Look, I'm Only Gonna Say This Once: Here's What Polyamory Looks Like
For those of you not paying attention, I had a heart attack followed by a triple bypass a few weeks back. That’s condensed my living down to bare basics.
This sort of thing traumatizes your wife, if you have one, because ZOMG YOU ALMOST DIED. (I technically should have; as a 43-year-old man, most of us with cardiac problems pop out because “heart attack” is not yet on the list of problems we could have, and so we pop a Tums and hit the club and then our heart explodes.)
So Gini and I have been reassessing and rebuilding and reassuring our life-long bond. For me, the most traumatic thing about this whole “having my ribs cracked open like a crabshell” thing is NOT the reminder of my mortality, NOT the life changes I will now have to have to ensure my arteries don’t clog again, but the fact that when I first woke, paralyzed and alone and choked and in darkness, my wife was not there.
I had always known that Gini could be taken from me. What I did not realize what that I could be taken from her. And in my darkest hour, due to circumstances that were utterly not her fault, I woke alone and terrified and lacking the love of my life.
Whereas Gini? Spent a week not knowing whether she’d get to keep the love of hers.
That’s our life. We’re poly. Yet at the core of our many loves is this deep and unique tangle of affections, this tight bond that links me to Gini in something far beyond marital bliss. We are central. We are essential. And it’s not that we do not love our other partners dearly, for we do – Gini called her boyfriend Steve for support through this, and I had a few panics when I couldn’t talk to my girlfriend A. We don’t treat our secondaries as disposables, to be jettisoned during times of crisis. That shit is awful.
But my lovers understand: as much as I do love you deeply, if there’s some crisis where I have to choose, my wife will always come first. (And considering most of our partners have been married, we understand the reverse as well.) We’ve organized our lives in a way such as to avoid such senseless conflicts, clearing a space just for us so that when we date it can be “us” time…. but I always remember what Gini told me when I moved in with her and her daughters.
“You know I love you,” she told me. “But if the house catches on fire, and I can only carry out one of you, it’s gonna be my kids. You’re okay with that, right?”
And I was. Because, well, the agreement I had with her is that the kids came first. And anyone who dates us knows that Gini and I are married, and we’re doing everything we can to avoid any errant flames… but should there be a Sophie’s Choice, Gini’s well-being will sadly come first.
In other words, we’re the “classic” poly model: an absolute love at the center of it, with many spokes around the edges. It’s the model the media likes to report upon. Because it’s basically, you know, monogamy+.
And this is what I will say to you:
WE ARE NOT THE FACE OF POLYAMORY.
We have a central relationship that takes priority; many have perfectly functioning relationships that don’t need a “primary” of any sort. We have plenty of rules; many loving people get by without them. We have a marriage at the core to protect; many don’t.
There was an article recently about how the mainstream media, when it discusses poly, focused upon people like Gini and me. (Well, more attractive people, but still.) And that presents a misleading picture to the world, as polyamory is NOT “a core of two and some folks on the fringe.” (Which is not how we’d describe ourselves anyway.)
Polyamory takes many forms. It is the opposite of monogamy. It is a wholly new relationship structure, where a single diatomic bond can be replaced by hundreds of strange configurations, many of which can only be expressed in complex diagrams, assuming everyone involved even feels a need to map that out.
I frequently write about what it takes to do polyamory well, and in that sense I’m trying to cover some basics that work for most people: have few illusions about who you’re dating, don’t lie, don’t think that NRE is an actual functioning model for a long-term relationship, communicate effectively. But somewhere, there’s a person out there who puts all of my suggestions to the lie as they work just fine without doing a damn thing I said.
I believe Huey Lewis called that “The Power of Love.”
In short: speaking as one of those media-friendly power couples, don’t believe the hype. Poly takes on many shapes, and many good strong relationships don’t require a “primary” to function. Hell, many don’t need a hierarchy of sweeties. Many don’t need rules beyond “play it safe, kids.”
When you try to fit polyamory into a box that will make the world comfortable, you’re probably doing it wrong. Poly is messy, gloriously so. We’ve got what works for us, but that doesn’t mean it should work for you.
Find your own path. Preferably one that doesn’t involve a triple bypass.
Let's Drink Water and Make Fun of Hitler's Mustache
When you know you’re skirting Godwin territory, you might as well jump right in. So. Hitler has a goofy mustache.
There. I said it.
And when I complain about Hitler, I’ll concentrate on mocking that dippy nose-skirt of his. What a ridiculous look! What kind of barber would agree to those premature borders on a hair growth? I’ll make LOLcats mocking Hitler’s mustache, and I’ll encourage my friends to add funny captions to pictures of Hitler mocking that misplaced soul patch of his, and by the time I’m done he’ll be a laughable cartoon to anyone who reads me. Just a big old mess of facial hair.
What? The Holocaust?
The wars he started?
The brainwashing of the young and the overthrow of a democratic government?
Well, as it turns out, anyone not paying real attention to Hitler (and getting their news through your feed) won’t hear a fucking thing about any of that. Because instead of focusing in on the real and very tangible crimes the man committed, you have decided to focus in on the childish, school-room superficiality that a fifth-grader would find humorous.
Good job! What you’ve done to the folks not paying attention – which is most of them – is convinced them that the reason you don’t like Hitler is because of facial reasons. Which will strike many of them as unfair, and mean-spirited – which, yes, you totally are being. And they won’t get to hear about Hitler’s many murders, because BWAH HAH HAH LOOK AT THAT MUSTACHE is what you’re spending the majority of your time publishing. In fact, by turning Hitler into a cartoon, you’ve actually made it easier to not discuss his policies, which lets your opponents spread the damage that your Hitler-hatred is personal and immature, which in turn lets them keep thinking that there can’t possibly be any valid reasons for disliking Hitler.
You wonder why there’s no real debate any more. Well, that’s because you – yes, you, you nimrod – have supported this infantile desire to mock a mustache over the real work of dissecting Hitler’s reasonable-sounding policies and explaining the many subtle evils they will cause. You’ve ignored a serial killer’s murders to focus in on his lack of fashion sense.
Good. Fucking. Job.
Likewise, today’s idiocy is that in rebutting President Obama’s State of the Union Speech, Marco Rubio took a rather awkward swig of water. When I log into Facebook and Twitter, what do I see? Tons of “HA HA RUBIO LOOKED SILLY ON CAMERA” jokes. Not, you know, a breakdown of the actual promises in his speech, or a Fact Check of his statements, or even a discussion of why the Republican promises won’t work this time. Just animated GIFs of a man drinking water.
Are we fifth graders? Are we so idiotically concerned with style over substances that a man tripping, or coughing, or dressed slightly funny, is enough that it will obliterate everything else that person says? These are the people running America, and when we reduce their many and potentially harmful policies to “neener neener, look at that stupid spray-on tan” you lower the fucking level of discourse for everyone. You elevate a cheap, senseless laugh over content. You train people to start looking for other funny bits to chortle after instead of actually using their fucking brains to debate.
“But it’s funny,” you say, getting surly. Fuck you, buddy, that’s the point. Sure, you can interrupt your CEO’s speech with a whoopee cushion and that’s a big fucking hoot, and when that’s all anyone talks about instead of, you know, potentially unionizing to protest the insurance cutbacks he just announced, then you can sure laaaaugh your goddamned way to an absence of doctor. This is shit that affects people’s lives, and by shrinking it down to a punchline what you’ve done is squashed the level of discourse to an Adam Sandler movie. Good on you! You’ve made the world very funny. And not at all functional.
So stop it. Stop mocking politicians for the stammers and stutters on-camera, the bad suit choices, the ugly wigs. Concentrate on the ugly ideas. Because their wigs aren’t going to hurt you, their funny suits won’t take away your rights, but their policies will cut your budgets and erase your freedoms unless you combat them…. and there you are, making it seem like the most noteworthy thing that Rubio did was drink water funny. No. He was outlining the Republican opposition to Obama. He’s convincing people who didn’t think the water drink was all that notable. And you are drowning in a tiny bottle full of insipid humor.
A Little Druggy Today, A Little Traumatic
So yesterday was a nice, bold return to work and progress until the evening struck. Then I cried for three hours straight.
I’m battling a lot of emotions right now, because that ventilator was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me, and the feelings of isolation and powerlessness are still hitting in weird ways. I woke up, completely helpless, with no one I knew around me to comfort me, and that’s a loneliness I didn’t know I could experience. I’d always thought Gini would be there for me, and she was in that technical sense, but in reality I was in druggy blackness, manhandled by paramedics, and with no one to explain what was happening.
That’s backfiring in weird ways. I’m terrified all the time now that Gini will leave if I’m not brave enough. If I cry. If I need her help for just one more thing. And she won’t, I think, but there’s that animal terror of coming to, paralyzed, confused, choking, and then I just want to cling to someone and never let them go. And the lid slipped a bit on that last night and it was literally three hours of tears, including a low-grade sobbing throughout a family viewing of Hotel Impossible, which is really not a show that produces mourning.
Any reference to any character being alone now will cause sniffles, including shows like King of the Hill. (The Bill Dauterive episodes are weepfests.) I’m just sort of feeling terrified like this whole life I’m living now is a sham, and any moment they’ll pull the curtain away and I’ll be back in bed. I double-dosed on Ativan last night and still was trembling until I fell asleep.
I’m told this is normal. Depression and disruption come in the wake of these things. Still, I hate crying so much that I wish it was anything else; I feel weak enough without my body betraying me again. My reaction to crying is sexist, and programmed, and completely stupid, but my own tears make me feel genderless and weak and pitiable.
I have an appointment with my therapist later this week. Today, I’m staring at code, trying to make sense of it through a brain-haze of last night’s double-dosage, and the variables are just dropping out of my mind. Things will improve. But I don’t want that moment of blackness to become an axiom of my life, because I’ve got enough bad things embedded in my memory and I don’t need a trigger pull that huge this late in life.
But that waking up was the greatest terror I’ve ever felt. Not knowing what was happening. Not knowing where anyone was. Not knowing how to get help, or how to get my body to respond. And that trauma has saturated my psyche in ways that are subtle and hard to track down. They’re fine threads woven through my mind that I only notice when something plucks at them.
I’ll be fine. I’m doing what I always do: documenting. Maybe others have been through this and they won’t feel quite as alone or weird when they see it. Maybe I’m the freak, and it’s just a personal quirk. Either way, I lay it at your feet, and expose myself, and hopefully this cold wind whipping through will carry something away from me.
A Important Announcement About My Recuperation
I have decided, as of today, that I am 51% healed.
This is correct in that I am literally over the hump. There will be bad days and inconveniences, I’m sure, but I am coming back to work and I am coming back to writing and I’m coming back to life. I can smooch my wife and girlfriend, write chapters, text jovially, and walk without too much trembling.
So yeah. It’s only better from now on. Eventually I’ll get back to normal, but I am as of this moment more normal than not.
A Longer Essay, Packed For Today: Why The Fuck Do Dudes Treat Women Like Vending Machines For Sex?
At some point I’m going to unpack this thought further, into a larger essay, but after seeing numerous examples this weekend, I’m just sort of still mystified by the behavior.
Why the fuck do dudes treat women like vending machines for sex?
Like, okay, if you treat them like puzzle boxes, it’s not great, but at least you’re accepting that there’s a kind of entertainment to be found. But the number of guys who literally want nothing to do with women if they’re not dispensing sex terrify me. They have zero female friends, except for the ones they’re pretty sure they can bang one day, and when it becomes apparent that the banging isn’t going to happen, they walk away without an ounce of shame or discomfort. In fact, they walk away with such an absence of shame that it’s as though they genuinely believe the entire world is like this, and the women should have known better to be fooled.
At which point I sputter. People are interesting. Women are people. Do you treat your guy pals with the same psychopathic coldness – your dudebros are just there to deliver an experience, and when that’s gone, so are you? Or are you so conditioned to see women as an alien race that you literally have a negative interest in connecting?
And do you realize how awful this methodology works? I mean, I guess you can go out and Pick-Up Artist the bars, finding new chicks every night, but that fails for most guys. Even if you just wanted nothing but mercenary sex, pretending to be pals with women is still your better option, because women know other women. If you hang around a girl, she’ll introduce you to her friends, and eventually one of them will likely show an interest with you. As opposed to burning every bridge you walk across the instant it becomes apparent there’s no juicy treat in immediate site. A smart psychopath would do better.
I dunno. It’s a cold approach, one abhorrent to everything I believe about the way you should treat women, and people. But it’s also insanely prevalent, this whole schism between women and men, where men treat women like an ugly foreign land to be endured. And that prevalence just shows a whole mindset that I find repellent and scarring and yet those dudes will probably find some wife who also believes in it and will raise a new generation of dysfunctionals. Which is, you know, creepy to the maxicreep.