I was chatting to JTR about our shared experiences of being openly polyamorous1 bloggers. Both JTR and I observed that it’s something that we don’t write about often.
We don’t say much about it… even though it’s probably something that, to some readers, would seem interesting and unusual. And also, perhaps, still sufficiently “taboo” that they wouldn’t feel comfortable asking us about it outright, either.
Why is that?
In my case, the single biggest reason that I don’t often write about it is… I think my polyamory is kinda boring!
It’s boring… because it’s established
Part of the reason I think it’s boring is because, well, it’s far from novel! We’ve been doing this for the vast majority of our adult lives:
- I’ve been in (only) nonmonogamous relationships for about 25 years.
- The three of us – Ruth, JTA and I – have been together for 19 years
- Of that, we’ve been cohabiting for 15 years, co-owning property for 13 years, co-parenting for almost as long
To me, this arrangement just feels like everyday life. We all know where we’re at and what we’re about, and we’re by now fuelled by long-established Old Relationship Energy4.
It’s boring… because it’s not scandalous
The second reason my polyamory is boring is because it’s free of drama; free of scandal; free of titillation.
We don’t go to swingers parties. We don’t have a dungeon in our basement5. We don’t revel in jealous chatter or gossip. We don’t spend most of our time naked. We’re not doing some kind of cuckoldry thing. We’re not doing this as part of some kink or fantasy.6
We don’t spend lots of time negotiating boundaries or handling jealousy or working out who needs an STI test: if you catch us discussing something, it’s much more-likely to be how we handle our savings account or who’s taking a kid to their swimming lesson or when’s least-inconvenient for everybody for the car to be serviced. Y’know: boring stuff!
We also only very-rarely “date” outside of our polycule7.
I’m confident that we attract a little gossip from the “school mums” or the nosy neighbours in our quiet rural village. But mostly, I suspect, it’s of the “hey, having a third parent around sounds super convenient: how can I get that?”8 type.
I love that my polyamory is boring!
Don’t get me wrong: I love that our relationships are unexpectedly-boring.
It’s a reflection of our stability and our commitment that the rest of my trio and I are a comfortably predictable. A perpetual landmark in the eyes of our families, friends, and children. We’re just part of the furniture. Just people, doing our thing, plodding along like everybody else.
Yes, Ruth gets to have a husband and a boyfriend. Yes, we’re all both “in a relationship” and “available to date”. Yes, our kids are raised by three parents (which I personally think is a huge advantage to them, and I imagine that they’d agree). But that’s where the excitement ends. We’re just regular-old common or garden humans.
So that’s the main reason I don’t blog about my polyamory. It’s just not that exciting. Sure: I could talk about how we organise our shared finances or who sleeps where on any given night or how we decided which adult does which part of the school run on which weekday… but it’s all pretty dull. And it’s frankly the kind of thing that any monogamous couple could talk about just as well!
Most successful long-term relationships are boring. Stability and consistency are not exciting.
But if I’m wrong…
…then tell me! There’s a comments form below9: ask whatever you like!10
And if nobody comments… then I’ll know that I’ve convinced you. I’ll know that I’m right. That my relationship structure, however uncommon, isn’t actually that interesting:
My polyamory is boring. And that’s great.
Footnotes
1 Polyamory: the practice of having multiple romantic or sexual partners with the knowledge and consent of everybody involved. I’ll try to keep a glossary going here in the footnotes for any less-commonplace terminology.
2 Metamour: the partner of your partner.
3 I apologise that my metamour JTA’s name is literally one-character different from that of JTR, a completely different person with whom I had the conversation that inspired this post. It annoys me to have to type it, so I’m sure it annoys you to have to read it.
4 Old Relationship Energy (ORE), or Established Relationship Energy, is the contented kind of relationship happiness that comes with time, and trust, and familiarity. It contrasts New Relationship Energy (NRE), which is the buzzy, loved-up kind of excitement common to new relationships and sometimes called the “honeymoon period”. These concepts are common to many relationship styles (and, indeed, the transition from NRE to ORE can be a source of challenges for some relationships), but they’re more-often talked-about in polyamorous circles because their impact is more widely-felt. For example: observing your partner experience NRE with somebody new and remembering when you and they shared the same can be a source of friction or jealousy… or a source of compersion (vicarious joy at somebody else’s love), depending on the people, timing, context, and more.
5 If we did have a basement sex dungeon (which we don’t), it’d have long ago become a swimming pool when our house flooded earlier this year. Sigh.
6 No shade thrown if you are a drama-queen nudist swinger with a sex dungeon and a cuckoldry kink. More power to you. All I’m saying is that’s not us, and therefore – by comparison – we’re pretty boring.
7 Polycule: a network of romantic relationships, or the people within those relationships, that are all connected to one another. The simplest polycule is arguably the dyad: two people in a relationship together. There are probably two possible configurations of three people: a triad, where each party is romantically involved with each of the other two, and a vee – a “V-shaped” polycule where one person is in a relationship with two others, who are not in a relationship with one another. Letters of the alphabet are useful to summarise other polycule shapes too, like an N-shaped or O-shaped quad or a W-shaped or A-shaped quintet, but of course there are many other ways you can permute the people and relationships when you’ve got this number of participants. Some polycules are huge (and, usually, loose, with the most-peripheral people possibly less-likely to be in direct contact with one another); others are relatively small. There’s a philosophical argument that can be made either way about whether a single person is a polycule-of-one.
8 I’ve got to admit, triple-parenting is convenient, sometimes. I have an enormous deal of respect for solo parents because that shit is hard. Two parents is simpler, but three… three sometimes feels like playing on easy-mode. Not always – kids will quickly learn which parent is the one to appeal to if they want an extra half-hour before bedtime or you to buy them a new book, for example, and having more parents gives them more ways to do that! – but sometimes.
9 Don’t want me to know that it was you? You can ask anonymously, if you like. But you do need to type in something that looks like a believable email address to ensure you get past the spam filter. Here’s some throwaway anonymous email addresses if you want one.
10 So long as you’re not a bigot or an arsehole, you can ask whatever you like and I’ll try to answer. Tell me that I’m living in sin or that what I’m doing is bad for my children or that we’re cheating on one another and you’ll find that you don’t make it through the moderation filter.
Very boring indeed. Why did I read this?! People being all happy in their relationships, boring!
But ohhhh so wonderful! Keep on keeping on!
> kids will quickly learn which parent is the one to appeal to if they want an extra half-hour before bedtime or you to buy them a new book
…. It’s me both times, isn’t it? Sigh.