Category: Relationship anarchy

The importance of freedom

Relationship anarchy is a style of relating to others that highlights freedom and autonomy. It focuses on the desires of the individuals and finding the areas in which they overlap to create the fuzzy little space of the relationship you can curl up in.  It also focuses on the freedom of each person to define their own boundaries and express their own preferences, and to live a life in which they pursue dynamics that fit their flow, without unwanted restriction from other dynamics.

Freedom is one of the merits of relationship anarchy, one of the things that makes it so appealing to many people.  To really understand why people choose relationship anarchy as a life path or relationship style, we have to first understand the value of freedom.

I was a philosophy major the first time I went to college.  I did not graduate with a degree in it, because when I was close to doing so I got distracted by a need to craft things with my own hands and ducked off stage a few credits shy of my degree. I had enough for a degree in general ed, so I took that instead, but I had amassed the knowledge from a plethora of philosophy courses, despite having no big official paper to show for it.  And boy am I rusty when it comes to philosophy in an academic sense, but I did learn ways of thinking that I still apply every day. After all, philosophy is the study of learning, the study of knowledge, and the study of existence.  We all apply principles of that in the daily meanderings of our minds.  For me, my love for philosophy and understanding is why I sometimes end up sitting and trying to really deconstruct why freedom is so important to me.

It is easy to justify things based on what would be lost in their absence.  Without freedom, you have restriction, rules, a box to fit in.  Society is pretty big on boxes you know, which makes sense since the human brain is wired for categorization of things, and society is a group of people with shared dominant cultural expectations.  So society naturally expands on the human tendency to categorize, and creates strong expectations or boxes for what different relationships are and the expectations within them. There are restrictive ideas in the culture I exist in, on what a friendship is, what a romantic relationship is, the exclusive nature of a romantic relationships, and the inferiority of friendships in comparison with that one special romantic relationship.  These boxes are in opposition with the freedom of relationship anarchy.  They are defined by an absence, having one monogamous relationship is a thing because you are choosing or agreeing to an absence of any other romantic or sexual connections.  Having a romantic relationship being prioritized above friendships is a thing because friendships are seen as being absent of the amount of commitment, life integration, depth of emotion, and depth of connection that romantic relationships have. Without freedom to explore each connection based on exactly what you desire with that individual at that time, you are forced to build a dynamic based on absence, knowing that you have limited allowances for what it can and can’t be while being socially acceptable. So we can justify freedom because we do not want to lose the potential that any new relationship has. We want the potential for friendships and romantic relationships to not be limited in their depth because they are seen as different societal boxes, to not be exclusive in nature and limit the potential of other connections.

I would rather justify things based not on absence though, but based on abundance.  I am not just an advocate of freedom and relationship anarchy because I do not want my life and relating to other people to be restrained.  It is in part about bucking against those boxes and throwing off the restraints, but it is also about what happens next when instead of an absence of potential you have an abundance of it. When I started forming relationships that were not structured around certain titles or expectations, where everything in the dynamic was based on the desires of the individuals and where the overlap was, and where the freedom of each person to pursue connections and have their autonomy respected was given focus and priority, something magical happened.  Embracing that freedom sparked a change in myself.  Suddenly there was an abundance of potential in my world, there was an explosion of fluidity and growth.  When I engaged in a relationship it was with the understanding that it could achieve any depth of connection, any range of life integration, it was alright if it changed and shifted over time, and expressions of love and affection and sexual interest were based on mutual consent and desire and not on a certain title or level of societal acceptability.  I had the freedom to move around and grow and expand, like a glorious tentacle beast uncurling on the floor of an endless ocean, or a fabulous demon spreading sparkling leathery wings after shedding it’s chains.

Here’s what actually happened, and what is still happening every day as I experience the self growth this freedom has given me.  I have learned to express affection and love freely to my friends. I can tell my friends that I love them and shower them with adoration and compliments of how spectacular they are. It no longer feels awkward or too much or prohibited.  I have found that when I simply lack the time and energy for new connections but miss the amazing fluff-balls-in-the-chest feels of meeting and getting to know someone and feeling that spark as love and passion develops, I still can experience that because I watch my friends and loves and partners do so and their happiness is contagious because it does not in any way detract from what I have with them.  I have less fear of break-ups because for the most part they are no longer a thing in my world. Dynamics may change, the type of interaction and level of connection may change, but unless the other individual wants to sever ties completely, it is more a matter of a -shift- and not an -ending-. Having that fear eliminated or minimized has made me less controlling, and as such, I’ve learned that being controlling actually was making me feel pretty shitty and I hadn’t noticed how much it ate away at me.

And one of the changes I value the most is this: When I was a kid, I went to a glorious socialist jew camp, and it was the norm for kids to sit in lines of one person leaning back in another’s lap, and that person leaning on the one behind them, and so on in a big train. Big cuddle piles of friend on a bed were a natural part of every day life.  I had an abundance of platonic touch and affection, and some that evolved into more romantic or sexual touch and affection, but it didn’t have to.  Touch was just absolutely normal and comfortable.  And then fast forward through years of trauma, sexual assault, toxic relationships, and becoming a controlling, insecure, and sometimes emotionally abusive person. I came out the other side extremely touch averse, with only a few partners as exceptions. I worked hard to not be a controlling fuckwad of the highest proportions, and did a pretty decent job of making myself into a person I could respect and that those in my life seem to think is pretty rad. But I was still very averse to touch, and that made me incredibly sad when I compared it to my childhood and early teen years.  Well, in the past year, as I’ve dived head first into the rabbit hole of relationship anarchy, after dancing around the edges and dipping my toe in for so long, I’ve slowly started to heal.  I am not the bouncing cuddly ball of rainbows I once was, but I have times where I have platonic cuddle-time with my friends and loves and feel warm-fuzzy-connectricity instead of skin-crawlies.  Giving myself the freedom to explore the abundance of human connection has helped me start connecting more in the moment and feeling safe with touch.  That is what freedom creates, that is why it is important, it gives you a field that is ripe for personal growth and healing.  It presents your fears for you to confront and overcome, and it allows for abundance and exploration in the ways you connect with other human beings.

So freedom is and always will be of extraordinary importance to me.  I want a life filled with abundance, I want a life with an absence of restrictions, and I want more then anything for all those I love to have the same and to never be someone who takes that freedom away.

On coming full circle and growing from your roots on up

Today I turn 29, and I’ve been pondering a good subject for a birthday post. My goal is to try and write something on here daily, and mostly focus on relationship anarchy, queer and lgbt+ issues, communication, interpersonal dynamics, intentional communities, advice, and occasionally politics (especially as it’s impossible for many of the previous topics to exist in an apolitical vacuum). So I was musing what topic to focus on today, and I’ll tell you I still haven’t figured it out. I think that I’ve realized I want to write this not just as a series of articles or informative or inspirational peices about the above subjects, but I’d also like to share my personal life and experiences. This isn’t a journal persay, but there are so many writers who write about the subjects I also have interest in, and the thing I bring to the table that differentiates my writing is myself, that it comes from my unique perspective, formed of my life experiences.

Let me share a little about my life. I came upon polyamory fairly early on in my existence, actually it’s safe to say I was probably a relationship anarchist before I was a polyamorist, though at the time I didn’t know the word for either. I was thirteen, I flew my freak flag high even then and had a following of other oddball kids at the Jewish socialist summer camp I attended. One boy was desperately infatuated with me, and he wasn’t the most handsome or beautiful admirer I’d had, and I don’t think anyone expected for me to return his feelings. I certainly didn’t expect it at first. He was always part of our little group and while I didn’t realize it’s importance at the time, I quickly saw that he made me laugh. It’s only years later that I’ve noticed how truly rare that is, I don’t really laugh out loud no matter how much I find things amusing, and it takes a very special person and a a very quirky sense of humor to truly inspire laughter in me. I believe that was why I fell in love with him. That, and when he smiled his crooked grin, while he was still not the most traditionally attractive person, it absolutely lit up his face. He just radiated joy when he smiled and I was inexplicably drawn to that.

This boy Bee and I ended up in a romance of sorts, one that I quickly told my boyfriend David about, because I had some understanding that most people were mongomous. David didn’t mind, and while eventually Bee was unhappy with my multiple dynamics, or maybe the lack of title in ours, for a couple years we existed fairly happily that way, at least as far as I was concerned. I also ended up in something of a romance with Bee’s sister Jen, and spent a lot of happy days in those few summers snuggled up with both of them, laughing and discussing philosophy and love.

I began to write a relationship manifesto, or maybe a life manifesto really. Reading back on my juvinile but passionate ramblings now, I see how they truly were the groundwork for all my passions since. I wrote about love being a free force that should not be restricted, of the dangers of society and its constraints, of community and love and connection within community being the most important thing in this world. I scrawled page after page based on conversations with Bee and Jen, about how we could love endlessly without control and restriction, and that love could take all shapes and didn’t need to fit into specific relationship norms. I’m not sure my wording was then was as sofisticated, but certainly it seems that I’ve come full circle and am writing about the same basic ideas now. Is it that much of a surprise that my love affair with the boy with a crooked grin who made me laugh and the conversations we had, helped build the roots for my passion for relationship anarchy and my life goal of creating an intentional community?

That relationship ended when I was fifteen and was followed by a few years of attempted monogomy, though I certainly wasn’t very good at it, and most of my dynamics involved some dabbling into open relationships or cheating on one side or the other. I was sixteen when I first heard the word polyamory and an explanation of what it meant, and it seemed to fit what I wanted, but a period of insecurity that begot controlling behaviors on my part, prevented me from exploring it fully at that time. I revisited the idea a year later, and when I decided at that point that I was polya, I knew there was no going back.

Being polyamorous was a breath of fresh air to some extent, but it still allowed me to nuture some of the more toxic parts of myself. I don’t think I ever lacked self confidence in my own view of myself, but I didn’t expect others to stick around, so I attempted to control and trap people to me in rule and agreement based relationships with high levels of codependency. The details of how I managed to break free of that are a story for another time, but fast forward to a few years ago, probably when I was 23 or 24, and I first read about relationship anarchy. There was a click, I realized very fast that someone put words to what I’d been seeking and writing about in my very earliest experiences with relationships. Since then I have been able to free myself more and more of some pretty toxic baggage both that society imposes about relationships, and that I developed on my own while being something of a steaming pile of shit in relationships.

And so we progress to now. I’ve come a bit farther then full circle, taking the ideas I had as a kid and refining them, finding better ways to communicate them, and learning the skills to actually put them into practice. Now I strive to build on them and pursue further growth, knowing that my roots lie strong and deep beneath me to support me and keep me grounded. So haply birthday to me, and here’s to another year of learning and self improvement. I look forward to see where I’ll have made it to in another years time.

 

Relationship Anarchy is an act of Self Love

Relationship anarchy is an act of self love, and here’s why:

Relationship anarchy is fucking terrifying.  It isn’t just, as some often suppose, an egalitarian form of polyamory in which there is no hierarchy or sneakarchy to place some partners in positions of power or priority over others.  Relationship anarchy has deep anarchist roots and involves bucking the societal system of rules and structures and questioning their worth and merit.  It involves forming relationships rooted not just in consent, but in desire.  I want to go into that more deeply in another piece, but suffice to say, relationship anarchy involves navigating away from rule based dynamics and rules masquerading as agreements.

Imagine yourself creating relationships as an autonomous being, with another autonomous being, where you both decide what the relationship will entail and build it from the ground up.  The relationship, and I don’t mean just a romantic dynamic, but any friendship, partnership, way of relating to someone with emotions or vulnerability or touching of your squiggly bits, is tailored to fit exactly what you both decide.  You start with respect for another individual who you see merit and worth in, and therefor want in your life. You desire a connection and way of relating and sharing experiences with that person.  You engage with them, and begin to discover the ways in which they want to relate to you.  You discuss, open up, form a connection, and find the common ground in the fuzzy happy places you want to curl up in, in each others lives.  There are no rules in these dynamics based in desire and respect for autonomy.  Rules are manufactured by society, but a society that clings so sharply to fear and control. A society in which our very ability to eat and have shelter is based on coercive relationships such as working for a wage or buying goods born of others’ exploitation.  Relationship anarchy can be something of a haven away from that.  It can be descriptively at any given time, monogomous or polyamorous, because people can have those particular romance shaped feelings for one or for multiple people at a particular time in their life. But it throws away the societal structure that imposes that you should feel those romance wiggles for only one or only certain people, or that you need certain titles or to follow a relationship escalator when you do. So relationship anarchy is a ideology that centers the autonomy, desire, and choices of the individual, and the respect for another’s autonomy and as well.

Now what does that have to do with self love?  Well, when you embrace relationship anarchy and buck the coercive structures of society, you are saying that a person is autonomous, they have worth, they deserve respect, they should not be controlled by a societal system or a relationship title or rules. And in that, you are also saying that you have the same things, you are also an autonomous being with worth and deserving of respect.  I’m not saying that relationship anarchists do not suffer from shame and issues of self esteem and self confidence.  But to choose a way of loving and connecting that on a base level embraces and elevates personal worth and respect for autonomy and individuality, you are doing something that exhibits radical self love.  You are placing your own freedom and vulnerability and ability to connect, above the judgement and coercion of society as a whole.  You are treating others as individuals with whom you can form unique self made fluid dynamics, and as such you also are honoring the individuality and worth in yourself as part of those dynamics and shared relationships.  You are allowing yourself to make a relationship with another glorious human based on what you desire with them, and in doing that you are acknowledging your desire as having worth.  That is a radical act of self love, and you deserve to have it recognized as such.

And back to the fucking terrifying aspect, because yes, relationship anarchy is deeply scary.  When you decide to form relationships (platonic, romantic, sexual, power exchange, and all the squiggly in betweens) that involve creating a mesh of your mutual desires, and experiencing your ways of relating with another person that you both actively and enthusiastically choose at that time; and when you have relationships that recognize your autonomy and respect the individual, there’s a problem.  In the context of society, there is a big problem.  That lovely ball-of-joy-giving person that you are feeling all the fuzzy vulnerable things for, can walk away at any point in time!  Their squiggly happy feels for you can change! And you are in a relationshipping style in which you aren’t coercing them to stay, you aren’t exerting control, you may not have titles or ties to bind them to you, and you could lose everything at any point in time!  Yes, society sees this as a big problem which is why the typical societal relationships, even polyamorous ones, often do involve a carefully orchestrated web of titles and rules or agreements to give you structure and a false feeling of safety.  The secret that they don’t want you to know though, is that the safety walls you created are all smoke.  If someone doesn’t want to stay with you, a marriage license and two and a half children and the house you own together, likely won’t stop them from leaving.  Relationship anarchy is much more vulnerable and raw in acknowledging that people may choose to come and go from your life, that dynamics are fluid, and that we have no right to own or control people, so we cannot make them stay.  Hoo boy, that is scary!  I would like to address the depth of that uber scary sinkhole, and how glorious it can actually be, in depth at another time, but right now I’m going to relate that back to self love.  When you decide to engage in relating in a way that is so intensely vulnerable and admits that your spectacular connections may not in fact be safe or solid or last for the rest of your life and beyond, and that safety nets and guarantees are not real, and nothing is ever certain, you are forced to acknowledge something truly valuable.  That you as a person exist separate from your relationships, that you are an independent being, and that you will endure and survive as an independent being regardless of the ways your relationships with the people you love and adore continue to endure, or change shape, or end.  And facing that again is an act of self love.  It is an acknowledgement that you take up space in this world and you exist and are worthy of life, separate from all the people who’s lives you are a part of.

So my lovely long time relationship anarchists, and my beautiful budding new loving anarchist folk, to those who are curious and dipping a toe into learning about it all, and everyone in between: Remember your worth, remember your power, remember your freedom, remember your independence, remember your autonomy, and remember to love yourself always.  When you live this way, you already are practicing a radical form of self love, so recognize that within yourself and embrace it.  You are glorious.

Is Jealousy a Magical Emotion?

“I couldn’t be polyamorous, I get jealous too easily”

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard that statement or ones like it. Tell me a little about your emotions. I imagine you feel a variety of emotions through life, such as happiness, excitement, anger, sadness, confusion, irritation, joy, exhilaration, and so on. Now I imagine the emotions that most folks deem as positive require little analysis, you don’t feel a need to -do- anything with them, you just feel them. But the others, well those are often addressed by all but the most emotionally obtuse people at some point or another. So when you feel confusion, irritation, anger, etc, what do you do? If you’re anything like me, I imagine you try and sort out what you’re feeling, why, and what to do about it. Folks process emotions differently, both depending on the person doing the processing, and the situation in which the emotion occurred. If angry for example, you may reason with yourself until you calm down, vent your anger and let it out, recognize it as unneeded or irrational and let it go, channel it into a healthy outlet of some sort, figure out the source and solve it, and so on. The end result is you see you are doing the emotion, you work through the emotion, and hopefully you continue on with your life. Does it work perfectly every time? No, I doubt it. But are you going to stop leaving the house because people like Douchebag McGee in his Mercedes cut you off yesterday and made you angry and you had to vent to your friendo until you calmed down? Also probably no.

Then there’s jealousy. The way mono folks talk about not being able to be polya because they le gasp would get jealous, just baffles me. Do they suppose us polya folx never get jealous? Wouldn’t that be nice! What is so magical about jealousy that makes it an emotion you would drastically limit your life to avoid, instead of just dealing with it, the way you would any other negative emotion that comes up? (And don’t get me started on “negative” emotions, the strange idea of some emotions being bad and others good is a rant for another time.) Sure, jealousy can be pretty unpleasant as far as emotions go, I’ve felt it to the point of being overwhelmed with a shaky paralyzing heat that seemed to be consuming me alive. Not a fun moment truly, but then I’ve also felt overwhelming grief, fiery hot anger, humiliating confusion and uncertainty, and a whole host of other also at-the-time unpleasant emotions. And when I dealt with them, I often learned a little thing, or came out of it a stronger or better person. The same goes for jealousy, some of the best parts of me are forged from the walks I took through jealousy and managing it when it reared it’s head.

I suppose if one has no desire to be with other people, it would be like someone living in a near-Utopian community choosing not to venture into the outside world and risk being cut off by Douchebag McGee and his Mercedes. Why subject yourself to that when you got all you need already and have no motivation to? I can grok that, but you know, that’s not what I often see. The mono folk I know who are saying “Oh nope, could not do that polya thing, I would be the jealous” are not talking about not wanting to be polya themselves because of lack of interest. They are wanting their partner not to be polya, that’s what they would be doing the jealous of. Look, I could write some nice things about no one true way, and all ways are great, and everyone can live their own life and that’s just fine and dandy, and that would make everyone happy (or almost everyone, someone always finds something to birch about). But I don’t believe that, I don’t actually think engaging with another human being in supreme closeness with the desire to restrict their behavior and potential to connect with other glorious humans just because you get this magical jealousy emotion that you won’t tackle the way you would any other negative emotion, is healthy. I’m not saying monogamy can’t be healthy in other contexts, two little humans who have no desire to engage in romance squiggles or sexy time with other humans and so they just choose each other for that, is lovely. But two people elevating jealousy to some magical pedestal as the untouchable emotion and negotiating a dynamic with their partner in which they decide they will both restrict their behavior -because- of jealousy being a thing you don’t work through and that you avoid at all costs, that ain’t healthy. Jealousy isn’t magic, it isn’t untouchable, and it isn’t healthy to try and avoid at the cost of not living a life of beautiful connections you might otherwise be curious about.

Oh and spoiler alert, if you’re that concerned about getting jealous to the point that you choose monogamy for that reason, you’re shit out of luck. Monogamy isn’t a cure to jealousy, Douchebag McGee is driving his Mercedes into your living room when you least expect it and at some point, you’re gunna feel that jealousy anyway, and you may not have the skills you would have otherwise learned to handle it with.