Dark sides of poly

A friend of mine recently returned to monogamy, after spending a couple-ish years practicing non-monogamy. Despite significant effort and support leveraged during (including many conversations with me), overall the relationship style worked very poorly for him (his experience was similar to Why I think polyamory is net negative for most people who try it). 

A few weeks later a poly friend challenged me at lunch to "steelman" my friend and I's consensus about the dark sides of non-monogamy. Since non-monogamy is a broad umbrella, I narrowed my claims to unmarried heterosexual folks practicing solo poly (UHFPSP; which describes a substantial chunk of the bay area non-monogamy community I'm familiar with), and articulated three dark sides, when compared to conventional monogamy. 

First, I think UHFPSP does worse than conventional monogamy at providing enduring support when a person acquires a disability or significant financial setback. 

I'll begin by claiming that the majority of monogamy-practicing folks in the primary 50 dating years (roughly between ages 20-70) spend a significant portion of those years with a cohabitating partner, often a spouse. The default expectations in those arrangements is for B to support A when A acquires a disability or significant financial setback. By comparison, the default expectations in UHFPSP is for A to support A when A acquires a disability or significant financial setback. 

I've seen this play out in the UHFPSP when someone was injured, once when someone died, once when someone was laid off and almost lost their home, and once when someone experienced a significant theft. Yes, friends and lovers help out initially, much as friends and neighbors do when someone experiences a significant setback; but the "family" expectation of being there for the person 6 months and 18 months and 72 months later was not there- because the expectation is for UHFPSP to insure themselves against such setbacks, since there's no reciprocal commitment to the enduring heavier "in sickness and in health" norm more present in the conventional monogamy world. Illustrations:

• For the person who died, the answer to the question of who buries you and plans the funeral, was some relative from hundreds of miles away: instead of a partner from their week-to-week life
• For the laid off person, friends chipped in two and three digit amounts against a five-digit need
• For the injured person, their non-cohabitating partner drove them to appointments for a few weeks, then tapered off their support (the injuree turned to neighbors and a relative) 

Second, UHFPSP does worse than conventional monogamy at providing relationships to the bottom status quartile of men. 

In both UHFPSP and conventional monogamy, women attract abundant potential mates (just ask any woman who's hopped on a dating app). For men, the reality is quite different. Typically their dating market power is a factor of status, and in the UHFPSP world the higher status males can have multiple partners. True, the women can as well, but in my observation women desire on average fewer partners than the average male desires. You can see this by comparing partner counts between women (who generally have the number of partners they desire, given the excess supply) and high status males (who also generally have the number of partners they desire, by contrast to their low status counterparts). High status males usually have 3-4 partners, whereas women usually have 1-2.  

The mathematical result at the population level is a large group of low status males with fewer relationships/partners than they want. Often, these men go for significant periods with zero partners. By contrast, because monogamy pairings are 1:1 and match the gender split, at the population level low status males have a higher chance of having at least one partner. 

There are also a few exacerbating factors.

1. Bisexuality. In conventionally monogamous populations, women are expected to be fully or primarily heterosexual, and because of the single partner expectation, are far less likely to experiment with or have a female partner instead of or in addition to a male one. In UHFPSP circles women, much more than men, experiment with and sometimes have female partners in addition to their male ones - which results in the low-status males competing against other women in addition to the higher-status males, further amplifying their undesired relationship scarcity. 
2. The slightly higher male:female ratio of UHFPSP
3. The higher ratio of attraction to women in the trans woman population, compared to trans men 

Third, UHFPSP only "works well" for folks at a narrow intersection of traits:

1. Attachment needs are met by the relationship model (for many folks, jealousy and insecurity leave them feeling more anxious and stressed than in monogamy)
2. (if male) don't believe in the "valley of the dolls"
3. Desire the multiple partner or autonomy aspects of UHFPSP
4. Competitive in the dating market

I happen to fit all four, which is mostly down to luck, and is why I'm staying put in UHFPSP. However, I know three folks where #1 wasn't the case for them: all three of them left UHFPSP. I know two women for whom #3 faded, and they too transitioned to monogamy. Then I know a whole lot of frustrated men who ran afoul of #2 and #4, some of whom gave up and returned to monogamy and others who are still trying. 

(Valley of the dolls is the widespread fantasy among men that, without the strictures of monogamy, they can finally have what they deeply desire: low-effort casual sex with lots of attractive women. It usually only takes a few hundred of the "no ONS" and "no hookups" reminders on every other woman's dating profile on apps, and a few dozen failed attempts, to disabuse the notion that supply exists to meet this demand- but it's a compelling fantasy, partially rooted in evolutionary selection pressure, and many men have a hard time letting it go despite the lorries of evidence.) 

Conclusion:
At the individual and group level, there are dark sides to at least some poly cohorts! 

Still looking for my tribe

Though I belong, I don't quite fit in any of the communities I frequent. 
-Regular society (cuz I'm poly and monogamy is the prevailing norm)
-Bay Area poly people (cuz I'm otherwise normal, and thus too neurotypical and insufficiently woke, trans, kinky, BIPOC, or queer)
-Intellectuals (cuz though I listen to podcasts often and talk about issues with friends, I no longer read, write, or participate in conferences or intellectual communities, at serious levels)
-Effective altruists (cuz I'm too busy with rest of life to participate at the level most do)
-Fitness freaks (cuz though I workout often, I'm not excellent or religious about anything in particular, like lifting or a sport)
-Careerists (cuz though I work a ton, I'm not striving for a promotion or strategic next skill or role)
-Family (cuz I hate parenting, though I do a decent job of it and love my kiddos)
-Creators (cuz my blog and social posts are intermittent at best, my ant hobbying is on ice, and my poly-themed stand-up dream has yet to see the light of day)
-ExMos (cuz I no longer care as much about that identity)

I suppose I could just stop trying to find a tribe that fits fully, and tell myself that myself, a community of one, is enough. And that being a decent fit in multiple communities brings adequate tribal benefits. 

 I still thirst, though, for that full fit of the full me. I think it will be psychologically empowering, and will produce a better version of me than its absence. 

So I'll keep looking.

 

Third Anniversary: Autonomy Reclamation Day!

In a few days I'll hit 1 November, the third anniversary of when my former spouse and I separated. To help me focus on the glass half full, in my calendar I've marked it as "Autonomy Reclamation Day," which signifies me taking back (at great cost and effort) my sexual and dating autonomy from the person and institution, marriage, that I'd transferred it to. 

As I make clear in my dating profiles, I don't plan to alienate that agency anytime soon: i.e. I don't intend to make dating or sex exclusivity agreements with anyone. Many of the reasons are illustrated humorously in Ali Wong's latest, Single Lady:

"I'd been married for 10 years, so I had that, like, 'just got out of prison' energy, you know?"

She does a great job of capturing "dating post divorcing at 40" dynamics. I'll comment on a few.

[audience laughing] It’s so good. Because they’re not just sticking their dick inside of your pussy… Mm-mm. …they’re filling the hole in your heart… [audience laughing] …that you didn’t know was there in the first place. Now, I have fallen in love once since my divorce, and that hole got filled. It did. But it made me curious about how many other holes are in my heart. [audience laughing] And if my heart is like Swiss cheese, where there’s different holes of varying diameters that require bespoke dicks to fill them.

Good old-fashioned poly heart here: maybe there's not just one empty space per heart for everyone, hmm?

I did fall in love once since my divorce. I fell in love very hard with this Japanese-American dude... and then all of a sudden, one day, he broke up with me. And, uh… I was devastated.

And I gotta tell you that even though that dude really broke my heart, not for one second did I ever regret getting divorced. I mean it. Because, you know, that drummer dude, he came along, and he filled this hole in my heart, but then he left me, and then that hole was empty again. But at least I was single and free to go on another adventure to fill it. Right? [audience cheering] Yeah. And that freedom, it feels so good. 

I've spoken at length about that freedom, and how good it feels to me (see The Sunshine Dividend). Having the freedom to date someone new, or additional, when a given relationship isn't fitting or fits well but yet doesn't complete one's heart, is a distinct difference from the married monogamy I persisted in. Folks in marriages also often put up with far too much mistreatment from their spouse; they also abstain from nurturing romantic and sexual relationships with others that could bring more support and love into their lives and those of their other partners. 

And I know, also, that, you know, divorce gets a really bad reputation and it can sound really scary and full of acrimony, but then just look at me as an alternate example of how it can be.  

And if you can take away anything from what you’ve heard tonight, look how much fun I’m having. [audience laughing] It’s crazy. Like, I never thought I would have this much fun, this kind of fun, at this stage in my life. I swear to God, divorce is so fun… [audience laughing softly] …that I almost wanna get married again… [audience laughing] …just so I can get divorced again. And if you would like to join the hotation, please feel free to DM me. [laughing]

The audience was laughing, but hotations are fun for many. I've fucking loved that aspect of the last three years, personally: I've had dozens of sexual partners, many girlfriends and hundreds of dates in that time. At first I felt ashamed of being so enthusiastic about and active in dating: fortunately I had a relationship coach and a therapist who helped me be more self-accepting in that regard. 

One thing I can say with certainty: those three years have been such a better fit for me than the three years of monogamy that preceded it, when I was in the closet and had just one partner and the sexual frequency and variety that usually goes along with a monogamous hetero relationship of that duration. As good as that relationship was, monogamy just doesn't fit my polyamorous heart. Dating non-monogamously is so exciting and liberating and invigorating and recreational for me: it feels like a new lease on life, and that feeling has endured for three years now.  Ali uses the word "fun" often, and I think that's consistent with my experience, and fairly unique (it's not often folks find wellsprings of fun in their forties!). Here's to the next year of fun and dating freedom!

Arrival Fallacies

I recently attended An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and His Piano in San Francisco. During the (excellent) show, he spoke some about the arrival fallacy:

I've been aware of the concept for some time, but hadn't heard of a proper term for it. I've been thinking about how it applies in my life. I think it's largely an obstacle to me being present in the moment, causing me to focus my attention instead on the pursuit of some goal. I'll list some past and current goals that qualify as arrival fallacies for me, then analyze the extent to which "arriving" lived up to my expectation.

Past

• First job post-graduation
• Marriage
• Paying off student loans
• Coming out to my spouse as polyamorous in my romantic orientation

Current

• Paying off divorce-related debts
• Returning to work (I'm on a multi-week leave)
• Cohabiting with a romantic partner

Reaching some of the past goals did produce enduring benefits for me. For whatever reason, debt generally stresses me out- so completing my last debt via paying off my student loan felt great at the time, and has provided enduring peace where before (and otherwise) there'd be a low level of anxiety. Similarly, my worst mental health occurred when I was poor and underemployed (and for a period, unhoused) in the nine months after graduation. Being fully and adequately employed since landing my first full-time job in California, brought me great relief on day 1 and has continued to provide peace and reassurance and belonging in the thousands of days since.

Marriage was also significant: I experienced a big psychological boost from the social reinforcement of that move, and I felt more security and belonging in my relationship with my partner at the time. Similarly, disclosing to my wife that I identify as polyamorous in my romantic orientation felt massively relieving (compared to the preceding two years of closet life) and the changes that disclosure led to continue to pay substantial dividends in my life. 

Other smaller milestones, however, have been more mixed: for example, taking several weeks off work. I was distracted for a year or two by this belief that I wanted/needed substantial time off work, and was spending too many months and years in a lifestyle where most of my spoons were spent on work, at an intolerably high opportunity cost.  The time off hasn't been as awesome as I'd envisioned. However, arriving at that time off has helped me put to bed the angst associated with that belief, since I now have data instead of speculation, about what several weeks off would feel like. 

On reflection:

1. I've been unsuccessful at going for any substantial period of time without 1-2 arrival fallacies guiding my energy investments
2. My goals are less fallacious than I thought: many of them provided substantial short and long-term happiness (largely by reducing what were otherwise, enduring rivers of anxiety and worry)
3. I could practice striving and arrival fallacy-ing less. However, leaning in to them and achieving them faster, such that I replace belief with experience, is also a decent strategy: at least as long as goal selection is tempered with pragmatism (targeting Olympic gold in swimming, for instance, is infeasible and would be far too opportunity costly to be worth pursuing)

Conclusion

I'm not sure how to live without these medium-term horizon goals, and I find they do help me marshal energy and achieve generally worthy things that matter to me personally: so interestingly, I plan to keep it up, coupled with critically questioning myself every so often on my cost/benefit beliefs, e.g. that a given milestone will pay off as much as I believe it will.

My inner voice that identifies what matters to me is perhaps not as misled by the arrival fallacy as I thought it would be when the analysis wheels starting turning at Tim Minchin's show. 

Why Parenting Sucks So Hard

Why does parenting suck so hard?? 

I've pondered this question for many an hour. It's perplexing in a way: most of us parents are pretty nice, kid-friendly, capable people who you'd think would make good parents (i.e. consistently treat their kids well and stay sane). Us parents certainly thought so: before multiple unrelenting years changed our tunes. 

I will attempt to partially explain why parenting sucks so hard, using the metaphor of four job roles.

Parenting roughly breaks down into these four roles: 

1. The Manager. Plans what we are gonna do, where we are gonna go, when we eat, how we respond to kid complaints and requests and resistance and "they've taken 20 minutes to brush their teeth so far and still aren't done."
2. Equipment Master. Responsible for answers to questions like: did we pack the shoes before leaving the house? What do we need to bring? Did we leave the goggles by the pool?
3. Doer in Chief.  Puts the sunscreen on, serves the food, packs the lunches, does the cleanup, drives the car.
4. Attention Provider. Interacts with the kids: does all the playing and nagging and cuddling and responding. Examples: responds to "can I watch the tablet" and "daddy come wipe me" and "it's my turn to choose the treat first!," plays blanket forts, cuddles during Bluey, joins for bike time and dress-up.

Most of us are reasonably capable of filling most of these roles. The problem is three-fold. 

One: but few are naturals at all four roles. Consider the hypothetical brother-in-law: playful and patient and long suffering, and could interact with the kids for ages. On the other hand, he's pretty terrible at managing: doesn't get them to bed on time, runs out of food and toilet paper because he lives only in the moment, doesn't clean up the kitchen.

Two: Trying to do more than one role at once, decreases performance in the other roles. Much as a master painter's works suffer when she tries to also juggle while painting, we do worse when we have to fill multiple roles simultaneously. Every so often we catch glimpses of this truth, in those small slices of time when the other roles fall silent. For example, at last all the utensils and children and food are all at the table at the same time and there's no night routine deadline immediately looming and the only task is to finish eating at some point in the next fifteen minutes: you suddenly exhale, laugh internally at the way your six year old is stuffing butter wholesale into their baguette with their fingers, and realize you're ready for once to respond calmly to whatever unreasonable demand or misbehavior next assaults your senses: cue a rare moment of attention provider excellence!

Third problem: IT'S TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR NORMAL HUMANS TO PERFORM ALL FOUR ROLES SIMULTANEOUSLY FOR MULTIPLE HOURS A DAY, DAY AFTER DAY, FOR YEARS IN A ROW, WITH THEIR SANITY INTACT. Let me emphasize this. It's too much to ask for normal humans to perform all four roles simultaneously for multiple hours a day, day after day, for years in a row, with their sanity intact. If there were four adults present performing the four roles, that would be one thing: but usually it's just 1-2 parents wearing all the hats. Which is exhausting. It's a burden on your mental health. It's oppressive. It's overstimulating. It's relentless.

When parents respond to these three problems, it's usually in one of three ways. First, by giving up: either on their mental health, or by disengaging or escaping from parenting in one form or another. Second, they adapt - say, by divorcing (so they get breaks) or shoveling cash at nannies and childcare centers. Or third, they get lucky - the other parent carries the load, the in-laws help out, or they're that rarest of human who can perform all the roles over time without losing their ever loving minds.

El fin

Finding your tribe

At a recent non-monogamy potluck I hosted, one of the attendees remarked to me how happy and relieved they were at the event, hanging out with "their tribe."

This made me think: is the non-monogamy community I'm so thickly involved in, my tribe?

I'd say no. Yes, I share the non-monogamy identity, and that provides a kinship. And yes, it's a relief to attend and host events in that community, where I can be open about that part of myself (as opposed to work and extended family settings, where I "turn down" or conceal that aspect of myself.)

However, it's far from the center of my many overlapping identities. Overachiever, tech employee, father, fitness freak, intellectual, writer, ant enthusiast, heterosexual, *post-conformist, altruist, curious student, runner: many of these identities are better guideposts to my ideal tribe.

Honestly, nowhere feels like my tribe right now. I'm too conventional and overachieving to fit in the non-monogamy community, which is a more normal distribution of humans (e.g. on employment and education dimensions), leaning toward the unconventional and anti-establishment if anything. I feel more amongst my tribe at my large tech company employer amid other high-functioning highly educated overachievers, most of whom are conventional and conformist in almost all ways. I'm in the minority being divorced and non-monogamous, sure, but relationship model & status is less important in that community. And in most other ways I fit in, bond naturally with other altruists there (e.g. I'm active in groups for bereavement, effective altruism, divorce/separation support, and accessibility for users with disabilities), and feel at home in the large bureaucracy. 

And when it comes to humans I'm most intensely attracted to romantically and drawn to friend-wise, the majority of them are peers in the overachieving community. As a result I'm skeptical I'll find my tribe in the near term, especially in the romance realm. Building it seems prohibitively difficult too, for someone in my position whose energy is mostly sapped by parenting and a demanding full-time job. 

I wrote on one of my dating profiles: "Someone once asked me to describe 'my tribe.' I haven't found mine yet: but an overachieving altruist that wants to overachievingly altruist a bit harder as a result of their primary relationship, sounds like a kindred spirit to me." That is something I seek, and something I valued when I was married: that I was able to perform at work and in altruism and parenting, a bit better than I would alone. I thirst to be higher-functioning and more effective than I am now, to be a better version of myself.  

*post-conformist: a new term I've been experimenting with. It describes someone who spent much of their life, let's say the first 2-3 or more decades, conforming socially (e.g. go to college, get married, have kids, live out the religion you were brought up in), followed by a significant departure in at least one area. That might look like coming out as gay, leaving your religion, switching from monogamy to non-monogamy, or quitting your high-paying job to pursue a decidedly less lucrative aim. Since I've left Mormonism and monogamy, I find I have a lot in common with other folks that've walked a similar path - obviously post-Mormons and post-monogamists, but also post-Adventists and post-tech-workers and post-raised-Republicans and expats. There's something about the overlap of attaining the social status that results from conforming to social norms, while also having the power and awareness to depart from a chosen subset of those same social norms. 

Reflections on The Ethical Slut, Second Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Adventures

 A few things have stood out to me so far. First was this section:

That's been one of the "hard truths" that I've seen practiced more in non-monogamy circles, than I did in monogamous ones: namely that it's more pragmatic to own your own feelings, than to hold someone else responsible for them via blaming. This isn't equivalent to giving malfeasors a free pass by the way: it's still appropriate to hold actors accountable for the foreseeable consequences of their actions, including the emotional ones. 

I also disagree with the claim that feelings are chosen, at least on an incident basis (I buy more into a cognitive behavioral therapy-based model, where an expectation or belief is what connects a trigger to an experienced emotion). However, because most of the variables that drive the presence and intensity of emotion are within the experiencer rather than the trigger actor, it is more pragmatic in the narrow case of mature adult peer relationships, for the experiencer to own their feelings rather than to blame those feelings on a partner. Through therapy and other means, over time one can change how and whether they respond to the same stimulus. They can also change the environment, communicate and enforce boundaries in the relationship, and deescalate: all of which are preferably empowering, relative to the "you made me mad" power handover to the partner.

It also feels less mature to blame one's feelings on another, rather than claim ownership of them, especially when that partner claims ownership of her own feelings: they are then responsible for an unequal ratio of feelings of the pair (say, 60%: 50% their own, and 10% the partner's). Even though the underlying truth is that both the trigger actor and the experiencer share in the causality pie, the empowerment assumption is more accurate and more useful than the victim assumption, especially with respect to problem solving for similar trigger-->emotion cycles in future.

It also results in a more empowered community, where ongoing relationships and agreements are more often the result of deliberate, considered choices with meaningful alternatives: rather than the defaults and roles and assumptions that prevail more often in monogamous communities, relative to partner-triggered emotions. It also gives members of that community more autonomy and individual identity (which can blur into codependence otherwise). 

Second passage that stood out to me. This part hit close to home:

Just last night, after frustration-induced yelling at my kids, I reminded them an hour later when things were calmer that I'm responsible for my feelings and not them. And the coffee that they spilled, or getting distracted for the umpteenth time during the night routine, doesn't mean that they did something wrong or that it's their job to help me calm down. Not sure how deep the message sunk. 😆

The third thing to stand out to me is the motif of every relationship being free to seek its own level. I've applied that in my poly journey: rather than trying to fit a partnership into a mold (e.g. cohabiting partner or spouse), I've instead adjusted the intensity and nature of each relationship to what I see as its natural equilibrium. That has reduced tension and resulted in the presence of relationships I would not otherwise maintain. I love this new, freer approach to relating!