"I couldn't manage it all."

So, I’m seeing the word “polyamory” and “non monogamy” a lot more in mainstream articles (The New Yorker, SEVEN PAGES OF ARTICLES in Vox, even f*cking Time) lately.  It’s not new, although I feel like the sheer amount of discussions are increasing.  I don’t have a lot of hot-takes, but the number of hot-takes I have is not zero. 

First off, I’m grateful as fuck that ENM seems to be received leagues better (indifference and vague judgment) than other experiences of queer-breaking-into-mainstream.  I may have gotten some looks with my tribe in the wild, but no one’s kicked us out of a bar, threatened our jobs, or come after our families.  And I know that’s not true of everyone’s ENM experience.  I have some midwestern friends who, during divorce and custody litigation, had to discuss a humiliating amount of detail about their ENM love lives, and lost a significant amount of custody time because of it.  People are still vicious, and they’ll still bite where there’s a free space.

But I’m "out" to just about everybody right now, except my job, and I sleep quite soundly at night.  I don’t have a lot of room to complain.  My opinions aren’t important, and I am not trying to throw shade on monogamy.  But I’m a writer, and I have thoughts, and I’m a terrible procrastinator on my more important projects.  So here it is.  

The nicest, most open-minded commenters in these mainstream “look at people doing poly” articles love to say things like:  “All the best to them; I could never keep track of all that!  It’s hard enough keeping track of one!”  And these commenters are giving their kindest and most open-minded contributions, so I need to assert right now that I’m a shithead for clapping back at it.  In truth, I’m grateful for their open-mindedness, and they have a solid point.

…but what does “keeping track” mean?  Keeping track of feelings (like we do in therapy)?  Of the schedule (like when you make plans with friends)?  Of the people themselves?  I don’t really “keep track” of my partners…I schedule them, and then we hang out.  Like you do with a partner you’re not living with.

It’s hard to find representative content to discuss relationships that isn’t dramatized, hyperbolized, or over-produced.  The poly yang to every mono yin is just as toxic.  Love is Blind on one side, Big Love on the other.  /R/relationships on one side, /r/polyamory on the other.  Predatory behavior on Tinder, predatory behavior on Feeld.  There’s no shortage of people fucking up and taking others down with them in their most representative way.

But when I think about “managing” or “keeping track” of people, I’m reminded of the enmeshment that necessarily happens in monogamy.  The relationship escalator, the pressure of marriage that is built into the culture of monogamy.  Hell, it’s in the very word.  We don’t call it “monoamory.”  We put the idea of marriage into the whole description of one-at-a-time love.  In fact, if you’re a one-at-a-time lover and not interested in matrimony, you might be dubbed a practitioner of “serial dating.”  Like…Jesus.

When marriage is the goal, the amount of checking in to make sure your partner is on the same emotional plane, on the same emotional page, with the same financial and locational goals, is sometimes overwhelming.  The resentment that happens in a monogamous relationship when one partner was planning for one outcome, and the other partner was planning for a different one?  The careful wordplay that gets used to keep things general enough for a loophole, but specific enough to quell a partner’s fears?  Nothing sounds more like management to me.

Marriage is wonderful with the right person.  But so is plain-old cohabitation.  Sex is wonderful with someone that you desire, but desire shifts constantly, and sex isn’t wonderful with someone that you do not desire.  Sometimes the best sex of your life is with someone who wouldn’t get along with your friends or family.  Comfort and excitement don’t come from the same place, but we’re always craving both of them.  

These are not polyamorous truths.  These are universal truths.  Life is hard to manage, and polyamory is a possible framework that can potentially help someone manage.

I think about monogamous people who, upon the fear that their partner is interested or excited by another person (also a universal phenomenon, not exclusive to polyamory), start to become anxiously aware of their partner’s phone usage.  The unavoidable calculations that start adding up when it’s clear that one partner needs distance.  The scorekeeping, the “after everything I’ve done for them,” the do-I-stay-or-do-I-go.

Yes, distance and breakups happen in polyamory too, and they hurt just as bad (no, the availability of other partners does not lighten the grief).  But I suppose the biggest reason I’m polyamorous is to avoid some of the management of the monogamous “lifestyle” (How’s it feel?  Just because you’re the majority doesn’t make you not-a-lifestyle).  Another person is not a threat to me.  I don’t get terrified when my partners go on dates.  I encourage the growth of my partners, because trying to stifle that growth is bad for everyone.  What do I manage?  Primarily, I manage myself.

In our throuple, my husband’s relationship with his girlfriend is theirs to manage.  My relationship with my girlfriend (even though she’s the same person) is hers and mine to manage.  There’s more circles in our venn diagram of relationships than there are in a monogamous couple’s, but none of us are responsible for intersections that we are not involved in.

You know what monogamous people manage?  Trying to fit all their needs into one person, making some inevitable compromises, and dealing with the resentment.  

What do we have in common?  The work.

All love is work.  It should be joyous work, it should be easy work.  But yes, love is labor.  You keep the person all but tangibly in your heart and mind, and you hurt when they hurt.  How does any mother love and care for more than one child?  How do people have more than one friend?  How does a doctor care for more than one patient?  (I’m cringing at my patent repetition of this poly mantra as if it’s my original thought, and not a song that’s been past down, word-for-word, among poly generations)

You know what comrades?  Labor can also be shared.  My partners don’t just have me to be vulnerable or passionate with.  Can you imagine the responsibility?  That’d be a fascist-ass relationship, which is what I feel like a lot of monogamous contributors believe when they leave comments about “management” of people.

Romance can be found in different frameworks.  It’s okay if some of them are not for you, and for the love of Christ, we don’t need any proselytizers.  Personally, I’m hoping that the continued conversation about polyamory will enable people to realize that they don’t need to stick to the factory-set relationship.  There are tons of negotiable aspects of relationships that we should be talking about that will enable us to live freer lives, without making our partners feel bad that they’re not always the perfect answer to every problem all the time.