Theory and Practice
The manifold differences between exploring ideas and putting those ideas into use in daily life are axiomatic. I demonstrated this to myself yesterday on the LJ Polyamory blog: I posted a comment or two in response to a couple of posts, and subsequent comments made by others were so much more sophisticated, aware, and useful that I deleted my comments and resolved to remain a lurker. I’ve got no business offering any advice in that community. Where I wrote general, pat-on-the head platitudes, others brought the kind of specific, targeted, practical advice that can only come from experience. I was embarrassed by my naïvete.
Which brings to mind the question: what, exactly, am I seeking here? (It brings it to my mind, anyway; your mind, most likely, doesn’t care so much, but this is my wretched patch of IntraTube, so it’s my mind that gets to decide what gets brought up and what doesn’t.) Clever turns of phrase aside, I’m quite serious when I say that, relationship-wise, I’m not looking and don’t want to look. I’m benched. I may go to clubs and ogle the boys and girls, but I wouldn’t go home with any of them. I may browse the poly sites and journals, but I’m not cruising for a couple. All I’m doing is gathering information.
Someone commented recently that polyamory is the “Parris Island of relationship skills,” and that makes sense to me. The truth is that there are no skills that are unique to ethically nonmonogamous relationships. The main difference is that the complexity of multiple intimate relationships requires, if you will, a more rapid deployment of these skills. A poly person might be dealing with two types of personalities at once with differing levels of intimacy, and learning as he or she goes, whereas a serial monogamist has to wait until the next person comes along. Those who are suited for it learn fast, or fail. Sometimes both.
Jealousy management, for instance. In a monogamous relationship, you might go for years before you have to confront that issue. In a poly relationship, it’s right there, in your face, and if you can’t meet your partner’s needs for reassurance and safety, that’s it: you’re done. A misconception I’ve encountered is that polyamory takes as its premise that jealousy “can be eliminated,” but there is nothing I’ve read anywhere that indicates that this is the case. The premise is that jealousy, if it arises, can be dealt with.
I’m not oblivious to the fact that there are probably many excellent reasons for me to stay far away from this ragtag utopian assemblage of free lovers, neopagans, and overeducated sensualists. I find what I read on the journals of poly practitioners to be immensely valuable, but I also find accounts of situations that seem incredibly dramatic, wrenching and—in a word or two—fucked up. Situations that I would never want to find myself in. I am not so naïve that I don’t recognize the increased probability of such drama, were I to move along from theory and into practice.
However, I am a person who is not afraid of ideas, and wants to discuss them as nonthreatening abstractions. This is, in fact, a litmus test for my relationships, one of a whole set of personal standards that I have been discovering and developing over the past year. The ability to freely discuss anything, whether it’s bisexuality, polyamory, some odd philosophical tenet, or states of mind and heart, is a requirement for me...not necessarily in friendship and acquaintance-type relationships, although friendships are certainly the richer for it. Such depth of discussion, however, is certainly a requirement in intimate relationships. Ideas are ephemeral things that can’t hurt anyone, and should be treated as playthings, brightly-colored conceptual Tinker Toys that can be intricate, simple, fun, dark, illuminating, or a host of other descriptors, but never a threat. It is only action that can cause harm.
True: ideas can trigger emotions, but emotions can be dealt with. The emotional subtext of such abstract discussion is simply another form of communication, and a rich one at that. I’ve discovered that if I pay attention, I can often learn more about a person from this subtext than I can from their overt words. An emotional subtext that is grossly at odds with the words being spoken or written will contain volumes’ worth of important information.
That much, at least, is no longer theory for me. That’s practice.
