When The Monogamous Bait Poly Smugness

Apr. 24th, 2015 11:00 am[personal profile] joreth
joreth: (Purple Mobius)
http://freethoughtblogs.com/heinous/2015/04/23/baiting-poly-smugness/

Here's the thing.  When lots of monogamous people think they hear "arrogance", what they're actually hearing is a confidence and appreciation for a relationship style that is working which triggers their own personal insecurity about participating in a broken system, so they project "arrogance" onto the speaker.  Or they may, instead, be hearing a poly acceptance awareness effort, which is where someone deliberately speaks of their relationships in a confident manner to dispel common myths about coercion and inherent failure in the system, and where they mention polyamory within the context of combating monogamy-as-default, non-monogamy-erasure.  But, either way, it's confidence that they're hearing.

What I mean is not to suggest that *polyamory* is inherently better or more enlightened, but that some poly people really *do* get the art of relationships more or less "figured out", at least for themselves.  Polyamory offers more opportunity (not the only opportunity of course, but more chances than in some other relationship styles) to develop advanced relationship skills that some polys manage to take advantage of (and others continue to fail at miserably).  These skills allow the poly person to enjoy safe, successful, multi-person romantic relationships.

Then there are *some* monogamists who really haven't got the whole relationship thing figured out yet.  They're participating in a version of the system that is fundamentally broken.  They're engaging in sexism or wallowing in self-loathing or perpetuating destructive cycles or one of a number of different things that our society condones as acceptable romantic relating, so not only are they "doing it wrong", but they have the weight of cultural acceptance behind them, pressuring them to continue making those same mistakes.  As a poly person without a cultural script, I *have* to figure out some of these skills because I don't have any handy, ready-made script telling me how to compensate for being without them.

So when one of these monos meets one of the above polys, there is *no way* to respond to their revelation that they lack relationship skills that can't be perceived as "arrogant" if the mono wants to deflect the cognitive dissonance they're feeling at being forced to confront their bad habits or choices.  It's much the same way that someone who lacks, say, professional business or technical skills might blame all his problems on how his boss hates him or is brown-nosing or something every time things work out for the boss who has the professional game "figured out" but the employee doesn't quite have the knack yet and it's easier to think poorly of the boss than to reflect and adjust his own attitude.  This doesn't mean that all employees lack professional skills, nor that all bosses have them.  But *some* of those employees learn to build those skills while some complain about those who do.

When people say things to me like "I couldn't do that!", it says much more about the speaker than it does about me.  When they say things like "it's so much work just with one partner, I don't know how you deal with two!", that reveals a lot about the speaker's choices and relationship skills. I'm not going to apologize for those times when I make my relationships work well.  I've made plenty of mistakes and I've had plenty of relationships blow up in my face, just like anyone else.  But, over time, I've gotten better at relating (as is likely to happen with anything you get to practice often).  I've gotten better at communication and identifying red flags and at partner selection and at introspection.  And I had a head start at those things too, with my early experiences with similarly introspective and compassionate partners.  That's not arrogance, that's acceptance and confidence.  I'm aware of my flaws and areas where I need improvement, but I'm also aware of when I do something well.

If someone thinks that my multiple relationships are "so much work", that tells me that their own experiences of relationships include a lot of work.  I've found that if I make good partner selection and if I do some of the ground work like learning how to communicate and how to listen and how to empathize, then multiple partners are actually *less* work than a dyadic relationship between people who can't do that.  Personally, I've found that monogamy takes much more work for me than polyamory does, when I make good partner choices in polyamory.  But in monogamy, there is so much more that I have to maintain, ironically.  Polyamory between "grownups", for me, doesn't really require a whole lot of work, but learning the basic relationship skills like communication, honesty & transparency, knowing myself, advocating for my needs, building and maintaining healthy boundaries, etc., did take some work.  Which I've done (and continue to work on).

If someone thinks that they wouldn't want to put up with the shit they already put up with times two (by adding another partner), that tells me that they don't think highly of their partner.  I've had a high turnover rate of partners in my past mainly because I *don't* put up with a lot of shit in my relationships.  I only stay with people who don't disgust me, who don't piss me off more than they make me happy, who don't make my life difficult.  Sure, I've dated people who *do* do that stuff, and we broke up.  I don't want to put up with the shit that these complainers already put up with either.  The difference is that ... I don't and they do.  That's not arrogance.  That's knowing my own self-worth and having enough compassion for both me and my partners to let go of a relationship that is bad for the participants involved.  One could argue that *not* doing so is often a sign of low self-worth, rather than doing so being a sign of too much self-worth.

[livejournal.com profile] tacit has written excellent posts* on Dating Black Belts and other important relationship skills.  These have nothing to do with polyamory, in the sense that they are inherent to poly and not applicable to other relationship styles.  But they are connected to polyamory in the sense that one will find it incredibly difficult to manage multiple romantic relationships with grace and dignity and compassion for the other participants if one does not learn these skills, whereas other styles of relationships have more tools for compensation, including social safety nets that encourage the avoidance of these skills:
How To Have A Happy Relationship: http://tacit.livejournal.com/280915.html


* There is a post out there somewhere about how someone once said that poly and / or relationships are a lot of work, and [livejournal.com profile] tacit responded that *relationships* aren't a lot of work, the underlying skills on being a decent person are a lot of work, but once you have those skills worked out, the relationships sort of take care of themselves.  I can't find that post, but the memory of it is what sparked that final paragraph, and the search for that post led to the list of links above.  If I find that post, I'll add it to the list.
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