Pandemic Love #8
What do you dream of when you think of us? Part 1
By Jeanne Donegan
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After last issue’s question on the dynamics of opening up a relationship for the first time, I realized that my knowledge of non-monogamy was lacking. While I’ve taken in various media and research on the topic, and firmly believe that open communication is the foundation of any style of relationship, I don’t have any concrete experience of my own to pull from.
So following the release of Pandemic Love #7, I posted a call asking if anyone in poly relationships would be interested in sharing their perspectives with me. Three lovely people volunteered, and our conversations were so engaging that this has turned into a two-part series. The first being my conversation with Dixon (they/them), who lives in Chicago with their wife. They’ve been in a non-monogamous relationship together since 2012.
Over the last couple of Sundays, I conducted interviews with these kind people that really cracked open my perceptions of polyamory in ways that I did not anticipate. While I was aware enough to know that not all non-monogamous relationships are motivated solely by the desire for sex, I really underestimated the expansive potential of trust and intimacy that can grow out of a polyamorous approach to relationships; and I really overestimated the hierarchy involved in distinguishing between primary and secondary partners.
From the experiences shared with me, I’m now realizing that expressions of polyamory are so much more about prioritizing and nurturing all the various intimate relationships in one’s life, whether they are romantic, sexual, or companionate; and not devaluing those relationships by holding any one above the other. It’s about not limiting yourself or your partners, and not placing unreasonable expectations on ourselves or on those we love. It’s about creating networks of people you love who love you in return.
When I stepped back and applied this way of thinking to my own relationships, I asked myself, do I hold my romantic partnership of 2 years to a higher level of importance than I do the 25 year friendship I’ve nurtured with my childhood best friend? The answer is no. They are both devastatingly important to me, and I would do anything for either of them. They both love me, support me, and understand me to my core. They are just different relationships that perform different functions in my life, but neither is more or less necessary than the other. This correlation to friendship is not intended to trivialize the depth of partnerships experienced in polyamory, but for me it was an important way to understand it.
Dixon really made it click for me when they noted how growing up they always felt uncomfortable with the term “best friend”, as it implied that you could only have one best friend, and that simply isn’t true. We grow and change as people over time. New friends come into our lives at different stages, which doesn’t mean we can’t keep our old friends, we just make more room. We might refer to them in different ways, such as my childhood best friend, or my best friend from college, but we accept these distinctions because we’ve been taught “the more the merrier” when it comes to friendship. Why shouldn’t that acceptance pour over into our romantic relationships?
I wouldn’t say that these conversations made me suddenly identify as polyamorous, but they certainly shifted the way I think about the richness of intimacy in my life, and made me question what role monogamy really plays in it. I feel fulfilled by having one romantic/sexual partner right now, but without those other deep, unshakable relationships which I call friendships, I would perish.
What follows is an extended interview with Dixon, part 1 of a 2 part series on loving more than one person.
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To begin, Dixon and I discussed my response in last issue’s Pandemic Love, and I shared my understanding of polyamory.
Dixon: You can conceptualize non-monogamy or polyamory as something that I’m doing for myself -- I love other people, I need all these other experiences, but you also have to recognize that they are other people with their own complexities and their own shit that they're working on and their own lives. While it’s very tempting to think, “I’ll just pop in and add these people to my life, and when I don’t need them I won’t reach out to them”, but that’s not ethical and it doesn’t work without a lot of communication. I think you’re correct in having a good philosophical framework of what makes polyamory work, because it’s not just, “I’m gonna go have sex with a lot of people and my partner is okay with it.” -- That CAN be it, but that’s not all of it. That’s a one sentence summation that doesn’t really encapsulate anything.
Jeanne: When did non-monogamy become part of your life and how does it function in your life right now?
Dixon: So, I was raised by two presbetaryian ministers. I’m a preacher's kid, so that’s why I’m like this haha [they gesture to themself, tattooed, trans-identified, and drinking out of a #1 Dad coffee mug]. I really had no concept of anything besides, you date someone and then you get married. Then you have kids and then your kids go to college. That’s what happens.
My parents very much instilled in me this idea that there is a way that you do things, and then there is the bad way to do things. There’s cheating on people, there’s having an emotional affair, there’s putting your friends above your partner or spouse. Those things are not okay. Which I experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance about, because, you know, we were also picking up and moving every couple of years [for their Mom’s job], and I wasn’t making long-term relationships with people. I had one friend who I made in first grade, she remained my best friend, she’s still my best friend, that’s the only friend from my childhood really that I’ve kept, and the idea that I would need to make someone else more important than her was very strange to me. And the idea that you only have one best friend, or you have a friend group but within that you have a “best friend” singular -- that made sense to me at the time because I did have a single best friend, but I also really desperately wanted other friendships. I wanted other deep connections, and I didn’t want a romantic relationship to be more important than non-romantic ones.
I really had no idea what monogamy was...it was more that’s just the way you do things. Getting to go to college, getting on Tumblr in 2011 -- I don’t recommend it, but it was important haha, I learned a lot. Basically just learning that there are words and categories for things that are mutable and changeable but that they have a name beyond “normal.”
Again, because I was moving around, most of my relationships that were romantic, ended up being long-distance relationships...I definitely did a lot of cheating on a lot of partners, that was not good -- it was very disrespectful to our relationship, to the things that we said we wanted from each other, and it was also an expression of the fact that I was unhappy, and unfulfilled and trying to figure out where I needed to fit in space and time.
My first experience with straight up polyamory was my sophomore year of college where I started dating someone and they literally handed me a copy of The Ethical Slut and said, “Here you go, just read that and you’ll get it.” -- I did not get it, hahaha.
That was 2011, right around the time where you could probably start finding things online to read about non-monogamy, and I didn’t know anything about this, but this person that I was starting to date was like, “Yeah, I’m nonmonogamous, that’s a really big part of my identity. I’d like to date you but obviously, I want you to understand what you’re getting into.” -- And I super didn’t haha, but I also felt really freed by the idea that a person that I was dating knew themselves so well that they could take care of themselves, and they could reach out to others in their community to receive care. And that, ya know, sometime I might be picked to be the person who they need to see, and the idea of being chosen instead of being the one who HAS to do it really appealed to me, because in my past “monogamish” relationships I was just leaned on in a way that felt like, “oh, so now that we’re dating, you handle my emotional processing and I might have other friends but I only share these things with you.” It was just a lot of pressure, haha.
Jeanne: That’s really interesting, I’ve never heard anybody describe it quite in that way. I’m familiar with the concept of you know, one person shouldn’t be everything to you. It’s necessary to build a network of support around yourself that isn’t completely and solely reliant on one single partner. It sounds like the thing you were attracted to, whether this person was monogamous or non-monogamous, was that they weren’t completely dependent upon you. They were a healthy, independent individual.
Dixon: Right, or at least trying to be haha. It certainly wasn’t the first time that I saw the power of caring for yourself first, but it was very transformative for me. It truly felt like the first time I was treated like an adult. Where I was given like, “Okay, these are my boundaries, these are my goals, I’d love to have you in my life in these ways. What do you think?” -- Instead of, you know, the kind of escalator of dating, it was an exchange. I didn’t know how to deal with that at all, hahaha.
Jeanne: Haha right, I was just going to ask, how did that initially make you feel? It sounds like you were intrigued, but did you feel hurt at all by that when it first came up?
Dixon: I was very intrigued by it, and also I felt very out of my element. And I definitely still kept treating it not quite as cheating, but it was still kind of this nebulous place where it was like, yes we’re important to each other, and it doesn’t bother me that YOU’RE seeing other people, but it bothers me that maybe I should keep it a secret from you if I’m seeing other people? Like it’s okay for YOU to have this, but I don’t have any claim to that yet, and so I was still working through these feelings of like...uhhh can I date other people? You’re okay with that? Why are you okay with that?? And that has definitely grown and shifted through the years.
Since that time I’ve identified to everyone that I’ve dated or engaged with that I believe that non-monogamy is what’s right for me right now, and...of course I made it extra complicated for myself in 2018 when I married my wife haha.
My wife and I have been dating since 2012, and it definitely has characteristics of being a primary partnership. I have always been very resistant to that term. And it’s been a sticking point for us where we’ve had to really talk through like, okay...what do these words mean to you? What do these concepts stand in for? And what ways can we kind of rewrite that story so that we have a better understanding of what the other person wants, and what the other person sees in this relationship.
I don’t know if you do astrology, but I’m a Saggitarius...obviously [as they very sweetly lift their hand to their chin to poise an angel face].
The trope of Sagittarius is very much free spirited; doing things your own way, ignoring society in favor of your own ideas, and on the negative side...running away from your problems, being kind of flighty, not wanting to label things haha, and not wanting to clarify like, what are we doing here? I have those traits, I definitely 100% do the coping mechanism of, if we don’t talk about it, then we can have this potential future where everything works out, but if we talk about it, it’s much more likely that that future will disappear and we’ll have a very concrete version of what’s happening instead of my dreamscape haha.
“Okay...what do these words mean to you? What do these concepts stand in for? And what ways can we kind of rewrite that story so that we have a better understanding of what the other person wants, and what the other person sees in this relationship.”
Jeanne: That’s gotta be challenging for you with this particular lifestyle, that has to be something you have to work on constantly.
Dixon: Yeah, and so part of why I feel non-monogamy is an important thing to invest in, is that it’s investing in myself, in getting better at communicating, and getting better at listening to myself and interrogating myself. I think that my concept of relationships both within monogamy and nonmonogamy is that it is a part of understanding the relationship between you and another person, but it’s also about understanding the relationship you have with yourself and whose needs you put above your own. Which aspects of yourself you repress, and which aspects of yourself you engage with more directly. Because for a very long time, running was the only option. Leaving was the only option, partially because I spent my childhood picking up and going whenever my parents were ready to go.
Jeanne: And that was totally out of your control, so I imagine you didn’t learn to cope with that stuff because it wasn’t a decision you were making.
Dixon: Exactly, it was just a decision that I had to deal with, and so I approached relationships that way too, very much. I’m in this relationship now, so...uhhh...I guess I’ll hang out until I’m not happy anymore and then I’ll go do something else. Instead of being able to ask myself and the other person the questions, what do you dream of when you think about us? What do you like about our relationship? What would you like to see change? Do you want to work on that together or would you like to just enjoy what we have right now and know that it has an expiration date?
Because I do think that relationships don’t have to last forever to be important. That’s partially the mythos around marriage and monogamy. This is a legally binding document where you say you are each other’s for *forever* asterisks haha, and my own experiences and self-concept have really led me to a place where I don’t want forever, I want the moments to be good. That kind of long view is important to express early on, because it can make people feel uncomfortable and make them feel like you don’t actually like them haha, which has happened to me. And so a lot of what nonmonogamy has been teaching me, is how to figure out what I want, and then also how to figure out what I would be okay with, and what I would be happy with trying. Because there are no guarantees of anything, and getting hung up on forever only makes me more anxious, and I don’t need to do that.
Jeanne: Yeah, the concept of forever is so associated with marriage, even though people get divorced all the time. So I’m curious about your decision to get married. Was it something that was more financially beneficial or was it more of an emotional decision?
Dixon: It was a couple of things. At that point I had a job within tech, where I had decent health insurance and a salary, and I was like, I would really like to be able to provide health insurance for my partner who I live with, because that feels like a really nice thing to be able to offer and to be a part of together, this kind of group safety. And it was also a period where I was a lot more active in the streets as far as political resistance and I was recognizing that if I got hurt, if I was killed, I didn’t want my birth family to have any control over what happened to me in death. I was starting to watch Caitlyn Doughty’s YouTube channel about having a good, ethical death, and I obviously don’t have any control, but this feels like a good place to try to have a little. And it was like, you are a person who I trust to look after me, and in turn, you trust me to look after you. So it felt like an exchange of trust.
Jeanne: An “exchange of trust” as a way to frame marriage is a beautiful concept.
Dixon: Yeah, nothing like the marriage that I grew up under haha. Nothing like my parents’ marriage at all. Nothing like their parents’ marriages, at least from the outside. But yeah, this way that we can look after each other...I want to do that. Not gonna lie...I would love to be able to marry multiple people. Haha
Jeanne: Sure, and especially because you framed it as a way of creating group safety. If you were able to offer health insurance to everybody you loved, why wouldn’t you? This is a terrible system where we’re forced into doing things like this, because you know if you weren’t married to this person, so many things could go wrong.
Dixon: Right, and it feels to me like a way of using the existing systems in ways that they could be used, rather than how they are intended to function. It just sucks, for example, another partner I was dating when I got married was really hurt by it because a lot of what they were going through at that point was recovering from their own recent divorce/separation, and not being a U.S. citizen. The stress of, you know, ‘I’ve lived here in the United States for 12 years, but I’m still not a citizen, and now that I’m separated from my ex-husband, I have no keys to the American Dream anymore.’ All of these external systems are interacting on your relationship, and so when you have multiple relationships, you become more aware of the multiple systems that affect your human interactions with others.
Jeanne: How do you cope with jealousy and insecurity? Obviously open communication from the start, but what about in terms of casual dating? Either on your behalf or your partners’ behalf.
Dixon: Yeah, it’s big because I have two reactions: either bending over backwards to be the most engaging person ever so that you actually don’t spend time with other people haha, I’m just so perfect, OR really kind of withdrawing in a way that is like, okay...fine. Neither of those feel good, neither are ways that I want to behave.
I think that part of dealing with jealousy now, is being able to recognize what I’m actually feeling. Like, it is jealousy, but what are the various emotions that make it up? For me, a lot of the time it is feeling this confirmation of, oh, you are only choosing me because that works for right now. Which like...yeah, of course, but that’s only okay when I’M doing it! Haha. A lot of the time when I’m feeling jealous, I turn to art. Actually with a couple of my relationships I’ve made little scrapbooks of all the lovely things, the stuff we are hoping to do together. It’s okay to feel scared about the future, and scared about the present, but those are also stories that I’m telling myself, and there’s a way to tell the story differently until I have more information. Because truthfully, the person that my partner is seeing might be a person who really changes their life, and they might decide, “I actually really just want to be with this person.”
“I have to recognize that there are parts of me that don’t fit into their life the way that I wish that they did. Sure, I can try to change myself, but is that being true to me? And is that being true to the person that they fell in love with?”
Jeanne: Yeah. I feel like that’s the piece for me that I don’t know how I’d manage. I don’t consider myself to be a jealous person, but I still feel that somewhat irrational fear. Because realistically, even if you’re monogamous, your partner could leave you for someone else at any point. That can happen in any form of a relationship. So I think I just talked myself out of it, haha.
Dixon: The intellectualizing of the fear does not undo the emotional feeling of the fear, haha. That really resonates with me because I want to be a person who will be so excited that my partner has found someone who really makes them feel that way, and I also want to be that person. I have to recognize that there are parts of me that don’t fit into their life the way that I wish that they did. Sure, I can try to change myself, but is that being true to me? And is that being true to the person that they fell in love with? You know, you don’t have any control how other people do things, you only have control over how you react. Sometimes you just need 10 minutes to scream into a pillow, haha. It’s really easy for me to get tangled up in wanting to have some control over my security, and wanting to have some say in how the world goes. It happens sometimes, but I don’t think it’s something you can just assume is always within your grasp.
So for me, jealousy is an important emotion to recognize when it’s happening, so that I can say, okay...I’m not feeling taken care of, or I’m feeling unappreciated, or I’m feeling unimportant. Because I have other relationships, and because I’m cultivating a stronger relationship with myself, what would it look like to reach out to those other aspects of support? To fulfill the needs I have without necessarily buying into the story that I’m telling myself, which is that I’m not loveable, that I’m not worthy of attention, that I’m not a person that gets to have nice things haha. And dealing with that kind of jealousy for me, always relies on needing to get those feelings out via making art, writing something, or venting to a friend about something else entirely haha. At least for me, it hasn’t gone away, just because I have a non-monogamous point of view...I still experience it, and I think a lot of people think that if they could just find one weird trick then they won’t ever feel a bad emotion again, which would be so cool but it’s just not possible haha.
Jeanne: You said something earlier about the term “best friend” and that’s a really easy way for me to understand this. I feel so grateful to have many very, very close friendships. I have a group of friends I grew up with, some I’ve known for 25 years. Then when I got to college I made another “best friend”, and another when I started grad school. None of them are more important to me than the other, I go to them with different things at different times, and I can maintain all of these “best friend” relationships without taking away from one another.
Dixon: Yeah, you kind of reach a band of trust for me [they gesture with their hands to create a horizontal space], we can share really important and personal things, and it feels very intimate even if it’s not sexual, it feels very much like we’re building something together, because we are -- we’re building a relationship together where we trust each other. And just because we’re not making out, doesn’t mean that it’s less important to me than the relationships where I am making out, haha.
Check back next issue for part 2 where we interview two partners in a polyamorous relationship.
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This week’s resources suggested by Dixon:
#PolyamoryProblems: Opening Your Relationship 101 by Daemonumx - Auto Straddle
Fill Ur Cup With Plum Wine, Pod Maps, and Drops of Polyamory - Fill Ur Cup Podcast w/ host Nikki J, featuring guest Bex Leon
that’s not polyamory bruh by Dolly Rose