Dangerous Liaisons

My friend Cate has been the mistress of a married man for the last three and a half years.  So far, Harry has managed to keep the whole thing a secret from his wife. 

A few days ago, Harry’s elderly mother died.  What this has meant for Cate is that Harry has not kept to their usual schedule: two or three times a week, he lets himself in to her condo at 6 a.m., and crawls into bed with her for 45 minutes or so; once or twice a week, they meet for lunch somewhere near where he works; sometimes, on Cate’s days off, they have a few hours for a romantic tryst before or after lunch, or are able to see a matinee together.  In public, he’s always on the lookout for someone he knows, someone from his “other life.”

This week, she hasn’t heard from him, except for the occasional text message reading, “Hugs and Kisses.”  Cate wonders how he’s coping with the loss of his only remaining parent. She speculates that he’s probably distracting himself by taking care of business, which is what he feels most comfortable doing: attending to details, getting the paperwork in order, coordinating with his siblings about funeral arrangements.  He’s never been one for overt displays of emotion, but this must be a difficult time for him.  Cate imagines what Harry might be doing and feeling, but she doesn’t really know. 

She can’t be there with him, so she can’t be there for him.  “The only thing I can do right now is give him his space,” she told me, wistfully.

Cate sometimes wonders what it would be like if something ever happened to Harry.  Suppose he were in some kind of accident?  She might never know what had happened to him.  There would be no contact from him, and she’d start to worry.  She’d do what she could to get in touch with him.  Maybe, after a while, she’d get desperate and try to track him down at work.  He wouldn’t be there.  She’d go home and play the scenarios in her head: Harry in France or Buenos Aires, drinking a Scotch on the terrace of some expensive hotel, trying to forget her; Harry, pale and wan, wrapped in the white sheets of a hospital bed; Harry in a casket, surrounded by anemic lilies. 

She knows this: she won’t be invited to his funeral.

It's the price she will pay for having been his secret.

Clandestine relationships have a certain allure.  I know; I was once in one myself.  When Scott and I first became lovers, he was engaged to Monique.  I still remember the delight I took in our secret assignations, the deliciously delinquent feeling of sneaking around with him: meeting at the office late at night; checking into a cheap motel at dinnertime and checking out again at midnight; making love in the tall grass by a stream or, on a moonlit night, in the shadow of trees or the lee of a hill at the edge of a public park; or hurriedly fucking on the couch at his house, knowing that Monique’s commute home would take her half an hour, give or take five minutes, then covering up the evidence and composing ourselves to greet her calmly at the door.  I remember watching Monique put down her briefcase, walk into the kitchen, and pirouette: “Scott,” she announced, “I’ve had quite the day.  Pour me a glass of wine, will you?” She was wearing a gray suit with a tailored skirt. She exuded legitimacy. I felt as though I were standing outside, looking in through a window at the two of them, at their life together, where there was no place for me.  It was a very strange feeling. 

Monique knew that Scott and I were friends, so my existence as a person he cared about was, thankfully, not a secret.  I was invited to their wedding – so, unlike Cate, I never had to worry that there might someday be a funeral I would never know about.  But I did sometimes imagine myself standing there beside his dead body, struggling to keep in check a grief all out of proportion to what his family and friends would expect from “just a friend.”

There are consequences to living in two different worlds, inhabiting two different selves. There are consequences to maintaining the fictional boundary that keeps them apart, and there are consequences to allowing that boundary to collapse: it often creates one huge mess.

Travis, who had a brief affair with a married woman a long time ago, described the experience this way: “It was this very honest thing – the raw, naked truth of our passion for each other – surrounded by a big lie. I once went to a Christmas party at my lover’s house. Her husband was there.  I was looking at him and thinking, He doesn’t know. It was surreal.  Eventually, it was all just too much for me: playing dual roles, keeping secrets, worrying that he was going to find out – I couldn’t handle it anymore.”  Travis ended up leaving town, not knowing how else to end the relationship before it blew up in his face.

I don’t judge Cate or Harry for the choices they’re making.  From what I can tell, their relationship seems to be a good thing for both of them, at least so far.  Perhaps Harry’s wife won’t ever wake from her dream of ignorant bliss; perhaps the strain of compartmentalization won’t ever take too great a toll on Harry’s health; perhaps the shame of being the invisible girlfriend won’t ever make Cate lose her self-respect.

For myself, though, I have sworn never again to be someone’s dirty little secret.

Erika's A.S.S. Answers

6 A talent for intimate relationships
I think the people who have been my friends in the last ten years would rate me either a (1) or a (9).  I think I have good problem-solving skills and conflict management resolution skills with people who are like me, unless they are way too much like me.  With people who are not really like me, I get pissy and nasty and I write secretive mean things about them in my blog.  In other words, (1) type behavior.
 

5 High self esteem 

I have a very high self-concept when rating myself on the very narrow range of things I'm good at (booking travel, assisting women in labor, Family Feud).  I have very low self-esteem about anything that I have to do that is outside of that narrow range (including but not limited to: Attending meetings, Cartooning, Cleaning up sticky things, Diving, Gardening, Hemming pants, Hula Hooping, Not throwing up, Pottery, Putting on makeup, Riding in a car, Speaking German, and Track & Field).

5 A good juggler 

I don't have a very high tolerance for complexity.  On the other hand, I have a very complex life.  So I guess it's more accurate to say that I don't have a high tolerance for a life more complex than mine already is.  I think that I probably am a bad juggler, as evidenced by the fact that answering the phone absolutely overwhelms me almost every day.

6 A love of intensity 

I do really love intensity about 5 days a week.  Two days a week I like sleeping 14 hour days, not talking to anyone, and not getting out of my pjs until late afternoon.

10 Appreciation for diversity 

I love different people, different ideas, different ways of viewing the world.  I believe that I have a great appreciation for all kinds of people, although I would not like to live with all of them.

6 Interpersonal skills
See "a talent for intimate relationships" above.
 

5.6 (Mean) Ability to be flexible (2), creative (10), and spontaneous (5)
I get wildly different scores on different items on this list.  I'm definitely inflexible.  I get set in my ways.  I like eating at the same restaurants every day, wearing the same clothes every day, reading the same books every day, etc.  But I'm very creative.  I'm spontaneous unless it gets in the way of my inflexibility.
 

10 A sex positive attitude 

I'm a big fan of sex.  I teach sex.  I have sex.  I draw pictures in celebration of sex.  Sex is great.

10 An independent streak
I'm independent to the point of obnoxiousness.
 

4 A team spirit 

I don't work well with others.  I work well when I get to take charge.  I work well when I don't care at all about the outcome and someone just tells me what to do.  I don't work well when I care about the outcome but I don't get to dictate everyone else's behavior.

5 A commitment to personal and spiritual growth
I believe in personal development and growth.  Like, I want to become a better cook some day.  On the other hand, I have a very good awareness of my deeper, not food related, personal weaknesses and I've constructed my life such that I can avoid most of them rather than try to overcome them.  If my life gets too far away from my predesignated settings, then my weaknesses stare me glaringly in the face.  This is uncomfortable.  Most of my personal weaknesses are not mild (you know, like a 3 on a 10 point scale).  Most of my personal weaknesses are severe (like a -3 on a 10 point scale).  Trying to overcome such severe personal weaknesses is disheartening and I can only take them on slowly (like, dealing with one every 6 or 7 years).

Lilianna's A.S.S. Answers

A talent for intimate relationships: 7

I think that there is a sense in which I do well, and a sense in which I have some weaknesses; I give myself a rating over 5 because intimate relationships are very important to me, and because I am committed to improving in this area. I have also seen some improvements that give me faith in my capacity to get better.

High self esteem: 6

I have some serious questions about the meaning of the concept of self-esteem. I give myself a middle-of-the-road rating because I am engaged in a process of transcending my personality structure, and this means that I am consistently aware of the things that I do and do not like about myself. I think self-love isn't something we earn or that we discover; it's something we remember.

A good juggler: 2

I often feel as though my intimate relationships are like crystal balls that I am juggling. I have had a significant fear of dropping one or more of them. I've been criticized quite a bit for not juggling well, in spite of the fact that I try so hard to juggle well, leading me to think it must be the case that I need a lot of work in this area.

A love of intensity: 10, 1

I have a love-hate relationship with intensity.

Appreciation for diversity: 9

Once I got over expecting everyone else to be like me and making them wrong when they were not, I discovered that I am fascinated by the different ways in which people think, feel, and act, be it to protect themselves or to move toward their own transformation.

Interpersonal skills: 6

I'm strong in self-knowledge, and strong in piercing others' defenses, but maybe less skilled in negotiation. I am particularly good at penetrating to the core, but this can sometimes lead to conflict, because people can feel pushed to deal with an issue before they're ready. Sometimes I see what is motivating people before they do, but I also recognize ways in which this vision is driven & distorted by fear. It's a mixed bag. I haven't had a lot of personal experience dealing with larger group dynamics. So overall, there are some areas of strength and some areas of weakness (which seems to be becoming a theme).

Ability to be flexible, creative and spontaneous: 7?

It bothers me that these are thrown together as one category. Maybe the concept that unites the three is a kind of mutability. I'm certainly capable of creativity and spontaneity, sometimes extraordinarily so. However, I tend to be most capable of flexibility when I feel safe; when I feel threatened, I can be rigid. What it all comes down to is this: Am I having to break through some difficult fear of my own because of what is coming up? If not, I'll probably be pretty great. If I am dealing with my own fears, however, I may have a harder time. The one thing I can promise is that I will tell the truth about what might be coming up for me.

A sex positive attitude: 10 (with caveat)

I've cultivated a sex-positive attitude. I'm also a rape survivor. My attitude is dependent on one crucial thing: do I feel like I am being apprehended as a whole person? If so, I see sex as no less than spiritual communion. However, I don't want to feel used in any way. I don't even like it when someone goes on & on about my personal appearance. Any initial flattered feeling is quickly replaced by, “Oh god, that's all you see.” This is a hard one for me.

An independent streak: 8

I'm certainly fiercely autonomous, and I like supporting autonomy and independence in others. I'm also fascinated by the collaborative sharing of consciousness, which some might view as dependence. I see it as interdependence and an opportunity to break free of our psychic survival structures.

A team spirit: 8

There are ways in which my default way of jumping in as a leader may not feel good to everyone, but I love being part of a team. I am not competitive, and I like to encourage leadership in others – but then again, Viny has made me aware that sometimes I have a way of derailing others by passionately jumping in and defining what's important before others have had a chance to define it for themselves.

A commitment to personal and spiritual growth: 10

This is absolute for me.

Travis's A.S.S. Answers

• A talent for intimate relationships  (6)

Well I have to wonder, given my history. Generally I've either stayed too long in something that wasn't working or pined for something that never would be able to work.  Although, usually the people I'm with seem pretty happy.  Frankly I just don't know how to answer this one.

• High self esteem  (8)

I like myself basically; it could be higher I suppose; this seems to be on the upswing to the extent that I am increasingly true to myself.

• A good juggler  (9)

I'm good with this as long as it is with things that I care about.  Otherwise, I'm likely to lapse into lethargy.

• A love of intensity  (6)

This is perhaps the age speaking but my experience is that a lot of intensity really stems from some degree of psychological or emotional dysfunction, often combined with addiction.  I'm not really all that attracted to it generally, it sort of wears me down.  Passions of various colors are exciting to me - someone involved in their life and with me.

• Appreciation for diversity  (6)

Again I believe my attitude towards this may be a function of my age.  I'm pretty comfortable with having a certain degree of limitation in my contacts.  I know the type of situations and people with whom I tend to feel comfortable.  I like to spend the majority of my time with those people in those situations.  I would also say, being an introvert I tend to form a relaltively small amount of close associations and a greater amount of more superficial contacts.

• Interpersonal skills  (9)

I'm pretty great at this.  I tend to read people well and I don't tend to judge or expect certain behaviours.

• Ability to be flexible, creative, and spontaneous  (9)

Because I'm such a crappy planner, of neccessity I'm pretty good at this.

• A sex positive attitude  (9)

Can I please have sex NOW?!?

• An independent streak  (7)

I go back and forth a bit with this.  I don't really like to do a lot of things on my own.  On the other hand I really like it when people do what I think is right.  It's better for everyone, don't you know?

• A team spirit   (6)

Another mixed bag.  I really enjoy group creativity, but I  chafe at being part of anything organized.  Let's face it, I'm a bit schizophrenic when it comes to other people.

• A commitment to personal and spiritual growth  (7)

In my own haphazard way, I am.

Parker's A.S.S. Answers

A talent for intimate relationships: 5
I don't actually get involved in that many intimate relationships, so it seems an odd thing to call a talent.  On the other hand, none has yet been a failure.  I've also made a total of one stained glass window, and many people were very impressed by it.  Am I thus a talented glass artisan?

High self esteem: 8
When I first started down the poly path, my self esteem probably would have rated about a 3, and self esteem issues were the source of most of my grief.  By now, though, I have sufficiently internalized the idea of inherent, unassailable, non-externally-determined self-worth, to the extent that not much bothers me in this way anymore.  Sometimes I feel that I do not have much to offer others (at least most others, at least in an intimate context), but this is more of an objective statement than a source of shame.

A good juggler: 7
I learned to juggle literal objects from a book called Juggling for the Complete Klutz, which rated the difficulty of juggling multiple balls something like this: 3 balls, on a scale of one to ten, is a two.  4 balls is a five.  5 balls is a thirty-three.  Similarly, I consider myself a good juggler of activities as long as the number does not exceed a certain overwhelming threshold (in this case, maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-7 categories of things to keep track of), at which point I freak out, demand simplification, and next thing you know a Goodwill truck is taking away all the furniture in the house.

A love of intensity: 8
Wait, WHY can't we hike the extra nine miles today?  Wait, WHY isn't there any joint in town with flame cannons like Opulent Temple has? On the other hand, I happen to know someone who can always outdo me in any measure of relationship intensity, so the scale must keep going above whatever point I'm at.

Appreciation for diversity: 7
Like the last item, this one is sometimes known to its detractors as "getting bored easily".  I actively want people to differ from me in ways that provide me with something to think about and learn from.  However, I find some diversity hard to appreciate ("We have something for EVERYONE!  Plush steering wheel covers with the logos of EVERY major sports team!")

Interpersonal skills: 6
It seems that not bringing a huge pile of your own ego bullshit to the table is half the battle, so I think I am not doing TOO badly these days, despite maybe not much inherent talent as a communicator.  It's just been practice, practice, practice.

Ability to be flexible, creative, and spontaneous: 8, 10, 4.
Hey, these are not the same.  Flexible = can change my plans or preconceived notions when new information comes along.  Yeah, usually.  Creative = when presented with a new challenge, can and actively will come up with something outside the usual range of responses.  Heck, people come to me for this. Spontaneous = when not doing anything, will start doing something without a plan or other external input.  No, sadly, I often can't think of anything.

A sex-positive attitude: 2
Well, I don't know... I'm actually very sex-positive... in theory.  That is, I pretty readily accept others' quirks and kinks without judgment (though not always without envy).  But since that all goes out the window when it comes to myself, I pretty much end up believing that anyone who knows what's good for her will steer clear of my sexuality.  I don't think that adds up to much positivity.

An independent streak: 10
A streak?  On what background?

A team spirit: 8
As former bosses and coworkers of mine can attest, this number goes way down when the express mandate of the team is to do something like build an ugly new subdivision.  But when we're talking about relationships (where I am not trying to sabotage the team's goals), I am probably a good team player in the sense that I'm not trying to get ahead at anyone's expense, or demand fame or credit or star status.

A commitment to personal and spiritual growth: 8
What else is there to do in life?  If only a cognitive commitment to growth resulted in every day being a fantastic adventure!

Introducing My A.S.S. (Anapol Survey Series!)

I finally read Dr. Deborah M. Anapol's Love Without Limits: The Quest for Sustainable Intimate Relationships, which is considered to be something of a staple in the teeny-tiny Poly Library.

It was a decent book. It was obviously geared toward people who are just beginning to wonder if they might be poly (i.e., not me), but I found it interesting to see how someone else approached writing a “how-to” book on poly relationships. I have a few bones to pick with Anapol, and I may yet do so, but right now I want to focus on her list of the eleven “personal characteristics which seem best suited for this lovestyle” (p. 20), which I think is right on the money:

A talent for intimate relationships

High self esteem

A good juggler

A love of intensity

Appreciation for diversity

Interpersonal skills

Ability to be flexible, creative and spontaneous

A sex positive attitude

An independent streak

A team spirit

A commitment to personal and spiritual growth

Anapol suggests that anyone who's wondering, “Is responsible nonmonogamy right for me?” ought to take a look at these characteristics and “ask yourself if these are traits you possess – or want to acquire” (p. 20).

I'm not wondering whether responsible nonmonogamy is right for me – at this point, I'm pretty well convinced that it is -- but these kinds of surveys are such fun!

So, I'm going to give myself a rating on each of the characteristics listed above, on a scale of 1 (this is a serious weakness of mine) to 10 (this is a particular strength of mine). Then I'm going to beg, wheedle, or strong-arm some other people into taking the same survey (using the same rating scale) – look for guest posts on this topic in the near future.

So, without further ado:

VINY'S A.S.S. ANSWERS

A talent for intimate relationships: 9

It feels a little weird to rate myself on this characteristic: surely other people would be the best judge of whether or not I have any talent in this area, right? However, I'll press on, sans external validation, and say that I've always felt good about my ability to maintain meaningful relationships with important people in my life.

High self esteem: 8

Aside from my tendencies to be competitive (i.e., I'm often tempted to put myself into a “better-than” or “worse-than” box, even though I know such boxes are cramped, and dark, and musty) and to rely too heavily on external validation, I have a pretty solid sense of self-worth.

A good juggler: 8

I love juggling. I do get anxious, sometimes, about how many balls I've got in the air, but I generally manage to keep them there. Yes, I have been known to drop the ball. Yes, I have too often made someone I love feel like a ball I'm juggling. Overall, though, I think I manage pretty well.

A love of intensity: 6

My problem with intensity is that I love it only on MY terms: I want intensity when I want it, and I want to be able to choose when that is. Intensity and predictability are, alas, often mutually exclusive.

Appreciation for diversity: 6

I am, and have always been, very interested in people. I like to observe others, to listen to their stories, and try to understand who they are and where they're coming from. I have a fair amount of empathy. However, I can also be judgmental, which sometimes closes me off to what I might have to learn from someone very different from myself. This is something I'm working on.

Interpersonal skills: 9

As a kid, I went through a socially awkward stage, and stray bits of insecurity persisted even into my 20's. However, I have always been good at interacting with others as long as I'm not feeling too worried about whether or not they are going to like me. As I've gotten older, I have become much more likely to approach interactions with the assumption that I'm basically likable – and if someone doesn't like me, for whatever reason, I'm much less likely to take it personally.

Ability to be flexible, creative and spontaneous: 6.5

Although I want to be flexible, I'm really not. I tend to get pissy when things don't go as I've planned. I'd give myself about a 4 on flexibility alone. However, I think I can be pretty creative, and I very much appreciate creativity in others, which helps me arrive at (creative) solutions for dealing with my flexibility issue. Because I'm a planner, I find spontaneity a delightful counterpoint to my usual M.O., but, as with intensity, I prefer to be spontaneous when it suits me, which can be frustrating for the people in my life who are less than thrilled with my penchant for planning.

A sex-positive attitude: 8

I certainly ENJOY sex a hell of a lot, but it's also true that I've had a legacy of repression to overcome. I am still learning about myself – what makes me tick, what makes me slick – and I'm having fun in the process. In terms of others' ways of being sexual, I am generally pretty accepting, although I have noticed myself feeling judgmental and/or dismissive and/or icked out by some kinds of kink.

An independent streak: 7

I definitely have an independent streak. However, I also have a little problem with worrying too much about what others think of me.
 

A team spirit: 3

I am not completely incapable of appreciating the joys of working together as a team, but honestly, I kind of suck at being a team player. I prefer to call the shots. However, I can be gracious about stepping down from my Bossy McBossypants podium when it's clear to me that someone else has a good idea. And I do like to be helpful.

A commitment to personal and spiritual growth: 10

I used to believe that “growth” meant “improvement,” but the commitment has always been there, no question about it. It's also becoming more clear to me, as I grow older, that the “I” who is committed to her own growth is fundamentally inseparable from other beings, whether those other beings are people or leopards or pine trees or stones or stars.

The Freak-Magnet Phenomenon

As a poly person who lives in an intentional community, I am a member of two fringe groups.

The problem with being a member of a fringe group is that fringe groups attract freaks.

Let's be clear: I'm cool with dumpster-divers, peak-oil fanatics, witches, and pet psychics. Fine people, all of you. Go ahead and howl at the moon, build a sweat-lodge in your back yard, or eat raw chicken meat on a regular basis. I'll be proud to call you neighbor.  I may even be pleased to call you lover.

I'm awfully fond of a lot of freaks.

No, my issue is with people like the pathetic excuse for a person who showed up in my co-housing community the other day. I was busy making moussaka for 26 people, and she shows up wanting to tour the unit that's available for rent, preferably right then and there. My husband kindly agreed to show her the empty place, since I was clearly unable to drop everything to attend to her wishes. After looking at the unit, she decided she didn't want to rent it, but she wondered if there might be any place for rent in one of the other co-housing communities in the city. My husband said he didn't know, and suggested that she contact the communities in question.

She started whining. “Oh, it sounds so hard. I'm just so tired, and my knees hurt, I've just been having problems, and everything is such a pain...I was just hoping maybe someone could help me out... ”

You see, there's a certain type of person who wants to live in co-housing because he or she is a social reject. (Their thinking apparently goes something like this: If I move into co-housing, my neighbors will HAVE to take care of me. They'll listen with a smile to my tiresome complaints about UTIs and eczema and back pains, and drive me to all my doctors' appointments. They'll have to invite me to community meals and happy hours, even if I am a complete asshole, and if I'm too lazy to get up off my sofa, someone will bring my dinner to my door.)

Unfortunately, there's a certain type of person who participates in a poly support group because he or she is incapable of attracting “normal” sexual partners, or lacks the skills necessary to maintain even ONE romantic relationship – or, to put it in a nutshell, because he or she is a social reject. (I'm not sure what their thinking is, but maybe it goes something like, Gee, I can't get laid...so maybe if I hang out with some amoral sex-fiends who subscribe to an ultra-inclusive belief system, I'll luck out and get in on SOME kind of action....)

I think Deborah Anapol must have run into a few of these gems in the search to create her perfect poly family. This is her advice to those who wish to advertise as part of their attempt to recruit new family members or even just to form a poly-friendly discussion group:

“Be forewarned that the image of a warm, loving, multiadult family is naturally appealing to anyone who has not been socialized to reject it. You will most likely trigger responses from people whose mental and social functioning is deficient in ways that limit their ability to participate in a support group” (Love Without Limits, 105).

Or, in other words: if you're operating on the fringes of society, you're going to run into people who are hanging out in your environs not because they are adventurers who chose to leave the safety of the the monogamous heartland because they wanted to ride the breathtaking rapids of the polyamorous wilderness, but because they see this lifestyle as something that will save them from their fundamental problem -- which is that they just can't get along with other people.

I'm sorry, but if you can't row, and you can't tell entertaining stories to the rowers, and you don't know anything useful about navigation or food preparation or ocean currents or weather patterns, and you aren't even going to appreciate the experience of sitting pretty while other people do all your work for you, then GET OUT OF THE FREAKIN' BOAT.  Maybe you'll luck out, and dolphins will save you.

Equally Committed? (The Problem of Comparison, Part V)

Back in September, when I was planning to start this blog, I had a little brainstorming session with my husband.  We were sitting on Georgia’s balcony, each with a small glass of honey bourbon, enjoying the pleasant evening air.  My friend Cate, who lives next door to Georgia, came out and asked us what we were talking about.  “Well, Cate, I’ve decided: I’m going to start a blog,” I told her. “Help me out here -- what poly-related topic would you want to see explored?”

Cate sat down and had a sip of my bourbon. “Okay: I want to know how you stay engaged with two or more people without comparing them to each other all the time,” she said, almost as if she’d been prepping for my question all day. “I mean, how do you avoid turning everything into some kind of contest, some way of picking the winner and dumping the loser?  What's the secret?  Just focusing on one person at a time, trying to be in the moment with each one, or what?”

As soon as I stopped squinting at the dark page on which I was busily scribbling, in an attempt to capture Cate’s question, I looked over at Parker, nonplussed.  He gave a little shrug.  “Wow,” I said.  “I’ve never thought about it.”

The whole POINT of being poly, for me, is NOT having to choose between people.

Cate might as well have asked me, “How can you be friends with both me and Georgia?  Don’t you find yourself comparing us to each other all the time?  Tell me, who’s it going to be, me or her?”

She might as well have said, “So, Denali and Sienna: how do your children compare to each other? And which kid are you going to keep?”

As we talked more about Cate’s question, though, it became apparent that her real concern was connected to the idea of commitment.  Whatever commitment to a person might entail, I think we can safely say that “I promise never to replace you with someone or something else: there will always be a place for you in my heart” is a big part of it.

Even people who have a hard time committing to anything are generally pretty committed to their children.  And no child is replaceable, as any parent unfortunate enough to have lost a child will tell you.  Although a grieving parent might feel consoled in his or her loss by the existence of another child, or by the birth of a new baby, no one is ever going to take the place of the one that died. 

It follows that no parent wants to have to choose between children. This is why the “Sophie’s Choice” scenario – being forced to declare a “winning” child, thus sentencing your “losing” child to death – strikes such a chill into our hearts.

However, people DO compare their children to each other.  All the time.  Some of us feel a little guilty about it.  Others don’t seem to be concerned about even overt comparisons – witness those parents who will introduce you to their kids along with a label for each one: “This is Ed, the brainiac; and this is Ned, the quiet one; and this here is little Jed, our musical genius!”  And how many of us heard, growing up, statements from a frustrated parent like the following: “Your sister manages to keep her room neat – I don’t know what your problem might be, but maybe you could stand to learn from her example!”

So, let’s just admit it: those of us with more than one lover may have NO DESIRE to choose between them, but we DO compare them to each other. 

Not in some kind of global way, maybe, but in all kinds of subtle little ways.  It’s just something human beings do as part of their effort to assign meanings to the things they observe.

Sometimes, a comparison has no bearing on the way we feel about our relationships.  These tend to be “Apples vs. Oranges” sorts of comparisons.  For example, Parker has blue eyes, Scott has brown eyes, and Travis’s eyes are greenish, or grayish, or hazel, depending on the light.  I have no preference: they’re all good colors. It would be absurd to say, for instance, “Parker’s eyes are the bluest,” because such a comparison doesn’t mean anything.

Some comparisons are meaningful, in that they affect our actions, but there is no “better” or “worse” attached to them.  For example, I like sushi a lot more than Lilianna does.  So, when Rick felt like going out to sushi, he tended to invite me along rather than her – not because he preferred my company to hers, but because, given our different cuisine preferences, that’s what made the most sense.

Other sorts of comparisons carry with them an implicit value judgment, and these are the most problematic – whether we are comparing children, or friends, or lovers.

During her most recent visit, my mother-in-law noticed that Sienna is nowhere near as skilled at putting together jigsaw puzzles as her older brother was at the same age.  Grandma Helen watched Sienna struggling to assemble a puzzle with 6 or 8 large pieces, and remarked, “Wasn’t Denali putting together that whole puzzle map of the United States at this age – or younger, even?”  “Yes,” I conceded. “But I think he was a little precocious in that respect, don’t you?”  Then, later, as Helen watched Sienna draw a face with the eyes to one side of the circle, rather than at the top, she laughed, “I think she might be a little spatially challenged!”

I was mad at her for voicing that opinion, especially given that both Denali and Sienna were listening in.  Hell, I was mad at her for even mentally forming such an opinion: “Sienna may not have Denali’s spatial gifts,” I said hotly, “But she’s one smart cookie when it comes to understanding the nuances of adult speech.  And furthermore, Denali didn’t draw at all at this age!”

Notice that the example I gave of a value-laden comparison was one involving my two children, not one that implicated my friends or my lovers.  It’s easier, and feels far safer, to make such comparisons between my children, because I am completely committed to both.  I love them both, with equal fierceness, and I could never in a million years choose one over the other. 

My guess, then, is that comparing people to one another – which is something social creatures inevitably do, at least subconsciously – is going to feel comfortable only to the extent that we are equally committed to them. 

Viny's Dating Advice

Option 1: Don't listen to me, because my own dating experience is next to nada. 

Spokesperson for Option 1: My ex-boyfriend Scott.  He called me the other day, and our conversation meandered around to the topic of dating.  He said he was just about ready to take another stab at the meet market, and, to that end, was considering posting a profile on an internet dating site.  "Hey," I said, "If you want to send me a draft of your profile, I'd be happy to tell you whether or not I think it's compelling."  He laughed: "Honey, you are the last person I would consult about this."

Option 2: Take what I have to say very seriously, because I am an expert on this topic: I may have spent very little time dating, true, but I have spent a lot of time in relationships -- which are, after all, the whole POINT of dating.

Spokesperson for Option 2: My friend Georgia.  Right after I got off the phone with Scott, Georgia pounced on me (I was actually on Georgia's porch when Scott and I said our goodbyes, as I'd been following my daughter Sienna, and her walks around the neighborhood always seem to end at Georgia's door) to say that she'd thought of the PERFECT job for me: an "Ask Viny" column, radio show, podcast etc. -- some venue that would allow me to dispense my dating/relationship advice to my adoring public.

OK, now that we have gotten that bit of "choose your cheese" out of the way, here's today's Dating Tip (drumroll, please...):

It seems to me that there are two common mistakes that you can make when you decide to "get serious" about dating:

1) Make a laundry list of all the things you want a potential date to do for you, and another long list of all the things you can't/won't provide in a new relationship.  Whether or not you actually share these lists with your pool of prospects, people are going pick up on the fact that you're all "gimme, gimme, gimme," and they are NOT going to come flocking to your boudoir.

INSTEAD, why not think about what you have to give to a new relationship?  What might someone learn from you?

2) Decide that you are not going to make the same mistakes you made in your last failed relationship -- and therefore, that you are looking for a VERY SPECIFIC sort of person, someone who will make it IMPOSSIBLE for you to screw things up the same way you did last time.  You may be hoping to find someone who looks exactly like your evil Ex, but without any of her evil personality traits; or perhaps you want a sexier version of the good friend you lost when your romantic feelings for him faded; or perhaps you want the exact opposite of your previous main squeeze, who was obviously completely wrong for you in every way.  Whether or not you actually subject your dates to the "How do you compare to my Ex?" test, everyone will fail to meet your stringent selection criteria, and you'll be left with the impression that there's just no one worthwhile out there.

INSTEAD, why not be open to getting to know a few of the interesting people who inhabit this crazy world -- regardless of how much they do, or do not, remind you of other people you've dated?  What new things might you learn from interacting with someone you haven't already type-cast?

An Interim Conversation with Georgia

My friend Georgia is one of the few people I know who can carry on simultaneous conversations with me and Sienna, my 3-year-old daughter. Georgia also feeds us.  No wonder we both love hanging out with her.

Today, our dual-purpose, multi-focus discussion went something like this:

Georgia: So I was thinking about the stuff you've been writing about in your blog, and it seems to me that everyone, poly or not, has to deal with the same things: jealousy, fear of abandonment...
Viny: ...Not to mention time management, divided loyalties...
Sienna: Guys, my new nickname is Fifi.
Georgia: Come here, you little pippersnacker, you little boop-de-do!
Sienna: Can I play with your blocks?
Georgia: Sure...let me find them...not that I'm saying poly is for everyone -- I mean, I'm not sure I could handle it -- but I have to say that I admire your candor, the openness, everyone knowing what's up...so here they are: blocks! Are you going to pick them up when you're done?  Viny, I just put half-and-half in your tea, is that okay?
Viny: Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Thanks!  Do you have honey?
Georgia: But of course, darling.  Und do you vant just a nibble of somesing tasty, a tiny treat from Deutschland? This marzipan, perhaps? See, it's like an opportunity for working on issues, an extreme version of what people go through anyway.
Sienna: Can I have some too? Can I?  Can I?
Viny: Here you go.
Sienna: No! I want a BIG bit!
Georgia: Okay, Sienna-Vienna, but no squishing it -- it's for eating!
Viny: It's funny, but I was just thinking about this.  It seems like we choose lives for ourselves that will force us to deal with our issues.  Maybe, for me, it's comparison, competition, external validation -- an issue that's exacerbated by being poly, yes, but I like being forced to look at this stuff.  It's good for me.
Georgia:  Here's the thing, though.  I'm not sure everyone actually deals with their issues.  For some people, maybe poly is a way of growing, of expanding commitments; for others, it's probably a cop-out.
Viny: A way of avoiding, of not having to deal, of escaping.  Is that what you mean?
Georgia: Yeah.  I know this guy -- intelligent, interesting, really good-looking guy, openly poly -- who just can't commit.  I've watched all kinds of women fall in love with him -- it's been years, I met him in 1993, consider him a friend, and he's a great guy, but he's a heartbreaker, he's immature. He warns everyone, "Look, I'm poly, I'm not committing...."
Sienna: Can you sing a song and I'll run around?
Georgia: Sure! (Starts singing a song in Italian)
Viny:  So what do you think are this guy's issues, the issues he's avoiding by being poly?
Georgia: I'm good friends with the last woman he dated.  You should talk to her.  She's a riot, a total riot. They're just friends now, because she got tired of dealing with him not committing.  It's not just about monogamy, it's about intimacy. I think he can't handle intimacy, and that's why he's poly.  Hey, Sienna, just run around in the kitchen, that way you won't bump into anything.  You bumper-noodle!  Poppy-knickerbumpkin! Pumpkin-poodle! 
Viny: Sienna, you crazy girl!
Sienna: Mama! Georgia!  Who do you love? Say it at the same time!
Georgia and Viny: We love Sienna!
Sienna: Fight over me, fight over me!

Drew's Drama Therapy (The Problem of Comparison, Part IV)

I had Lilianna read my previous post before I actually uploaded it (a courtesy I did not extend to Rick when I posted an overly-personal entry about him recently – perhaps because I didn't care overmuch about hurting his feelings at the time I wrote it, although I did feel a twinge of remorse when I found out that reading it had indeed upset him). She said she didn't have any issues with anything I'd said, so I went ahead and posted it.

This post is going to be about my relationship with Drew, an artist I dated from March to September/October of 2009. I'm not going to ask him to read it first. For one thing, he doesn't even know I'm writing a blog. For another, our entire relationship was a kind of game in which authenticity was subservient to creativity, and I'd like to be true to that memory of us.

We had a blast, Drew and I. We played our parts well. It would be a shame to ruin it now by letting him in on the secret, which is that the spectacle of our relationship became the mirror that gave me back to myself. 

I don't think Drew has a clue what he really did for me, and I'd just as soon keep it that way. (However, on the off chance you ever read this: thank you, Drew, from the bottom of my heart. Don't let it go to your head, though.)

When I met Drew, things with Lilianna were at their nadir. It was March of 2009, and she had gotten back in touch with Parker after a silence of several months, but she wanted nothing to do with me. She didn't trust me. It was as if she'd turned me into someone else: a composite of all my worst qualities. The Viny she had created was a competitive, duplicitous, back-stabbing, cold-hearted, holier-than-thou snob. That Viny was a wearer of many hats, putting on whatever garb she thought would make her look best, forever obsessed with maintaining her image. She was seductive, manipulative – in short, an ice queen. Oh, pardon me: did I say ice queen? I meant cunt.

Of course, the Viny Lilianna created out of her own hurt feelings wasn't the real me, but neither was Lilianna making things up out of thin air. The Viny she doesn't like is certainly a part of me.

Drew, heaven help him, fell in love with that Viny.

Everything Lilianna rejected about me, everything I wished to disavow, I reclaimed in my relationship with Drew. I rolled all those nasty bits together and created one fantastic character – and then I played her to to hilt.

She wore slinky dresses and high heels all the time. She even spoke with an accent, something vaguely Ukrainian. And, believe it or not, she was outrageously funny.

Drew put her on a pedestal. He took hundreds of photographs of her. He brought his camera with him everywhere they went and filmed her every move. Then he posted the footage on youtube and watched it, over and over.

You see, the character Drew was playing and the character I was playing had collaborated to develop an entire fantasy script, a mockumentary of sorts, in which I appeared as a scheming, money-grubbing mail-order bride and he played the part of my clueless American husband.

In preparing to write this entry, I reviewed the footage from one of our early dates, and I was struck by the following interchange:

Drew (after I've just informed him that I will probably leave him in two or three months): “Can I get another one, or am I stuck with you?”

Viny (in accented, slightly incorrect English): “Can you get another one, what? Of me?”

Drew: “Well, another Eastern Bloc woman, when you leave --”

Viny (interrupting): “Oh, yes, but, you know, they are not so good.”

Drew (pretending to be disappointed): “Oh, they aren't.”

Viny (shaking her head dismissively): “No. No. I am best.”

And there you go: I finally got to be The Best. It felt so satisfying to say it, to utter those words – I am best – with absolute conviction, even though it was all just an act. And with that, a large part of my competitiveness simply evaporated. Call it drama therapy.

Of course, I wasn't completely cured. There was, after all, my very real attraction to Drew: before long, the line between fantasy and reality began to waver, and I couldn't always distinguish between the two. What began as an artistic collaboration (charged by a certain amount of mutual infatuation, it's true) became, over time, an actual romance. And that meant that I began to play our game in earnest: I was out to win. If someone's heart was going to be broken, it sure as hell wasn't going to be mine.

The more I interacted with him, the clearer it became that Drew was, in many ways, a male version of myself. However, I kept this thought to myself, which gave me the upper hand.

Since this entry is way too long already, I'll conclude with something I wrote about Drew in July of 2009, after I had determined that we weren't, after all, evenly matched – that, not to put too fine a point on it, I was going to get the best of him:

He's so self-conscious, so unaware! He shakes his curls, he parts his mouth, he tilts his head, male coquette that he is. And he's lovely, simply lovely; I want to clap my hands and say, Bravo!...I am so cursed to've met someone so like me in so many ways....[I want] to understand what it is about him that draws me, and what it is that repels....

Oh, he is so full of himself. He wants people to like him. He wants no one to be unhappy with him. He wants admiration, adoration. Oh, I know him intimately! I recognize him, I've got his number and I'll call his bluff. (He, alone, on the bluff, a figure against the sunset, waiting with phone in hand...)

I am torn between a desire to be kind to him (and thus to say it is right & meet for the universe to treat me kindly) and to be cruel, to teach him a lesson. Perhaps he fascinates me so because it is my karma, as a self-obsessed person, to become obsessed w/ a person like me (the mise en abime of narcissism!!). We're all looking into that pool: he and I, with our bright reflections, not knowing whom we see: ourselves (himself/myself) or (an)other.

Viny vs. Lilianna (The Problem of Comparison, Part III)

I'd planned today to write about all the difficulties I have encountered in my relationship with Lilianna as a result of my own competitiveness. I was careful to set the stage with my two previous posts on the problem of comparison, and I have been thinking about this next-in-the-series entry for several days now. To top it off, last night I went with Travis to see Black Swan, which – if you cut out the eating disorder, the mortification of the flesh, the controlling mother, and the ballet – was eerily on-target given what I planned to write about me and Lilianna.

However, I'm just not feeling it.

That whole competing-with-Lilianna thing seems like an ancient relic, a brittle voodoo doll with matted hair and glassy eyes I once dreamed up. Maybe some mummified version of it will rise from the dead at some point in the future (God forbid!), but this morning it's safely mouldering in the grave.

So, in order to say anything about the way I felt about Lilianna in the past, I'm going to have to exhume some passages from my journal.

The first time I ever mentioned Lilianna in my journal was in December of 2005:

I've gone out to lunch & dinner w/ [Rick], whose wife [Lilianna] is madly in love with another man [Robin]. I then talked to [Lilianna] for probably 2 hours last night....I liked her – she seems like a really sharp woman. Talks a bluestreak though – more than I do.

(All you lovers of textual analysis out there: Notice the COMPARISON? And here's an irony for you, for good measure: earlier this morning, I read this same journal passage aloud to Lilianna over the phone, and then proceeded to talk a bluestreak about the movie Travis and I saw last night – she got the plot, the thematic analysis, evaluation, connections between the film and our own experiences, some half-baked philosophizing about beauty, art, and the drive toward perfection ultimately becoming suicidal, plus a reminder about my favorite Hawthorne short story, in which a too-perfect woman dies – until finally Lilianna gently cut me off with, “Honey, my phone is going to die.” So, really, who talks more than whom?)

In January of 2006, when Lilianna and my husband began their relationship, my jealousy was partially characterized by a feeling I'll call “competitive” – though I suppose this is not at all unusual. I've included my jealous not-quite-rantings in a previous post, so I will repeat just a fragment of the relevant journal entry here:

...I had stopped feeling compelled to hate either [Lilianna] or myself. I still don't know how to truly like both of us – it's such a paradox! – but I have more faith in my ability to live in & inhabit that paradox.

The jealousy faded, and a genuine friendship with Lilianna began to blossom, but I persisted in comparing myself to her, or her to me, in all kinds of ways: innocently enough, at times, but the effects were insidious. The flagship journal entry on my core issue with Lilianna was written in August of 2006, not quite a year into our complicated romantic network's history (we had dubbed ourselves the “Metaphive”):

So ultimately I have to figure out how to feel okay about myself despite the fact that [Lilianna] has a greater weight, in the cosmic sense. She's the one everyone caters to, including [Parker] – because she's higher maintenance, and I can be counted on to be reasonable. If [Lilianna] is having an issue, it's “Hold the phone,” if [Lilianna] just wants to say something, it's, “Can you wait a sec, Viny?” And I don't know how much comfort I can take from the fact that I'm so reasonable. I have this little sense of revolt, every time, that frequently leads me either to bad behavior (“See! I can have issues too!”) or to a kind of low-grade depression because I want to matter as much as she does and am afraid I don't....I feel like [Lilianna] is pretty damn demanding, and that everyone (including me) seems to think she's worth it. My trouble starts when I compare myself, then, and decide that not only am I not demanding, I try really hard to be accommodating & flexible and understanding – and that this is not even really appreciated; it's just expected. And it does nothing to balance out the equation, either – [Lilianna] still has more clout. The other day [Parker] was remarking that [Lilianna] was still sexy even when she was upset, and I said that kind of rubbed me the wrong way, because I know for a fact he doesn't think I'm sexy when I'm upset. He said, “Well, you get combative when you're upset.” Apparently [Lilianna] can get upset in a sexy way, woohoo for her. Anyway I look at this discrepancy, or what I fear is a discrepancy, and it's difficult not to conclude that if I want more attention, love, desire & appreciation, I should be more like her – that this being reasonable and patient and even-keeled thing is way over-rated, and that actually my approach just guarantees a life as invisible woman, as doormat-girl. But I don't like feeling this way, and I believe that it's probably only going to hurt [Parker] (and maybe [Rick] too) if I get into a virtual power-struggle with [Lilianna] just to prove my own self-worth relative to hers. Seems to me that someone has to give that up, and that someone is going to be me and not her. It's just the way our personalities are. I don't think she even realizes, most of the time, that she calls all the shots....

So clearly the steps are: get over resentment, drop the fear, decide to be okay with things as they are & stop worrying about what some perceived inequality implies about our personal worth, our cosmic weight, if you will. And work on being comfortable with – appreciating and celebrating – who we are, without worrying so much about external validation. Because if external validation means a competition (real or imagined) with [Lilianna], everyone loses. Whether that's fair or not fair, it's a fact, and needs to be understood as a given rather than something to fight against. (I do keep feeling like I want kudos from [Parker] for being so good, though...sigh.)

In retrospect, dear readers, my dire prediction – if external validation means a competition with Lilianna, everyone loses – turned out to be absolutely correct. Lilianna and I developed a deep and abiding love for each other, but there was a little competitive cankerworm in my heart, and eventually she got close enough to me that she began to feel its sharp tooth gnawing at her own heart. There was a breakup of sorts, a period of time during which she and I were not in contact at all, which lasted from November or December of 2008 until about April of 2009. It was a very difficult time for me.

The following journal entry was written during that period, in late March of '09:

I wonder if [Lilianna] really did value me or if she just said she did. Has she only started missing me recently? Will there ever come a time when she REALLY misses me? What could possibly have hurt her so badly? Even @ bottom, the sickest truth of it – which was that yes, she was a victim of my need-to-feel-better-than, I can't see why I am so dangerous. My wanting to feel superior doesn't make me superior – doesn't actually diminish her worth or her power, does it? She's behaving as if a real act of violence has been perpetrated against her, by me. And yet she might easily say something similar: that her need for control did not strip me of my power or make me subordinate to her; I didn't have to cast her as the Captain of the Team. I don't know if or when this will all get sorted out. I don't know what I have to prove (aside from “I'm not so bad, really”). I feel like I look at all this yucky stuff about myself and say “Yuck!” but I still like myself; why can't she like me too? [Parker] knows me & still likes me. Hell, even [Scott] still mostly likes me (though he may be more ambivalent about it).

A lot of what hurt Lilianna about my competitiveness, I think, is that she felt like it stemmed from the fact that she's a woman, not a man – and I falsely perceived her to be a competitor rather than the loyal friend she really was. I'm not saying there's nothing to that gendered argument of hers – but my own feeling is that I'm just too fucking competitive, period.

Three days after the previous journal entry, for example, I was busy comparing myself (unfavorably, I might add) to my husband:

Look at [Parker]: he can put together a sprinkler system, plant an aesthetically pleasing garden, build a stucco wall (not to mention design one so it doesn't fall down), write a novel, tile a kitchen or bathroom, learn to sew or play the piano in a matter of weeks, speak Mandarin and Italian, put together governance documents for the community, sequence the salmonella genome, write a scientific paper – I mean the list goes on and on! And what can I do, really? Um. Weeding? Of things [Parker] can't, won't or wouldn't do, I can think of dancing* and performing fellatio and that's about it. Not that those are skills not worth having, just that the list of things [Parker] can do that I can't or would totally suck at (no pun intended) is a lot longer! And WHY am I in this comparative space? Is it just my curse to hang out in Compareville all the time? Why must I be down on myself or down on others?

(*Parker has since learned to dance, thanks to Burning Man.)

And that's quite enough of that.

So I'm sitting here at Travis's computer – I spent the night with him, and saw him off to work this morning (i.e., I made him some tea, ironed his shirt and pants, and, clad in his bathrobe, waved goodbye at the door: “Bye, honey,” I said, giving my best '50's-era housewife imitation, to which he responded, “Bye, hon – see you tonight – that is, unless you're with that other husband of yours.”)

When I wrap this up, I will head home to have lunch with my husband, my 3-year-old daughter, and my super-extra-bestest Lovely Lilianna, who has stopped by to visit Parker after spending last night with her lover Paul.

I'm very much looking forward to it.

Vanquishing the Competition (The Problem of Comparison, Part II)

When my mother-in-law first learned that Parker and I had an open marriage, she was pretty unhappy about it. (See my October 14, 2010 post, “Questions from My Mother-in-Law,” for the story of how she found us out.) She wrote us a distraught letter in which she asked us a bunch of questions, which Parker and I answered, and then she wrote us a reply – or shall I say a critique – in which she took us to task for various personality flaws. Selfishness was her main complaint, but there was another criticism leveled at me, specifically: competitiveness.

This is part of what she wrote in May 2003: At polyamory.org it says that some people just don’t get jealous. I think this might be true. I’ve always considered [Parker] as someone like that. [Viny], on the other hand, couldn’t even stand the fact that [Liz] had the first baby in the family. She admits that she was jealous when [Scott] had a girlfriend. And that [Scott] was jealous of [Viny's] third polyamoristic thing. [Viny] and [Scott] don’t seem like ideal candidates for polyamory, at least when things aren’t going in their favor. 

 

Well, that just burned me up: there she was, handing out prizes for polyamory's Ideal Candidate, and I wasn't even in the running!

Yeah, okay, I'm a sore loser.

Yeah, I often feel like I have something to prove.

It's a problem I'm working on (in order to prove that I don't always have to prove something, no doubt).

When I was in high school, I had a doppelganger nemesis we'll call Cindy. She and I shared a whole lot of demographic characteristics, and we even looked a lot alike. Growing up, we'd been part of the same gifted program, so we ended up in all the same classes, where she got better grades. We also shared the same interest in drama and improv. During final callbacks for school plays, it always came down to me and her, and she was always the one who walked away with the lead role. She was class president, whereas I was kind of a nerd. To top it all off, I had a crush on her boyfriend.

I hardly ever think about Cindy, and I don't envy her anymore – last I heard, she and her lawyer husband have three kids and live in Orange County – but twenty years ago, her presence in my life was like a perpetual eclipse.

There was a whole story I was telling myself at the time, in which I appeared as Silver Medal girl, forever doomed to be not-quite-best at anything. Can't I just be the best at SOMETHING, one tiny little thing? I complained in my journal. Will I always be the Queen of Mediocrity? And then felt guilty, of course, for not being consoled by the fact that I could have had things a whole lot worse.

So yesterday, when Parker was telling me about how he wants no part of the reality in which self-esteem is based on knowing one's place in a hierarchy, about how he doesn't think the supposed “real world” is any more real than the one each person invents for him- or herself, a world of singularity, in which “it's just you being you,” I was intrigued but skeptical.

“It's a little more complicated than that, don't you think?” I said.

“Look,” said Parker, “It's just an accident of evolution that we are set up this way. We're social animals, and so we've developed all these ways of assessing what others think of us. We have to know our place. Other animals don't have to have a self-esteem. Some animals are territorial loners; all that's required of them is a lot of hostility toward outsiders. For them, the question is not, 'Who's better?' it's, 'Who's still here when the fight is over?' Now, I'm not saying I want to be a territorial animal. It doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun. All I'm saying is that this supposedly objective view of reality, in which who you are depends on what other people say you are, isn't the only reality that's possible.”

So, Parker wants to live in a self-determined universe, to be the god who creates his own unique reality and lives out his own divine purpose.

Sounds lovely. No more competition: after all, it would be ludicrous for a single entity alone in his own universe to compare himself to any of the characters with which he peoples his dream of reality.

It's an interesting thought experiment – at the moment, Parker's still the undisputed Thought Experiment Champion – but I don't think thinking that way is going to work for me on a day-to-day basis. I can't shake the idea that there's an objective reality out there that's separate from me, a whole world full of entities over which I have no control (or, if I do have some control, it's not I as an individual, but rather I as part of something so enormous, so complex, that it's entirely beyond my ken just how I might be exercising that control, or what I might be willing into, or out of, existence).

It's funny: all the people I've ever known who admit to fantasizing that they might be the only real inhabitant in a self-created world – that other people, although they seem real enough, have no separate lives of their own – happen to be introverts. When I was a kid, my mother once confessed to me that, as a child, she wondered whether she might be the only person on the planet with an inner reality: perhaps everyone else was just a character in a long dream she was having. She seemed to think it might be a common childhood fantasy, something I probably thought about as well, but such a notion had never even occurred to me until she brought it up.

I also wonder whether the radical individualism that Parker seems to be espousing would work in more collectivistic societies. Maybe there's a Western vs. Eastern philosophical divide on how to overcome the problem of comparison. The mystical traditions of both cultures seem to end up with a similar result, though: erase the Other or erase the Self – either way, you've erased the gap between the two.

I want to end this post with two thoughts that kept coming up yesterday – it's kind of like a little “compare and contrast” exercise on the topic of comparing and contrasting, although I have no idea what it might mean:

1. I have, on a number of occasions, completely lost my sense of self. Sometimes, this has been an unpleasant experience, kind of like identity vertigo, but more often it's been ecstatic. My peak erotic experiences tend to be characterized by this erasure of boundaries between Self and Other.
2. As part of an experiment with stream-of-consciousness writing, at age 18, I wrote the following, even though it completely freaked me out to commit the words to paper: Chiasmic symmetry – the wall, me, the mirror, me, the wall. As though my existence is validated somehow by having two of me. If I ever come across another me I'll kill her. Supreme selfishness in rainy Chinatown. The smells of the cheap restaurants drifting in on the open air.

Life is Not a Beauty Pageant (The Problem of Comparison, Part I)

I feel compelled to write something great about the problem of comparison, competitiveness, the way in which we humans, as social creatures, collectively damn ourselves to a fictional hell of existential angst about whether we are, ultimately, replaceable.

However, this topic is so epic (to use a favorite term of my son's) that I can never do it justice.

I once read an article in which the author (Michael Cunningham, if I remember correctly) was saying that every novel is born out of a writer's burning desire. In its unrealized form, the story is “a cathedral of fire” – the writer experiences it as something akin to sexual desire, to religious epiphany – but the novel that actually gets written is never more than a pale echo of what the writer imagined it would be.

So. Having gotten the requisite apologia over, let's begin with the pale echo of what I've been obsessing about all day.

Last night, Lilianna was gushing to Parker (my husband, and her sometime lover) about how incredibly awesome Paul, her new lover, is. This morning, I asked Parker, “So, did it feel bad to have her go on about Paul's muscular arms, et cetera?” Parker shrugged. “I already know I'm not Mr. Buff, so who cares?” I pressed, “But what about the fact that Paul is also Mr. Capable – remember how you had an idea about how to fix the window in Lilianna's jeep, and then Paul had the same idea, and he ended up fixing it?” Again with the shrug: “Great – it's fixed. The fact that Paul was able to do it doesn't make me any less capable.”

I was a little suspicious of his bodhisattva-like unconcern. It's true that Parker is one of the least jealous people I know, but it's also true that he's been known to fall into the trap of comparing himself to others – and then, more often than not, bemoaning the fact that no one else is like him, that he's a total misfit, etc.

“I smell a rat, Mr. Envy,” I said. “Remember how you always used to compare yourself to Robin?”

Parker acknowledged that yes, he'd gone through a phase of mentally holding himself up to another of Lilianna's lovers, and finding himself lacking. “But comparing myself to Robin was nothing compared to the way I used to compare myself to Scott,” Parker pointed out.

Oh yeah, I remember that.

For example, the following, from a journal entry I wrote in February of 1999:

[Scott] & I had a conversation about Sense and Sensibility while [Parker] was in the kitchen making bread. Tonight [Parker] sadly said that it sounded like we were having fun together, that [Scott] was better at talking about books, & since books were so important to me, then I'd be happier if he [Parker] didn't exist, so that [Scott] & I could be together, etc. He's feeling in the way, he said. That's the other thing that bothers me, to get back to the things that bother me. I wouldn't be who I am without [Parker]. I don't wish him gone; I don't regret having married him. “Can't I want you both?” I asked.

“So what's changed?” I asked Parker.

“I've had it with all that,” he said. “Everyone loses when you set up the question that way – this, 'Who's better,' whether you're talking globally, or whether you're saying, 'Here are 5 categories that are important to me; who's better at each?' You know, everyone loses at something. Even if you were the one person who didn't lose at anything, it wouldn't last – eventually, someone better would come along.”

Once, in the throes of his jealousy about Scott, a dozen years ago, Parker said to me, bitterly, “You have all the power in our relationship. Look, we all know I can't do any better than you.”

Apparently, he'd run the Global Mate-Attractiveness Class Ranking numbers, and decided he'd gotten a good deal. At the time, this was not all that comforting to me. What if he was wrong, and he could do better? Did that mean I'd be replaced when someone better came along – as she inevitably would?

In my experience, jealousy is mostly about the fear of being replaced. On a deeper level, it's the fear that, if someone does end up replacing you, you are worth less. In other words, interchangeable = worthless.

And being in an open relationship means that you're staring at the possibility of being replaced all the time. It can be unnerving.

Monogamy offers a particularly seductive illusion: the competition is over, and you've won. You're the only girl/guy in the world.

But of course that's not true.

As it turns out, there's not a whole lot of job security in being The One and Only. And being The Best sure as hell doesn't save you from having to think about your competition constantly.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

So, your position at the pinnacle is being threatened by some upstart who thinks she's Snow White. What are you gonna do about it, order your favorite hunter to kill her, and bring you back her bleeding heart?