blog entry ever.
This is also my first open/polyamorous
relationship and I’m learning as I go. Until now monogamy was my default
setting and quite honestly I was fine with that. That is, until I met Mimi.
Mimi has already covered in
earlier entries how we met so I won’t bother with repeating those details.
I’ve never had an issue
with Marc and Mimi being primaries and no desire what so ever to try and alter
that in anyway. They are peanut butter and jelly, lox and cream cheese, pork
chops and applesauce, pick a food pairing of your choice. They belong together
and compliment each other well.
Nor do I have an issue with
the open aspect of the relationship. While I currently have no desire to act
upon it myself, I’m well aware of not only Mimi’s desire to occasionally take a
new lover but also how she views the act of engaging in recreational sex with
others. In her words, “It’s like bowling with a new friend.” Bowling…Mimi does
love her sports.
For me sexual intimacy has
almost always been with someone I felt a deep connection with. It’s a physical
act that I love experiencing for sure, but it’s also a spiritual commingling, a
bonding. It’s been rare that I’ve been intimate with someone I didn’t have an
emotional connection with. I know that this is just my view, and I do try hard
to recognize that and avoid projecting my interpretation onto her and her
experiences.
For myself that’s easier
said than done. As an artist, I’ve literally spent my entire life letting my
brain have free rein with my imagination. It’s a handy playground for being
creative. Not so much when super imposed onto your girlfriend’s experiences
with other lovers. For this reason I’ve asked Mimi to avoid letting me know
when she has an upcoming date. Oddly enough and for reasons unknown to me, I’m
overall fine with the knowledge after the fact, but to be aware it’s happening
in real time is a struggle, which brings us to the point of our tale.
I was breaking for lunch at
work and, as I often do at such times, checked in to Facebook to see what Mimi
was up to. It’s how we met and, being that we live so far apart, it’s a way for
us to feel connected and see what the other is up to day to day. It was then
that I saw Marc’s post regarding the date that evening.
To say I was hurt and angry
is a bit of an understatement and my mind, not always being my friend,
immediately went into hyper drive with various narratives complete with
surround sound and hi def imagery. I was angry because this wasn’t the first
time such a situation had occurred.
Suffice it to say that after the first incident, I felt like we had
established clear ground rules on not posting on Facebook about upcoming dates.
To be fair, the first time was a post from Mimi, not Marc, but since he had to
deal with the fall out of my reaction then, fair or not, I was beyond sure he
knew he was not only breaking a rule Mimi and I had, but he also knew the
effect it would have on me.
To make it worse, it was
Saturday, our date night. Date
night means Mimi and I clear our calendars and set aside a big chunk of time to
talk on the phone or video chat. I was scheduled to work that evening but
thought I could weasel out of it early to make our date. Mimi requested we
postpone our date night to the following evening. Not realizing at the time it was so she and Marc could go out
with the new couple, I agreed.
All of this was on the
backdrop of a conversation Mimi and I had about not wanting to take a new lover
any time soon. I knew of course that at some future point she would and was
fine with that. I would never want to discourage Mimi from having new
experiences or being who she is. I guess I just didn’t expect it so soon on the
heels of that conversation.
To sum it all up, I was
trapped at work with a full on mental movie, feeling angry at Marc for posting
something that he knew was not only breaking a rule but would also have a huge
effect on me. On top of that, I was hurt for feeling my date was bumped for another
one and for Mimi taking new lovers so soon after saying she didn’t want to.
Now, here’s the rub.
Neither one of them did
anything wrong.
Marc and Mimi are the
poster children of the open/poly movement and are accustomed to joyously
sharing their love of each other and the way they live. I’ve unintentionally
made it hard for them to be open in some cases. That’s gotta chaff a bit. To
Mimi’s knowledge, I was not going to be able to make our date and she had no
way of telling me what was happening without breaking the rule I had made. I had
essentially made it all but impossible for her to openly communicate what was
happening. It was a lose/ lose situation for her.
And even while Mimi was
pouring her sweet words in my ear, I knew there would be new experiences and
lovers she would want to have. It was foolish of me to put any sort of
artificial time limit to her words. I had basically set things up to be
difficult if not impossible.
In short, I have to and
want to get to the point where Marc and Mimi can be totally open wherever and
however they want to be about their amorous adventures. I know how Mimi feels
about me and that her open experiences bare no resemblance to those she shares
with Marc or myself nor in anyway tarnish the love she has for each of us. This has all been so new to me and both
of them have been great, not just in allowing me to be part of their world, but
in the patience they have shown.
I will, no doubt, continue
to struggle, but I will also look for new ways to still my mind and embrace
compersion. Deep breaths and baby steps. It’s a whole new world.