Anxiety and irritability

[danaeris]

Kinda like pride and prejudice, or sense and sensibility?

For the last week or so, I've been having bad dreams. Either the frantic panicky sort where you can't find your tickets and you're not done packing and you need to be on the plane, or the really sad kind where you die and you're rather depressed about it. Sadly, these dreams have been pretty damned consistent. Also, two of the recent dreams have included stuff about being queer or somesuch and hiding it from parents, or coming out to them, or somesuch.

Yesterday and today, I've also been very irritable, cranky, grumpy. Maybe it's PMS. Maybe it's lack of good sleep. I don't know, but can it stop, please?

---

I've been questioning polyamory's place in my life lately. I've been running into a lot of people who say that polyamory sounds nice, but it would be more trouble than it's worth, and I have to admit that there's some truth to that. Active polyamory without drama or angst can be really hard to come by. I'm sure there are ways to organize a relationship to keep it as low-drama as possible, while still being polyamorous. But, with stability as the watch word which brings me happiness and sanity, I'm not convinced that I can handle the stresses which go with polyamory. Forever? For now? I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud here, after all; it doesn't mean anything certain.

Comments

[pyat.livejournal.com]

If you asked for my honest opinion (which you haven't, but I'll pretend you have) polyamory has always seemed to me to be something of a "mate filter," like casually dating several people until you found a particularly compatible person. With polyamory the limits of casual romance are simply extended to include behavior that is normally restricted to people who have made a long-term commitment.

I’m aware that this sentiment cannot be universally applied, because I’m told there are many very happy actively polyamourous people out there. I expect you know some. I’m also aware that my opinion may simply reflect the inability of an outsider to understand what it really happening “on the inside.”

However, it does seem to me that the most contented of my polyamourous friends are the ones that have settled down in long-term relationships with just one or two other people. The ones that haven’t done so seem to have, as you say, a lot of “drama” in their lives.

I think may tie in somehow with my old theory about love being an action rather than a state, but I’ll save that for a long-winded LJ post on another day.

Thanks for lunch, BTW. :)

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

If what you mean by saying that is, "By jove, poly people who have quickly changing, unstable relationships tend to have lots of drama in their lives, and poly people who take things slowly, and are cautious, or even polyfidelitous, tend to have less or no drama," then I'd have to agree with you. I've known for a while now that fast-paced poly is really not a functional lifestyle, in the longterm.

If what you mean by saying that is, "Most poly people are just shopping around in order to find someone with whom to settle down, and those who don't settle down eventually and go monogamous are unhappy and have high-drama lives," I'd have to somewhat politely disagree.
'

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, I definitely don't mean the second. :) I know a lot of happy polyamourous folks who live in stable triads or groups, or couples who are effectively monogamous with the exception of mutually agreed upon occasional flings.

I should have said "having a lot of short-term partners" rather than "actively polyamourous."

[princeofwands.livejournal.com]

"having a lot of short-term partners"

One of my long held beliefs is that the shotgun dating through a bunch of people in the poly community is not all that unlike the shotgun dating through a bunch of people outside of poly communities. You go out, see how your personalities fit and what the chemistry is like, get a feeling of how your lives mesh (or not), give it a while, grow a bit, keep checking how it's going, somewhere along the way make some commitments (to stick around, to keep at it, to fade away) and live ever after.

Poly provides an interesting throughput opportunity relative to monogamy oriented structures. My friend K is a devoutly monogamous person and has this recurring patter of leaving a relationship, re-entering the dating scene, going out for a bunch of early dates with a bunch of new people, if things get to a 4th or 5th date, the question of "big-R relationship" starts to come up and if it progresses, all the other threads get dropped. When that relationship ends the process begins again. In a poly oriented situation, those early dating-ships just don't necessarily get dropped. And so may still be continuing at the next "a relationship ended, begin cycle again" point.

The logistics of the poly scenario do some interesting things that may not be entirely obvious - they both relieve the time-pressure to Start Something Significant Right Now and broaden the time-scale over which the early dating runs. When maintaining a pre-existing set of established relationships, early dating with a someone new might well only happen once a month or less rather than the likely every week or two in a more traditional situation. When things "get serious" they might move to once a week rather than two or three (or more) times each week. My impression is that this gives the appearance of inherently more stability than might otherwise be perceived. OTOH, there's also a lot less pressure to keep at a relationship that isn't working in its current configuration. Which ends up also leading to a more casual attitude toward reshaping those relationships - and certainly does nothing to discourage explosively bad breakups.

All of this largely ignoring the question of what the nature of those established ongoing other relationships might be since they've definitionally already transcended that casual-early-dating phase.

Not my most coherent writing on this topic... but a good impetus to get back to the train of thought.

[funos.livejournal.com]

I'd been ruminating this for weeks. I needed the right stimulus I guess. Thanks. :)

"However, it does seem to me that the most contented of my polyamourous friends are the ones that have settled down in long-term relationships with just one or two other people. The ones that haven’t done so seem to have, as you say, a lot of “drama” in their lives."

The two stable, serious quads I've observed over that last couple years have both fallen apart, even one several years old and living in a common house. It seems nigh-impossible for more than two people to keep all the ends tied up. Things get frayed.

I'm currently entertaining the hypothesis that it's not the theory of polyamory that is wrong, but the practice. Something tells me that casual dating and sex is somehow deleterious to other concurrent stable relationships, regardless of jealousy. Might simply be time taken away from growing together, or some unseen deep biological effect of sex.
(After all, the whole idea of social orders such as monogamy or polyamory is to modulate biology.)

My current bet is that, 'new paradigms of loving' aside, polyamory would be best practiced as an extension of the usual monogamous rules, even to the extent of not having intercourse (I can't say for other forms of sex, such as BDSM, and I am including lesbian/gay sex as intercourse.) outside of marriage. There is too much emotional, social and epidemiological (in the sense of quality of life, rather than morbidity) burden that comes along with it I think.

So this way, a person can be unboundedly social within some limit of chastity, and with luck, find someone to tie the knot with. (pun not intended, but amusing...) Nothing changes afterwards, save that the marriage/union/etc... is the primary focus of time and energy. And should the person be *very* lucky, may find *another* person to become a spouse
with (and spouse of the first, also. See how unlikely it is...).

(Note how I'm assuming a triangle, and not a vee. I'm simply not sure if vees are stable at all, given that if the two remote ends are not also growing together, then drama seems inevitable either through direct incompatibility in outlooks and goals, or through the hinge having to deal with the disparity. Not impossible, but not a convergent system. Growing together does not necessarily mean sex is involved. Take "Boston Marriages" for example.)

This doesn't rule out quads and larger groups, but it does recognize that finding and getting along indefinitely with *one* person is unlikely and hard enough to begin with, that a strong emphasis on stability must be made if anything is to last.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

So this way, a person can be unboundedly social within some limit of chastity, and with luck, find someone to tie the knot with. (pun not intended, but amusing...) Nothing changes afterwards, save that the marriage/union/etc... is the primary focus of time and energy. And should the person be *very* lucky, may find *another* person to become a spouse
with (and spouse of the first, also. See how unlikely it is...).

That was remarkably well-stated. :)

[funos.livejournal.com]

You make a living at writing, so it's an honour you do me. thanks! :)

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure I'd go as far as you are going, but your last phrase "A strong emphasis on stability must be made if anything is to last" is my current thought in a nutshell.

Whatever the primary relationship (be it a dyad, triad, or whatever), I believe that for stability to occur, there needs to be a very strong emphasis on caution. When you meet someone new, both partners should get to know them for a long time before a relationship is taken seriously.

This may sound strange, but I'm capable of having friendly sex with no meaning. I don't think that's a problem or a danger to the relationship. But if I see the possibility for more with a person who I meet, then I should not get sexual until my primary and I are absolutely certain that the person is a safe, sane, stable person. The relationship should progress very slowly with negotiated checks and balances (perhaps, only one date every other week for the first six months, for instance).

I'm beginning to think that rather than a bi quad, what I might want is coparenting. That is, be in a dyad relationship which is somewhat open. Find a compatible couple with children with whom we are JUST friends, very good friends, purely platonic. Co-parent and possibly cohabitate, so that the four of us can have lives while also having children.

Um. I should stop rambling.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

While you can get all that and a bag of chips with poly, you can also get it with monogamy. Because it's not the relationship style, it's the people *in* the relationship that are the source of drama (or its lack). Trust me on this, having relationship drama and stress and angst are just as possible in monogamous interactions - there's whole sections of the video store and the library devoted to it (usually under the heading "romance").

I have found that when I force myself to ignore attractions and emotions that crop up naturally (which is what I need to do to be functionally monogamous) I pile up more stress, angst, and internal drama than just about all the poly drama I've ever heard of, or participated in. So obviously it's far less stressful (healthier, if you prefer) for me to be poly than for me to be mono. However, if you're finding poly to be stressful or drama-prone, then that's probably a sign that you shouldn't be participating in it.

[x-hypatia-x.livejournal.com]

Coyote3502, that might be one of the best ways I've ever heard it put. Also, I'm not sure I really understand the point of saying "My husband and I are in search of an OSO." To me, that seems like the equivalent of a single, mono person announcing that they want to get married.

Commitment is about the person or people. It's about who you love. Trying to get something because society says you ought to want it is an ineffective method of finding happiness, whether it's mainstream society or your subculture that's pushing for it.

And Funos, I don't think I would agree that it's impossible to have a stable, committed primary relationship and still have sex with other people. I would be very careful about assuming that one particular person's emotional reaction to sexual intercourse is universally applicable, and in my observation, I haven’t seen monogamous "rules" work out particularly well for monogamous couples, either.

If you don’t have communication and commitment, then it seems like drama would be inevitable, whether your relationships are poly or mono.

[funos.livejournal.com]

That's why I said it was a hypothesis. :)

Just throwing in a thought or two...

[miss-mimsy.livejournal.com]

There is a long post in here, but in a nutshell, here is my current theory.

Many people like comfort and many people like excitement. In a good poly relationship, you have "comfortable" partners and "exciting" partners. In some cases exciting partners settle into comfortable ones, comfortable ones can become exciting ones. Relationships are, after all, dynamic.

The problems is that if you only put energy into the "exciting" relationships, you get tons of drama. Not only because the exciting partner starts eating up time and energy, but usually because the comfortable partner starts feeling neglected and makes drama of their own.

I have yet to figure out how to balance. If I feel neglected, I am a HUGE ass drama queen. If I am getting sufficient energy, someone usually feels neglected. This is where most of my drama comes from.

At least if I am poly, there are more people paying attention to me and thus the drama can be portioned out in smaller doses. Well, also because at least as poly I am not bored.

[lysana.livejournal.com]

I'm with those who've noted that low-drama poly is best found amongst those who prefer low drama in their relationships. For example, people who recognize why they're prone to certain impusles and work on reducing the ones that have a negative impact on their relationships do better than those who cause conflict out of some mistaken notion that "being true to themselves" means they have to act on every last whim.

[dicedork.livejournal.com]

This should be my own comment but I wanted to give lysana a thumbs up for her thoughts. I've met, dated, and loved both types of people and I can honestly say that drama is as drama does.

Also, I think it's important to remember that it's very difficult to keep one relationship together "forever", nevermind four or five. People here talk about disrupted quads and such, but the fact is that all things change over time. A relationship's success and it's longevity are not the same thing.

In general lots of good thoughts on this thread.

[aaangyl.livejournal.com]

I dunno,poly or mono, short or long term, all can have amazing tons of drama. For myself personally, the best way to keep my drama levels low are to 1) stay single (and generally celibate as well) and 2) keep the chronically drama-prone people in my life at an arms' length, or even start sliding "away" from them and their circles entirely and 3) take care of my own issues, with gusto, on a regular basis. It does seem that my acceptible drama levels are significantly lower than average, and a single drama-heavy relationship can burn me out on it for years (as it seems my last one has done). One of the things that always left me gaping at polyamory, especially the very actively poly, was just how much time and effort was put into, like, being poly - like on par or even beyond the time and effort I put into my most favorite hobbies or activities - and how poor the "returns" from that effort seemed in comparison to the costs. (Granted, I don't find orgasms contributed to by other people all that much more exciting than the ones I can give to myself at will, and there are usually plenty of things I'd take over sex at any given point in time, so take it all with a shaker of monksalt.)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

my experience with trying to be actively poly in the sense of pursuing multiple people at once was that none of them ever turned into meaningful relationships. my theory is that I was too distracted by the idea of new people to be able to focus on any one of them. once I decided to give up on the idea of trying to form multiple relationships at once I found one that became deeper. is that just a coincidence? were all of those flings perhaps just people I wasn't compatible with for anything longer-term? possibly. but some of them might have been and I missed the opportunity. I'll never really know. But it wasn't really primarily drama that drove me away from poly - it was the lack of depth I was experiencing.

I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to pursue any additional relationships until I've been primary with someone for a significant period of time. To me that means about 4 years. For the purposes of the poly community I am familiar with I feel like that means effectively not poly, and so I identify as such and will provide further detail if asked. I suppose I could identify as "poly but not currently looking" but to me that assumes that someday I plan to be looking again, and I don't really have plans to. I just have an idea in the back of my mind that if that ever seems like a good idea maybe I will.