I'm Polyamorous – Is There Something Wrong with My Primary Relationship? (DP vs. PPL #6)

Not everyone who identifies as polyamorous has a primary relationship. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that not every poly person identifies as part of a couple/triangle/family: one poly “single” whose acquaintance I made several years ago felt that her primary relationship was with herself.

Conventional wisdom would have it that these people are simply “players” – people who are afraid to commit to a serious relationship with another person. Why? Because they are immature, or damaged, or incapable of real love, etc. Should they ever settle down with a mate, they will prove that they've matured, and/or that they've been healed and made whole by the miraculous and mysterious power of love.

However, if you started your poly adventure as an already-formed couple, what you have proven to the monogamous mainstream is that there must be something wrong with your relationship.

In the case of poly couples, conventional wisdom would have it that either A) you aren't working hard enough on your primary relationship, and you're using other people as a way to shirk your real responsibilities, or B) you ought to stop using other people as an escape from the messy business of getting yourself out of a big mistake. In other words, “Get counseling, or get a divorce!”

Encountering this attitude – and believe me, it crops up constantly – can be downright infuriating.

It's no big surprise that many poly couples take the defensive posture they do: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR RELATIONSHIP, GODDAMMIT. STOP PATHOLOGIZING US ALREADY!

I myself have taken this position numerous times. Parker and I have a remarkably happy marriage, and it pisses me off to be judged by people whose (supposedly) monogamous marriage makes them miserable.

But the bare-bones truth of the matter is that EVERY long-term relationship has something “wrong” with it. There is no relationship that's completely free of dysfunction.

It's also true that no relationship is going to meet all of your needs. However perfect your match, you and your mate cannot be each other's entire world. Oh, sure, you can survive as just the two of you. Hell, you can survive as a hermit, mumbling nuttily to yourself in your tumbledown twig hut.

You can also, I hear, survive on a diet of potatoes and milk, but I'll bet that as soon as someone shows up with some curried spinach salad or salmon en croute, you're going to realize you've been missing something.

So, I'm going to go out on a limb here: part of the reason that Parker and I have an open relationship is that we don't meet all of each other's needs.

What is it that's “wrong” with our marriage?

Back in the fall of 2000, I attempted to articulate the problem to a friend who was considering opening up his own marriage as a concession to his wife, who was unhappy with the way things were, but who did not want to get divorced. At the time, Scott and I had been together for about two years, and Parker was obsessed with a friend of mine named Carmen. The following are excerpts from two letters sent to Mr. E, who wanted to know how things worked for me and Parker in our open relationship:

"You're right: the compromises and concessions and expectations that grow
up around or in the midst of a relationship rarely, if ever, are
understood. They're shadowy, and I suspect that we want to avoid
looking at them too closely because we don't want them to be there.
Because yes, falling in love just happens, sans cold calculation, and
yes, sometimes there is that lovely stage in which no compromise is
necessary. Who wants to stop believing in magic? And who wants to
believe that he or she was deluded during that phase of needing nothing
else but love? But it is important not to insist that love and
pragmatism be mutually exclusive, or we human beings could never be
happy in a long-term relationship -- sooner or later, negotiation
becomes an inextricable part of any relationship between two people.
I think that sex is where these tensions play themselves out most
vividly because it is somehow emotionally unappealing to think of sex as
a negotiation, to answer your question in general and rather circular
terms. In order to explain more clearly why I found it particularly
upsetting to realize that I might be exchangeable, and why I
particularly noticed being upset about this during sex with a spouse
who, I suspected, was thinking about a specific other woman -- well, I
would probably have to tell a very long story. Suffice it to say that
when I married [Parker] I understood very little about my own sexuality,
but I knew enough to understand that sex was the one area in which we
were perhaps not very well matched -- and thus, even in the midst of
being in love with him, I made a practical choice -- a compromise, if
you will. Being insecure about the sexual side of our relationship,
having to work at it (i.e., be pragmatic about it) from the very
beginning, explains (perhaps) why I don't like to be reminded just how
non-magical that particular exchange has been."

"No, I don't find it strange that you've found sex to be the one really good
part in the recent story of your marriage, that it's been a relief from other
negotiations. I know that when [Parker] and I moved from having a theoretically
open marriage to an actually open one (meaning that, taking [Parker] at his word
when he said that he did not expect me to be monogamous, I actually began
stitching a scarlet A for myself), our sex immediately took on a strange
urgency & was better than it had ever been. Perverse, maybe -- but
evolutionary psychology, at any rate, would have predicted it.
No, nothing is set in stone, and a sexual imbalance can be lessened, sometimes
by bizarre means. Actually, I would say that for most of my marriage, sex has
been fine, despite the imperfect match. But although we have learned a great
deal, the original imbalance is still there, and will most likely always be
there, because it stems from a personality difference. It's hard to describe,
but I'd say that [Parker] is just not as fascinated by sex as I am -- though this
is largely an intellectual thing, rather than a difference in physical desire.
He once wanted to know why I was so interested in all the theory and literature
I studied, and I answered, only half in jest, that I'd figured out that in
order to be a successful graduate student in English, one only had to remember
one thing: that everything you read, regardless of subject matter, is really
about sex -- unless it claims upfront to be about sex, in which case it isn't
about sex, it is really about power, or capitalism, or something. Then I
explained that I loved studying the stuff because either I got to theorize sex
or I got to read it, one or the other -- and he just thought I was endearingly
loony."

This “Parker is just not as fascinated by sex as I am” story ended up getting blown out of the water when he met Lilianna, though.

One afternoon, Lilianna, Parker, and I were sitting around our kitchen table, discussing Parker's and my marriage. Lilianna had recently come across a triangle model of relationships: a perfectly balanced relationship would be an equilateral triangle composed of PASSION, COMMITMENT, and INTIMACY. The theory was that most relationships were imbalanced in some way: in most relationships, one of the sides of the triangle is shorter than the other two, and very imbalanced relationships lack one aspect (or, in some cases, two aspects) altogether.

It was a no-brainer to identify the “short side” of our marriage: Parker and I are committed to each other and very intimate, but passion's not our strongest suit. According to the rubric, this dynamic results in a “companionate” relationship – which is a little bit misleading, since ours is hardly a sexless marriage, and there are all kinds of things we're passionate about together.

However, it's true that I think of Parker as a best friend and soulmate first, and a lover second. (As an aside, no, I don't think a person ought to have just one best friend, one soulmate, and one lover – and I certainly don't subscribe to the notion that your spouse is supposed to be all three rolled into one.)

When Lilianna asked, “Which of the three things would you say is MOST important to you?” I said intimacy. For me, commitment and passion are both impossible without intimacy.

You can imagine my dismay when Parker responded to Lilianna's question differently: “I'd have to say that passion is most important to me,” he said – and my heart just plummeted into the soles of my feet. If passion was really what was MOST IMPORTANT to him, then what on earth was he doing, married to me?

Our ensuing conversation revealed that Parker and I have very different ideas of what passion IS – no wonder I'd mistakenly assumed that passion – as *I* understood it – wasn't all that important to him!

It turns out that a necessary component of passion, for Parker, is longing – which means he's unlikely to feel very passionate about someone he has, someone he's sure about. In other words, as his wife, I simply cannot meet his need to experience passion in his life.

I'll never forget Lilianna's response to this revelation: “I'm not sure how you do it, Viny – I don't think I could handle being Parker's primary.”

It was quite a moment. The ugly truth about us as a couple – the sore spot, the jagged place where we don't quite fit together – was under the magnifying glass. There it was, in plain daylight, ten times its normal size, and it looked pretty bad. Lilianna touched the painful spot with cool fingers, and said she understood, and... somehow, I felt better.

Here's another truth: I wouldn't want to be in a monogamous marriage with anyone. I think I understood this about myself a long time ago, back when Parker and I got married, at the tender age of nineteen – and the fact that I knew he wouldn't insist on monogamy was one of the reasons I decided to marry him.

It's a decision I've never regretted.