Renegotiating Love – how I introduced non-monogamy into my existing relationship.

Our dominant narratives of love tend to present it as something reasonably static, something which works more or less the same way for everyone, and something which by its very nature necessitates a vast array of complex and immutable rules. None of this is true. Anna Karenina famously said that there are as many ways of loving as there are hearts – I’d go further and say there are as many ways of loving as there are combinations of hearts. This blog post is about love. It is primarily about the forms and evolutionary path taken by the love between two particular hearts – mine, and my partner (known online as Mr Bezukhov or Mr B)’s.

There are a set number of dominant relationship models in our society, with rigid stages in a rigid order. Our relationship has never done a great job of following any of them. Most people expect a relationship to start with a few awkward dates, and slowly develop into something more solid and exclusive, perhaps eventually moving onto co-habitation after a few years, with marriage, children, and package holidays as the inevitable final aims. We did none of that. When Mr B and I moved in together we barely knew each other – we’d met a few times through a mutual friend, and the three of us all found ourselves in need of a new place to live around the same time. I was moving cities and didn’t know a huge number of people, Mr B was just emerging from a long co-habiting relationship. We had been flatmates for almost a month when we drunkenly ended up kissing on a night out (it was Hallowe’en. I was dressed as a cat.) and after that it only took a few more days until we tumbled head-first into an amazingly intense relationship which became very serious very quickly. We became completely absorbed in each other. We were barely ever apart, sharing the same group of close friends, with whom we spent a lot of time. We were basically attached at the hip. We were utterly absorbed in each other. Mr B became my world. He became the focal point of my life, and I of his, and we were disgustingly, sickeningly happy. I had never been so happy. We’d been together about three months when we got a kitten. Things were definitely not going according to the storybook relationship model.

Three years on, we have been through good times and bad together – that time our flat was burgled, me writing my MA thesis, sickness, family crises, joy, unemployment, poverty, some really horrible stages of my mental health issues, arguments, resentment, poverty, horrible living situations, shitty jobs, money worries, stress, excitement, holidays, worry, excitement, anticipation, borderline drug abuse, elation, me landing my dream job, and so much more. We’ve made the decision to live apart – partly for practical reasons and partly to each have our own space for the first time in our relationship. This is definitely doing things backwards according to most people’s set ideas of how a relationship should work. But I don’t give two fucks about that – because it’s right for us, and that’s all that really matters.

Of course, as you can probably tell from the title of this post, that’s not the only aspect of our relationship we’ve decided to reconsider and it’s not the only change we’ve decided to make in how we structure our relationship, how we express our love for each other. We’ve made the decision to abandon the dominant Western model of monogamy in favour of a freer, more fluid non-monogamous relationship structure.

For me, this has been years in the making. I’ve never found the concept of monogamy a particularly natural or easy one, and I’ve often struggled with it. Through some really wonderful poly and non-mono people I know, and as part of my general process of becoming more aware of alternative ideas and approaches to life and my attempts to educate myself politically and socially – including through some amazing people I have met or encountered through twitter and some fantastic bloggers – I eventually came round to the realisation that monogamy was really no longer what I wanted from life. Which isn’t the easiest thing to realise while in a happy and fulfilling monogamous relationship with someone you deeply love and care for, who vastly enriches your life, supports you, and knows you better than anyone in the world. I made an uneasy compromise with myself that I would not be seeking any other monogamous relationships should Mr B and I call it a day. Over time, however, the problem with this became increasingly clear – I didn’t want my relationship with Mr B to end. Far from it. Over our relationship, though hard work, dedication, love, and mutual respect, we had built and expanded on our intense beginnings and feelings for each other to establish something strong, something wonderful, with firm foundations and the potential to go wherever we did. Our relationship was one of my absolute proudest achievements. I didn’t want to give that up, but the more I rejected the concept of monogamy, the greater the cognitive dissonance within me grew. I wanted a future together, but the compromises I was making for that to happen were beginning to feel stifling and overbearing.

Eventually, I approached a very good and dear friend of mine who was once in a monogamous relationship with one of the people he now shares his home and life with as part of a poly family. I knew he had successfully negotiated from his first qualms about monogamy, through various stages and relationship models to a situation now where both he and his original partner could not be happier. As soon as I seriously began to think about raising the idea with Mr B, I knew that this friend was the person to talk to about it. I could not have made a better choice. My friend (J) was fully understanding. He was supportive and full of advice. He offered to talk to Mr B if Mr B needed someone to discuss things with. He warned me to expect it to be difficult – to expect challenges and for it to take time. He warned me that even mentioning it would change my relationship with Mr B irrevocably. I knew, though, that I could not continue to be in a relationship where something this important to me was something I could not even dare to mention to my partner. So I did it. I took the plunge. I brought up the topic in relation to a friend of mine who is dating multiple people, and then casually asked whether it was something we might consider? We discussed it vaguely and I gained confidence as Mr B was receptive and kept an open mind. I mentioned some of the reasons I didn’t like the idea of forced monogamy – the idea of ownership of another person, the restriction it placed on interactions with friends and others outside the relationship. We agreed to discuss it further at a later date. I was encouraged by this, but I still expected it to take a long time and many discussions to get to a place where we were ready to change anything.

The second conversation was about three days later. Mr B had spent much of the intervening time reading about poly and non-mono online. He was absolutely convinced he wanted to do this and wanted to start to discuss practicalities of how it would work. We spoke more freely and openly than we usually manage – we discussed the key importance of communication and how we sometimes struggled with the level of free conversation we’d like to have, and how good it was to talk openly. We discussed the fact that both of us have spent pretty much our entire adult lives in relationships and feel we’ve missed out on a lot of the types of interactions most people enjoy at this stage. We talked about trust and love, and not wanting to own each other. We talked about the importance of having our own space, of being our own individual people – not two halves of a whole, but two amazing wholes coming together to be even more awesome. We talked about my anxiety and the pressure I often felt in our relationship, and how relying on each other less to be EVERYTHING for the other may alleviate some of this pressure. We talked about our future more freely and with less hesitation and doubt than we ever had. Mr B talked about how he felt a lot of his commitment issues had probably been centred around his uncomfortableness with monogamy, though he hadn’t had the framework of alternatives to understand that. We talked about not allowing oneself to be ruled by negative emotions like jealousy. We talked about the very stifling and over-powering relationships we’d both had in the past. We talked about how neither of us was primarily interested in non-monogamy for the purposes of going out and fucking other people, but more about negotiating our relationship and our relationships with others on an individual basis rather than based on ill-fitting templates and norms. We talked about having freer interactions, about respecting each other as individuals and about trusting each other without needing to impose restrictive rules. We discussed in depth the idea of jealousy as a virtue in dominant relationship discourse and how much we both disliked that. Mr B had some interesting perspectives from his academic philosophy background.

We talked about the amazing relief we both felt at bringing things out into the open – and realising how many of the compromises we’d been making were unnecessary, about how we both wanted – and felt we deserved – the best and most fulfilling love we could have, not the best we could do within the artificial restrictions of society. We talked about making compromises with each other, not with oppressive social norms.

 

We have now decided – properly, officially, and after a few more conversations – to ditch monogamy. I know that the road ahead won’t necessarily be easy and that opening up our relationship will open us up to new stresses and problems, but I am so excited. I feel an overwhelming rush of the same intense, overpowering love I felt when we first got together. I’ve never lost sight of the stength of that love and now it just seems stronger, more beautiful, more empowering than ever. We both already feel our relationship has been renewed, revitalised, replenished. I was nervous about speaking out – but in so many ways it has been the best thing I could possibly have done for our relationship. I know this is not for everyone and I would never tell anyone that they should reject monogamy. I would however encourage anyone and everyone to really think about what it is they want and need from a relationship, and to never stop thinking about that and reconsidering it – in my case, I realised I wanted non-monogamy, but that may be very different from what you want and need.

I am also totally overwhelmed at how easy it turned out to be – evidence of how strong we are, and how wonderful the man I fell in love with really is, how much we are alike, and how silly I was to ever fear being honest with him.

I love the idea of a relationship which is constantly growing and changing, which adapts. I feel much more confident in the longevity of this model and I feel much happier knowing that having a healthy, happy, loving, supportive and fulfilling relationship with the man I love so much doesn’t have to mean compromising on me, my relationships with others, or my individuality and self-fulfilment – or him compromising on any of that in his life. I feel invincible – like the flexibility and adaptability of our love means it may well follow us through whatever life throws at us, however we both change and progress through our lives. I am not a static entity, and neither is Mr B – so why should our love be? and why should we want it to be? I always used to say that one of the best and most worthwhile things I had ever done was fall in love with Mr B. Now I know I was wrong. It’s not falling in love with him that’s so important – it’s loving him, loving him with all my heart, in a way that only my heart quite can.

Feminism is irrelevant – reflections on an argument

This blog post is about a discussion which happened on the facebook page of an awesome, righteous, young feminist twitter-friend of mine. It happened over a week ago. I haven’t felt able to write about it until now. Content note: this post will discuss some fairly horrific examples of victim blaming, abuse, sexual assault and rape. All quotes, unless otherwise stated, are from the same person, whose name I don’t want to disclose. She was apparently a good friend of my pal’s once. I’d guess she’s about 20-23.

1. I’m a woman and I do NOT feel oppressed. 

Well that’s OK then. As long as you feel fine. Totally ignore the examples just given to you by three women of how they do feel oppressed. You are all that matters.

3. Women ARE NOT “less likely to be paid less for the same job as a man” what complete and utter rubbish. Im a computer aided design technician as part of my job role and I was given the opportunity to do that. I didnt have to beg for it or convince my boss I was worthy of that because Im a woman…

Unfortunately, it always seems to bear repeating that the plural of anecdote is not data. The pay gap is a real thing. There is extensive evidence for it.

 Your completely embarassing. What time from the past do you think your living in? Lmfao. You think you have it hard as a woman in 2013 (which we do not) imagine being a woman from 50 years ago. Or try being from a third world country where women are raped daily and completely discriminated against.

I do live in a country where women are raped daily and completely discriminated against. The fact that things have improved so much in terms of women’s rights in the last 50 years just makes me more determined to fight for full liberation and full equality – this is proof that things can change, that feminism can improve things for women. I know I get a lot of privilege from living in the UK. It doesn’t mean I will just give up and accept my oppression too – I believe we can do better than that.

Tbh your only making yourselves as women look weak by saying you have a “hard life as a woman”.

I’d like to quote Rebecca West here:

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” 

I don’t see how standing up for my full and equal rights as a human being – how fighting tooth and nail for liberation makes me look weak. I don’t see how my friend standing up publicly online for her beliefs and speaking out loudly against her own friends, her own family, too, when they challenged her statements on sexism and misogyny makes her look weak. I think it makes her incredibly strong, and I’m proud to know her – and many more strong, fierce, inspirational people from all walks of life who battle and combat all sorts of oppressions.

What more do you bloody want! We can vote, we can learn any qualifications we want and develop into any job we want.

What more do I bloody want? WHAT MORE DO I BLOODY WANT? I want to never be the victim of street harassment again. I want to never hear another sexist joke or put-down. I want the likes of UniLad and laddish rape apologist comedians to be wiped from the face of the earth. I want a world where no other woman will take 5 years to be able to come out and say openly that what happened to her was rape. I want an end to gender essentialism. I want full reproductive rights and to never have to worry about them again. I want poverty, violence, unemployment, anxiety, PTSD, stigma and shaming to be – well to be eradicated, but failing that at least to no longer be so heavily gendered. I want women to be free. I want everyone to be free, but we’re talking about feminism here, so I’ll focus on women.

 

You make out you dont want to be looked at by men or women as beautiful sexy beings, yet Im pretty sure all of you buy nice underwear and clothes to make you look and feel sexy. Its complete hypocracy. Its hilarious.

I have literally never said I don’t want people to find me attractive. I buy clothes for myself, actually. But even so, if you really cannot tell the difference between me being in control of my sexuality and appearance, me enjoying my partner(s) being attracted to me, and women as a class being forcibly objectified and sexualised and viewed purely as sexual objects designed for the pleasure of men, then seriously, I suggest you do a lot more thinking and reading, because these are very different things.

Feminism is not a positive force at all.

Feminism saves lives, it prevents rapes, it liberates, empowers, and emancipates. Feminism gave me my voice back, my identity back when a man took them away from me. Feminism has changed and is changing the world for good – it changes countless lives everyday. Yes, the movement is large and diverse and fractured, and there is harm – significant harm – done by people under the guise of feminism. But as a whole? It’s once of the most powerful and positive forces in the world.

Look at the comments from these so called feminists. The males apart of this conversation did not once speak disrespectfully to any of them, yet look how they reacted. In all honesty, I don’t have respect for women who disrespect men.. why should I?

Firstly, the men in the conversation disputed the existence of the structural oppression of women, claimed we do not live in a patriarchy, and dismissed the lived experiences of the women in the conversation. One of them claimed that because he’d taken a first year uni course on feminism, he knew more than we (feminists) did about the movement. You can use your polite words all you like, but if the message they convey is that fucking rude, dismissive, and damaging, I reserve the right to tell you exactly how to fuck right off. As for respecting women who don’t respect men – you should have a basic level of human respect for everyone. But standing up to and defending oneself against ones oppressor is definitely something I rank highly when it comes to respect. 

Men need support just as much as women, and I feel they are targetted more than women in todays society and are expected to have nice bodies,

I don’t even really know what to say to this. Really? You… really?

they are stereotyped by women as the main cause of domestic violence. I’m not being funny every woman has a choice to walk away from a violent relationship, and they don’t start for no reason. Most of the time its a two way thing, yet feminists instantly blame men.

No. You are not being funny. And no, they don’t start for no reason. They start because of how fucked up our society is, and how damaging the messages it teaches are. They start because abusers are deeply dangerous and manipulative people. They start because abusers – mostly men – are utter fucking shithead arseholes who waste not just oxygen but actual carbon molecules. And as for having a choice to leave,if you think leaving an abusive relationship is an easy and free choice then I envy you. If you think that any choice I made in my abusive relationship was free or easy, or mine alone, then you clearly fundamentally misunderstand how abuse works. I envy you because you clearly have no idea what it is like to have your soul and spirit and identity crushed under someone’s foot. I envy you because by the sounds of it, you haven’t undergone sex under coerced consent – rape and sexual abuse, simply put. I envy you because you probably didn’t grow up in a toxic environment watching your parents’ dysfunctional abusive relationship destroy them. And most of all, I envy you because you’ve clearly never been in an abusive relationship. You’ve clearly never loved someone who treated you like fucking dirt. You’ve clearly never felt utterly and completely worthless and disgusting and alone. You’ve clearly never had the entire burden of everything bad that happens placed on your shoulders. You’ve almost certainly never lived in fear – in abject terror – of the one you love most in the world. But also, and this is not a word I ever throw around lightly, I hate you. If you DARE to tell me it’s my fault I was abused, I hate you. I do my best not to hate anyone – hate is an ugly, destructive emotion, and it rarely achieves anything. It eats away at the hater and brings no comfort or closure, but I cannot help it. I hate anyone who tells me it was my fault. I don’t actually need anyone to tell me it’s my own fault – that the abuse started because of something I said or did. I am perfectly capable of telling myself that, and if you think I still don’t feel that’s true on some deep level, despite knowing it’s not, despite believing with every part of my heart and soul and mind and ever fiber of my being that no abuse, no attack, no assault is ever the fault of the victim, that no survivor ever deserved it or caused it, then that is just further proof you’ve no actual idea what actual abuse is like. She also had earlier said that perhaps sexism – but not rape or sexual assault – was the fault of the victim. Where do you draw the line? Was the man, the friend of mine I trusted, who manipulated me into a vulnerable position where I was dependent on him for a place to stay, and who then aggressively came onto me until I felt I had no choice to blame for what happened or was I? Was I responsible for that rape? She clearly thinks my abusive relationship was my fault – was the coerced consent my fault then? The rape and sexual abuse that was a part of that relationship – how can that not be my fault if every other part of it was? What about the man I made the mistake of talking to in a bar, who then shoved me violently against a wall, who forcibly touched me and told me he was taking me back to his flat, who threatened me and chased me when I tried to escape – was that not my fault, but the times with my ex, who used subtler threats, and less physical force but more emotional manipulation was my fault? Because I believe that none of it was my fault. I believe that it is fucking hard enough to recover from that type of thing happened to you, without strangers on the internet calling into question whether I brought it all on myself. Victim blaming is incredibly irresponsible and dangerous. The above quote triggered a massive attack of anxiety and depression and some fairly horrific flashbacks. I literally became a sobbing mess. I lost all self-confidence and self-belief. I cannot live with blame heaped on me for the worst things to have happened to me. I cannot accept responsibility for the hell someone else chose to put me through. And I will not. And I will not stand by while anyone tries to blame victims and survivors for their own torment.

I can see for myself clearly what is going on and women are not victims of sexism.

You keep using that word, clearly. I do not think it means what you think it means.

People have fought for equal rights but for feminists that isn’t enough. They want more and more, when quite frankly we don’t need any more rights.

Actually, I don’t think I need any more rights. I believe I have all sorts of rights that are not respected by law or by society. I believe in basic human rights for all. So now, a few scraps, a few concessions, a few legal protections are not enough for me.

I genuinely believe men have harder lives in todays society having to live up to the stereotypes women have caused. Look at the world we live in, the magazines for women, programmes like Loose women. If that was a male version it would be banned after the first episode and blown up in the media. Yet women are allowed to be sexist…

I will never defend Loose Women but seriously? SERIOUSLY? Have you ever watched literally anything else on TV, because most of it is incredibly fucking sexist and oppressive in a wide variety of ways. As for men having it worse, just – just don’t, OK?

Feminists embarrass strong women. Why do we need a gang of angry opinionated women to stand up for us?

Because we live under kyriarchy. I am angry because I have just cause to be angry.

However feminists of today are not helping women at all. What are you actually aiming for? “Equal rights”? Because we have those, in examples as you have just stated. However men and women will NEVER be the same or viewed the same. Firstly because we are NOT the same. We are built differently, think differently, act differently and want different things. Why can women just not accept this and be proud to be different?!

Nice bit of gender essentialism there. Nice bit of stereotyping. Nice bit of failing to understand the impact of societal norms and gender roles.

If you wish to be treated like a man, then you will accept that men should be allowed to hit women if they are violent towards men. But ooohh no, thats a big subject and suddenly you want to be treated differently in these circumstances… You wish to be treated as a woman.

I wish to be treated as a human being. 

I’d rather live my happy ladish life where I don’t experience sexism. It seems all of you feminists experience a hell of a lot of it so maybe we should all learn from this and steer clear from feminism… It seems a much happier way of life

Well, enjoy your internalised misogyny. I will keep fighting it. Yes, being a feminist is often depressing, infuriating, difficult. It’s hard to have your eyes opened to how horrific our society is. It’s hard to see injustice and inequality everywhere you look. But it’s there, and my eyes are open. My eyes and mind are open, and I will continue to learn, to discuss, to try to educate where I can, to challenge, to be challenged, to strive to become better and to fight for everything to become better. My eyes are open now, and my fist is closed. I’ve got a globally entrenched system of multiple intersecting forms of oppression to smash. So I’d better get on with it.

 

In Five Years Time (I might not know you)

Tomorrow is Wednesday, 10th July 2013. Exactly five years since the day I set out to a foreign city to find a place to live. I was nervous, excited, over-awed. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I know I didn’t expect what happened. When I arrived in the city centre after a long and boring coach ride from the tiny airport, which, typical of budget airlines, was absolutely miles away,  it was the first time I saw what was to become my home. The bustling city centre in Southern Germany with its huge imposing train station was a far cry from the small, friendly city in the North of England I had spent the past two years living in. I looked about in excited curiosity, in trepidation. I was really going to live here. These strange, unfamiliar streets would become familiar, I would know them. I would wander down them, hurry along them, I would live here. I set out to find the youth hostel I had booked a bed in. I had decided that I was going to fight to overcome my usually shy nature and I was actually going to try to talk to my roommates – that I was going to make the most of my period studying abroad. I was going to meet new people, to experience new things. To overcome my fears and anxieties and take risks. I was going to take risks. I felt – had always felt, really – that my life was stagnating. It was going nowhere. I was going nowhere. Technically, this was untrue, of course, as I progressed through life’s milestones. Outwardly, my life was going well. Inwardly, however, the turmoil was threatening to overflow – the deep, dark depression and constant anxiety I had dealt with from a very young age, always bottling it all in, trying to never let on how weak I was, how unhappy, how much of a failure I was. How much of a disappointment. I crossed the busy main road in front of the train station determined to make a success of this. Determined to feel I was doing something.

When I finally found my hostel, I was really not so sure about it at all – it turned out to be in the city’s red light district, a poky little hostel above a porn rental place. Large, drunken men sat at the tables outside the cafes lining the streets and yelled ugly harassment at me as I passed. I was young, I was inexperienced, I was nervous. The man running the hostel was gruff, unfriendly. He took me upstairs though, showed me the bathrooms and then to my room. I put my bags down on the bed. I was sweaty and somewhat disheveled and I had a huge, red, painful and embarrassing spot on my face. The bunk above mine was occupied by a sleeping man who I later learnt was visiting Europe from China. The bed across from mine had an empty top bunk, and the lower bunk, facing mine, was occupied by a young man with bright, shining eyes, whose accent I couldn’t quite place. He was eager to talk, to introduce himself, to suggest we hang out that evening. I look back now, across all these years, and I can still see his face as it was then, I can still see that room, the white curtains, walls, bed frames, the long black table between the beds, the gentle flapping of the curtains in the slight breeze. I feel the softness of the bedding I am sitting on. I look down and see my own jeans, the handbag I bought at the airport. I hear the pleasantness in his voice, I feel his warm, smooth hand as he takes mine to shake it. The passage of five years has done little to fade the vividness of the memory. At the time, of course, I had no idea what he would come to mean to me. What he would signify. I had no idea the risk I was about to take, or the consequences it would have.