Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (25 page)

I enjoy seeing my other partners happy with someone else. It
makes me happy to see them being happy and made happy by
someone. It also strengthens our relationship because they bring
that love and happiness back to us. -Marcus

In his essay on compersion, Eric Francis argues that we must
bring all our deepest fears out in the open and confront them:

It is true that if one's lover has sex with another person, or even
gets close to another person, they may choose to be with that
person and not you. And this is a possibility we have to face
no matter what. Living the way of compersion brings this to
the surface, where we can see it and work with it... Resentment, anger, fear of abandonment, and the rest-all needs to
come up in order to give the relationship a chance to have life.
Swept under the rug, these things are far more damaging...
Compersion takes us to the next realm beyond. It is about
being with and appreciating our partners for their desires,
dreams, wishes, and their personal journey to self-love. It's
about being real, and having relationships as real people.'

Francis believes that jealousy is the fear of loss, and in those
terms, compersion is a kind of fearlessness, or at least embracing the
fear and not letting it drive your decisions. James is a 57-year-old
Latino man who teaches Tantra. He's in an open relationship with his
partner and strongly believes that embracing his fear helps him bring
authenticity to his life and relationship:

Just think how alive you live every day, knowing the possibility [of
the relationship ending] is there and that edge is there. Even though it is the hardest thing, to me, it's the most real way to live with
somebody. You're really creating that relationship every single
second. And if something comes up that's going to change that
relationship, you both have to look at it and say, "Am I willing to
focus on your happiness and your evolution even if it means
losing you?" Yeah. Absolutely. Why would I want you to stay with
me if you really have lust and passion for somebody else? Go for
it, don't waste time. Even though security is the hardest thing that
you're always dealing with-because you can lose everything
that's real to you in a second-I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Part of achieving compersion is letting go of any perceived control
we have over our partners. When you do this, you give your partner
the freedom and support to grow and change in whatever ways he
needs. If you are new to open relationships, you should not expect to
master compersion right away I do not believe that experiencing compersion is necessary to a functional open relationship in the way that
other values, beliefs, and practices are, but it is bound to enhance your
relationship. The closer you come to embracing the spirit of compersion,
the better you are at managing jealousy, letting go of possessiveness,
and feeling positive about all your partner's relationships-even the
ones you're not a part of.

PROFILE: LUKE AND ILANA

"We develop other intimate relationships that nourish us and help
us develop along our growth path."

ILANA AND LUKE have been married for almost 20 years. She's 47,
he's fiftysomething, and they both work as consultants. They live in the
Deep South.

When you first got together was the relationship open from day one?

Luke: About a year after my divorce, Ilana and I started dating. She was
dating other people at the time. She didn't want to change that, so from
the get-go it was a nonmonogamous relationship, which was quite different from my model. I was raised Catholic, had had a good Catholic
marriage. Infidelity was right up there with murder as a grievous sin.

What was that transition to nonmonogamy like for you?

Luke: It was a little challenging at first... Within the first year of our
being together and having outside relationships, we just worked into
what felt right, what felt comfortable, what was allowable, how deep
we could go in other relationships. We were just sort of defining all
that along the way Ilana is my primary I want and need a primary in
my life. I view marriage as the way to make this sacred commitment
with one. I've very rarely not been in some kind of serious relationship
where I was investing all my emotional energy... having that kind of
commitment, partnership, is just somehow in touch with my being...
When I have other relationships or fall in love, it's totally different.
I don't have conversations about our retirement, how to manage our
money, what kind of furniture do we want to buy... Having all that
other stuff-how you met, how you spend your life, kids, how you're
gonna grow old, dreams... I really feel much more complete and centered and whole when I have one person with whom I can share that.

Ilana: I love having a committed life partner, though initially I wasn't
sure I ever was interested in "marriage." Early on, after five years of
living together and owning a house, my husband really needed and
wanted to be married. I decided I wanted him as a life partner, so marriage made sense at the time. We hadn't considered whether we were
poly or open... we just communicated our needs and values and
accommodated each other in ways that made things work. In some
ways, now, our marriage is problematic in the traditional culture we live in. Our marriage is quite different from what most people assume
"marriage" means-in this part of the country at least.

Luke: I can elaborate on that a bit: people feel they have their own set of
rules and definitions as to what marriage is. If we do something outside
that, it can raise eyebrows. If I agree to lunch with a woman, just purely
as a friendship, not even a relationship, per se, that seems outside the
realm of acceptable behavior for a lot of people here. They project their
definition of marriage on us, and if we live outside their definition, it raises
flags, questions, issues, gossip, and sometimes outright condemnation.

How is it for you to be in such a nontraditional relationship in the Bible Belt?

Luke: We would not have an outside relationship here in town, in part
[because] if someone went off the deep end, caused a lot of problems,
we wouldn't know how to deal with it logistically So, most of our relationships have really been the result of travels. We both travel a lot, for
business and pleasure, so we'd find relationships in places we'd travel
to frequently rather than here at home. In terms of being in the Deep
South and living openly and honestly who we are, it's really a challenge.

Do you have other partners right now?

Luke: For the last five years or so, we've been involved with two other
couples, and...it's grown into these deep, loving relationships. We
anticipate these being lifelong friends, an ongoing part of the fabric of
our lives, more the warp than the weave, and that's been a new experience for us that we've really been enjoying. I don't know if that's
unique to us, or couples with couples share some common issues that
couples with singles don't share.

Ilana: It's been valuable being able to travel together, share about relationship issues together. I will forever be grateful for the gifts from
these relationships: personal growth and awareness as well as ecstasy,
joy, sacred sexual spiritual transcendence, contentment, deep love, and connection-and a deeper, stronger relationship with my primary
partner/husband. There's tremendous richness and growth in intimate
relationships. Partners can be on our growth edge. And as that edge
moves and changes over time, we develop other intimate relationships
that nourish us and help us develop along our growth path.

Luke: I think outside relationships have tremendous potential for
personal growth, both individually and for your primary relationship.
But this is only true if you have a primary relationship that is safe and
secure and flourishing. There's so much scripting we've grown up with
that really just needs to be thrown out. When you get involved with
somebody, learning who they are and growing this intimate relationship, if the possibility of sex is on the table, you put up all these
filters-can I say this, can I do that, can we spend this kind of time
together. There's just all these filters and structures. Most of the time
you don't even know what they are because you're running on different playbooks, different rules. Once you take the sex off the table and
say, "This relationship can be absolutely anything," then the relationship will be anything that the magic and the chemistry of two people
can create. It is just so much richer and deeper, and you can get there
so much more quickly because you're not fumbling through restrictions, prejudices, rules. We've both discovered how rich relationships
can be when you take the rules off the table and let them evolve into
whatever they need to be.

THE JEALOUSY AND OTHER FEELINGS discussed in Chapter 12 can
cause angst, hurt, conflict, and drama between partners. Such intense
emotions can cause problems and fuel arguments in any relationship,
not just an open one. People in nonmonogamous relationships face all
the issues that monogamous people do; however, certain problems are
specific to nonmonogamy or seem to crop up more frequently when a
relationship is open. These include complications from "new relationship
energy"; time management issues; miscommunication; the violation of
rules and agreements; coping with change; coming out and dealing
with reactions from loved ones. In this chapter, we explore all but the
last two. Change is the subject of Chapter 15, Opening Up Again: When
Something Changes; dealing with loved ones is covered in Chapter 16,
Coming Out (or Not), Finding Community, Creating Families.

When you meet someone you feel a spark with-whether you want to
fuck, fall in love, or both you usually feel a rush of excitement. You're
flying high, crushed out, and falling hard. Some social scientists refer to this as a state of limerence. The psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined
the term in her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being
in Love. After interviewing 500 people about being in love, she identified
a common pattern marked by the following characteristics:

• intrusive thinking about the object of your desire

• acute longing

• dependency of your mood on the person's actions

• inability to react limerently to more than one person at a time

• fear of rejection and shyness around the person

• vivid imagination about the person

• intensification through adversity

• an aching in the chest or stomach when uncertainty is strong

• acute sensitivity to any act, thought, or condition that can be
interpreted favorably, and an extraordinary ability to devise or
invent "reasonable" explanations for why neutral actions are a
sign of hidden passion in the person

• buoyancy (a feeling of walking on air) when reciprocation seems
evident

• a general intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the
background

• a remarkable ability to emphasize what is truly admirable in
the person and to avoid dwelling on the negative or render it
into another positive attribute.'

Tennov's research was limited to the experience of being in love,
but feelings of intense desire, lust, and connection can also produce
some of the characteristics of limerence.

When you meet someone you like, when your crush is reciprocated,
when you first pursue a relationship, you're blissed out. You can't get your
mind off him. You're anxious until the next time you see her. You're
completely focused on the two of you-it's easy to shut out the rest of
the world. When you're together, you can't keep your hands off each other. Research has shown that many of these feelings and behaviors stem
from chemical changes in your brain. When you first feel attraction, begin
a relationship, and fall in love, levels of dopamine and norepinephrine
(natural stimulants) increase in the limbic system; in addition, activity
increases in the parts of your brain involved in arousal and pleasure.

When you bundle together the physical (chemical changes in
your body) and the emotional and psychological (intense feelings and
thoughts), you've got what some people call new relationship energy
(often referred to as NRE)2. The term was coined by Zhahai Stewart in
the mid-1980s and has been commonly used by polyamorous people
since the 1990s.3

NRE is that euphoric state of love or lust in which the world
seems to revolve around the new person. It is both wonderful and dangerous. It's wonderful because you feel energized, alive, excited, and
thrilled at having found a mutual connection with someone. You want
to tell everyone about her; you tend to see all of her positive aspects
and none of her flaws. One of the benefits of open relationships is the
ability to experience NRE without having to end an existing relationship. How can such wonderful feelings be dangerous for people in
open relationships? During this period, your judgment is altered-it's
fueled by hormones and desire and clouded by overwhelming feelings
of love and lust. Many people report that when a partner is experiencing NRE, they are focused only on themselves and the new partner;
they neglect other partners, do callous things, and make rash decisions. NRE can cause grievous heartache to one's partners, and it has
been known to break up relationships.