I didn’t know I’d lived so much until I reflected back

I am absolutely terrible at keeping track of time. Not short time, like the hours in the day, but long time, like years passing by. I think about things like when I first got on the path to stop drinking and I’m like hmm, that was a few years ago right? A few years ago feels pretty short in my brain. Then fb memories remind me that it was five years (and forty days) ago that I first truly acknowledged I had a problem and then took a hundred days of sobriety, which then led to learning moderation, and eventually the last year+ of complete sobriety. Five years. When it’s a number instead of a vague concept of a few, it seems a lot longer. Holy crap, has it really been five years?

Likewise, I often struggle with putting concrete times and dates on other big events, until I have something to measure them against. My ex-fiance left the same year I stopped drinking, so now I know when that was. That’s pretty exhilarating. I love being able to concretely date the times of things better because it makes me feel more accomplished. I’ve spent five years without a person who only saw how I could fail. Five years later I’m sober, have gotten one degree and am working towards another, have a bunch of lovely stable relationships with fantastic communication and none of the toxicity of the ones in that older time period, have held down jobs where I literally saved lives (I mean, doggo and kitten lives, but that’s legit), and decluttered the mess of a house I once shared with him to have a home that on it’s messiest days is still eons cleaner then it ever was in it’s cleanest state before. I’ve begun pursuing my BIG life dream of having an intentional community, and my life has been basically a whirlwind of forward momentum with a few little bumps in the road. Oh, and I have a flat chest and facial hair now and get gendered correctly all the time, let’s not forget that. Being able to recognize where events fit into time really helps me in feeling excited and accomplished about life, because I can see how much progress has been made. In the day to day moments it may not feel like things are moving fast enough, but reflecting back really shows the huge transformations.

Often I look back and wonder how I’ve packed so much -stuff- into such short amounts of time. I’ve been an adult for a bit over ten years. I spent about three or four of those years in a drunken haze. Yet just in that time I’ve lived with 20+ people in households of various sizes, had 20+ relationships that on average lasted a bit over 3 years, gone to 4 different schools and gotten 2 college degrees and now working on a 3rd, raised my own livestock and fed my family with the meat and eggs from them, traveled to 2 countries outside of my own and 12 states within my country, worked 9 different jobs, and tried to run my own business. I’ve had an uncountable amount of experiences trying amazing new foods, exploring new kinks and developing deep bonds of trust, making absolutely phenomenal friendships, taking ridiculous risks and feeling ecstatically alive, and generally living life to the fullest. And I mean, I spent quite a few years drunk on my couch and pretty much out of commission, so when I think of where I packed that all in, I can’t even really include those years. I don’t often reflect on it all as a whole, I may think of specific moments or dwell on specific relationships, but it takes looking at it all at once to put it into perspective.

Now I know this whole post might seem like some sort of long humble brag. First of all, there’s nothing fucking wrong with that if it is. I am all for each person listing their accomplishments that make them feel fantastic, reading the fuck out of that list, and feeling on top of the world because they are a rad fucking person who can do anything. And I’m happy to do that and feel no shame in celebrating what I’ve done. But, this is more then that. I don’t know if I’ve always come across as confident to others, but I’ve always felt I was a confident person. I’ve realized recently that it was because I’ve gotten very good at telling myself that narrative and ignoring the parts where I felt like I wasn’t enough, or was failing somehow to do this whole life thing. I hear those parts of my mind, I recognize them, but I didn’t let it disrupt the view I had of myself as a confident individual with great self esteem. It was a discordant note, viewing myself one way, and feeling things that were quite to the contrary. And therein lies the problem, I could tell myself I had great self esteem and believe it, but that didn’t actually make me feel any less shitty and like a failure when those were the messages my brain meat focused on for the day. So instead I’m learning to recognize those, to see that I do struggle at times and I can admit that. Oof, that vulnerability hurts. I don’t want to be a person who has to admit that. It is part of me though, and in recognizing that, I can begin to accept and heal parts of myself that were damaged by years of abuse, by the hands of others, and even more so by myself. I hurt myself when I spent years being a pretty toxic being to my own body and to everyone around me. Healing that means recognizing the time that was my reality, and how much time since I’ve begun to move on from that. It means acknowledging all I’ve done, the amazing life I’ve led, and what I can do when I am a better little human. Somewhere in there I might have to forgive myself for the person I was through some of the dark years, though I’m not quite there yet. For now, I look back at time, and I build a real confidence rather then a fabricated one, through seeing the journey and really cementing in my mind how far I’ve come.

Falling in love in a series of moments

Do you fall in love all at once, or in a series of moments?

For me love has always been an unfolding series of emotions but often with a secure path. I recognize NRE easily, and feel it pretty readily as well. It’s the feeling of my breath catching and heart fluttering when I’m getting to know someone and they say something sweet. It’s the tugging sensation when I’m talking to someone and they express their values and goals and I see how they reflect my own, and I want to share more of my life with them. It’s the excitement of learning their favorite food, or what author has shaped their life, and this information being precious because it comes from them. New relationships have a particular electric excitement to them that enhances everything, those floods of brain chemicals making me want to think about someone constantly and spend all day talking to them and exploring their mind. I acknowledge the love and limerence I feel during that time as real and feel honest in the expression of it, while also knowing that it doesn’t always predict the shape of a long term connection or translate into a more deeply seated love.

Following the rushing torrent of NRE feels, my love often takes one of two paths. The first path is into a comfortable realm of cozy warm feelings of contentment and comfort with a person. I would liken my love to a warm hearth, stable and providing security, not full of intensity, but full of a consistent glow of enjoyment. This path often runs towards a slowly deepening loyalty and commitment to a person and exploring vulnerabilities together over time as we grow close.

The second path is almost a continuation of NRE, in that it mirrors those intense rushes of emotion, the overwhelming sensations of being caught off guard and reveling in the energy of it. Little moments become big electrical boosts in the person centered part of my psyche, thrilling me and driving me to focus intimately on those moments of exhilaration. This often included elements of the first path as well, but has a definite aspect to it of love gathering intensity and momentum in a series of defining moments.

This weekend one of those stark moments came into clarity. I was sitting in the backseat of Hoffy’s truck as he was driving and half dozing off, as we were coming back from hanging out with some other folks in the local poly community and stuffing our faces at the buffet. I was a bit at my limit for socialing, had been wanting to just have some space to relax alone. Being in the truck with Hoffy driving, Kelev in the front seat, Raichu in the back with me, and music filtering through the background with no need for conversation, was peaceful. I was thinking of how I was surprised at how comfortable I was, because I don’t normally feel comfortable with someone else driving. Then I looked at Hoffy and was watching him drive and sing softly along to the music, and it was one of those moments where I was just overwhelmed with how much love I felt for him. There was just this intense feeling of ‘yes, this person. This is my person, I am happy here, and this is the person I love.’ There is a feeling of certainty in those moments of intensity. And they are amazing moments in how they have the level of excitement of NRE, but also the sheer comfortable and stable feeling of love after NRE has passed. I was thinking about how falling in love with him is a series of moments, just ordinary moments that happen as we live life together, but that take on this intense special quality out of the blue.

It is interesting, how my brain in those moments goes ‘this is the person I love.’ It’s true, it is absolutely true in that moment, and as a whole. It certainly isn’t exclusive though, and that is the beauty of being a polyamorist relationship anarchist to me. I very rarely feel that sort of intensity of emotion past NRE though, with most people I settle into that comfortable hearth fire love of stability and warmth, and overwhelming moments are not a regular occurrence. Once in a while though, the path of my love with someone takes the more passionate and extreme route, with strong surges and surprising and startling moments of energy. I found it amusing and ironic, that the other person in my life that I’ve felt that with was sitting in the front seat beside the person I was having those thoughts about now. And it mirrored the experience I had when I first recognized I was feeling that intensely about Kelev, also coming when I was sitting in the back seat of his truck eight years ago, watching him drive. I always wondered why my emotional connection with him was so much more potent at times, and here I was feeling that again.

I don’t really feel passion for people easily. I feel NRE, I feel comfortable safe feelings of love, I feel extremely potent and intense loyalty and connection and vulnerability. But passion, that often escapes me except in rare circumstances. My passions are often directed to my efforts to create and intentional community and dreams of such, towards my activism which is one of the most important aspects of my life, towards art and music, towards my never-ending quest for knowledge and learning. Those things are where my passions lay, and my relationships with people are more a beautiful cozy place rather then an enormous ardent one. I’ve found another partnership in my life that has diverged from the usual path they take for me though, that has a more passionate quality to it that is unfolding for me in that series of moments. Those moments where I really see him, and I am quite overwhelmed and absolutely eager for that fiery intensity. I’m amused when those moments mirror previous moments in the series that has played out in my other partnership of a similar quality. But most of all I’m just grateful for them, and for how they show me the many ways we are able to fall in love and appreciate that multitude and the aspect of it that I’m in at the moment.

Making a long distance relationship work

So I talked about yesterday how I decided to open up again to the idea of long distance relationships, and how I now have a few dynamics that are long distance. Today I’m going to go over some ideas I’ve come across or come up with, in making a LDR as functional as possible. I’ll split this into a few categories that I feel are helpful in making a LDR work well.

Expectations

LDRs can be incredibly rewarding, but they offer a lot less in terms of actual in person contact then most relationships between people who cohabitate or live close by. For many people, a lot of a relationship is sharing experiences, intimacy, and moments of vulnerability as you go through the ups and downs of daily life. These can be a bit hard to recreate when someone isn’t there in person a lot of the time. I think its important then to make sure your expectations are reasonable. In a relationship with a nesting partner (person you cohabitate with) you may expect or want to depend on them to prioritize comforting you when you are not doing okay. It is reasonable to want this as well from a long distance partner, although the comfort might take the form of a phone call, text, or video chat instead. It is important to remember though, when you expect this of your nesting partner, you are also able to see if they are also going through a hard moment, or in the middle of something urgent, or just unable to provide that at the time. It can be harder to see those things in a partner who is not physically there, so limiting your expectations so that you are not getting upset with a partner for not being able to provide support, when you may not have the whole picture, helps minimize conflict. Of course if having that emotional support is important to you, and your partner is constantly falling short of providing it, you need to discuss if there is an incompatibility there. But as a whole it tends to relieve a lot of stress on long distance relationships when we remember that the other person is living their own life that we aren’t privy to every moment of, and being generous in your compassion if they are embroiled in something else at times.

Also, different people need different levels of contact to make a relationship feel fulfilling. Because you don’t have the convenience of knowing you live with someone, and at some point you’ll run into them on a mostly daily basis, it can be hard to know exactly when or how often you’ll connect and communicate. It helps to define this with each other, figuring out both what you want in regards to frequency and type of communication, and what your bare minimum is to keep the relationship functional, during times where time is hard to find.

It is important to remember that every relationship has periods of greater and lesser intensity. With a LDR, the lack of constant or in person contact can make it easier for insecurities or feelings of abandonment to take root and grow. It is normal though for a relationship to be very intense with lots of flutters of NRE (or ORE) and overwhelming emotions at some points, and at other points to be more of a comfortable steady connection with less extreme highs. This can manifest in periods of constant excitable conversation, and other times with somewhat less contact or contact that is more based in checking in and sharing your day than being overcome with rushes of emotion. Accepting the waves of intensity and low-key stability as they come and go, helps in keeping an LDR functional. Of course if you feel your partner is not keeping in touch and feel neglected it is important to speak up and ask if they can meet your needs. But don’t worry if your communication does not always have the same highs it did when starting out, or if the emotional intensity varies some as your focus shifts between your long distance partner, and attending to things in your every day life.

Rituals

Relationships tend to develop rituals over time, either out of habit, or constructed intentionally between partners. Rituals can be especially helpful in LDRs, in having something to help you reconnect when you see each other, or in having something to do together during the time you are apart.

I try and say good morning to my partner Hoffy every morning, and good night before going to sleep at night. This is a ritual we didn’t plan, but that developed from how our communication took shape early on. It is something I can look forward to, I love waking up to a good morning message from him, or getting up early enough I can send one first. It helps me connect with him from the very start of my day, and that helps facilitate sharing more of my day in conversation as it progresses. When I say goodnight, though he often goes to bed a few hours before me, it comforts me to know we are thinking of each other at the start and finish of our days, even if we aren’t able to see each other in person for those moments. I feel like this ritual helps keep our relationship healthy and make it a little easier with the distance between us.

That said, it is important again to keep reasonable expectations, ones your partner is okay with, and to be compassionate when what they can provide or commit to does vary. In one of my very first LDRs as a young teen, I used to say goodnight to my partner Kyuu every night before bed as well. The difference there was that I struggled a lot with insecurity about the distance, so I elevated that ritual in my mind and clung to it for reassurance. It led to me being controlling, and getting upset with them if saying goodnight to each other was not the very last thing we did before going to sleep. I was trying to recreate the feeling of actually going to sleep next to each other, but instead I just made it so we had to constantly coordinate sleep schedules whether that worked for us or not, and prevented him from having other conversations once I was asleep, or else I would get upset. It was not something I would have taken to that extreme in an in person dynamic, but having that distance, especially because I had other insecurities at the time and was worried about abandonment or betrayals due to past experiences, I turned what could have been a lovely confirming ritual into a issue of control and tension. That is something to definitely avoid doing, rituals should be enjoyable and not create extra pressure or be a medium for exercising control.

These days, sometimes Hoffy falls asleep before saying goodnight to me. Occasionally I’m the one who falls asleep before I remember to text a goodnight. While we never agreed on the ritual as a specific commitment we made to each other, we usually apologize for this in the morning if it happens. There is an understanding that this is a thing we try and do because it feels good for both of us, and that we are sorry if we miss out on this particular shared moment. But there is also no control or upset outburst if it is not fulfilled, no massive significance attached to the ritual that there would be a -something must be wrong- moment of fear or anger if life happens and someone just falls asleep. This kind of understanding and flexibility within the structure of this little ritual helps to keep it as something enjoyable without any pressure or tension attached.

Other good confirming rituals are ones shared during the times you are able to be together. Shara and I always cook something when they visit, or go out to eat one of our favorite foods. Often we make onigiri together, one of my favorites, but a recipe I just can’t seem to get to taste quite as good without them here. We also often watch Love It or List It, a somewhat ridiculous guilty pleasure show that we enjoy poking fun at together. Having these comfortable routines we settle into with each other brings stability to the times we share, and creates the feeling of the same comfortable safeness that I feel with partners I do cohabitate with.

Ways to connect over distance

One of the hardest things in LDRs is how to connect over the distance. Many LDRs start with talking online, and progress through messaging, talking on the phone, or videochat, between the periods of in person contact. After a while things can get a little stale with what to constantly talk about. It makes sense, in person relationships are often built on shared experiences and physical intimacy as well as on conversation. It can be hard to figure out what else to build a foundation on over distance, aside from conversation, which can be hard to keep up to a very active engaging level during busy times. Here are some ideas of other ways to connect and share experiences over distance.

Watch tv or movies together – you can coordinate this by choosing a show or movie that you both have on DVD or on netflix and starting it at the same time while on the phone or videochat, or by using an app such as Rabbit, watch2gether, or gaze.

Write letters or share a journal – while texting or messaging is the norm in LDRs and you usually have the option of daily contact, there is something the just feels really good about reading a letter or written message from someone (assuming their handwriting is better than mine and you can read it). Writing letters to each other or having a notebook you each keep and write in for a few days or weeks before mailing it back to the other person, can offer a wonderful way to share your thoughts with a bit of extra excitement attached.

Play games together – My housemates are long distance at the moment while one of them is on tour, and they often play Overwatch together as a way to connect. They play while in person together as well, as gaming with a partner is often a great shared hobby. If you aren’t really into gaming, or the same games, there still may be some fun games you can try together. Facebook has some fun games like words with friends and draw something, which can just be a great way to enjoy something fun with a partner that you can play on and off throughout any day.

Have online date nights – you can get really creative with this. I like to suggest picking a recipe you can both make, making it together while chatting or on the phone, then setting up a videochat to eat dinner together and watch a movie or play a game afterwards. Really though, you can do a lot of creative things with an online date. Videochat on your phones and each go for a walk, showing each other the sites around your neighborhood. Bring your laptop or phone to a coffee shop and chat and send pictures over coffee and ask each other all sorts of dorky first date sort of questions, you may already know the answers if you’ve known each other a long time, but it can be fun to see how they’ve changed.

These are just a few suggestions for ways you can cultivate experiences together over distance. I highly recommend folks who are in a long distance relationship who are struggling with ways to connect pursue further resources as well. Here are a couple that have been recommended to me and that I’ve found useful. And good luck, I’ve found my LDRs to be incredibly fulfilling and I hope you find joy in any you pursue!

https://www.lovingfromadistance.com/

https://surviveldr.com/

Deciding to get into a long distance relationship

Some of my first serious relationships were long distance. It was hard, but as a teenager it was a little easier, simply because I was still living with my parents and stuck going to high school every day, so living with a partner or having the freedom to go out on adventures any time we wanted wasn’t an option. So I had a few relationships that involved eight hour phone conversations through the whole night, ending sleepily as the sun rose. Figuring out how to use a webcam in the early days of chat messengers, and sometimes leaving it on as we went to sleep so we could see each others peaceful faces during the night if we woke up. It was hard at times, I was deeply lonely and felt very isolated, and we would eagerly count down the days until they could visit. When we fought, because in at least one dynamic we had our share of problems and fights were unfortunately frequent, there was no ability to offer physical comfort or intimacy to mend our closeness afterwards.

Once I had my first relationship in college, where we moved in together within the first week, long distance became harder. I got used to a constant presence of a partner, the ability to take an impromptu midnight run to Taco Hell, or walk through the woods together when we needed an escape from the world, and share a moment of intimacy on the bank of a stream. I got used to sharing a bed, something which I was extremely attached to for many years after, until I re-discovered my ability to be independent and learned the equal joys of sleeping alone sometimes. I had a few long distance dynamics in my early adulthood, but after a couple years I decided I wasn’t willing to put myself through the inevitably painful part of missing someone so much and struggling to connect in every day life. I set a boundary, I would not do long distance relationshipping anymore. I kept to it for quite a few years. The most I was willing to do was start relationships that were long distance for a short time, with the goal of quickly narrowing the distance and moving in together. Not a hard thing to do since I had an ever fluctuating household of partners and friends, and we always managed to cram another person in when the need arose.

Well, that changed again, probably when my partner Shara went from living with me, to moving back to their hometown a couple hours away. Our relationship improved in some ways, they were in a place that was healthier for them when back home with their group of friends, and we worked hard on figuring out a communication level and visit schedule that worked for us. Because it was an already established relationship of a few years at that time, I was willing to put in what it took to make long distance work. Then I got involved with Kwik, a partner in Canada. I hadn’t considered beginning a long distance relationship that I knew would stay long distance, but I decided on a whim to give it a try and was happy with how it functioned. When I met Hoffy this past year, I had already changed my views and was willing to get into LDRs again, and I’m glad for it, because that has grown into one of the most impactful relationships of my life. So, I do long distance relationships again. They are not easy, they require a lot of dedication to work well at times, but for the right person I have found it is worth it for me.

I think it also might be easier when polyamorous, or a relationship anarchist. Polyamory accepts more then one relationship at a time. With a long distance relationship, a lot of the struggle is often a lack of physical affection and intimacy, and not being able to share little every day moments as well. If you have the possibility of a relationship in your life that already provides those things, it can be easier to not feel starved for them when getting into an LDR. Of course you may miss those things with that particular partner, but you don’t get so touch starved overall that it impacts your mental health even more. As a relationship anarchist, relationships are custom build from the ground up, made to fit the needs of the people involved with a respect for autonomy, and limiting expectations only to what both are comfortable committing to. Because of this absolute possibility of fluidity in structure, you can go into a dynamic with the knowledge that you will see someone infrequently, but leaving behind societal and cultural expectations that a relationship is less valuable if you don’t cohabitate or spend time together daily. While not having certain regular daily interactions may still be painful, you remove the societal expectation that things must be a certain way to be valid or real, so that pain is not compounded upon.

Tomorrow I’ll go into ideas I’ve compiled over the years for making LDRs work well. I’ve found them to be a very integral part of my happiness because of the wonderful partners I have, and am grateful I opened back up to the idea. Still, they are difficult, and I hope I can offer some helpful suggestions on how to connect more with someone even when not there in person.

Facing judgement for non-traditional relationships

When folks ask about large scale changes in the dynamics of my polycule, often its simply interest in my personal life, because the asker is someone I’m close to. Often is curiosity, humans lives are interesting and how we relate to others is one of the most interesting aspects of them. I’m a nosy little fuck, so I completely understand why someone would want to know details of my personal life to satisfy their own curiosity. Sometimes though, especially with large changes that face a certain amount of societal judgement, it is hard not to feel as though someone is asking so they can pass their own judgement on a person, usually not positive.

This is something I encounter more these days as a relationship anarchist. My dynamics are tailored to fit what both individuals in them want and need at the time, and are fluid, so they can shift as our needs change. This has served to create great dynamics with a much higher degree of comfort and intimacy, because we can establish trust that we truly respect and nurture each others needs and wants. It has also served to create greater longevity, because needing to change the structure of a dynamic does not as often necessitate that it end, simply that it change shape.

When Kelev confronted me with his decision to move out, that was a moment that may have well shattered many typical monogamous or relationship escalator based mono or polya dynamics. In fact, despite us practicing relationship anarchy and having been fluid in the past about -big- things, such as sleeping arrangements, relationship titles, kink dynamics, and room sharing, he was scared to bring it up. I had proved again and again in practice that I was more then happy to adapt to dynamic changes, and our emotional connection would endure and strengthen through them. But society is not as flexible, so even with years of past experience of me being understanding and adaptable, he had many more years of societal conditioning that this was something you are broken up with for. This is a thing that causes people to walk away, that will create enough anger for someone to cut you out of their life, etc. When he expressed the fear that I would do those things, I immediately supplied reassurance, but it was sadly not hard for me to see the origins of those fears. So many people are willing to toss a wonderfully functional healthy dynamic to the curb simply because it does not take the perfect shape they always dreamed of, or disappoints certain expectations. I support realizing what you do need to have a relationship be worth while and having boundaries for yourself of course. But with polya folks where often you do not live with -every single one- of your partners, there is still a large contingent who would end things if a nesting partner suddenly stopped nesting, because they center their needs for that relationship in particular, over their connection with the person. They would rather attach themselves to the role they fit that person into, than attach to the person themselves in a way that allows people to grow and change while maintaining intimacy. So even within a very fluid and adaptable dynamic, there is still sometimes fear of judgement.

It isn’t surprising then, that when people ask about those kind of large scale changes, the sort that often spell doom in society’s rigid relationship structures, I wonder how what I say will be twisted around into a negative judgement. When I told my parents about his decision, I did so with considerable apprehension, ready to leap to his defense. I knew his decision was not a betrayal, it was not a reflection of any damage or cracks in our relationship, but I also was prepared for it to be seen that way and to fight those assumptions off. I was waiting for them to suddenly see him as less of a partner, and terrified they would treat him as such, especially knowing how much their love and acceptance has always meant to him. I felt like I had to balance my words just right, find the exact placement for them when giving my explanations, so that the message could be conveyed with absolute understanding.

I suppose what it came down to was, our relationship was not existing in a vacuum between the two of us. We had built a beautiful dynamic from the ground up, tossing off societal norms and deciding to love each other completely without rigid rules and structure and expectations that would stifle our growth. We wanted to be able to change and grow as individuals, have fluctuating needs in the moment, and enhance our intimacy by embracing that in each other and providing support and companionship through those changes. But other people in our lives related to our relationship, they had ties of love and family and friendship to our dynamic as well as to us as individuals. So, while we had dropped the silly notion that society should tell us certain changes should feel like our relationship was less strong or one had committed a betrayal, they may not have done that emotional work and might feel for us, something we had decided made no sense for us to feel. You see this often with polyamorous people just coming out. Their friends decide to feel righteous anger and indignation for them, for their spouse cheating on them, despite the couple having done the emotional work to detach feelings of betrayal from the idea of sexual or romantic fidelity.

This all results in a feeling I’ve had with big relationship shifts, like deciding to un-title things, deciding not to cohabitate, deciding to have a platonic dynamic, that I must justify and defend these choices to people in my life so that my partner is not judged harshly for them. Or at times, so that I am not. Sometimes it is a matter of finding reasons that allow it to be understandable or forgivable to people who do not relationship the way we do. Sometimes there are no explanations that would fit into societal norms, so that isn’t possible. When that is the case, what I really am asking of people is that they do the emotional work we have done, not nearly to the same extent, but enough so to look upon us favorably for the love and intimacy we share, instead of condemning one or the other or both partners for violating a societal taboo of what happily-ever-after must look like. It is their right to choose not to do that work and pass judgement instead, but I always hope that won’t be the case. Because if you do bend your mind to step into our wonderful fluid polyamorous or relationship anarchist world for a moment, you will find not only the relief of not having to judge harshly the “betrayals” that are hurting no one, but you may also get to enjoy some of the beautiful growth and personal discovery that makes this life worthwhile for us.

The fluid nature of trust

One of my clearest memories from childhood is walking barefoot on the gravel driveway at the farm I lived at until I was five. I remember the way I had to step slowly so that the gravel wasn’t painful on bare feet. I had gotten out of the car and was walking around it to go up towards the house, and one of my parents was still in the car. I remember distinctly as I walked in front of the car, making sure I had my hand on the hood the whole way around. It wasn’t for balance, it was because I rationalized that if I had my hand on the hood, they couldn’t run me over.

Now my parents have never been abusive. In fact, they have never so much as hit me, my household was one where spanking was never an option and I’m glad for it. I had absolutely no reason to fear that my parents would out-of-the-blue decide to run over their small child, but for some reason that was a fear of mine at that young age. Not even a fear really, I don’t think I really felt a fear of anything at that age, it was just a vague concern that I wanted to prevent by having my hand out to steady the car at all times. Aside from the fact that this indicates to me that my young child brain was not as good at being rational as I thought (because how the hell is my hand on the hood going to in any way prevent someone from running me over if they wanted too?), this is something I have thought about often and wondered if I had trust issues.

As a preteen and then young teen, I liked to say that I was very un-trusting. That someone had to work hard to earn my trust, and if they done fucked up then that was it, trust wasn’t coming back. Honestly though, that didn’t mess up with my experiences. I often depended on people in ways that left me disappointed, and my intense heartbreak when people I was close to didn’t measure up to my expectations, shows me that by that point I had started investing a lot of trust in the few people I was close to. But I didn’t want to be seen as someone trusting. Was that just edgy teen angst, or did it reflect back on my strange childhood relationship with trust and unrealistic concerns about being hurt?

Thus followed a good many dysfunctional relationships, I was a bit of a hot mess, and not very self aware. I thought I was self aware, because honestly compared to my peers I certainly did more introspection. I would ask acquaintances and strangers in high school about things like what they thought of themselves, how they would describe themselves, their passions and dreams, what motivated them, what they would change about themselves if they could, and so on. Many were unable to answer and admitted they had never thought about any of that, they were just living day to day. Thinking back, maybe they weren’t comfortable giving those kind of answers to a quirky quiet kid who was suddenly badgering them with personal questions. A lot of folks I accosted did seem genuinely confused that these were even topics to think about though, and I was left feeling like I was clearly so much more self aware and far beyond my years in philosophical thought. So, I represented myself as such, and fucked up a few close relationships because of how much I did not know that I did not know. I was good at seeming wise, but I barely knew myself, I had only scratched the surface of what I thought on a regular basis, and was not good at understanding and dissecting my motivations, or working through what I felt.

Fast forward through trauma, abuse, and the drunk years, and you have who I’ve become in the past four years or so. I pause often before I speak, and try to really dig deep into my own thoughts and history and motivations. I still have not figured out if I have trust issues, either in being too trusting, or not trusting enough. I know that the way I trust has adapted and become much more healthy, I feel, through my exploration of polyamory and relationship anarchy. When you have multiple relationships and no one person carries the burden of being expected to meet all your needs, you trust different people for different things. When relationships do not need to check off specific boxes of all being romantic, sexual, etc, you can tailor what you expect and depend on folks for even more to the specific individual. With labels and prioritization of relationships mostly off the table at least as a standard, I find it is much simpler to base trust on the unique dynamic I have shaped with someone, rather then on an idea of what trust should be as an all encompassing thing.

The way I trust now is a circumstantial thing, it is adaptable, it is fluid. I base expectations on what people tell me they can do, and what they show me they can do. If someone tells me I can trust them to be supportive, but they consistently disregard my feelings and are not present to listen when I need help, I try not to react with anger or betrayal. Instead I re-evaluate my trust in their ability to do what they say. They are no longer categorized in my mind as someone who can be supportive, instead they are someone who wants to be supportive but often falls short, and my expectations change. I also may be less trusting about other things they say they can do, but it is not a judgement meant to disparage them, it is an awareness that they are probably not quite aware of their abilities and limits when they communicate what can be expected of them. There is no concept in my mind anymore of absolute trust, there is just a continued assessment and re-assessment of what the people in my life say they are capable of, how that matched up with what they show in their actions. I do need a baseline level of trust in key needs, security that I am physically safe with someone, that they strive for honesty in their communication and are often successful, that they make every effort to take commitments seriously and don’t make them casually and with a disregard for their abilities. But what I can trust people to do and be is variable. I don’t think I have trust issues now, though I don’t buy into having the faith in people, the magical “complete and absolute trust” that I hear lauded as an ideal. Trust is given in equal measure for what is provided in return, and those things need not be great or numerous for me to be content, it is just a descriptive for what I can expect and what I cannot.

Breaking cohabitation – transitioning from living together to living apart

Major changes can make or break a relationship, and often the choice to live together is one of the big changes that can really show you if you can make a dynamic work with a person. But what about deciding not to cohabitate after having lived together? That is a decision you rarely hear talked about, because it does not follow the traditional relationship escalator. Can a relationship survive that sort of decision? Does it mean the relationship is failing in some way? Or is it possible it can even be a good thing? This is my story with that transition and what I learned from it.

A stable partnership

I’ve talked before about Kelev, the partner I have been with for eight years now. We’ve been a central focus in each others lives basically since the start of the relationship. He moved in about a year after we met, although I really count it happening even before that, since he pretty much started living with me about four months in to the relationship, it just took a little longer before a room opened up in my house and he moved his stuff over. He was there through the house hunting six years ago, and the purchase of our home, the repairs, the experiment with urban farming, and all the ups and downs. He supported me through me ex-fiance’s departure, through two years of school to become a certified vet tech, though alcoholism and overcoming it, through a job that felt like hell for a year as I worked to support us with my new career. We share a bank account, four cats and three dogs, and eight years of amazing memories.

The unexpected announcement

This August Kelev approached me and told me he would be moving back to his Dad’s place, a couple miles across town. My first reaction, after a bit of shock, because we had frequently confirmed a desire for the cohabitation to be a life long thing, was to try and understand why. His reasons made sense to me, a mixture of needing to help his family, and a need for some sort of radical change in his life. Especially with the monotony of daily life now that he couldn’t work, and often couldn’t move around well, I understood why it was so overbearing to be stuck in the same place day in and day out with no change. To me, that wouldn’t be living, I thrive on radical change for my own growth. On top of that, he was someone who had spent his lifetime moving every few years, I couldn’t relate to that personally since my childhood was largely stable and my own period of moving a lot was the first time in college. Still, even without a personal reference, I could empathize with how it wasn’t easy after a life fueled by transitions and new beginnings, to settle down and have that feeling stagnate until you craved it. I also completely understood wanting to help his family, and to be able to spend time renewing his closeness with them. It wasn’t that we didn’t see them on occasion at our home, but it was short visits that lacked the real depth you have when you are around someone every day. I confirmed that there wasn’t a dysfunction in our relationship, and he was able to reassure me of that, along with the reassurance that he had every intention to move back within a year or two, and certainly was still 100% on board with our dreams to build a community together in the coming years and move there. Still, it was terrifying. I imagine when relationship dysfunction is the cause, it is even more uncertain and nerve wracking, but as is, this was a huge unexpected shift in how our relationship had been shaped almost from the beginning.

Adapting to change

Kelev moved out in August. Through a series of other events living up, my need for more space, other housemates needs for more independence, or housemates moving to live with other partners, I ended up with the house completely to myself when he left. I had largely worked through my codependency issues after my ex-fiance left, but it was my first time living completely alone. That was both exhilarating and terrifying. It was lovely not having to worry to close the bathroom door (although that did increase the rate of cats-on-lap while using the toilet), but it was a bit uncomfortable at night knowing that no one else was home if someone broke in, or I somehow injured myself in my profound clumsiness. The first couple weeks I kept very busy, I filled the emptiness in my life with action, mostly around the house to keep it functional. Another big part of this change was that since I had been the one who attended school or worked, Kelev was the one who took care of our home, so suddenly I was figuring out how obnoxious it was to take out the trash, or scrambling around to get home by five to feed the critters in the evening. It’s strange how loading the dishwasher and then unloading it in the morning, or cleaning the cat boxes daily, made me feel more like an adult then bringing home a paycheck ever had. It was the consistency, if I did not do every task, it just did not get done, so I made checklists and reminders and tried my best to keep on top of it all. After the first few weeks, when the new routine became, well, routine, I began to do a lot of introspection. I worked a lot on myself, fostering greater independence and self confidence, and trying to really see what areas of my brain meats could use some improving. I also after a time began to discover both a great love of quiet and aloneness, a relaxation into it that I hadn’t experienced since I really began having adult relationships and always having someone around. I enjoyed sitting with those moments, and also with the loneliness that sometimes came with them. It was a relief to not have an easy access point to fill my loneliness with, and to instead have to become comfortable with being silent with my own self by necessity. I did then in October have more housemates move in, other founders of the community who had traveled back to this side of the country so we could begin further working on that dream. But the short period I had of living on my own is something I think I will cherish for the rest of my life, even if I may not pursue doing so again.

The effect, what our relationship has become

If you’re facing a recent split in cohabitation with a partner, or it’s on the table, this might be the part you really have been wondering about, how did it effect our relationship? It was such a huge change. We have gone through many times where we tweaked our dynamic, added a title here, took off all titles there, removed a bdsm component, got involved with other partners, added a bdsm component, stopped sharing a bed every night, experimented with sharing a bedroom, and so on. Most of those changes had some effect on our interactions, but none permeated our daily lives so completely as this change.

There was a lot that I really learned to love about this. I found that the time we spent together was often more exciting, more filled with laughter and emotional intensity, because suddenly it was a commodity that wasn’t always readily available. Visiting his place at Dad’s felt like an adventure, lounging on his bed with his stereo blasting Alice Cooper or Hailstorm while while he fiddled with his wrestling figures and I read a book, reminded me so much of my teenage years visiting a friend or boyfriend’s house, and I felt younger and more alive. Talking on the phone was a fun new treat, now we had hilarious conversations, sometimes with his sister or niece joining in from his side of the phone, where before phone conversations were mostly limited to checking if I needed to pick up groceries on the way home from work. The whole experience really had a very youthful feel. I also found a lot of joy in the separation of time-to-social and time-to-alone. I savored the drives home from Dad’s, as I could lose myself in music and appreciate the transition from the warm loved feeling of their home and being near my partner, to the clear peaceful emptiness of being alone again. And something kind of magical happened, we started really doing things that we hadn’t before. Our relationship was always so saturated with the every day, we were comfortable in spending hours relaxing while he watched tv and I played on my phone or read a book, and going out seemed like a difficult task, a departure from the comfortable and usual. Once he moved it, it suddenly opened up a door for all sorts of new experiences. We went to a concert together for the first time, the aquarium, tried new restaurants, and began going out to community events that we usually would have just been too tired and too low on spoons for. I also began going to things on my own, without the guilt that I was leaving him home alone (though he never minded and would encourage me to go), I was able to have my own adventures and feel like I could really decided to spend my time however I chose in any moment. I still choose to spend a good bit of that time with him, our emotional intensity is on an upswing and I’m loving the increased connection that has come of this venture, but I also am nurturing myself as a separate person more, so I bring more stories and experience to the table of our dynamic each day.

There are downsides though. Sometimes the cats do something hilarious, or I manage to make a spectacular mistake in my clumsiness or absent mindedness, and while I try and remember it to tell him when we talk later, I know many moments are lost in the day and never get shared. It’s sad, those little things, relatively unimportant, but also the fabric that makes up the majority of the day, are not longer all a shared part of our tapestry. I wish that every surprised laugh as the cat falls off the counter or I drop my phone in the litter box, could be followed by looking up and meeting his eyes and seeing the laugh lines crinkle as he laughs with me (or at me). I miss his snores at night. I never have trouble falling asleep, but I wake early and often with panic attacks, and that noise was my comfort for many years. Though, the nights he is here each week I just savor it more, my gruff lullaby that says everything is okay. I worry about his health, it has been getting worse over the years and often I’ve taken the role of remembering the doctor’s instructions and making sure they are applied. I still go to every appointment and try to remind him of what he needs to do when we get back, but I have a nervous inkling always in the back of my mind that things are slipping through the cracks and one day it will be something important. My health is also not as good as it was. I love to cook, but I have much more trouble motivating myself to do so just for myself. My new housemates are wonderful, but they can cook, so while I do make family meals at times, I’m not -needed- to. Having Kelev to take care of and cook healthy food for, really helped me stick to eating better as well. Mostly though, I just miss the endless opportunity. When someone is there almost every moment, there are no barriers to making each day a love affair or an adventure with them. I didn’t take advantage of that very often when we lived together and I’ve learned to cherish now what I once took for granted. That lesson though is something I am every grateful for, because when he does move back in, I will strive not to take those opportunities for granted again and will make every day a wonder.

Does helping someone else cheat make you a cheater?

There are many bumps and pitfalls when you engage in relationships outside of the societal norm, such as polyamory and relationship anarchy. In a monogomous relationship, sharing sexual or romantic intimacy with someone else is almost always seen as cheating. In a polyamorous relationship, cheating is still possible, just not so easily defined. Since polyamory involves engaging in multiple romantic or sexual dynamics, cheating is usually defined as breaking a relationship agreement. This almost always refers to relationship agreements relating to intimacy with other people though. After all, while your spouse might get jealous if you watch the newest episode of Desperate Housewives with your friend Jay, even though you may have promised to watch it with your spouse first, they are unlikely to label this as cheating. If on the other hand, you have sex with Jay and tell your spouse afterwards, and you have agree to run new sexual partners by each other beforehand, then your spouse would likely feel that you had cheated on them. When a relationship agreement is broken, in a monogomous or polyamorous dynamic, and it does relate to intimacy with other people, the label of cheating is often applied. And cheating is often seen as the worst offense, the sex you had with Jay is a much greater betrayal then your watching of Desperate Housewives together. So what about when you are not the one breaking an agreement, but you are Jay, and are just the third party involved in the breaking of the agreement?

So you have ventured into polyamory, or maybe you have been polya or a relationship anarchist for years. You befriend an adorable creature who shares some social circles with you and begin to get to know each other. You meet up for coffee and get lost in their eyes, your discussions stay with you for days after. Soon you realize well fuck, I really want to kiss this person, but alas, they are in a monogomous relationship. What do you do? Okay, well obviously don’t kiss them without consent, you have to make sure they want to kiss you too, but assuming mutual desire has been established, do you go ahead because you both want to, or do you refrain from doing so out of respect for their relationship? The cry I’ve heard echoed in most all the polya circles I’ve been in is full stop! Respect their relationship! For many years I was in Camp Respect, I would have said that you were enabling cheating, and in doing so you were just as bad as a cheater yourself. If that were still the case this writing would be pretty boring, as it would end here. I no longer believe that.

This boils down to an ownership mentality. While polyamorists often try and unpack the idea of owning their partners much more then monogomists, it is hard to completely throw off that societal conditioning. But I don’t feel like I own my partner! they may say incredulously. Well, do you accept that your partner is a completely autonomous being who has every right to have and express their emotions as they come up, and share their own body as they wish? If not, do you feel you have a right to restrict how your partner feels and expresses their feelings or shares their body? If you answered yes to the second question, there is a sense of entitlement over your partner’s body and mind. That possessiveness is the ownership mentality I’m speaking of. You may have answered yes to the first question, you do accept that your partner is autonomous and can share their body and heart with who they choose, and that means we’re on the same page. As a relationship anarchist, this principle is of extreme importance to me. Shrugging off the ownership mentality, the idea that I had some say over how the people I am close to could share themselves with others, was no easy task, but one I continue to put a lot of effort into. The motivation behind that is the most important thing. I truly do believe in the importance of autonomy. I do not believe your partner is ever your possession, or that anyone has a right to treat someone else as a commodity they can keep to themselves or only rent out to others as they choose. So, in a situation where a person is in a relationship where their partner has dictated, or the societal norms have dictated, that they may not do the delightful kissing or other such things with other people, respecting that is buying into that ownership mentality and acknowledging that they are a possession of their partner. I refuse to take part in that coercion any longer and as such, if I consent to the kissing of the new adorable creature over the coffee date and they consent to kissing me as well, I will not respect a monogomous dynamic that allows their partner to dictate what they may consent to, and in doing so disrespect their own autonomy to decide. Now I do acknowledge that them breaking the agreements of fidelity with their partner are hurtful, even if I believe imposed monogomous relationship agreements are unethical. I also acknowledge that cheating usually includes an element of deception, and that is not a dynamic I will walk into, so usually I end up refraining from the kissing for that reason. I have no interest in helping someone lie, because while I do not find a disregard for possessiveness and restriction of autonomy to be unethical, I do find dishonesty to be unethical. My response would likely to be an expression of my desire to kiss the person, but an acknowledgment that I have no intention of being part of a secret where we mutually work to keep it from their partner. And if they express that they will keep it from their partner, and I need have no part in that, possibly because I don’t know or will never meet their partner, well the desire to do the thing is gone because I don’t really need to be swapping spit with someone who is happy to lie. So, it’s often a non-issue, but I feel the reasoning behind it to be very important from an ethical standpoint. Especially when my ethics dictate bucking against a culture of owning-ones-partner as much as possible.

Now what about if the person you are interested in is polyamorous, and it’s not a matter of coercive monogamy structures in which fidelity is assumed and there is an expectation of a persons body belonging only to their partner, but instead you have people who respect each others autonomy and desire to explore with others, but have made agreements to guide how they do so? This is where it gets sticky and even I am still working out my hard feels about this. So if you make an agreement with your partner that you will let them know before you have sex with other people, is that coercive and ownership based? Sometimes I think the answer is yes, I’ve seen these sort of agreements made, where one partner felt they had to agree to restrictions to be “allowed” to be polya, and that is clearly coercive. Assuming though, that there wasn’t overt coercion, is there a problem? Well, if you want to tell your partner beforehand, and your partner wants to tell you beforehand, you both will do so, is there need for an agreement there, that if broken = cheating? If the agreement is truly being made out of a mutual desire to do so, there really isn’t a need for an agreement at all, because both people will do the thing anyway when acting out their wants. If one person no longer wants to do the thing, then honestly, they are no longer a mutually consenting participant in the agreement. I think though, brains are not that simple, and desire is not that simple. If we are assuming agreements made without coercion, without any pressure from the other person that restricts autonomy, and with a deep respect for each others desires, then a person might agree to something that they know is an overarching want, even if their in-the-moment wants might conflict with that. I have agreements with some of my partners to discuss new partnerships with them as I am considering them. I have these agreements because my base wants are to share my emotions as I enter new experiences, and to give my partners a platform to share their emotions. I will not let a partner control my new connections, but I do want to know and understand what they are feeling and address that with them, and also include them in my emotions and life experiences, even ones that don’t directly involve them. In the moment I may at times find these agreements restrictive, and for that reason I do question them, and I may evolve away from them over time. But at this point I have chosen those agreements and they are my primary want, even if they conflict with other momentary wants. So I keep to them.

What do you do when you are the third party in these situations though? You don’t know if agreements that a polya person has with their partner might contain some elements of coercion, or if they are agreements gone into with a respect for autonomy. When the adorable creature you want to kiss tells you that it would be breaking their agreement but they wish to do so anyway, is there wish to do so a passing fancy that conflicts with their overarching desire to do the thing they agreed to, or are they bucking against and agreement they did not desire to make? For this matter of ethics, I would say you can’t really know. All you can do is ask and then trust their answer, and if they say that they truly with to do the kissing, more then they wish to do the keeping of the agreement, you are not ethically bound to hold them to an agreement they do not want to be engaged in. Now again, I would likely have other reasons for not moving forward. One reason would be again the possibility for dishonesty here, are they someone who would lie to their partner about this later, or are they letting their partner know and informing them that the agreement is no longer something they can keep to? And also, I would likely disengage at this point because I do take agreements so seriously due to my distaste for ownership and coercion. I want to make sure my partners will only agree to things with me that they are sure they want to make a commitment about, because they know they do have a strong autonomous overarching desire for it. I want partners who are self aware to be able to see these things about themselves and determine their own wants and needs. Someone who is going around making and breaking agreements, when coercion isn’t a factor, is lacking a measure of self awareness and understanding of their desires before making commitments, and I don’t want to get involved there.

I think in the end what we need to understand is that ethical blame is often misplaced due to the normalization of ownership mentality and a lack of respect for autonomy. Cheating is not unethical because you are sharing yourself in an intimate way with another human, it is unethical because of the dishonesty and breaking of commitments involved And breaking those commitments is not always even unethical when they were not made in an environment free of coercion in the first place. When you are participating from the sidelines, not the person who is breaking their agreements to begin with, but the person who is just engaging with an individual regardless of their agreements, you are not taking an unethical action. Respecting someone else’s choice to decide for themselves what to do with their body is not unethical. You are not required to buy into respecting their agreement to hand that control over to someone else. You are not required to buy into the concept that someone else is owed or deserves that control. And you are not responsible for deciding which of their wants are most prominent or overarching, especially if they tell you otherwise or don’t have the self awareness to tell you at all. I would advise against engaging in those kind of dynamics for many other reasons, dishonesty and causing hurt being some of them. But I would like to dispel the myth I once perpetuated that helping someone cheat makes you a cheater as well, and put forward that instead we dismantle the structures where we feel we can own someone else’s body and cheating is even a thing.

Relationship anarchy vs polyamory – What the heck is the difference?

What is the difference between relationship anarchy and polyamory?

That’s a good question, but not an easy one, because there are many types of polyamory, and relationship anarchy is a newer term and the concepts it includes have been evolving over the past twelve(ish) years since Andie Nordgren wrote the relationship anarchy manifesto.

So first let’s define what each of these are. My definitions are a lovely chimera made of the commonly used definitions, what I found through research as a supposed standard, what I’ve most heard repeated in my experience with both communities, and what I feel fits from my own personal experiences with each.

Polyamory is the style of relationshipping that involves negotiated dynamics of having, or the possibility of having, multiple romantic and/or sexual relationships. Most people include “with the knowledge and consent of all involved”. I prefer my addition of “negotiated dynamics” at the beginning instead because the basis of polyamory is deciding with a partner, or deciding on your own and informing a partner, that you are going to potentially date multiple people at once. There is not always knowledge in that some polya folks do have DADT (don’t ask don’t tell) agreements. There is also not always consent, someone can be ethically polya with the consent of their partner in some of their dynamics and end up cheating in another dynamic due to an agreement or rule broken, but they are still practicing polyamory (although they probably aren’t doing a very good job of it). I think the point of the knowledge and consent portion is meant to rule out people who just decide one day they are polya, don’t care to inform their spouse, and run around sexing ALL the peoples behind their spouses back. FYI, that isn’t polyamory, but I think you knew that.

Relationship anarchy is the act of treating each relationship as it’s own individual dynamic, and the individuals engaged in it determining exactly how that dynamic will be shaped, while respecting their own autonomy and each others. Relationship anarchy is a more amorphous term once you get past that, likely because it is so new. Andie Nordgren wrote the original Relationship Anarchy Manifesto back around 2006, but since then as more people have adapted it, the definition has evolved and been expanded upon. It remains similar to the original though, in that most people use it to represent a few key ideas.

One key idea of relationship anarchy that varies from polyamory is that the focus of polyamory is on multiple romantic and/or sexual dynamics. While there are types of polyamory that have hierarchy between partnerships and types that do not, relationship anarchy forgoes hierarchy altogether between all sort of relationships. For a relationship anarchist, there is no strict hierarchy where friendships are less then lovers or romantic partners, which is often commonplace in polyamory. In that way, polyamory mimics the amatonormativity (“the assumption that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in the sense that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types,” – Elizabeth Brake) of society but simply extends it to multiple relationships. Relationship anarchy goes “fuck that noise” and either does not prioritize people at all, or does so on the basis of the dynamic in particular, and not the basis of it being a platonic, romantic, or sexual one.

Another key point in relationship anarchy is the focus on personal autonomy. Relationship anarchy highlights the individuals in the relationship deciding what the relationship will look like, and any agreements they have in it. Some relationship anarchists don’t even prescribe to the idea of agreements as a whole, and favor a way of relating that focuses on sharing what can and can’t be expected of them and if that changes, but not choosing to tie themselves down to any specific agreed upon commitment. For most though, agreements are about figuring out what they want to and can bring to the dynamic, and committing to share that until such a point as it is discussed and renegotiated if need be. This is something that is found in some polyamorous dynamics as well, but not all types of polyamory center this. In some types of polyamory, partners agree on not only what shape their relationship will take, but on the shape other relationships they each can have with other people. This idea of putting rules that may restrict the way a person can interact with and have other partners is antithetical with the practice of most relationship anarchists.

One other deviation between polyamory and relationship anarchy is the use of labels. Relationship anarchist tend to favor either not using relationship labels (titles like boyfriend/girlfriend/lovefriend, husband/wife/spouse, etc) or only using descriptive labels as opposed to prescriptive ones. Descriptive labels are ones used to describe in shorthand what the relationship is at that time. For example, nesting partner is a term that is used to mean a partner that you live with. Descriptive use of that would be to describe the partners you live with at that time as nesting partners. Prescriptive labels are ones that are meant to create structure that informs people of the place that relationship is allowed to fit in your life. For example, spouse is often a prescriptive label, because most people do not walk into marriage with an expected end date. Spouse confers a certain amount of societal privilege, implies certain things about the dynamic, and therefor is more used as a “I have given this person this specific role in my life, this is the role they have, yes” as opposed to a descriptive label of “right now this person means this to me and here is a shorthand way of conveying that.” Prescriptive labels don’t work with relationship anarchy, partly because they often effect relationships other then the one they are labeling, and partly because relationship anarchy is all about dismantling those relationship structures that prioritize people or create dynamics with implied privileges or structures. In polyamory it is not uncommon to see a hierarchy created with prescriptive titles such as primary, secondary, tertiary, and so on. Some polyamorous folk do favor descriptive over prescriptive labels though. Its more a venn diagram, with RA folks using either no labels or descriptive ones, and polya folks using prescriptive or descriptive ones, with descriptive labels being the potential overlap.

One final thing I think about when I’m considering the differences between relationship anarchy and polyamory, is something I see covered less in similar guides. Most comparisons focus on the ways relationship anarchists and polyamorists structure their relationships differently and interact within them, as I have above. There is one other core difference that I feel bears mentioning though. Polyamory is a different way of approaching romantic and/or sexual relationships. Relationship anarchy is a different way of approaching all relationships in life, but it is also a deeply political concept. Relationship anarchy is not, as many believe, just a spin off of polyamory for those who wanted even less restriction and more fluidity. RA overlaps with polyamory in many ways, but it has deep roots in political anarchism. As such, casting off relationship hierarchies and amatonormativity, and centering autonomy, are not just a product of seeking greater freedom to make tailored individual relationships. Relationship anarchy is also about rebellion against the societal institution that prioritizes certain types of connection and the traditional romantic dynamics that isolate people into nuclear families. It is about centering community and connection. It is about deconstructing to coercive relationships as a whole, and it makes no sense to hold those ideals specific to only romantic and platonic relationships and not apply them to the coercion workers, sex workers, children, marginalized communities, and others face in our society. While there are people who engage in relationship anarchy in their personal relationships and never question the overall societal structure that exploits workers, marginalizes minorities, focuses on small nuclear family units over community, glorifies capitalism, etc, it is important to remember that the roots of relationship anarchy are deeply political and it was born from anarchist concepts and still continues to embody those.

So in conclusion, there is overlap between the concepts of relationship anarchy and polyamory, and a person can in fact practice both in their life, or they could fall firmly into one category and not another. With the varying types of polyamory, some have more in common with relationship anarchy and some less. Relationship anarchy has roots in more then just a movement to have multiple romantic and/or sexual partners though, and is a structure that embraces ideals that have deep political ties to changing societal structure and bucking the current coercive systems. Polyamory also allows for hierarchy and rule based relationships in ways relationship anarchy does not. In the end it is up to the individual to decide what structures and ideologies they will adapt and explore in their own life. Hopefully this helps you in understanding each a little better and taking your next steps in that exploration.

Some resources to look into for further information:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mae-bee-a-green-anarchist-project-on-freedom-and-love

http://www.relationship-anarchy.com/videos/2016/6/20/the-difference-between-relationship-anarchy-and-non-hierarchical-polyamory

https://www.thecut.com/2018/10/what-does-relationship-anarchy-mean.html

http://www.relationship-anarchy.com/about/

Relationship anarchy is not for fuckboys(or polyamorists)