Polyamory, Deal-Breakers and Possibility
Deal Breakers
Archaic gender assignments aside, I love the fact that Lucy knows where to draw her line. We all have our 'deal breakers', I think, and the scope and forcefulness of whatever qualities/abilities/preferences we want others to have vary as well. But it makes sense, because to be discriminating (if I may invoke a usage not used very often today) is, in this case, simply to acknowledge that one has preferences, and is not willing to compromise on some of 'em when it comes to relating with others.

Sometimes I feel like my deal-breakers are petty and trite. And sometimes they are. Sometimes the deal breakers are just defense mechanisms ("I would never be friends with somebody who would do that to me!" could be a healthy way to look at things, but it could also be a way to avoid remembering being hurt, whether one was wronged or not.) But a good deal of the time, deal breakers are sincere attempts to say to the world (or, ahem, to a potential friend/lover) "This is what I want." Perhaps to challenge them to be that way, or perhaps as a way of saying goodbye.

Lucy may refuse to want to listen to obscure classical music; we might call her petty for that--if she really loves Schroeder, why not learn to love that stuff (you can learn it while you cook and make him laugh)? Well, maybe because she doesn't want to. He wants that in somebody, she doesn't want to be that person, so....BOING. (And we're ignoring for the moment, of course, that S isn't what Lucy wants in a...er...boyfriend?) Sometimes our preferences might seem petty--but that doesn't reduce how powerful they can be. It brings to mind lots and lots of letters to Savage Love: Sometimes desires for a particular kind/frequency of sex can be strong enough that people just don't want to live without. I think sex is just one facet of our lives that shows that the lines that we draw around what ought to be a deal breaker and what ought not are complex and interesting.

The Poly Thing
For instance, it often comes up in forums with other non-monogamous people as to whether or not nonmonogamy ought to be a deal-breaker. It seems to come down to how strongly one identifies as nonmonogamous. That is, for some people, it's central to their identity, and is also therefore a deal breaker. And some people have to learn that the hard way. Repeatedly. Just like the stereotype of the gay woman who finds herself constantly attracted to straight-identified women, there are nonmonogamous people out there who constantly find themselves attracted to monogamous-identified people (and possibly for some of the same reasons). And of course there are lots of monogamous people who have to learn the same lesson about what counts as a deal-breaker for them. For others, nonmonogamy isn't as central to their identity--it may be closer to a want than it is closer to a need. Or it may simply be one of equally desirable options.

Identifying as non-monogamous can feel quite freeing. When I first discovered that people practiced non-monogamy consciously, for the various reasons that they do so, it was one of the few times in my life that I could actually identify with people who feel like they've had some sort of religious epiphany. It was like the sort of 'aha!' moment that one gets when figuring out a logic problem or some such, but of course the emotional connections ran deeply, so that the 'aha!', rather than being a quick, sharp spurt, seemed to resonate and echo throughout my thoughts for weeks and months afterwards. It was an extremely pleasant sensation, though slightly uncomfortable as well, becasue it did remind me of some sort of religious experience, and, well, I'm not used to such things.

It's hard to even draw analogies to how I felt, because it really did (at the time, at least) feel like a singular sort of experience. Which is sort of silly, in a way, because part of the whole center of the experience was recognizing not only a way of looking at how I felt about love, but also recognizing that some other people felt that way too.

I guess you could say that, once I discovered that conscious nonmonogamy was something that other people did, I started to change how I identified as regards nonmonogamy, and it became one of the centers of how I think about who I am. It became a deal breaker.

The Possibilities are Endless...and Limited
At first, conscious nonmonogamy seems to offer up the world. If you read The Ethical Slut and agree with the central ideas there, you finish reading it and you just know that your cup, it's gonna runneth over. And I think there is real potential for such things--I have experienced them briefly, and don't see any real reason why such feelings couldn't be extended in my case (and there certainly people who have had long-term nonmonogamous relationships, which is one of the reasons that reading The Ethical Slut can have such an effect--realizing that the people who wrote the book made this work). But of course, like any epiphany, the devil is in the details. And I knew this going in--I'm a relatively practical guy a good deal of the time (or, ahem, pessimistic and skeptical?). But one thing I hadn't quite figured out from just thinking about this stuff, but did start to figure out once I got into it in my own life, is that, while the potential for love and being loved is huge with nonmonogamy, the potential for finding love, if nonmonogamy is a deal breaker for you, at least feels greatly reduced.

For instance, if I meet somebody who seems interesting and attractive, and they don't know me through friends or some such, the chances that they will identify as nonmonogamous are pretty darn small. And this is in the SF Bay Area. I can't imagine what it would be like if I lived in, say, Idaho. So the potential for just meeting somebody and hitting it off and finding some love that way is just not very great. (But then I think to myself--I think I've gone out on only a handful of dates where I didn't meet somebody through friends anyway, so it's not cutting my chances of finding love much at all.) And it takes some of the fun out of life, actually, because I end up not flirting as much, not entertaining possibilities as much--if the chances are so small, then you get into a 'why bother' mode. (I imagine this is just a little slice of what it is like for anybody who is in a very small minority regarding relationships--people who are gay, for instance, have to deal with this sort of thing every day.)

And yet...it's still a deal breaker for me. At some point, whether or not it reduces one's chances of finding love doesn't matter--if I don't want it, it doesn't matter how it affects my chances of getting what I want. For some things--like listening to obscure classical music--I wouldn't mind changing what I like. But this feels more fundamental, feels more like something that I wouldn't want to change, even if I could. And maybe I just need to hang out with more nonmonogamous people--then the flirting could just fly.

Filed under: Therapy