Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (24 page)

"We continually work at figuring out what is good
for the relationship."

FIONA, 36, IS A SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHER and university
instructor. Sam is a 32-year-old student in social work and education.
They have been together in a polyamorous relationship for five years
and live in Brooklyn.

What are the rules, boundaries, and limits in your relationship?

Fiona: I think what has been successful for us is to conceptualize
things differently We don't "negotiate" or focus on limits or boundaries. That is not to say anything goes! Rather, we work continually to
create our relationship and how we relate to others. This is something
we have had a lot of help with, particularly from our therapist. We
continually work at figuring out what is good for the relationship. So,
rather then set it up as my needs versus yours, my desires versus yours, my boundaries versus yours, we try to decide what the relationship
can handle at any given time. For example, we have some working
guidelines. If you are out at a bar or party, you can make out or fool
around with other people. But if we have a fight when one person is
leaving the house, or one person is in a bad way for whatever reason,
then it is not a rule but it is the culture of our relationship for the
person who is going out to decide it is probably not a good night to
hook up at the bar.

How do you deal with negative feelings like jealousy, possessiveness,
insecurity, anger, resentment?

Fiona: Sometimes I talk to a friend, change the channel of my mind, or
use some other tactic to remind myself that it is no big deal and that I
have a million more important things to worry about. Other times I take
anger and upset and frustration to be a sign that things are not working
for me, that I don't like how I am being treated or what we have agreed
to. Then I get help by talking to other people and talking to Sam.

Sam: I have been amazed at how much less jealous and possessive
I have felt within this relationship than in the past. Somehow having
it out there that of course we are both attracted to other people has been
a huge relief-and means that I trust it a lot more when Fiona says she
wants to be with me because I know she is being honest, and can
have those other attractions and experiences at the same time. An
exception would be our relationship with Brooke, when I really wasn't
able or willing to put my relationship with Fiona ahead of my immediate, selfish wants... That was a very painful time. All those feelings
came into play during that time.. . and I don't think any of us dealt with
them very lovingly or effectively, perhaps most especially me.

Tell me more about the relationship with Brooke.

Fiona: Sam and I had a joint girlfriend for six months.

Sam: My connection with Brooke was really intense. She and I got
together first and were involved to a certain degree separately from
Fiona. Then we stopped that because... our connection wasn't okay for
Fiona's and my relationship, it wasn't working. Then, Brooke and
Fiona went out one night and kissed... it was really exciting. These two
very intense relationships. They had a connection that was sometimes
really hot and awesome and fun, but there were also lots of ways that
they didn't completely mesh.

Fiona: It was beautiful at moments. Fun. Hot. Sex. Magical. Oh-sointimate. At times it was exactly why I wanted to be poly I saw up
close the intense and wonderful connection between Brooke and Sam.
The emotion in our threesome and in our respective twosomes ran
really, really high-from the extremely close, connected, and wonderful to the crazed, angry, and upset. I was into the ideal of a threesome
and into the ideal of supporting Sam to pursue this relationship with
someone he had a really deep connection with. But, day to day, it turned
out I wanted to have just... [a] Sam-and-I twosome. I think I made a
big mistake in that I underestimated how important our shared home,
shared evenings, shared time, just the two of us was. So time and
again, when Brooke said, "Hey, I am in the neighborhood, can I come
over?" I said yes, but for me it ended up being too much, too fast, and
ultimately not what I wanted or could handle-even though I adored
her and believed in the idea of it all so strongly

Sam: We were trying to do something challenging-really sustain a
threesome relationship-and I think none of us were quite sure what
we really wanted from it or from each other. We really didn't have the
support we needed to figure it out. Even friends of ours who were into
the idea of being poly couldn't really handle it or didn't know what to
make of what we were doing. I was so aware that we were really making
things up each moment... This is one of the things I love about being
poly-that it challenges me to be creative and to live as authentically as possible, but it is incredibly difficult, especially when emotions run
high.

Fiona: So, it just became a mess. We were all really awful to one another.
We said a lot of mean things and just struggled for months. Ultimately,
Brooke ended it, and one of my most intimate evenings with her was
when she told me she realized she needed to move on, that she wanted
a partner and kids, and being with us was not a move toward that. It
was so hard for me to let go. I wanted her in our lives. I held out a fantasy that she would move in with us. But I think it just wasn't right for
any of us, despite our love and attraction.

Looking back on it now, what did you learn from it?

Sam: One lesson I teamed was to be much more cautious about checking in about what we want out of [a new relationship]. [Now] I feel
much more committed to working and creatively building my relationship with Fiona and to have whatever else happens be a part of that,
whether we do it separately or together.

Fiona: I was able to realize how important my relationship with Sam
was and that I really didn't want to completely share it with a third
person. At the time, I didn't appreciate enough what we had. I was
trying to be the party girl and go with the flow. One thing I have
learned is to be continually assessing my life and the relationships I
have created. Do I like them? Am I happy? Is this working? Is it what
I want? To be in the process of my life with people and deciding
together what makes sense.

For you, what is the most fundamental element of creating and sustaining a positive poly relationship?

Fiona: Be on the side of the relationship. This is something we learned
from our therapist. She has asked us, in different ways over time, Who
is going to be on the side of the relationship? After much hard work, we have adopted that. I think we are both now less concerned with
"getting" (as in getting what we each need) and more focused on what
would be good or growthful for our relationship.

Sam: I have been, within relationships over the years, both cheated on
and a cheat, both incredibly jealous/possessive and desperately restless
for new hookups. Something about polyamory, at least in the way that
Fiona and I do it together, has supported me to more fully embrace
Fiona and our relationship and, at the same time, more fully trust, let
go, take risks, make new connections... Fiona and I have a strong,
loving sexual and emotional connection that continues to grow deeper
and more exciting through the years... and part of that is supporting
each other to continue to be attracted to and connect with other
people, have new experiences, find new passions.

THE WORD COMPERSION was coined by members of the Kerista
Commune as part of their philosophy of multipartner polyfidelitous
relationships. Keristans originally defined compersion as "the opposite
of jealousy, positive feelings about your partner's other intimacies."
Others have expanded upon the concept; here are some additional
definitions:

taking pleasure or joy in the action of your partner engaging
in a similar romantic or sexual relationship with another
person. -Urban Dictionary'

the feeling of taking joy in the joy that others you love share
among themselves, especially taking joy in the knowledge
that your beloveds are expressing their love for one another.
-Polyamory Society'

the positive feelings one gets when a lover is enjoying another
relationship. Sometimes called the opposite or flip side of
jealousy May coexist with "jealous" feelings. -Poly Oz'

an emotional state where your insecurities are so low, your
trust so high, and your value in the happiness of your part-
ner(s) so far beyond your own baggage, that seeing them
have good relationships with over lovers inspires nothing but
joy and contentment in you. -Pagan Polyamory'

Each definition varies slightly, but the general idea is that compersion is taking joy in your partner's pleasure or happiness with another
partner. Compersion is a much-used concept among polyamorous
people, and many nonmonogamous people believe it is one of the cornerstones of open relationships. Some would go so far as to say that
you cannot succeed without it. I think it's more complicated than that.

One form of compersion, which I call erotic compersion, can be
achieved when you enjoy or get turned on by watching your partner
have sex with someone else. Many nonmonogamous people who have
threesomes, group sex, public sex, or semipublic sex are aroused by seeing
a partner with someone else, whether they are participating or not.
Claire and her partner almost always play with other people together.
She says, "Seeing him in ecstasy, seeing someone else with him in ecstasy,
I feel it... I feel like I'm very much a part of it. It's not intellectual and
it's not emotional... it's visceral."

When Dahlia and her partner arranged a play date with another
person, she experienced erotic compersion in a dramatic way, and it
was a breakthrough for her:

When this person was fucking my partner in the ass, I lay down
on the other bed and began to masturbate with the Magic Wand.
I got so turned on watching my spouse getting fucked that I had
one of the mightiest orgasms I've ever had. This may seem commonplace, but one needs to know a little background first. I didn't
start masturbating until I was 26, as I grew up in afundamental-
ist Christian home, and the only kind of sex that was allowed was
when one got married to a member of the "opposite" sex and that person had to be a born-again Christian. Masturbation was
considered "of the devil," and only served to promote lust and
selfishness... Even though I finally started masturbating at my
late age, I had never masturbated in front of anyone before. It
even took some time for me to be able to do it in front of my
spouse. So, the fact that I had this huge orgasm in front of an
almost complete stranger was very exciting for me.

Some people who experience erotic compersion don't even need
to be present to be turned on. For example:

When my husband and I were first dating and he was on a date
with someone else, I knew their intention was to have sex. I was
alone that night. So I was kind of sitting around with this icky
feeling like, Oh my god, what does this mean, maybe I'm not
pretty enough-all those insidious things-and I just started
imagining the two of them together. It was so incredibly beautiful,
it was a turn-on. So I brought out my Hitachi [vibrator] and had
these amazing orgasms thinking about them having sex together.
Somehow eroticizing it took away the ickiness and replaced it
with excitement. -Ruby Grace

While erotic compersion can be powerful, deriving pleasure from
your partner's other relationships goes deeper for most people. In an
ideal world, when your partner is happy, you're happy, even if you
have done nothing to provoke her happiness. But this may be easier
said than done for folks who wrestle with jealousy People work hard
to tolerate and support their partner's other relationships. It's one thing
to accept that your partner has other lovers or partners; it's another to
take joy in them. The gap between acceptance and joy can be wide.

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio writes that compersion is, in part,
"the ability to turn jealousy's negative feelings into acceptance of, and
vicarious enjoyment for, a lover's joy"' I appreciate that she treats acceptance as a skill that can be learned rather than as a static state of
mind. It is not a skill that most of us are taught or that is encouraged
by our culture-a culture much more given to encouraging and reinforcing jealousy and competitiveness.

For some, compersion can be learned, and like anything else, it
takes patience and practice. We are taught that jealousy is innate,
natural, instinctual; in fact, people who don't get jealous are considered strange or in denial. Jealousy is a learned behavior. The first step
to achieving compersion is to work on unlearning jealousy-letting go
of feelings of insecurity, possessiveness, and fear. You're striving for a
shift in consciousness. One way to begin is to think back to a time
when you felt excited for your partner, not threatened, when he
revealed a crush. For example, Sam says:

Fiona supported, pushed, and challenged me to hook up with this
trans boy I had a big crush on... it was a new experience for me,
to get together with a boy as a boy (instead of as the heterosexual
girl I had tried to be as a teenager). I was very nervous and
hesitant about it. He and I did end up hooking up that night and
on several other occasions. Fiona and I both had a ton of fun
with the whole thing. It was the first time I had ever really acted
on my attraction to someone besides my partner in a truly honest,
open, poly sort of way... It definitely felt overwhelming and surprising, confusing, and absolutely wonderful that Fiona was so
supportive and into it-and often right in the next room when we
were hooking up.

In this case, Fiona felt so positively about her partner Sam's crush
that she actually helped facilitate the hookup. Others have described
similar times when they felt they were in cahoots with their partner to
make something happen, even if both of them weren't involved in it.
To conceptualize it another way: if you love your partner and are dedicated to her growth, anything that enriches her life or encourages growth should please you. It can even benefit you: when a partner is involved
with someone else, they explore, learn, and change, and that can make
your relationship better.