socialization

All posts tagged socialization

The Poly Scoreboard Problem

Posted by Tim on August 20, 2014
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , . 1 Comment

I’ve run into a little problem lately that I want to air out.

I’ve encountered this in a few places lately.  After a few months of getting comfortable, I’ve started the slow process of coming out at work.  It’s been going pretty well so far, which has been a great relief.  The conversations are a bit awkward because my coworkers have never really conceptualized polyamory in a concrete way.  So they ask the somewhat regular gamut of questions one encounters in that situation.  But the question about the number has seemed to come from a place of scandal and intrigue in a way that I’ve had a hard time understanding.

I’ve also run into this a bit at cocktails and other poly events.  I touched on this a bit a while ago.  Folks new to poly, especially men that are brand new to things, always take the number asan indication of how “successful” I am at polyamory, or even relationships. While I do understand a bit about where that comes from, this isn’t how I come at it at all.

I think, and I know others do too, that polyamory is much more about how you construct and approach all relationships.  It’s about introspection and boundaries and communication and trust and calendars and philosophy.  Boiling it down to a number that goes on a scoreboard is minimizing at best.  It tries to quantify something that is inherently unquantifiable.  My relationships are all multifaceted and enormous, and trying to boil them down to a hash mark feels super wrong.

Yes, there is a number of people who I am seeing.  But that number is the just the tip of this very large iceberg, and I’m afraid that people will pay attention to the number, and skip over what that really means to me.  Especially when a lot of the context of polyamorous experience is absent.  So I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of two conversations: one that I really want to have, and one that I feel like I need to have.

Does this resonate with anyone else?  How do you handle these situations?

Coming Out At Work (Again)

Posted by Tim on November 21, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I started a new job a few weeks ago. I’m back in a corporate environment again. It’s been mostly good so far: having a steady paycheck is nice, and I do know how to do this job well without too much ramping up. It is cutting into my ability to sleep in every morning, which will take some getting used to. But from an existential and financial, this is a big step in a better direction.

The folks in working with are very nice and welcoming, which I feel is really important if I’m to do well in this new place. I want to have a good interpersonal connection with everyone on my team, and I feel like I am integrating very well. They are quirky and funny and dorky, which definitely makes them my people.

The one thing that I am really anxious about is coming out as poly at some point. I came out at work when I had my last corporate job. I inched my way out to folks, approaching those I knew would be understanding, or at least would roll their eyes at me and get back to work. It felt really good to discuss my life with them without having to do an elaborate self-censoring dance. And I knew that I was lucky to find myself in that workplace with a majority of queer folks, which made those first hurdles nearly nonexistent. I cherished that.

A few months ago, it dawned on me that I was going to have to go through that whole process again. At first I was a little angry, because in my head I had “already” done all that work. It was unfair that I had to start over again at the beginning. Even without the greater societal norms and expectations that I had to climb around, it felt like I was being personally penalized. Once those vague feelings were centered on a specific new job, the anxiety zoomed up to the foreground. I was going to have to have that conversation with these specific people, in these specific circumstances.

I have not come out to anyone there yet. I’ve only been there a few weeks, and I feel like I want to know the lay of the land more first before I start making moves. And I am already not as confident that it will be as easy this time. These folks are a bit older, and bit more conservative, than my old team. I think it’s going to take me a little more time, and I’ll need to be a bit more intentional.

But I will come out to them, one way or another. My relationships are too big, and too present in my life, to pretend that they aren’t there. I long to be myself in that group, truly and completely. I look forward to being in that place.

Passing

Posted by Tim on August 2, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I’ve talked here a lot lately about coming out, being open about poly stuff, being an activist. It’s present for me, and talking about it here has been my major outlet for thinking through it all. I think it is an important dialogue to have, and is leading me to approach my thinking in really practical terms. So, first, I’d like to thank you all for your patience while I’m processing this.

I consider myself lucky to live in overlapping progressive/feminist/queer circles. On a daily basis I am having conversations with different people about patriarchy, gender, race, and privilege. It happens in my home, at my place of work, and with my other partners. Living this life means that I am constantly evaluating my life, my interactions with others, and my own preconceptions. Especially coming from my super white small town upbringing, this is something that I value very much in my life. I’m not going to claim that I am a ninja at working through any of this, but I am putting in effort on this front every day.  Go team critical thinking.

As a result of my personal environment, this article in The Atlantic came at me at least three different ways yesterday. It led to a bunch of interesting discussions about what it means to pass, and the many ways that society tells us we need to behave or interact with each other.

I do not, and would not, equate the civil rights struggle nor the gay rights struggle to the same issues that poly people face. First, the issues and laws and scope and social acceptance involved in each of these instances are different,  As the article states for race and gender, there are different risks involved in each.  And sitting on this absolutely massive pile of white-cisgendered-male-in-a-heterosexual-marriage privilege, I’m not even going to pretend that I have any grounds to talk about the particulars of any of these movements.  This is better addressed by folks who are in those communities.

But, on the very small level that I encounter it, this concept of passing really hit something in me.  I am never confronted with bias in society unless I’m running my mouth.  I get to hide behind my monogamous appearing hetero marriage, and pass in this way for as long as I like. As far as living in a closet goes, I’m playing on super-easy mode. But that doesn’t mean that I want to live in that closet, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to feel recognized for who I am.  I want to live genuinely, which means I have some choices to make.  I can pass for my entire life, or I can start exposing myself on a small-scale to the kinds of bias that others encounter every moment of their lives.

Honestly, there are giant chunks of passing and privilege and harassment that I cannot understand. I’m definitely not claiming to be an authority.  What I would like to be a part of is a dialogue about these topics, to cultivate a greater understanding of each other and what we face.  That is why I felt it important to write about here.  Let’s talk about these things, and see where that brings us.

Labels

Posted by Josie on July 28, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , . 3 Comments

A few weeks ago I went to a co-worker’s monogamous wedding. I think most poly folks at these events tend to hear things like the bible verses and the vows and take a very different perspective on them from those around us, and this experience certainly isn’t new to me. But this time around, as we neared the exchange of vows, I started wondering whether my marriage – nine years long and counting, and one that would likely be met with disapproval by most of the Catholics in this particular ceremony – actually broke any of these vows.

“I, (name), take you, (name), to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”

Hell, I do all of those things. I’m guessing the priest would quibble with me over my definition of “true to you,” but if my wife considers me to be true to her, I don’t see why he should get any say in the matter.

Anyway it got me thinking about words, and labels, and the meanings we ascribe to them. I struggle a lot in my poly life to find words that fit me. I technically have a wife, but I detest a lot of the implications of that word (and ‘partner’ has different implications, but they aren’t more accurate). I’ve had poly partners I’ve called ‘girlfriends,’ and at times that feels appropriate-ish. But for others, labels are even more hopeless. There’s one person I see a lot who once described our relationship as “romantic non-sexual” – what the heck do I call that? Friend? Partner? Are we dating? Are we seeing each other? The best I have so far is ‘lover without benefits,’ and if that’s the best you have you need help.

For that matter, even if I do have a relationship where boyfriend/girlfriend/lover/partner-type labels work, what am I to this person’s kids? (Aunt?) Or to her husband? (Wife-in-law?)

Usually when I start down this road I end up throwing my hands in the air, thinking “Why do we even need labels at all? Why are they so important to me? I don’t want to put my relationships in boxes anyway.” But we use names and labels for a reason. If I’m introducing my lover without benefits (ugh) to someone, I want to be able to confer her importance in my life. Calling her a friend doesn’t approach it. A best friend might be closer, but isn’t really accurate either. And any other word I can think of implies that something is true of our relationship that frankly is not.

This is a problem that I don’t think has an ideal solution. But I’m still not sure what to do about it.

Freaking Out the Squares

Posted by Tim on July 1, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

It was pride weekend here in Chicago, so there was a lot of socializing going on for me.  Specifically, Caroline and her husband had a poly barbeque on Saturday night, and Jamie had a bunch of people over for the parade (she lives right off of the parade route).  I think that I am just now getting out of the cloud of booze and sun exposure from this weekend, and returning to something close to a normal state.

At Caroline’s barbeque, there was a point where I met some people who I hadn’t met before.  Forgetting that this was blatantly advertised as a poly event, I checked in with her to make sure that it was cool to be out with her friends.  In the end, we discovered that I had actually met these folks before, so it wasn’t even as big of a deal as I had initially thought.

And then at the parade, there were again some folks that I hadn’t met before, so I checked in before I stated making some social faux pas in mixed company.  I don’t want to go about making people uncomfortable about interactions without some polite communication about where folks are at.  I don’t want to make my friends go on some long explanation of what is going on with their weirdo friends, or inadvertently out them to people they wouldn’t want to be out to.  Now, granted, this was at the pride parade, so there is already a level of acceptance built in there.  But I want to be nice to everyone, and let them work their way into poly issues if they would like.

Except this is kind of a lie.  Because there is totally a part of me that wants to throw polyamory around and maybe freak some monogamous people out.  I believe in advocacy and awareness, and what better way to raise awareness than to be out and loud and let people take away from that what they will.  And I want to be the person doing it, because I believe in these ideals so much that I want to be the loudmouth.  I’m happy to be the one up front.  I felt this all the more at pride, where it was about owning the way that you are and the way that you feel, and it felt really antithetical to have to couch my identity where there were a ton of people out on the street doing exactly the opposite.

But I don’t want to cause strife, and I don’t want to be a jerk about this all the time.  So I do try to walk the line in-between.  I’m super happy to talk about poly ideas and stories with folks once I know that they’re open to the idea.  And maybe I’ll try to push those boundaries and hope that the people I’m talking to are thinking about these ideas in a way that they might not have done before.  But out of respect for my friends, I’m happy to use a bit of tact before I start running my yap.

I think there’s always going to be a part of me that is going to out and loud and try to be a voice for awareness.  I hope that at some point that part of me won’t need to feel this way, because there won’t be so many folks to freak out.  For now, I’ll guess I’ll keep walking that line and let that part of me out once in a while.

“Real” Life

Posted by Tim on June 4, 2013
Posted in: polyamory. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

So, here’s something horrible my brain did to me.

I was talking with my girlfriend the other day. She’s been going through a lot lately: moving house, family stuff, stress all around. Our schedules haven’t matched up lately, so we haven’t been able to get that much time together. It sucks missing her so much, but those moments that we do get together are super bright and wonderful. And I know that this is a temporary arrangement, and eventually we’ll be able to see each other more often.

I was checking in with her, making sure that she was feeling supported and loved while all of this was happening. I was trying to tell her that I understood if she needed some extra time for herself, to be able to relax or see her husband, or just kind of not feel stressed out about having to see me. This is what I wanted get across, so she would know that I understood what was going on for her, and that I wanted to be there for her in whatever way that I could.

Instead, what I said was that I didn’t want to come between her and “real life”. Those words were barely even out of my mouth before I was shocked and appalled that I could even say such a thing.

I immediately apologized, and she was much more understanding than I was. She said that a lot of the time we spend together is in this cuddly space, and that we’re not ever really dealing with everyday issues like paying the bills or running errands. She took it in stride.

I was the one that was offended. Because my relationships are all super-real to me. I was saying to Jamie the other day that I was glad that our relationship had “relationship permanence”: even when it’s out of sight, and we’re not in the same space as each other, we are constantly thinking of each other and wanting to communicate. And I do that with everyone that I am with. The idea that my brain had tried to insinuate that these relationships were somehow not “real” was horrific to think about.

I’m afraid that this thought came from social indoctrination. That this is monogamous culture not taking my other relationships seriously. That this is polynormativity treating a relationship that’s not with my wife as disposable and fanciful. And that this is all rattling around somewhere in my head, and I managed to have it come out right then. I want to crawl into my head with a flamethrower and burn that bullshit right out of there.

I mean, fighting these ideas is part of the reason I started writing in this blog. It is the reason that I want to do more activism, and raise poly awareness. It is the reason that I have so much patience answering newbie questions at meetups. It is part of the reason that I want to come out of the closet more fully, so that I can be an example of how this exact thought process is crap, and needs to be evaluated.

I hope this was an aberration. But I’m going to keep a closer eye on how I think about these things for a little while.