Polybook Day 2: A Proposed Crux, Kink + Poly Intersection
It will take me a while to lose my “meta” voice while I try out this experiment of figuring out writing this book as a series of blogposts first, before a revision period. If it’s annoying, I wouldn’t know how annoying it is, but might just have to live with it regardless. But it’s cool to not have finished what I meant to say yesterday, and to have permission to keep thinking about it the next day. I have decided that if I want to make a relatively happy book, that I should write the parts of the book when I am in a relatively happy mood, and then when I assemble the contents together, there will probably be some sad or troubleshooting parts I will have to add, but that can be at a later stage than the stage in which most of the book is written in, and so the main tone of the book is reasonably happy.
In some ways I don’t find the topic very interesting. In some ways, more content on this topic would be very meaningful to a lot of people. I am not sure yet which organizing images or motifs I will want to use. Everybody is different. Something too general would mean that more people are included, but it would be dry. Specific pockets of imagery or cases would make it more like something somebody would enjoy reading.
In some ways it is meant as a book about modern dating, than a book about polyamory specifically.
There is an episode of Rick and Morty that I really like, in which they parody the Hellraiser series, which is famous for being the BDSM slasher. This is one of my favorite clips.
Sometimes pain is pleasure!
And this is relevant because pain being pleasure sometimes is one of the complications both with monogamy and polyamory. It is not unique to either and it is part of the troubles (and the pleasures). And not being able to fully alchemize it into pleasure if that’s what a person wants is a way to create a lot of trouble!
In a normal marriage, if one partner develops a masochistic streak that is never able to flourish, or that the other partner feels very embarrassed about, or feels that it is humiliating that their partner has it, then they will likely have some stuck energy and soon resent each other. Perhaps this will even become the impetus for them trying to open up the relationship, or break up.
The kink communities and the poly communities are related, socially. A kink party generally welcomes poly people. A poly party does not necessarily welcome kink people. There are BDSM spaces where sex is not allowed. Many swinger’s parties are relatively straightforward and don’t allow non-swinging kinds of activities.
They’re also related because they can get intertwined.
I think this book will be focused on “non monogamy” generally speaking, rather than polyamory — that is, the definition of polyamory that is defined “in opposition to monogamy” rather than being defined as its own subculture within ethical nonmonogamy. It would define all ethical non monogamy as polyamory. I wouldn’t want there to be a mixup here and so that is something I would have to work out.
Where the kink and the poly get intertwined is a major subject. Some people who are poly do not get jealous. Some who are poly do not like sex. For those people, the spot where it gets intertwined is not very complicated.
Other people really care about if they are feeling cucked, if they are feeling cheated on, and if their mechanisms for not feeling that way, or if their hopes around having those bad feelings become good feelings are being met by the arrangement they had set up.
Some people are interested in nonmonogamy because they had been monogamous for a long time, and they have not been faithful to.
I would argue that just because for some people this area does not get very complicated, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a very cruxy area. I would say that this spot is *still very complicated* but that these people have a legible, and consistent, simplification mechanism.
I would say that having a legible, consistent, simplification mechanism for the area where kink and poly intersect is very important.
I might also say that when people say “every poly couple is different” or that “every poly couple has their own rules that suit that couple” that rules around this specific thing are where the “rules” come in.
Let’s go through a few case studies. I will try to keep them crisp and short so that we can see this pattern of legible, consistent, simplification.
Alice and Bob do not want children. They got married really knowing that they do not want children. Then Bob decides that he really wants children. Something had him change his mind. Alice still does not want children.
This situation can end up okay if Alice is okay with Bob raising another woman’s child. In this situation, the success of Alice and Bob’s relationship would depend on if Bob can keep Alice happy with the change of the status quo. It can also end up okay if Bob convinces Alice that having a child would not be bad for her. However, each of these options is challenging, because when they had chosen to marry each other, they had in mind a particular style of romance that they were coordinating on, that involved not having children. If now one of them wants a child, two questions are raised:
Which parts of the status quo change for the future?
Which parts of the original romance agreement are they keeping to?
Often, both of these questions lead to a lot of fights. When they don’t lead to a lot of fights, it is because there is a lot of legibility.
A lot of being good at romance is being good at the fighting, but a lot of people in our culture today take a lot of pride in not fighting. “Becoming good at fighting” therefore is a funny proposition. It implies both that you value becoming good at fighting, and that you are not already good at fighting — hard things to admit!
I should have a “hard things to admit” section in the book:
That your relationship and life could indeed have been better if you’d gone to therapy sooner
That your partner is not the right long-term partner for you, irrespective of what your relationship structure is
That there are things about you that make you a difficult partner to be with, that are hard to change
That there are things about you that make you a difficult partner to be with, that are easy to change, but you do not want to change them even if that means you become a better partner
That some things that you say are about “coordination style” actually are about incompatible eros
That some things you say are about “incompatible eros” are actually about your lack of skill in coordination, or general lack of conscientiousness
That you can’t get what you want even if you improve in skill
That you CAN get what you want if you improve your skills, but you are choosing not to improve your skills
Frightening!