Previous Ask Bear columns for The Butter can be found here. If you have a question for Bear, The Butter’s advice columnist, send it along to asking.bear@gmail.com.
Dear Bear,
So there’s a boy, and I really really like him, and I’ve liked him a while, and he likes me back in a kind of getting married-like way, though we’re not engaged. But we’ve talked about “our life” as though it’s assured going forward. He’s from a family that’s like my family in various ways, and there’s a lot of expectation and positivity. It’s clear that if I marry him I will be showered with all the love and gifts and approval you can imagine (and as I said, I really, really like him).
Then there’s a girl (if it matters, I’m a girl). I have known her less long but I like her a lot too. Differently, and I don’t know if that’s a boy and girl thing or some other kind of thing. I’m different with her than with him. She and I are having a thing that I thought was going to be a fling but isn’t. Besides which she and I are also from pretty similar families and backgrounds. I am not sure how my parents and so on would receive the news that I was breaking up with the boy they’re all so excited about to take up with a girl, but she would be a soothing choice for them.
The boy doesn’t know about her, but she knows about him.
They live in Boston and Chicago, respectively. I live in New York, but I will graduate in December and there will no longer be any reason to boing around like a pinball. I should move to where one of them lives and set up shop there.
I bet you can guess the question. But I have to say one other thing first. It might sound stupid, but I love them both SO MUCH. Just really differently. Like night and day, like sunset and sunrise, like stars and dew. How is it possible that having so much love in my life sucks so bad? That is not what I was promised.
* * *
Dear Brave Correspondent,
So first, can we talk about polyamory? Because here’s what I cannot help but notice about your succinctly-summed-up dilemma: the actual problem does not seem to be too much love, but rather the idea that you cannot keep all the love that you currently have. Which is a different problem entirely. So it feels fair to ask whether you have explored – within yourself, or with any of the constituent parties – people’s feelings about the idea that you could maintain these multiple relationships concurrently, in an open and aboveboard way.
How is it possible that having so much love sucks so bad? It doesn’t. It’s the possibility of loss that sucks so bad, the idea that you can’t continue to have all the love. If, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously wrote, you love them not only for what they are but for who you are when you are with each of them; not only for for what they are making of themselves but for what they are making of you, then your feeling of suck is about losing a part of yourself. A possibility of who you could be. And that’s awful, for sure.
I am, my very own self, in a polyamorous (open)(nonmonogamous)(there are a lot of words for this) relationship, and there are many satisfactory things about it. Not the least of which is being able to enjoy loving and being loved by multiple people, without having to sneak off the Chicago in order to further sneak around with a girl I might happen to like. It’s true that polyamory isn’t for everyone, for various reasons – some of them are constitutional, things about how you or your partner(s) feel that make polyamorous relationships untenable. In those cases, it’s just not a good idea. But sometimes much of people’s resistance to polyamory, or other kinds of open relationships, is more cultural – seems weird, jealousy is a difficult emotion, family membership at the zoo only covers two adults, and so on and so forth. There are a couple of pretty good books about polyamory that you can look into (Opening Up by Tristan Taormino is my favorite), so I am not going to do three verses and the chorus about polyamory and how it can work, except to say: it can work. It can work in various permutations, it can work with partners together or separately, it can work with children, it can work with many other happy possibilities you may imagine in your future. It can work on a train, it can work in the rain; with a fox or in a box. Is it complex? Sure. Will you need a very robust family calendar? Indubitably. Is there anything better than looking across the pizza place and seeing all your beloved humans together, munching companionably? Not so far as I am aware, and I have led a very lucky life and seen many marvels indeed.
Second piece of advice, assuming that choosing a person is a thing you need to do, is this: in my thirties I came to understand that picking a partner was as much about their faults as their virtues. Someone can have the most exciting good qualities, things that light you up all the way to your toes with how much you admire them, but if their faults don’t turn out to be ones you can live with it doesn’t matter. Of course you will want strong upsides, but let me just assure you right now: the downsides must be things you can roll with to some degree.
The faults (or mismatches, or however you care to construct it) cannot be things that trigger your fears and insecurities. They cannot make you feel diminished or invisible, not if you hope to live a happy life with that person. They can make you furious, they can make you exhausted, they can make you frustrated beyond the power of language to communicate – those are all actually totally acceptable ways to feel in a relationship sometimes, even if they’re no fun. With someone who has great and delicious virtues, someone who makes you feel emboldened and enlarged, you can probably be happy and satisfied for a very very long time with faults that (occasionally) make you feel white-hot with anger.
Faults or mismatches that make you feel unseen, or afraid, or small in the bad way (not tended to and cuddled, but condescended to and belittled) are… they’re awful. They erode your sense of yourself over time. That’s one of the ways powerful, thoughtful people end up staying in no-good relationships for too long; their confidence gets washed away bit by bit as they get habituated to a steady trickle of being undermined. So it’s vital, Brave Correspondent – absolutely critical – that you evaluate this boy and this girl in the light of not only what about them makes you feel fizzy with joy and hot with wanting. Also please look at how you feel when you disagree. This is so, so important.
The truth is, I have been foolish for love many times in my life. I have pursued many opportunities for intimacy in all kinds of ways. Some of them have been delicious and nourishing while others have been, eventually, bitter. Nevertheless, I am not sorry. Like you, I welcome and treasure the love they’ve brought. I may not have always been able to keep it forever, but I also don’t believe that’s the measure of whether a relationship is worthwhile – what’s true is that all of those loves enriched me (however eventually, and sometimes in that “growthful” way we don’t necessarily enjoy). All of them have added rooms to my heart that didn’t exist before; all of them have taught me. Which is the last thing I want to tell you, Brave Correspondent: be glad in love. Even if neither this boy nor this girl lasts, even if the whole thing comes crashing down and you move neither to Boston nor Chicago but to Toronto and start all over again, be glad. Everything you are learning now will last you forever.
Love and courage,
Bear
PS – there are many, many, many songs about choosing between loves. But if I were making a Give Polyamory A Try Playlist, it would begin with Ben Lee’s song “Apple Candy.”
Tags: advice, ask bear, S Bear Bergman, the butter
To add to the list of resources for people who want to learn more about polyamory, morethantwo[dot]com is an excellent resource.
Also, you will often come across recommendations for The Ethical Slut. Take those recommendations with a heaping tablespoon of salt. For a long time this was the go-to book about polyamory because it was, essentially, the only book about polyamory. That does not make it the best book. It’s not terrible – I read it, and gleaned some useful info from it – but it does have numerous issues I think, and the vision of nonmonogamy it espouses will not resonate with a lot of people.
Seconding this. The Ethical Slut was not finished by either me or my husband due to how little it rang true for what our openness needed.
Also the More Than Two book!!!! It’s my favorite poly book.
Yes to your thoughts on TES. Felt like a manifesto for something that wasn’t me. Would be a great read if you were 100% behind it. But the other books/resources mentioned (I loved Opening Up) are better, imo, for helping you think through options, see new perspectives, and reflect on what you might want or not want.
Yeah, Ethical Slut made me strongly dislike the idea of poly. It was only later when Dan Sacage started to talk more about monogamish-nish, and when I learned more about different types of poly relationships and how to have them properly that I became more open to it.
Also I swear there is a part in TES where the author talks about her partner and a third making out right in front of her, and how instead of giving in to her jealousy she goes to her room and uses her tarot cards. I’d yell at the other two to get a room, but that’s just me.
Polyamory can work, but it can’t work with people who are dishonest with their partners. Without ethical commitment, polyamory is just cheating. Bluntly, correspondent needs to work on her ethics. She(?)’s all delighted about having all this love and doesn’t seem to have the slightest compunction about deceiving the boy-in-Boston (“we’ve talked about ‘our life’ as though it’s assured going forward” = reasonable expectation of faithfulness at that point). Until she grasps that a relationship actually involves the good of (at least) two people, she shouldn’t be bidding for a third.
assuming that choosing a person is a thing you need to do
By the time you’re at the point where someone wants to spend his whole life with you, you have someone else you’re deeply attached to, and you’ve deliberately kept it from him and only from him, yeah, you will have to choose.
The way you say “a thing that I thought was going to be a fling but isn’t” doesn’t encompass a lot of detail so I understand you may not be doing anything that would be considered cheating by anyone, including by the two or three of you. But you’ve already made your choice about who gets to be told about your private life, and it’s her, not him. that seems like an indication of what you want. You don’t indicate if she’s invited you to come out there forever, though.
(There’s so little space given to that most important point of him not knowing, it’s hard to figure. The instinct to say “this is a special thing of mine so I am going to keep it secret” is an instinct I understand, far better than the instinct some people have to say “this is a special thing of mine so I am going to tell everybody, starting with the people I love best.” But that’s not something I would feel well expecting a partner, or someone who in good faith thought they were a partner, to know and accept unless they had been forewarned.)
also, the advice to consider these potential partners in light of how good they make you feel and what pleasures they give you and whether their faults make them well suited for you is not really the hard question. If you must choose, which one will stand up to you and not let you treat them as one of two passive options that it’s up to you to select between? Which one won’t resent you for having the power to make the choice? Which one is more likely to have another beloved partner in a fourth city that they carefully didn’t tell you about, and would you mind?
This is a very good point – if I were the dude in question, and I suddenly had this made known to me, my feelings would be pretty hurt, regardless of my pro/con feelings towards polyamory.
These are all such good points. I wanted to type something similar but I think you said it better than I could.
.I only really encounter polyamory in online/advice column spaces but I feel like cases like this is exactly why people claim those kinds of arrangements won’t/can’t work and a really poorly chosen letter to advocate for that lifestyle. If either person feels faced with an ultimatum (share me or lose me), rather than a choice they’re making willingly, it seems a recipe for disaster. If either of them enter the polyamorous situation with reservations or reluctantly, or secretly hoping to wait out the other person, things wont end well.
(This could already very well be the case with the girl mentioned in the letter- plenty of people have affairs knowingly, assuming or hoping that the person they are seeing will eventually see the light and leave their husband/wife/whatever for them. )
I also am trying to imagine a letter from the perspective of the girl mentioned in the letter – “I am having a relationship that started out more as a fling. She hasn’t told her partner about me but I care about her deeply.” I feel like counseling polyamory probably won’t happen here. Most people would tell her to get out.
Although it’s noteworthy that it doesn’t sound like the letter writer has talked future relationship stuff with her girlfriend. Maybe the girlfriend is thinking “I’m having this fling and it’s gotten a little intense, but I feel comfortable because she has a really serious boyfriend and lives far away so I know this won’t get TOO serious” and then the letter writer is potentially going to call her up at some point to tell her she’s broken up with the boyfriend and is moving to Chicago so they can get serious.
All the more reason Letterwriter can’t just assume they’re passively waiting for her to choose between them.
*nods*
Speaking from my own experience, it really hurts to be monogamous by temperament, in a years-long relationship with someone, and have them say, “So, it turns out I want to have other partners, and there’s someone I have in mind.” Yes, if that is a thing you learn about yourself, say so. But the person you say it to may hear it as a form of rejection.
I found it really easy in that setting to think, “Well, if I say I can’t handle this, there will be three unhappy people– me, because something I cherished about this relationship has changed, and Partner, and Metamour-to-be. If I swallow my discomfort and misgivings and agree, maybe I get to keep *some* of this relationship, and Partner and Metamour will be delighted. Majority rules.”
Except deciding that one’s own feelings don’t matter because one is outnumbered doesn’t make the feelings go away. And there is no better way to feel small and insecure, as Bear counsels against, than to treat one’s feelings as if they don’t matter.
One way or another, correspondent– if she is going to keep one or both of the relationships she is currently in– is probably going to need to work overtime for a while to re-establish trust. Because asking for a relationship reconfiguration that requires trust, having just done something to erode trust, is unlikely to work.
I very much agree with you that the situation is vague enough that it’s very unclear if agreements have been broken, and that regardless, it is notable that her male partner does not know what’s up.
There is something to be said about the differences that exist between male/female relationships and female/female relationships. A common poly trope is the “one penis policy”, where guys are often happy to enter poly relationships where they’re the only guy involved, because they simply don’t register relationships their female partners have with other women as threatening.
Now, the whole OPP thing is not very pretty to unpack, and is rather bullshitty. But it does mean that it’s possible that a male partner may be surprisingly fine with someone saying to him something along these lines— “I love you, and I want you to be part of my life long term. But I have this good female friend, and she and I have been getting closer and closer. My feelings for her are more than just friendly. And I should have told you about this earlier, but I didn’t know how to, and I didn’t even really understand it myself at first. Before things get any farther, I need to talk to both of you about what you’re okay with.”
It’s possible that even if things have gone farther than they ought to have without open communication, that even if she really really ought to have started some conversations or made some choices before now, that maybe, just maybe, because she’s a woman, and the new person in her life is a woman, she may be able to “get away with” something that probably wouldn’t fly if her new person was a guy.
Or not. It’s possible she’s already irrevocably torpedoed the long term prospects of a relationship with this guy.
Yep, it is all about your last paragraph. Upvote x1000.
Bear’s response was a charmingly poetic essay on the good side of polyamory and relationships in general (containing many valid truths worth pondering), but I don’t know how well suited it was for this specific situation — when one of your partners is thinking of marriage and doesn’t realize there’s someone else you “have a thing” with, specifically someone else you also want to be with long-term. In this situation, we need to consider the other people’s POVs as they exist as fully realized people. I support stripping away the romantic language and considering yourself in either of their shoes. Better yet, for laying it all out on the table and seeing what they say, whether they want a future with you and how open or closed they want that to be.
picking a partner was as much about their faults as their virtues
Holy crap, that’s amazing advice/insight. For anyone. Everyone!
Bear strikes again! This column always gives my heart a hug.
Yes. This is so, so right! Heed Bear’s words, letter writer!
seriously. also, awesome/astute application of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and nature of relationships. Bear is lovely.
Faults or mismatches that make you feel unseen, or afraid, or small in the bad way (not tended to and cuddled, but condescended to and belittled) are… they’re awful. They erode your sense of yourself over time. That’s one of the ways powerful, thoughtful people end up staying in no-good relationships for too long; their confidence gets washed away bit by bit as they get habituated to a steady trickle of being undermined.
Oh my god.
Exactly – why did it take me forty years to figure that one out!
“I should move to where one of them lives and set up shop there.”
Why?
In my experience, long-distance relationships are really difficult and generally successful only at making those involved miserable. So that would be a decent reason why, assuming the letter-writer has had a similar experience.
I do think it’s notable that that sentence starts with “I should” and not “I want to,” though, and if that’s an accurate reflection of how the LW is thinking and feeling about where to live post-graduation — if her feelings are more like “I guess I’m supposed to pick one of these people and move to their city[/move in with them?], that’s the Next Step on the Road to Adulthood” than “I’m so excited to move to [Chicago/Boston] to be with my person!” — maybe it’s worth poking at that should a little.
Very good point. The “dating > steady > move in together > get married > have kids” script (aka the Relationship Escalator) is incredibly hard to unlearn.
Yes, sorry, that’s what I was getting at. I just thought it seemed like a forgone conclusion in the way it was written. In my experience and what I have seen among my friends and family, moving somewhere just to be with someone (with no other connection to the place) can be a recipe for angst.
Yes, I totally agree! Polyamory is an option if everyone is on board with it, but if they are not (and, you know, try that, but transitioning an assumed-monogamous relationship to a polyamorous one is a pretty rough ride even if everyone thinks up for it), then at the point where you can’t figure out which person to be with, try being with yourself for a bit.
Every one of these gives me happiness to read them, and makes me nod in recognition, and reaffirms my gladness that Bear is here writing these.
But also, I just wanted to breathe a few words of gladness that “why not poly?” gets to be a dignified answer here.
Also, uh, don’t marry anyone anytime soon? I appreciate the gentleness of this answer, and I think the encouragement of polyamory is spot on, but it also needs to be pointed out that this person:
A. Is telling one person they might marry them, while cheating on them.
B. Seems to be basing all their life decisions on this person vs. the other person, rather than figuring their own shit out. This person is clearly very young, and maybe poly, but also clearly has a long way to go before they’re ready to be in a successful poly relationship, based on the way they’re currently handling their relationships.
I agree with everyone in comments, especially when people here are saying things that seem, on the surface, to be contradictory here.
I guess that where I’m landing is that poly is the answer for this person, but probably not for these relationships.
Let me unpack that. This person has found herself attached to two different people in two different cities, she feels like she is different when she’s with each of them, she can imagine the future with either of them, and she seems to be very attached to both. So, she’s learned something important about herself, that she can find herself in love with more than one person at a time. That’s great! And it means that chances are, she may be most happy in relationships that are explicitly open to this potential. Whether they are very specifically poly or some other form of nonmonog from the outset, or whether there is a stated understanding that things may happen, and that if they do, there will be a conversation at that point to hammer out details. It sounds to me like some form of that sort of thing will be the happiest, healthiest, most honest place for her to approach relationships.
And it’s not *impossible* for that to happen here. She’s long distance with both of these people, so it’s certainly possible that given attachments and agreements and expectations, she’s been well within what others expected of her, and these particular people may be able to enthusiastically figure out agreements that respect everyone involved, and work for everyone involved. It is possible. Especially if she’s been at least mostly ethical, but even possibly if she hasn’t been.
But that’s probably not how things have gone. Someone (probably the boyfriend) is probably going to feel like there was something less than honesty going on (even if no agreements were technically broken). Someone (probably the girlfriend) may not even actually want something long term. Even if they’re both willing to try poly, and even if the way this has started doesn’t poison the entire thing, an agreement that gets everyone’s needs met will likely be really difficult to figure out when there are at least two different cities involved. The more open, honest, and ethical everyone has been up until this point, and is going forward, the more likely things will go well. But even with people experienced in nonmonog, even with people who are up front from the beginning, sometimes things just don’t work.
So, yeah, the answer to “how is it possible that I love more than one person” is poly. The answer to “what should I be reading about as I plan the next several years of my dating life” is poly. But the answer to “who should I choose if I really really like two people” is “consider poly……… but maybe not with these two exact humans”.
Brilliantly put!
well said! and, also, seriously, once again the commentariat here makes me very happy.
This is perfect
but she would be a soothing choice for them.
He’s from a family that’s like my family in various ways
also nothing will make you feel more like garbage than to know that you were weighed against other options on the basis of how well you’d fit into someone’s family or family culture, as if you were a handbag that might go better with this or that suit. It does matter to some, even though other people would find it degrading to choose a lover on that basis, I know that. but there’s not a thing they can do about it, and if you must pit the two against each other that way please don’t ever let them know. It’s worse than making a decision based on which city you’d rather live in. It’s deeply dehumanizing. I’m imagining being dropped because I don’t fit in with our kind of people as well as a rival would, and it’s horrible. It’s no better to win on that field, if you can call it winning.
Eh, I see another side — for those who are close with their families, compatibility is an important consideration. And also one very culturally-dependent, where that factor of how well the prospective partner fits in with one’s family plays a huge role.
But I understand where you’re coming from — the “our kind of people” wording is particularly alarming, and yeah, I easily see how that would be insulting. And I would hope that if you sincerely love someone, yet their family is different from your own, you would set about showing your family how wonderful this person is and why you’ve chosen them.
So yeah, in the end, of course you should never tell a person, “I really thought about making a life with you, but due to your family’s background which you had absolutely no control over, I decided it wasn’t meant to be” — that is 100% garbage. But I do think there’s another, less-garbage perspective (that’s more about character than background) that might push in the same direction, though yeah, I agree it shouldn’t be a dealbreaker.
I hope I made any kind of sense. In writing this, I realized more of your POV, and I’m in agreement with it; I’m just also thinking of a lot of cultures where one’s foremost considerations in evaluating partners is how well they’ll be received at home (for better or for worse).
Also, can I just say, ‘love locks’ are stupid and destructive and please don’t vandalise public property with them, as symbols of your ‘eternal love’ that have to be regularly taken down and carted away at public expense so that they don’t, you know, collapse bridges as stuff.
OK, poly, sure, but you have to deal with the fact that you’ve been cheating on Boy. He doesn’t know about girl; he did not consent to girl; cheating. Girl may be better able to deal with the darker time in your relationship(s) moving forward, given she was the one you cheated with rather than on, but still. Cheating.
I wish you love and happiness and honesty in your future life and future relationships. Mostly honesty.
Yes, well said. LW has some things to figure out about what she really wants her life and relationships to be like, and polyamory is something she should definitely give serious thought to.
Thank you for this piece. It verbalizes so many things I feel about love and relationships, but didn’t know I felt or how to explain them until now.
*shakes head*
Just choose. Commit. Grow up. Or walk away from both.
Well, I mean, clearly the LW has written in asking for advice because the “just choose” part is difficult for her.
I would slap down cash dollars for a well-curated Give Polyamory A Try Playlist.