Poly Drama-Trauma-Rama

If you look at the dating profile of someone who identifies as non-monogamous, there's a very high chance that he or she will have something negative to say about drama. “NO DRAMA, PLEASE,” for example. It's kind of a joke. You really don't want relationship drama? I've got the perfect living arrangement for you: a hermitage.

The fact is, human relationships are complicated. And maintaining more than one sexual/romantic relationship at a time can be very complicated.

I'd venture to say that most poly people have a high tolerance for complexity. Some even enjoy a certain amount of drama in their lives. (Hey, at least it beats feeling your thighs spread a little more every day, as you sit there on your sofa watching manufactured dramas on the boob tube and stuffing your face with hot-n-spicy fried pork skins. I don't know about you, but I can think of waaaaay more titillating scenarios involving many of those words I used in the previous sentence. IMHO, drama's occasional appearances are a small price to pay.)

However, sometimes, the drama-trauma gets out of hand.

To illustrate, let's look at the most recent sequence of events in my friend Lilianna's life:

1. Lilianna and her out-of-state boyfriend Robin spend the weekend together, and things go pretty well, even though they have a couple of difficult conversations about the fact that she's recently gotten back in touch with Paul, and she's slated to have dinner with him on Monday night.
2. She meets Paul for dinner, and they have a fantastic time together: they talk astronomy and ideas, and the evening ends with a spontaneous kiss. Lilianna is really happy about it. (She and Paul went out once or twice about a year ago, but somehow things didn't quite click then, and she felt like he'd flaked out on her. Recently, he contacted her, expressing regret that he'd let the connection slip, and she cautiously accepted his invitation to get together again.)
3. She gets back home after the dinner, and Rick has a glass of wine all ready for her: “Come sit here on the futon with me and tell me all about it!” So, they're talking, and her cell phone keeps beeping, because Robin's texting her.
4. She texts Robin, telling him, “Hey, it's late, and I'm talking to Rick.” Robin says he doesn't care how late it is, whenever she's done talking to Rick, she needs to call him, because he's feeling anxious to know how her date with Paul went. So she texts back, saying they had a nice dinner, talked astronomy, evening ended with kiss.
5. Robin's response goes something like, “What? What? NO. No, no, no! Make it stop, make it stop!”
6. Rick, who's wondering what's going on, reads Robin's text. Suddenly, he's furious. His response to Robin's response goes something like, “That fucking hypocrite! He waltzed in here five years ago and turned our whole LIVES upside down! And here he is, losing it over a dinner date and a kiss? Give me a break! What, we're all supposed to feel sorry for him, cater to his whiny-whine demands, because he's in so much pain, oh waah, waah? When he didn't give a fuck about how I felt? Oh, no, back then it was all, 'Oh, the eternal principle of love blah blah blah!' It's always all about him and what he wants! What do you even SEE in him, anyway? Name me one good thing about your relationship with Robin – besides the sex, I mean – 'cause I sure as hell don't see it!”
7. After Lilianna and Rick are more or less finished with their now-not-so-pleasant conversation, she gets a text from Robin: “I'm still up – are you?” It's really late – past midnight here, and two hours later for Robin. So Lilianna suggests they wait until morning to talk. He says he must talk to her now, that he doesn't care how late it is, he needs five minutes on the phone.
8. At 5 a.m., Lilianna finally says, “I'm sorry, Robin, but I have to hang up and get some sleep.”
9. As soon as Lilianna wakes up on Tuesday morning, Robin – who apparently has not slept one wink – pings her online, wanting to take up the conversation where they left off. He has now decided that what he really needs (assuming he can't manage to coerce Lilianna into agreeing to be “just friends” with Paul by threatening to break up with her) is for Paul to know how upset he is. Robin needs Lilianna to tell Paul all about their harrowing post-date conversation, in which Robin wept, gnashed his teeth, etc., etc., the whole nine yards. Robin wants Paul to understand exactly how much suffering he's causing someone else by pursuing this thing. At one point, Robin admits he's not hoping for compassion, he's actually hoping to scare Paul away: “Maybe he'll decide that it's just too much drama for him.”

No wonder, when I called up Lilianna on Tuesday afternoon, she exclaimed, “I'm so glad you called – because I really need to talk to someone who is not involved in this whole thing!”

No wonder, when I went over to her place today with my daughter Sienna, Lilianna seemed delighted to spend her afternoon dealing with a not-quite-three-year-old, whose simple demands are easily addressed: “Of course you can help me stir the cornbread, honey!” or, “No, that's enough for now -- too much lemonade will give you a tummyache.”