Tag: societal

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.

What does adulthood mean for a Millennial?

When does adulthood begin?  I read an interesting article recently about a college professor who taught a class on adulting, all about coming of age in today’s society.  In teaching this class, the professor discovered that most of the students did not consider themselves adults, despite being over 18.  They were asked to write about what they felt were the markers of adulthood, something that has become increasingly unclear as we experience some major societal shifts as Millennials and now Generation Z are coming of age.  It got me looking inward and thinking about whether I feel like and adult and what I believe makes one an adult.  I also decided to do a little more digging into what the supposed markers of adulthood are.

I’m going to start by dispensing with the idea of turning 18 being the marker of adulthood.  We have many milestones of that sort, at 16 (or some places 14) you’re adult enough to work many jobs, at 18 you’re adult enough to vote and join the military, but at 21 you’re adult enough to drink, and only at 25 are you adult enough to rent a car, etc.  These are also relevant to the United States, but vary greatly in other countries, which does evidence in some ways how we’ve picked arbitrary lines to draw there.  Yes, they are a general guideline for when we believe a person can handle certain responsibilities, but they aren’t actually very helpful in determining what will make someone feel like an adult.

I found a few analysis of adulthood from a psychological perspective, with such traits meant to define adulthood such as rationality, and non-defensiveness and openness.  Well shit, that precludes the current President of the United States and a good many other political officials, many in their 60s, 70s, and above.  It also leaves out a lot of the shitty parents of folks I’ve been close to throughout my life.  People who have raised a now adult child, paid the bills, and often been little manipulative abusive shits who probably couldn’t grasp rationality and non-defensiveness anymore than they could bench press the Empire State Building, but there you go.  So maybe that isn’t the perfect milestone either in determining what would make the younger generations feel like we are adults.  Our elders certainly have not done a stellar job at modeling that as a determining factor in adulthood.

Going back to the article that started this line of thinking, there was a discussion of the students responses.  Many felt that marriage, having children, and home ownership were markers of adulthood.  I can certainly understand that, we’ve been raised by a generation that often followed a very clear life path, fit a certain mold, and taught us to do so as well.  I don’t remember a time where I didn’t just “know” that you were supposed to go to school, get into a good college, graduate, get married, buy a house, and manifest a few loin spawn to raise who would do it all over again.  There is a script to this, one many people in my generation haven’t been able to follow, or have decided to toss to the wind as we make our own path.  Which does explain why many of us are left not feeling like adults as we enter our 20s and 30s.

It is interesting, because many of the Millennials I know spend more time focusing on traits mentioned in the psychological articles on what makes an adult, than members of earlier generations I know.  That is of course not a conclusive study, just my personal experience.  Many of us suffer from mental illness, often times created by or exacerbated by our circumstances.  We are treated as children by the media and by older generations, accused of destroying industries when we don’t buy into consumerism.  We bought into the dream of college opening all doors to success in life and graduate with bachelors  degrees and 60k in debt, only to find our only job option is to be a manager at a Papa Johns unless we want to get even more in debt for a higher degree.   We put off marriage and having children because we can’t afford it, or we choose different ways of relationshipping or to be childfree because we recognize that we don’t actually have to fit every mold they made for us.  We find the middle class we aspired to has all but disappeared, so we work two jobs and still need food stamps to get by.  Then we wonder why we suffer from depression and anxiety in such high numbers.  We learn rationality because we have to fight irrational systems of oppression and crumbling aged lawmakers who refuse to understand that we are more interested in being allowed to express our love regardless of gender and make sure every town has clean water, then we are in corporations getting more tax cuts.  We learn to be open and non-defensive because we have to nurture each other and promote self care every day and across social media platforms or in person with our friends, because we have to wonder how many more friends we’ll lose to suicide this coming year.  This isn’t true of everyone in my generation, but its what I see growing around me in my small communities and in the thousands I connect with through online platforms every day.

For me, adulthood begins with disillusionment.  It starts when we realize the lies we have been fed, that the boxes we were taught to fit in are unneeded, that the life path we were taught to follow was unrealistic.  It continues as we start to unpack all of that and struggle with the impact it has had on our psyche, our morale, our self esteem.  We grow more into adulthood as we gain the ability to remove ourselves from the system, to choose which pieces of it work for us, and which to discard as soon as we gain the power to do so.  Adulthood is that determination to find that power, within ourselves to stand up for who we are, and within the system as we elect as more and more of our number to office so we can change the way the oppressive system functions.  Adulthood is being able to kiss your same gender partner in public after years of fear.  It is taking a moment to breath into yourself after two retail shifts, telling yourself it is okay to break out a coloring book if that is your self care, as you bat away the dread that you’ll be doing the same thing every day for the rest of your life despite the shiny diploma tucked away in a box in the wore out apartment you share with three friends.  It is choosing to not have children because you are comfortable not wanting any, or because you desperately want them but can’t face bringing them into this broken world or know you can’t afford them.  It is having four children and having to coordinate between family who takes care of them as you each try and work the hours your employer pretends to graciously give you, wishing you’d be taught about safer sex during the abstinence only age.  It is getting divorced for the third time because you have found the inner strength to leave people who abuse you.  It is deciding against marriage because you love all three of your partners equally.  It is wanting to get married but knowing that disabled people still don’t have that right equally, because you can’t survive without the disability benefits that cover your life sustaining medication, and your partner makes too much for you to keep them, but not enough to cover the prescriptions if you wed.  Adulthood is rebellion, against all that we were taught, and it is finding our own way instead and paving a better way for generations to come.