A 'Sweetie' by Any Other Name...

So here's a perennial poly problem: what to call one's special people?

All right, it's not a huge problem, and maybe I'm the only one fretting about it. But it does keep coming up for me. 

A lot of poly folks have hit on the solution of referring to their significant others as “my sweetie,” as in, “So I went out to dinner with my sweetie So-and-So, and she spent the whole time talking about how her other sweetie was having a hard time with one of his sweeties....”

But I'm not really a fan of “sweetie” – too saccharin for my taste.

Other options aren't a whole lot better.

At a party in the Bay Area I once attended with Parker and Scott, we were introduced as “Viny, her husband Parker, and her O.S.O. Scott.” It took me a second to decode “Other Significant Other,” and I wasn't sure I liked it. Economical, certainly, and maybe kind of amusing, but also potentially marginalizing, kind of like an Honorable Mention or an “Also Ran....”

I have tended to favor more traditional terms like “boyfriend” or “lover,” but these don't seem like accurate descriptors for some of the people in my life.

Parker is my husband. Travis is my boyfriend. Okay, so far, so good.

Ex is a useful term, if you've got a relationship that has clearly transitioned into a platonic friendship. But poly people don't always simply end a relationship that isn't working.

Monogamous people, faced with a problematic relationship, are very tempted to just break it off, because they take it for granted that they can't pursue anyone else as long as they're still attached. Poly people, who don't have to be single in order to move on, tend to keep former lovers in their lives in whatever way seems to work best. In label-land, as elsewhere, being poly is a complicated business.

Is Lilianna Parker's ex-girlfriend? I'm not sure, but it doesn't sound quite right. What about that episode under the apricot tree a few months ago? Or the trip they're talking about taking together?

Another example: Scott and I broke up years ago, but nearly every time we've seen each other since then, we've ended up in bed together. So, what does that make him? Not my boyfriend, since we see each other only once or twice a year, but “ex-boyfriend” implies that we're totally over each other, and we're not.

My mother recently came up with a good catch-all term when she informed me that she had no interest in interacting with any of my (here she paused, searching for the right words...) extraneous people.

Extraneous Person. I think I like it. From now on, everyone I love who isn't part of my parent-approved nuclear family will be designated as an E.P. I'll append the identifying letters to each name, in a little superfluous bubble, like a TM.

Or maybe I should just suck it up and go with sweetie, like everyone else.

More on Friends and Lovers

I've had sex with seven men. Three of those relationships began as simple friendships. I've been sexual with two women, both good friends of mine. That makes a total of nine sexual partners over the course of the eighteen years that have passed since I first became sexually active.

And I'm still friends with eight of these people. Nine, if a Facebook-only friend counts.

Last night, I had dinner with three of them (my husband Parker, and our friends Lilianna and Rick). On the way home, we stopped off to see another (my boyfriend Travis, who is moving into his own place, and who needed Parker's help to move a couch and dresser). Later that night, another one called me (Scott, who wanted to commiserate about how lame Mormon parents can be). Then, early this morning, I got a call from another (Drew, whom I fondly call “my darling Ex”).

This is why my friend Erika's statement about not fucking one's friends made no sense to me. I guess the underlying fear is that sex ruins friendships, but that hasn't been borne out by my experience.

It's true that the transition from being romantically involved with someone to being just friends can be painful, but those kinds of hurts generally fade, and what remains is something worth preserving – provided there was anything of substance there in the first place.

Which brings me to the topic of casual sex.

For years, I claimed that I just wasn't “into” casual sex, even though I didn't have a clear idea what casual sex might be. Now, I think I have a better idea.

There are two kinds of casual sex:

1. Casual sex with a friend. In this case, although there may be no “romance” involved, both people genuinely like each other and are committed to maintaining their friendship.
2. Casual sex with someone who's not a friend. In this case, the connection is almost entirely physical: there's little interest in developing a relationship of any kind, except insofar as basic social niceties are sometimes necessary in the pursuit of sexual gratification.

The jury's still out on #1, but I can now say with complete conviction that I am not interested in #2.

My opinion is that being friends is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for being lovers.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that, in my own life, my one experiment with casual sex is also the only exception to my rule: he's the only lover I've had who is not currently my friend (except on Facebook). This is because he wasn't my friend to begin with, and, during the five months or so that we were lovers, our social intercourse was just about nil. We were attracted to each other, sure, but we basically didn't have anything to talk about.

In a previous post ("Photographers I Have Known"), I made it sound like the reason I broke off that relationship, if something so casual can even be called a relationship, was because I felt competitive with the guy's wife after he emailed me some photographs he'd taken of her. Actually, though, I had already resolved to end things with him: it was feeling increasingly weird to me to be spending so much time with someone I hardly knew, someone who really wasn't interested in letting me get to know him.

In that entry, I made my break-up letter to him sound much more glib than it really was. Here, in part, is what I actually wrote him in June of 2009:

“Much as I like you, and much as I've enjoyed the evenings we've spent together, I don't think I am really cut out for a relationship this casual, even though its very casualness had originally been appealing to me after so much relationship drama with [Lilianna] & co. I'd been mulling this over, some, before our last date, and had intended to talk about it then -- not as a decision, but more as a conversation I wanted to have with you -- and then found myself completely unable to bring it up. And since then I've come to the conclusion that, if I can't feel comfortable talking to you about how I really feel about something, I ought not to be having sex with you. (I say this not in terms of some kind of global judgment about the way things ought to be in relationships, but simply as a statement about what suits my own personality.)”

His response to this was basically mild regret: “Ah well, I suppose we aren't looking for exactly the same things. I do feel a little bad that you didn't feel able to talk to me about it though. I guess I'm not the easiest person to get to know. If you change your mind about dinner this week, or anytime, the offer is always open. No strings attached.”

Then – and this surprised me – he concluded with this quote from Thich Nat Hanh:

When I have a toothache, I discover that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. 

I had to have a toothache in order to be enlightened, to know that not having one is wonderful. 

My nontoothache is peace, is joy. 

But when I do not have a toothache, I do not seem to be happy. 

Therefore, I look deeply in the present moment and see that I have a nontoothache; 

that can make me very happy already.

 
So, who knows? Maybe we could have been friends.

Fucking Friends

“I don't believe in fucking my friends,” a friend of mine once proclaimed, in a tone that brooked no argument.

I don't remember what occasioned Erika's statement, or the mini-manifesto on sexual etiquette that followed, but I don't think it was because I'd been coming on to her. I'm basically straight, so I have a lot of friends I don't fuck – but not as a matter of principle, so I was surprised by how emphatically Erika (who identifies as bisexual) defended her position that friends & sex just don't mix.

I do remember wondering what had happened to all that high-flown rhetoric of hers the night I walked into my bedroom and, lo and behold, who should suddenly sit up in my bed but (you guessed it) Erika, wearing precious little. And there was someone else in the bed with her: her friend Parker, a.k.a. my husband.

Here's how it happened.

Parker and I were hosting a party in her honor at our house one night (she'd just passed the qualifying exams for her Ph.D.), and when it got late and the party was winding down, Parker announced that he was heading to bed. He's always been an early bird. So Parker went upstairs, and Erika started drumming her fingers on the table. Less than five minutes later, she went upstairs herself, and she didn't come back down. After half an hour or so, I walked my three remaining guests home. “You can always come crash at our house if your bed is full,” one of them offered. “I think I can handle it,” I said, laughing.

Standing in front of the door to my bedroom, not sure how to proceed, I couldn't help reflecting on the ludicrousness of my predicament: would I be interrupting something? If so, would I be a welcome or an unwelcome intrusion? Unwelcome because they were in the middle of some kind of “just the two of us” sex scene? Welcome because they'd both enjoy it if I were to join in?

Or would my intrusion perhaps be initially resented but appreciated later? Would I be thanked for breaking things up before they went too far, causing Erika to regret the fact that she'd violated her own principles?

I knocked on the door, waited about 30 seconds, then opened it. Erika bolted upright with an alacrity that was comic, clad only in bra and panties, her hair all in disarray. Parker was lying on his stomach next to her, naked, from what I could see. He seemed kind of sleepy.

“Hey,” I said. “So...I'd like to go to bed now.”

“Okay,” said Erika, not budging.

“You're welcome to stay,” I said, “but if you do, we're actually sleeping. Okay?”

“Maybe I should go,” she said, still not budging.

By this time I had gotten into a nightgown, although I normally sleep naked. “Oh, go ahead and stay,” I said, climbing into bed with them. Erika was in the middle.

It turned out that Erika and Parker had not had sex, although they had fooled around enough to get Erika worked up, and she wasn't in the mood to just go to sleep. She and I ended up making out, which piqued Parker's interest, perking him up considerably, and soon all three of us were entangled. Then Erika said she wanted to watch Parker and I have sex, so that's the way our little menage a trois concluded. Then we fell asleep, three friends in bed together.

The fact that Erika has never actually fucked either me or Parker is a mere technicality, as far as I'm concerned. And I'm not 100% convinced that she'll stick to her resolution, anyway: she and Parker have been very close friends for a long time, during which time their relationship has gone through periodic sexual phases, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were to end up having sex with each other at some point.

I haven't asked Erika whether she's changed her mind about whether it's okay for people to fuck their friends, but I suspect that, at the very least, she'd be less vehement about disagreeing with my position on the matter, which is this: why fuck anyone else?

Photographers I Have Known

My boyfriend Travis is something of a photographer, but his camera went on the fritz right around the time we started dating, and he hasn't replaced it. So we've used my camera on our various excursions together, and I've taken almost all the pictures. I'm manifestly not a photographer, and many of them have turned out badly: fuzzy, foreshortened, or weirdly framed. However, every now and then I manage a good shot. I'm actually pretty pleased with some of the photos I took on our recent weekend trip to the White Mountains.

One I particularly like shows Travis standing on the bank of a shallow creek, framed by yellow cottonwood leaves in the foreground. He looks happy. He's in his element.

It's a photograph that almost didn't happen. We were a couple of hours into the drive home, and we just happened to spot a perfect photo opportunity.

“There's our fall foliage,” Travis said, indicating the gorge on our right, where cottonwoods were making a sinuous line of gold through the darker evergreens. “Funny, I don't remember seeing this on our way up there.”

“Yeah, I didn't see it either. Beautiful!”

“Wow. I can't believe I didn't notice this. We ARE on the same road...right?”

“Yes,” I said. “We were just preoccupied on the drive up. Remember? My five-hour rant?”

“Oh. Yeah. That. I guess I was too busy defending myself to look at the scenery.” 

He gives me a grin, because that was then, and this is now, and neither of us really gives a shit about anything we might have argued about on the drive up. We've just spent a lovely long weekend together, and we're feeling pretty exuberant.

However, the drive to the White Mountains was a whole different ball of wax. 

Then, my knickers were really in a twist.

Right before Travis came to get me for our weekend away, I checked my Facebook home page, and saw that my ex-boyfriend Rick had just uploaded a bunch of new photographs. Most of them were of the same woman, although it seemed like she was wearing a different outfit (did I say outfit? I meant bikini...) in every shot. Lithe, sexy, fresh-faced – and probably not much over twenty.

Supposedly, Rick had been in Florida on a business trip, but apparently he'd found enough time to pursue his favorite hobby. I couldn't resist commenting (and I'm paraphrasing, as he's since removed both my comment and the photographs that occasioned it): “Gee, looks like work's been really tough lately. Wandering around on the beach, taking photographs... I bet you even got sand in your shoes. Poor you.” Just some light-hearted ribbing, right?

Wrong. I kept chewing on what I'd said, and it wasn't long before I began to wonder if maybe it sounded snarky. Bitter, even.

I told Travis about Rick's photo shoot, and my reaction to it, right about the time we were reaching the city limits. At the very beginning of our five-hour journey, in other words. And that's when Travis made his big tactical error: “Hmm. Sounds like this is bringing some things up for you,” he said. “Tell me about it.” 

So I did. 

I won't bore you with my long disquisition on beauty, American culture, and how “age” is the most problematic part of “image”. I will refrain from trash-talking Rick, or either of the other two photographers I've dated in recent years.

(Funny – I broke up with one of them right after he emailed me a bunch of photographs he'd taken of his wife, whom I'd never seen before. They were gorgeous, and so was she. My reply basically went like this: Wow. You are really good. And your wife is a complete knock-out. As for having dinner next week, though, the answer is no. Much as I've enjoyed your company over the last several months, I don't think I am cut out for a relationship this casual. Sorry this email is such a completely lame-o way to tell you so.)

Suffice it to say that, in the end, my five-hour rant can be summed up by the following interchange:

Me: Okay, fine – so tell me something. What do you have your age range set to on OKCupid?

Travis (trapped): Um. Okay. 35 to 42.

Me: That's it? That's the range? 42. 42. Jesus fucking Christ. FORTY-TWO?!? That's TEN YEARS YOUNGER than you! ELEVEN, actually! As your absolute this-is-the-oldest-woman-I-would-consider-dating! Oh, yeah, and you KNOW that men message women who are YOUNGER than their supposed “this is too young for me” cut-off point, but do they message women who are older? Not bloody likely. THIS is the problem. THIS is what I'm talking about. You're only into me because I'm so much younger than you are. And apparently I have only six more years before I'm TOAST, before I'm completely OBSOLETE (etc., etc.)...

...At which point, Travis, bless his heart, breaks in with a joke: “Rick, you bastard – WHY couldn't you have waited to post those pics until AFTER we'd already left?”

So, yes, the vacation began somewhat inauspiciously, with Travis – who is, nota bene, sixteen years and eight months my senior – bravely taking the hit for every man who's ever lusted after a woman younger than himself.

However, let's give credit where credit is due: he talked his way through that landmine-strewn conversation with just the right combination of patience and chutzpah. By the time we checked into our little cabin in the woods, I had gotten over myself, and we went on to have a fantastic weekend together. And no, not just because Travis doesn't have a camera.

A Perfect Storm

7:30 a.m. Sienna and I are eating raisin bran at the dining room table, while Parker batiks like mad in the kitchen. He has a craft fair show coming up on Saturday, so there are piles of shirts in various stages of the waxing/dyeing process all over the place, and the whole house smells like beeswax. Denali, earbuds in ears and backpack on back, is heading out the front door. “Bye guys,” he says, and I have this nagging feeling I was supposed to nag him about something before he left this morning. But it's too late – he's gone to catch his bus, and I still can't remember what it was.

Between 8 and 10 a.m., I make or receive at least ten telephone calls.

1. To Barry, Parker's first cousin once removed, who doesn't pick up. (I'd just gotten an email from him, saying he was in town with his mother – the notorious Great Aunt Mattie – and that he hoped they could drop in for a visit in the afternoon, which was the only time that would work for them.)
2. From Helen, my mother-in-law. (She wants to know why it was that Denali had never gotten in touch with the bass player guy who was supposed to be giving Denali his first bass lesson today. Oh, that's what I was going to nag Denali about....)
3. To my friend Georgia. (I've promised to help her cook dinner – lasagna, salad, and apple/pear crisp for 18 people – and I want to make sure we are on the same page about how many people we are feeding.)
4. To Travis, who is at work, and who asks if I can call him back on his land line, which I do.
5. From my mother.
6. From Georgia, who is at Trader Joe's, and who wants to talk ingredients and portions.
7. From Barry, who hasn't listened to the message I left him. (I basically explain that he's picked a day from hell, but that we'd love to see them before 1:30 or after 4:30; we finally settle on 5-6 p.m.)
8. To a lady whose car we are interested in buying. (I leave her a message saying to call me before 11:30 if we can come look at the car at noon, which is the only time that will work for us.)
9. From Helen, who says that she and Liz (Parker's sister) are writing a play together. (“It's partly about polyamory,” she says. “Is that okay? And do you want to help us write it?”)
10. To Georgia, who tried to call while I was on the phone with Helen. (She's ready to get started on the dinner prep, and wants to know if I can bring over some herbs from the garden.)

10-11:30 a.m. Sienna and I go over to Georgia's to help her with the cooking. Georgia and I manage to layer two pans of lasagna and make the topping for the apple/pear crisp – meanwhile, Sienna is going to Georgia's fridge every two minutes, helping herself to yogurt, apples, etc. Either that, or she's asking for things she can't reach, like frozen mangoes, which she nibbles on and then daintily discards. At 11:30, the lady calls about the car, and I grab Sienna and rush back home.

The noon-1:30 p.m. time slot is taken up by car stuff – a test drive, some rapid-fire discussion between me and Parker (who hates having to make these kinds of decisions), and the final wheel & deal session, in which I offer $500 less than the asking price. The lady says she'll get back to me on that.

At 1:45, I am headed to an elementary school, where I am supposed to be tutoring two fourth graders in reading. When I arrive, I am informed that I will be tutoring one second grader in reading, and one fourth grader in math. Although I have no math teaching expertise whatsoever, I do my best. So I'm alternating between “Little Critter has a puppy” and “Expressing rational numbers in standard and expanded form” until 4:15, when – oh joy! – the school day is finally over.

4:30-5:00 p.m. I arrive home to find that Parker has set up his batik booth on the lawn. He wants my input on the placement of items, the wording of signs, pricing, and a bunch of other things. Meanwhile, Sienna, who looks like an absolute ragamuffin, keeps taking off her shoes and her jacket and attempting to follow our neighbors into their houses.

5:00 p.m. Barry and Great Aunt Mattie arrive. They dutifully consult with Parker about his booth mock-up, and then I lure everyone inside the house for a cup of tea (the only hospitality I'm set up to offer). Mattie, normally vivacious and extremely friendly, seems subdued. Troubled, even. It's hard not to chalk her behavior up to the fact that she's recently become privy to the fact that Parker and I have an open marriage. (Parker's mother took it upon herself to spill the beans. Now, why in the world would Helen out our story to Great Aunt Mattie? Read my “It's a Small World (Redux)” post for the gory details – this afternoon's visit was the Scene Three I was dreading.) Barry is keeping up his end of the conversation with great aplomb, though, and so are Denali (who has a clever comeback for every statement uttered by anyone, leading Barry to conclude that Denali will probably become a lawyer for a Fortune 500 company, just to spite his hippie parents) and Sienna (“Mommy, can you tell me the story about Rosemary and the lion? Mommy, I SAID, can you tell me the story about Rosemary and the lion and the yeti and Malificent? Can you, can you, CAN YOU?!?).

6:15 p.m. Sienna and I bid a rushed adieu to the relatives and rush over to Georgia's dinner. The food's not quite ready, so I rush around the kitchen madly for a few minutes, chopping radishes, checking lasagnas, mixing together the salad dressing, etc. Parker and Denali join us all a few minutes later.

It's 8:30 p.m. by the time the dishes are all washed and the kitchen is cleaned up. I head home, where Parker has put Sienna to bed and is already elbow-deep in the batik again. We have a scattered 10-minute de-briefing session, after which I get in the car and drive the 15 minutes to Travis's place. He gives me a glass of ice water, listens sympathetically to my litany of “busy day from hell” woes, then leads me to the bed, which he's made up with fresh sheets. He's even got the covers turned invitingly down. Ah! That Travis is a very clever man: after the day I've had, his bed looks very inviting.

11:30 p.m. I don't really want to get out of Travis's bed and drive back home, but I finally make myself do it, because Parker wants to leave early in the morning, so he can go on a long hike. I get home just before midnight.

So, that's the story of yesterday, and days like that have been descending frequently, it seems. From my point of view, the trouble with such days is that 1) they give me no time to write, and 2) they don't make for very interesting blog entries later.

Why am I so obsessed with this whole blog project? I don't know, but I'm impatient for things to settle down a little, so that I can address that very question (not to mention the ten or eleven other topics I have in queue!).

Armchair Philosophizing: On the Exchange Value of Sex

Some time ago, my friend Cate commented to me that she thought polyamory was a “more mature” form of relating than monogamy.

Cate doesn't identify as poly herself, so I was surprised. “Really?” I asked. “What makes you say that?”

“I think it's about the evolution of human relationships,” she said. “With poly, people are no longer treating each other like emotional property.”

Although, as I admitted in my last entry, I'm not always as mature as I'd like to be, I do agree with Cate in principle: I think there's something very fine – noble, even – in recognizing that we do not own the people we love.

Similarly, I also maintain that it's a bad idea to measure our value – our personal worth – in terms of the sacrifices others make for us.

I'm continually amazed by how often people approach relationships like economists running a cost-benefit analysis: Is this a good deal for me? Is someone else getting a better deal? Could someone else offer me a better deal? How much am I worth to him/her? Am I being cheated? Am I valuing myself enough?

Underneath it all, there's our genetic legacy. We've been bequeathed a fundamental disparity between the sexes, and a resulting preoccupation with the idea of fair exchange. Biologically speaking, sex is more risky for women than it is for men. Yes, reliable birth control helps, but if it fails, it's the woman who has to pay the final bill, one way or another. And this is why a lot of women have an aversion to “giving away” their sexual favors.

Only a loser gives it away for free: this is what we've all been taught to believe. And no one wants to be a loser.

And so it is that sex frequently comes with a price tag: it's affixed by the person with more to lose, and paid by the person who has less to lose. In heterosexual relationships, it's usually the woman who sets the price, and the man who pays it.

Which brings us to an oft-noted, oft-lamented disparity in the fortunes of heterosexual poly men and heterosexual poly women. Poly women don't have a whole lot of trouble finding male sexual partners. Poly men do have quite a bit of trouble finding female sexual partners – in fact, they have much more trouble than their supposedly monogamous brothers do.

The twisted logic goes something like this:

A married man makes sexual advances toward a woman other than his wife, and, assuming the sleaze factor doesn't completely turn her off, she's likely to feel flattered: He must really want me, she thinks. Look how much he's risking to be with me! Maybe I'm worth more than his marriage!

But let's say the man is poly, and he tells the object of his affections, Hey, it's on the up-and-up: my wife is cool with me having sex with other women. So how about it? The woman thus approached is likely to feel insulted: I'd be a chump to go for this deal, she probably thinks. He has nothing to lose. And I'm worth more than that!

Afternoon Tea with a Desperate Housewife

This morning, my son Denali was telling me about a couple at his high school that had just broken up. Apparently, the guy got sick of the girl after two weeks of going out with her, so he asked a friend of his to break the news to her.

“Wait,” I said, “isn't this the couple who was, according to you, in a stable relationship?”

“Well it WAS stable,” Denali patiently explained, “But he's a man-whore.”

“Ah. That makes perfect sense,” I said, wondering to myself what a Good Mother (the mythical creature we imperfect mothers are always comparing ourselves to) would have said to her son in response. Would she have pointed out that it's not nice to call people names? Asked him why he and his friends are so fond of designating people as whores or sluts, regardless of the offense they've committed? Given him an erudite lecture about how his having prefaced “whore” with a masculine marker suggests that gender inequality is alive and well, even in youth culture? Reminded him, ever so gently, that each of us has a spark of the divine inside us, and that thus we are all equally deserving of compassion and respect – then handed him the lunch I'd packed for him (home-made eggplant parmigiana, wheat-grass shake, and carob-chip cookie)?

Last time Denali called someone a whore (in that case, he had been referring to a girl who had said something rude to him in class), I told him a joke:

Q: What's the difference between a bitch and a ho?

A: A ho fucks everybody. A bitch fucks everybody but you.

I'm pretty sure that one isn't in the Good Mother's repertoire. Oh well.

It's kind of interesting to be watching the high school relationship circus again, this time from an adult perspective. More than anything else, these kids are experimenting, playing at commitment: at that age, you can try on a stable relationship, and if you decide you don't like the way it looks on you, you can wriggle out of it after a couple of weeks.

I think one of the things I tend to look for in my extra-marital relationships is the opportunity to be a kid again. Maybe that means I'm immature. Or maybe it just means that I, like most people, am searching for what's missing from my life.

And what's missing is certainly not a stable relationship: Parker and I have been in one ever since we were kids. We started dating at seventeen, got married at nineteen, bought our first house at twenty, and were parents by twenty-two. My life is chock-full of adult responsibilities, and I'm not looking for any more commitments. In terms of my day-to-day experience, I suffer from a surfeit of domesticity.

Which is why, when Travis, whom I have been dating for about a year and a half, recently started fantasizing about all of us living together under one roof, I freaked: if he's in the house, who's going to take me out?

I'm beginning to realize that my committed self has her hands full, and that, for her part, Viny the commitment-phobe wants to keep her hands free.

This is something of a problem. After all, Travis is not suffering from a surfeit of domesticity. He's quite a bit older than I am, but he's never been married, and he's never had children. At this point in his life, a stable relationship is looking pretty good to him – he feels he may finally be ready to settle down. In fact, it's entirely possible that Travis was attracted to me in large part because of how stable I am. Maybe he looked at my demonstrated ability to maintain a long-term relationship, my minor feats of domestic prowess, the joy I take in my children, and thought, “This is what's missing from my life.”

Ah, the perennial problem of the human dyad: how can ONE relationship meet the needs of TWO different people?

The only solution: keep creating the relationship together.

Because it is a continual act of co-creation, a stable relationship between two people is necessarily (if somewhat paradoxically) a fluid one.