Primary, Secondary, Tertiary--A Hiearchy of Polyamorous Love? Part Two (With a Sidedish of NRE)

This was orginally published elsewhere in April 2007

Now, I must admit to having a bit of a bias in regards to the love that is experienced in a long term sustainable relationship. Whether this relationship is primary, secondary, or tertiary makes no difference. I'm talking about using the assessment of time as a significant factor in the level of commitment we offer to a relationship. Love tends to grow over time. Especially when we give the relationship devoted attention. The more time we spend with another, the more intimacy is shared and the bonds of friendship deepen. Vulnerabilities are exposed. Trust grows.

Not that I'm dissing "love at first sight". I've experienced it myself so I know some of its power and appeal. The heart is known to have the ability to open wide and fast. Some love opens as sweet friendship. Some a wild passion. When the heart opens to love, it's a beautiful thing, whatever form it takes.

I've had discussions with certain polyamorous individuals who subscribe to the idea that they must treat all of their partners as "equal". Now if by equal they meant that everyone deserves respect and consideration, kindness and compassion, in the general sense, then yes, I agree. But what some folks subscribe to is an equal consideration towards all of their partners, no matter how long the duration of the relationship. I remember a conversation with one man who was having some issues with his wife of many years over his "equal" consideration of his girlfriend of 3 months. I told him to get a clue. If I was in a new relationship with someone and they were offering me the same level of consideration as a their long-term partner, that would be a big red-flag for me that would actually lessen my ability to trust them. Yes, give me equal consideration as to what restaurant we all eat at or what movie to watch, but beyond that, I hope you'll get to know me better before you make me a beneficiary on your trust. Love at first sight or not.

One phenomenon that often occurs in new relationships that can cause stress in the already existing relationships is New Relationship Energy (NRE). NRE is a wonderful thing but the high one experiences from it can feel so overwhelming and all consuming that a person may be drawn to spend every free moment with their new love while neglecting what they are already committed to. It's also easy to give extra consideration to the preferences of the new love while taking your long-term partner for granted. Simply postponing your obligations to the non-human aspects of your life might be a reasonable choice as a temporary condition of NRE. Chaos ensues and then you clean up the mess later. We all have moments when we don't want to miss out on the fun and we are willing to pay the price later. But if one has other committed relationships, they must be conscientious in tending to those relationships. It's unkind and simply bad behavior to neglect an "old love" just because the "new love" seems more exciting in the moment. If you don't have what it takes to care for the heart of one love, you might want to reconsider your ability to pull off being a good partner to multiple lovers. An appropriate time to consider adding on is when you are maintaining well what you already have. Of course, love doesn't always come at "appropriate" times. Kind of like children. So we cope the best we can with an overly full plate sometimes.

That said. It's also important for the "old love" to exercise understanding and support towards the development of the new relationship. It's a very lovely gift when the long-term partner is willing to accept a little benign neglect from the one who is currently high on the drug of new love. This is a time when compersion is a very valuable asset to possess. Not merely tolerating, but encouraging and supporting the one you love, loving another, is a big piece of what makes polyamory work well.

Primary, Secondary, Tertiary--Hierarchy of Polyamorous Love?

This was originally published elsewhere in April 2007
Some polys abhor the idea of classifying their lovers as "primary", "secondary", or"tertiary". They find the concept degrading. Personally, I find the terms valuable when wanting to use a simple word that explains the practical nature of your relationship with a specific partner. Now, if someone were attempting to use these labels as descriptive quantifiers or qualifiers in regards to "how much" they love a person, or to the "degree of intensity" of that love--a sort of categorizing of lovers who win 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, places in their heart, that does strike me as degrading.

Here's my idea of a practical application for using these terms although there is of course no set way of structuring the primary, secondary and tertiary statuses of your polyamorous relationships. This is merely an attempt to explain a feasible way to use these terms.

Primary Partner: This is the lover you spend most of your time with. You probably live together but not necessarily. Your finances are often combined in that you might own a home together, have joint checking and savings accounts, as well as other shared investments. This person is the mother/father to your children and you share the holidays together with relatives on both sides. This is the person you are mostly tied up with in the mundane aspects of life. As the mundane is a significant part of most of our lives, it's very nice to have a responsible and committed partner to share these daily duties with. After a long day of work and kids, it's nice to relax on the couch with this person and exchange foot rubs. Hopefully, on the nights you aren't too tired, you'll have an incredible session of lovemaking before falling off to sleep in each other's arms.

Secondary Partner: This is the lover you schedule the next most significant amount of time with. Since your life is busy with your primary relationship, kids, work and everything else, you probably have a fairly regular schedule worked out to be with this person. Maybe you meet them for lunch every Tuesday, and do dinner with a sleep over on Thursday. Sunday they might come over for brunch and help you and your primary with yard work. You probably talk on the phone and exchange a lot of emails with this person to keep the communication and scheduling clear, and also just because you miss them.

Tertiary Partner: This is the lover you see twice a year. Once, in the winter when they come to the city you live in to visit their relatives (and you) for a week, and then once every summer you take a mini vacation to visit them for three days. Other than that you talk on the phone every month or so and email occasionally.

Of course, these are just made up scenarios that might suggest the level of life involvement you keep with your primary, secondary and tertiary lovers. They are meant as reasonable descriptions of the level of contact you might maintain with your different lovers. There are certainly no hard and fast rules nor definitive lines that place relationships in rigid primary, secondary, and tertiary boxes with specific time allotments. Some people may have two primary partners and live with one or both of them. You may or may not share your finances with your primary partner. If you don't have children or a busy work schedule you may have lots more time for "playing" with your all of your partners. Maybe your primary partner travels a lot and you see them least of all your partners. Some people consider themselves as their own primary partner and their lovers as their secondary partners. Maybe you have no primary partner and two or three secondary partners. Maybe you are in a group marriage and the responsibilities, including the children, are all shared equally. Or you might be part of a triad and you are all primaries to each other. Maybe you have no primary partner and half a dozen tertiary partners who all live in the same town as you. Also of course, life situations change and people evolve and a secondary could move into primary status or vice versa.

Whether a lover is primary, secondary or tertiary, it does not refer to the quality or quantity of your love for them. You might have a tertiary lover that you've known for twenty years and the love you share is just as deep and abiding as the love you share with your primary partner of 5 years. And each relationship is different. Each person is unique and therefore the love we share with them is unique. We are multi-faceted individuals and each person we are in relationship with will focus on a different facet, will see our shine from a different perspective. Love manifests differently in every relationship. One love isn't better or worst than another. There is no hierarchy of love. The nature of our relationships aren't higher or lower. Primary, secondary or tertiary, love is love.

To be continued.

Know The Truth Now

When people contemplate enlightenment they often think of The Buddha. Jesus, Rumi, or Muhammad among many others may also come to mind. What specific aspect of character did these personalities possess that makes their greatness so obvious? I imagine that each of them experienced a fundamental shift in consciousness that allowed them to directly experience the truth. In other words, they were enlightened beings.

Regardless of your cultural and spiritual influences there is only one kind of enlightenment. There is not one enlightenment for the students of Zen, another that one aspires for through practicing yoga, one that is attainable by chanting Hindu japa and yet another that is arrived at through meditation and prayer. Enlightenment is enlightenment. The truth is the truth.

Some consider enlightenment as a rare reward, only attainable by a few individuals who are willing to give away all of their earthly possessions, separate themselves from family and friends and spend their lives meditating in a cave or monastery. But enlightenment is available to anyone who chooses to pursue it and such sacrifices are not necessary or appropriate for everyone. The paths to enlightenment are varied, each suitable in different ways depending on a person’s walk in life.

“O God, My God What Shall I Do? And if everyway is closed before you, the secret one will show a secret path no other eyes have seen.”--Rumi

One path to enlightenment is the Enlightenment Intensive, which was developed in 1968 by Charles Berner (1929-2007), also known as Yogeshwar Muni. Yogeshwar studied humanistic psychology extensively for years, working to help people to improve their relationships through communication. As his interest in accelerating the process of self-discovery grew, he developed the idea of combining western style dyad communication work along with a Rinzai Zen style of contemplation using various Zen koans such as Who Am I? or What Am I? The results were that his students started describing personal experiences that were identical to the enlightenment experiences described by people who have sat in silent meditation for years and years.

The 3-day Enlightenment Intensive is a residential workshop that combines the age-old practice of reflective contemplation with verbal communication. During the retreat, all of your basic needs are provided for in an environment that is free from the distractions of your daily life. There is no belief system for you to follow and no one attempts to tell you what the truth is. The combined contemplation and dyad communication technique allows you to move past mental constructs, memories, ideas, insights, traumas, and false identifications in an accelerated fashion. This process empties the mind, making it possible for you to breakthrough into enlightenment and directly experience the truth.

A direct experience is different than the usual indirect methods we normally use to understand something via our senses, thinking, reasoning, feelings, believing etc. A direct experience is self-evident and beyond doubt. The truth is that which actually exists apart from and not dependent on what we sense, think, reason, feel or believe.

The enlightenment that many participants experience on an Enlightenment Intensive is the same enlightenment that Buddha experienced. No doubt, Buddha’s enlightenment was extraordinarily deep, but the direct experiences of truth are the same. So although the extent of Buddha’s enlightenment may have been greater, there is only one type of enlightenment, which is conscious, direct knowing of oneself.

People with direct experience of the truth have a deeper understanding of self and others. Their relationships, along with the overall quality of their lives improve. They tend to communicate more skillfully and to create more personal happiness in their lives.
Although we can’t force enlightenment to happen, an Enlightenment Intensive is a powerful and easily accessible opportunity where the perfect environment is created for a direct experience of the truth to arrive, through grace, for those intending to know it.

“Separate from yourself that which separates you from others.”—Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

Enlightenment Intensives are not part of any structured organization or belief system. They are a tried and true technique, made available by trained individuals throughout the world. There are some books that have been written that describe the process in detail and also many websites dedicated to this practice. One of my favorites is Edrid's site, which also provides a list of Enlightenment Intensives scheduled throughout the United States. You can also simply google Enlightenment Intensive and/or Dyad Communication to pull up lots of information.

"El poliamor,uno para todos, y todos para uno"

I've posted below, article on polyamory (translated by Juliette Siegfried of Barcelona) from a daily newspaper in Spain called Publico. It was written by Antonio Gonzalez in Madrid and printed on December 26, 2007. You can go straight to the site and read it in Spanish. I pulled it off of Polyamory in the news! from the Polyamorous Perculations site.

One For All and All For One

A new emotional concept suggests the possibility of romantic, long
term, honest relationships with various people, but without getting
married.

Roland has been married to Juliette for more than 10 years. At the same
time, he has maintained a romantic — and sexual — relationship for some months
with Laurel, with the complete knowledge and approval of his wife, who gets
along very well with her husband’s new girlfriend.

Both women can also have other relationships and Roland, apparently, doesn’t mind. No one would say that American Juliette Siegfried, 40, Britisher Roland Combes of the same age, and American Laurel Avery, 32, form a typical family (as they themselves affirm), but instead they are an ideal example of polyamory.

This concept, born in California in the 1960’s, describes an emotional relationship between various people, and is based on honesty and mutual sincerity, and in which jealousy, they say, has no place. Polyamorists are clear that their relationships are not merely sexual, as happens with swingers (partner-swapping), but instead involves relationships with an emotional connection.

The three have decided to go public in Público to help make this lifestyle known, which is quite the minority in Spain, where those confirmed to be polyamorous number around 500 but are expanding.

Juliette, who runs an internet polyamory group, has lived in Spain
with her husband for almost five years, and she proudly confirms that in
Barcelona, where they have lived since June, more and more people attend the
monthly group meetings. However, Roland sees Spaniards as reticent about this
new lifestyle and notes that “For many, the main obstacle is jealousy.”

No Secrets

Roland says that there is no “approval process” for someone to enter into
a polyamorous relationship with them. “If Juliette falls in love with someone,
that person will usually begin coming to our meetings or going out to eat with
us. I will never say to my wife “I don’t like him,” because we have a natural
confidence that we’re not going to choose inappropriate people or people that
will be very bad for us,” Roland explains.

For Juliette it’s essential that there are no secrets, although she notes that in her case, she doesn’t want to know every detail of every encounter. Other polyamorists are interested in that kind of detail, and there is no standard model of a polyamorous relationship. Along the same lines, there are groups in which all the members are sexually involved with each other, particularly if there are bisexuals, and other groups in which all members are not physically involved, as in the case of Juliette and Laurel.

Juliette says that “There are no limits” to the number of people in a
polyamorous relationship, but that it is impossible “to have time for many
people,” particularly, notes Roland, “if you want to have a stable, loving,
quality relationship.” “The fundamental concept is honestly, and the rest is
very open,” says Roland, and he concludes by saying that he believes the
government should support this type of union.

Along with the emotional aspects, polyamorists have to confront the consequences in terms of daily life and sexual health, of having multiple partners at the same time. Polyamorists maintain that the risk of suffering a sexually transmitted disease may be less than that of a monogamous couple, since, in their case, they have more frequent STD tests. In addition, all the partners know about the other partners, which doesn’t usually happen in traditional relationships.

“We are tested regularly, much more often than monogamous people,” says Laurel, who believes that in Spain, many women are not surprised about the possibility that their partners are being unfaithful. In any case, Juliette says that it’s “fundamental” to always use condoms or appropriate barriers with partners outside the primary couple, to avoid problems. Her husband Roland affirms “honesty protects us better than the hidden sex experienced in many monogamous relationships.”

In terms of children, Roland, Juliette and Laurel don’t have any, although they know polyamorous families that do. “We love the idea of raising children in households of more than two adults, in fact we don’t want to do it with only two, because it’s too much work. Family groups with children do very well,” says Juliette.

The Battle Against Prejudice

The majority of Spanish polyamorists only fully share and develop their
way of life among those who think similarly. They keep it secret from their
families and work environments, for fear of the possible consequences.

“There is a lot of sexual hypocrisy. If you know it will upset your parents or that
they’ll criticize you at work, you keep quiet. We’re not trying to upset anyone
or damage our professional credibility,” explains Ana (a false name), a
42-year-old physician from Madrid, who believes that there are “many more
polyamorists than it seems.”

Ana has been married for 21 years to Juan, a 40-year-old graphic designer who also did not want to share his real identity, and who confirms that in the majority of monogamous couples, “they lie; they don’t tell the other what they are doing.”

For her part, Patricia, a 25-year-old bisexual sociologist who also prefers to give a false name, believes that all structures can be valid in polyamory. “There are trios, quads, and all can be involved with each other. However there are other groups that are more like a network based on one primary couple,” she explains.

Juan wants to be clear that polyamory is not some sort of sect, particularly since “there are no fixed norms” other than “honesty above all.” Regardless, he says, “jealousy can arise, but this also happens with monogamous couples.”

“Love without Limits”

For model Lilian Kimberly Jeronimo, from the Canary Islands, who has no problem revealing her identity for the cause, polyamory is “love without limits.” Lilian has a
primary partner, with whom she has a 4-year relationship, and a secondary
partner, a monogamous man with whom she’s been for a year, since they began
living polyamorously.

At the same time, she has relationships with two special friends, with whom she maintains a friendship that is “deep and sincere, and can go beyond friendship.” Her dream is to build a “polyamorous family in the future,” and she doesn’t rule out having children.

Lilian Kimberly, who is also an animal rights activist, believes that polyamory in Spain could develop similarly to the gay movement, and she is willing to fight for it. The model, who recognizes that before becoming polyamorous she was “rather possessive,” concludes that when there is excellent communication between partners, jealousy disappears.

What Is Committment?

Here's an article one of my friends just sent me, What is Commitment?--Polyamorous perspectives on love, sex, and relationships by Cascade Spring Cook. It was published in American Sexuality magazine which is a publication of the National Sexuality Resource Center at San Francisco State University.

While I'm posting links, here's another to the International Association For The Study of Sexuality, Culture And Society (IASSCS).

I'd love to go to their next conference in Hanoi, Vietnam 2009! I'm posting the graphic from their 2007 conference in Lima, Peru just because I like it.

Total Power Exchange

Mistress Matisse offers a nice post today on Total Power Exchange (TPE) in Dominant/Submissive relationships.

Masochistic Surrender

Leathernroses offers lots of good articles on BDSM. Here is one written by Dorothy Hayden, CSW, CAC called Psychological Dimensions of Masochistic Surrender.

Purpose Of This Blog

This is a new blog that I'm just setting up for my clients and anyone else that's interested. I'll be posting whatever I think is valuable for specific clients and also for general interest. Happy New Year!