"ethical polyamory"

[MightyMax]

If applying this to poly, I'd be thinking more widely. Relationships don't just start and then end. You need to pay attention to what is going on while they are happening and adjust them as you are going on. I suspect poly folks are fairly good at doing this on the whole.

Also - it is not simply a person's own requirements that they should pay attention to. The requirements of the others are just as relevant. You've outlined paying attention to that very clearly in your previous post.

Also - before you even start, assessing where you are is good. Somebody who is good with people and part of a community where poly is widely practised is in a very different place than somebody who has been married to the same person since they were 20, has lost or never had good skills with people, who's spouse doesn't like the idea of non-monogamy, who is parenting a couple of small children and works a full time job.

That sort of thing I think if you were to apply it to poly. I'll think about it some more and see if I can come up with anything else. It's an interesting question.

Re requirements. I was more thinking of it from another perspective. Say, for instance, you might require someone single, because you want them to be able to see you often without too many distractions. Then, you have a relationship with a single person and the difficulties of trying to accommodate a secondary relationship with someone who would prefer to be your primary become apparent. The relationship consequently ends. Next time, you need to adjust your own requirement for a single person because it's obvious it doesn't work for you and causes trauma to all involved.

 

[Ravenscroft]

I loathe the fact that I've even had to be familiar with the perception you call the Buttercup Rules. I won't go into the reasons, but I'm now 57, & been actively working to avoid furtiveness for at least 43 years -- if Mom is to be believed, it started earlier than that.

There's something about a cringing dog that makes me want to kick it. Now, mind you: that is a metaphor, & the only dog I've ever actually kicked was in self-defense. But my experience IRL is that when a particular dog likes to sneak up & nip people, it's a cringer.

Human beings have proven to be similar. It's the ones who squeal endlessly about how much they "hate drama" that are the biggest drama queens. It's the ones who demand to be protected from straightforward communication -- a.k.a. "aggression" -- that delight in ganging up on someone they don't like & belaboring them into submission or into angry response that gets them barred from the "safe space".

I'm the eternal noob. The one that people endlessly complain about being "negative" for daring to see AND point out negativity that could be improved upon. That gets reamed out for offering solicited advice, then re-reamed when the advice is ignored & bad stuff arrives exactly as predicted.

I've always thought that maybe life would be easier -- NOT simpler (two concepts that Buttercups seemingly cannot separate) -- if I would just give up & play the nasty little games.

But (as with passive aggression) it's like choosing to give up living in a sere place like the Sangre de Cristo mountains outside Santa Fe, in order to live in a dynamic community on the edge of a toxic waste site in New Jersey. I'd blame it on age, but in truth I've always been better hewing closely to those Sweetpea Rules.

It DOES often suck. Close friends, people I'd literally risk my life for without a thought, will suddenly turn away from Sweetpea living for the "safety" of Buttercup. The details of my life & my thinking -- which are not terribly secret but rarely come up in casual conversation -- are suddenly fodder for gossip, salacious speculation, & outright slander.

What bugs me most about THAT is those I could name who regularly ridiculed me/us for being openly poly... who eventually declared themselves poly, & are amazingly thin-skinned & defensive & humorless about it... who have the gall not only to pretend they were never in the least mean-spirited toward me/us, but tell me how I'm "doing poly wrong."

A small example of "being Sweetpea." Anna & I worked to avoid falling into what you guys call "couple privilege." And if one of us said/did something stupid, the other would call a time-out in the proceedings, pull the errant partner aside, & we'd hash it out in a matter of minutes. No backpacking/gunnysacking, & we'd go back to where we'd been. This (of course) led to a constant refrain of "oh, they're FIGHTING again!!" which persisted for 12 years despite the number of monogamous gossips who went through multiple messed-up relationships & never grasped the irony.

 

[River]

But (as with passive aggression) it's like choosing to give up living in a sere place like the Sangre de Cristo mountains outside Santa Fe, in order to live in a dynamic community on the edge of a toxic waste site in New Jersey.

It's not so sere here in these mountains -- in the literal sense -- as some may imagine. And not even as socially or culturally sere as some may imagine. It is a difficult place -- and figuratively sere -- for a biamorous, parntered poly guy who wants to have more then one love in his life (sigh).

Walking upon the trails near here you can oftentimes hear the freshly splintered stones tinkle underfoot like shards of glass. It's a little weird at first but after a while one gets used to it.

 

[kdt26417]

I am thinking SweetPea Rules are well-suited for RA.

 

[InfinitePossibility]

I loathe the fact that I've even had to be familiar with the perception you call the Buttercup Rules.

I would doubt if there are many people alive - at least in the UK and the US - who are not familiar with that concept. It filters through all of our society. Look at how school children first learn - they learn to fear the red crosses on their work and getting things wrong. As they grow up, they learn to fear failing exams or they won't get a good enough job. Getting things wrong or not knowing something become things to be scared of even though both of these are vital parts of learning. Coercion and unpleasantness exist throughout our society, sadly.

There's something about a cringing dog that makes me want to kick it. Now, mind you: that is a metaphor, & the only dog I've ever actually kicked was in self-defense. But my experience IRL is that when a particular dog likes to sneak up & nip people, it's a cringer.

Human beings have proven to be similar. It's the ones who squeal endlessly about how much they "hate drama" that are the biggest drama queens. It's the ones who demand to be protected from straightforward communication -- a.k.a. "aggression" -- that delight in ganging up on someone they don't like & belaboring them into submission or into angry response that gets them barred from the "safe space".

What I see in a cringing dog and in people who feel the need for a space free from disagreement of their view is fear. I think that the fear in both springs from their social needs. Dogs and people need social contact. We are all social creatures and we need contact with others to feel okay.

Dogs who experience being shouted at, excluded or kicked regularly will cringe. They still seek social contact but they sometimes will cringe and look guilty to try and avoid the harshness that they have come to expect from the people they love.

People are similar. Speaking truthfully of a desire to avoid drama and conflict so that they can have the social contact that they need - and that is so often denied to people. People who don't fit in, who don't pass exams, who get 'dead end jobs' or who dress in ways that are deemed strange or who don't have children or who seek to have relationships in ways that are not considered normal have often experienced the same sort of social exclusion and unpleasantness as the cringing dog. They fear the harshness just as much while - like the dog - being compelled by the nature of being a person to seek out social contact.

So yes - those dogs and those people can be unpredictable. A cringing dog can very easily become a biting dog - because biting is another way to make bad things start. A person may begin by setting up a "safe space" to allow them to obtain the social contact they need without the fear of the harshness they seek to avoid - that same person may well then go on to defend the "safe space" so strongly that they aggressively drive off anybody who speaks in a way they don't understand or who disagrees on some minor point.

I'm the eternal noob. The one that people endlessly complain about being "negative" for daring to see AND point out negativity that could be improved upon. That gets reamed out for offering solicited advice, then re-reamed when the advice is ignored & bad stuff arrives exactly as predicted.

Lol. Me too.

A small example of "being Sweetpea." Anna & I worked to avoid falling into what you guys call "couple privilege." And if one of us said/did something stupid, the other would call a time-out in the proceedings, pull the errant partner aside, & we'd hash it out in a matter of minutes. No backpacking/gunnysacking, & we'd go back to where we'd been. This (of course) led to a constant refrain of "oh, they're FIGHTING again!!" which persisted for 12 years despite the number of monogamous gossips who went through multiple messed-up relationships & never grasped the irony.

Yes - that is lovely. To take time in the moment to talk things through and find another way is excellent. I wonder also if you ever would talk to each other about things that had gone well? Times you noticed each other be skillful or kind or handle a difficult situation well?

Thanks for writing. That was fascinating.

IP

 

[InfinitePossibility]

I am thinking SweetPea Rules are well-suited for RA.

Hey Kev. Yes - but not any more suited for RA than for any other form of relationship. I think that SweetPea Rules are a much better way to go about relating to all beings regardless of what the relationship structure is.

 

[Ravenscroft]

I wonder also if you ever would talk to each other about things that had gone well?

Oh, yes. I mean, NOT disconnected praise -- "that went so well" "you did good," &c. -- but certainly regular morsels of support. These tended to be subjective rather than objective: saying "I'm enjoying this" rather than "this is nice."

Confrontation has got a bad rep. We embraced it, with ground rules like setting aside anger & meanness, & the goal of free communication without fear. If we hit a tripwire, then there was always room for backfill & explanation, so that an honest, unintentional error didn't take on power.