small life, large life

One of the simultaneously supportive and lamentable aspects of couplehood seems to me to be an inevitable narrowing of life. Of course, we value being able to meet our partner with a lot of shared context and living experiences in that comfortable, historical and reliable space of just we two. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of story whatsoever. The exclusive dyad provides a large life, in many cases, and being single or having multiple attachments doesn't necessarily guarantee a large life. 

However, my own journey into the dyad is marked by a progressive, inevitable narrowing. I am quite sure this is a reflection of codependent tendencies and I look forward to sorting that out. But I also see it in many other couples. The narrowing can be alarmingly acute when children, successful work life or real estate enter the picture. 

A friend of mine and I were observing recently how many apparently exclusive dyads end up with "outside" sexual or romantic dramas, triangulations, "betrayals" and so on. Of course this is probably more the norm than not. The tragic aspect o it is that people seem to take these "outside" adventures seriously enough to lead to the destruction of very fine partnerships, or worse. 

My claim for polyamory essentially centers around this enduring reality. I am not personally interested in exclusive monogamy with a single partner over a long period of time. I want the freedom to form various kinds of sexual or non-sexual relationships with others within a set of explicitly negotiated agreements, where a very few are non-negotiable and the rest are periodically revisited. I think this arrangement provides for a larger life or at least is humanely cognizant of the simple reality of our desires and connections. 

There are a great many ridiculous misconceptions about this approach and people get very heated about it, which I have compassion for, since it is so dramatically different from so many of our cultural norms. It is interesting to me that a relationship framework that actually acknowledges the norm is seen as "radical" or "unworkable." 

The partnership with A was on a poly basis with a pretty good set of agreements. I never had any real world adventures "outside," although there were some flirtations. The sad thing is that A looked back and said (in spite of her sexual involvement with two other men, one of which destroyed our partnership) that almost 6 years of partnership on a poly basis were "never what she wanted," and that she "only agreed to it because she was in love with me." Which, bullshit. I find it difficult to express how much this still chaps my hide. I have had so many imaginary conversations with her on this idiotic point. An either conscious or unconscious knowledge of how deeply fucked up this is must be one of the reasons she has completely cut me out of her life. I can't say I blame her, as my both barrels approach to expressing my outrage is not a pretty sight. 

One other funny thing about all of this is that a very few people who knew A and I were poly blamed our agreements for the end of the partnership. This is laughable, for reasons that are obvious to me. More than anything, it is a reflection of the deep ignorance about what poly actually is and how it works or fails. Next time a supposedly monogamous friend of mine goes through an explosive breakup due to "infidelity," I'll be certain to blame monogamy smugly for that outcome. 

If you are at all curious about any of this poly stuff, I highly recommend the latest edition of The Ethical Slut. 

Anyway, of course one could be living a small poly life or a large exclusive dyad life-- we are wily creatures and either destructive of our contexts in order to get what we want or fearfully entrenched in our ruts in order to feel safe, or both simultaneously, in painfully compartmentalized ways. 

If the idea that a large life is better than a small one is accepted axiomatically, the project would be to make whatever our relationship situation is as large as possible. There's a lot to do and live and savor and create in a short time. On my deathbed, if I get to have one, I doubt I will wish I had made my life s small as possible out of fear.