This Is My Dream

I'm contemplating New Relationship Energy (NRE) as it particularly applies to polyamorous relationships. NRE is like a drug that induces an alternated state of consciousness with a heightened sense of sexual and emotional attraction for a new partner. NRE helps a couple form deep bonds of attachment when they are still virtually strangers to one another on many significant levels. Swimming in NRE is often experienced as intense waves of bliss and well being mingled with bouts of anxiety that lessen as the mutuality of the attraction is more securely established.
In monogamous or serial monogamous relationships, NRE energy often plays out significantly different than in polyamorous relationships where the person (s) experiencing NRE is concurrently establishing a relationship/falling in love with a new partner while at the same time maintaining an ongoing relationship with an old love/spouse/primary partner.
Unless a "monogamous" partner is cheating on a current and ongoing partner, they are pretty much free to jump feet first, into the supreme joy and emotionally bonding pleasures of NRE. Although a monogamous person may have other commitments such a career, children etc., there is no "significant other" to interfere or distract them, no other lover that loyalty insists they must mindfully consider. They are pretty much free to dive into their new relationship, fully immersing them self in the waters of love, allowing the rest of the world to disappear while the full focus of their attention is directed to the supreme loving of this new other.
NRE is a valuable and exhilarating gift that new love offers. Some say it is indispensable to the bonding process of new sexual loving relationships. It's the glue that sticks new lovers together. Others are leery of NRE, even labeling it as a "false love" because of the common distortions in judgement and perceptions that one is susceptible to making in regards to this new person who is the object of their desire. These people would rather deny or suppress NRE than risk being swept away on a wave of irrational and exaggerated positive feelings where the new lover's attributes are magnified and their deficits are barely noticed. These people prefer a slower, more pragmatic approach to the process of creating new relationships and falling in love. I suppose that some new relationships, with otherwise potential for compatibility, actually drift apart when NRE isn't given it's due. That's not to say that love in some relationships doesn't grow slowly and surely with measured steps and careful calculations as one allows their heart to open with very little manifestation of NRE. Who can say how love will present itself? The possibilities are endless.
But for those romantic and polyamorous people who want nothing more than to dive deep into NRE, experiencing it in all it's wet and wondrous glory, rarely poking their heads above the surface for a breath of air, well theirs is perhaps a different story when they have another significant other relationship to maintain. As much as they might desire to take the plunge, they have commitments and responsibilities in sustaining their other, older, perhaps momentarily less exciting, but nevertheless tried and true, long term, love relationship (s).
This can prove to be a huge challenge and is often seen as the cornerstone of being a worthy polyamorous partner. What a balancing act! If you are of the school that NRE is a good thing, where do you start? I suggest starting with strong intention. Intend to keep your heart open to both partners. Intend to maintain your primary and already established relationship with devotion to mindfulness. Intend to ride NRE with both wild abandon, and cautious, graceful integrity. How does one do that? Well, all relationships have different needs, but I do know that with intention all things are possible. Intention sets us on the path and the steps we need to take are often revealed on an as needed basis. There will be holes that trip us up and boulders that seem to block our way. When we are intent on maintaining an ongoing long term relationship while establishing a new one, we may need to put the wild abandon of NRE on a long but tethered leash. Depending on our situation, we may need to put it on a short leash. Maybe it needs to be practiced in a timed released sort of fashion--in small doses that don't rock the stability of the boat of our other relationships. Perhaps setting an alarm clock to wake us up from our NRE dream at scheduled intervals. There are no hard and fast rules that will work for everyone. We are the architects and I suggest using freedom as the foundation that we build our love relationships on. Again, how to do that? Intention provides the answers. We gotta make up our rules as we go along, caring as gently as we can for one another's hearts. And yet there are open relationship pioneers who have already blazed some trails into this wilderness and I think it prudent to follow their lead, at least listen their suggestions and try some of their ideas when we are first starting out. Reading lots of books on polyamory is a good idea. Finding and connecting with others who live this lifestyle is invaluable.
Good communication with both partners--your long term relationship partner, as well as your new love, is imperative. All three partners (or four, or however many partners there are) getting together and discussing the dynamics of NRE and how each person is being impacted by it is helpful.
I repeatedly advise couples I work with to keep their hearts and minds open to everyone involved. To be a good friend first and foremost, and to love your lover's other partner (s) which I know can be most difficult at times (definitely not always) but that's when it's probably most important. I think it's a good idea for the established, long term partner to be as generous and understanding as they can possibly muster in allowing for their partner's experience of NRE with their new lover and the dimished focus they will perhaps receive for awhile. This takes a lot of trust and emotional maturity, no doubt. At the same time and equality important is for the partner who is caught up in NRE with their new love, to simultaneously keep their long term partner's needs and vulnerabilities close to their heart at all times. They must be diligent in following through on the commitments to their older relationship (s). I would suggest it's a red flag, the partner who is willing to be lax with his attention and focus on his already established relationships. If he was willing to forsake his old love the new, I'd suspect that the new love's heart would be next in line to be trampled on when when they are no longer so fresh and new. At the same time, a new love is also worthy of attention and focus and need their opening heart to be protected and cared for too. We have to be willing to talk about our needs and be creative at finding innovative strategies for making sure everyone's are being met.
So the point of this post is the contrast of dealing with polyamorous NRE as opposed to dealing with "monogamous" NRE. Polyamorous NRE is, or at least certainly has, the potential of being much more of a challenge. I've found it to be one of the biggest complications/challenges for many who are starting up a new polyamorous relationship. That and the simple fact that there may be unlimited love but there is not unlimited time and energy. There are only so many hours in a day.
This is one of the reasons that I appreciate a family centered model of polyamory, where time and energy can be used more efficiently. It affords one to feed two birds with one seed and offers a relationship the freedom to have all of your lovers with you most of the time. This doesn't mean that everyone will necessarily be together most of the time, but rather that there is the freedom to choose to be together as much as is practical and possible for each particular person. It means that building a comfort level is paramount, one of knowing that you are welcomed, wanted, and loved. It doesn't mean that everyone lives together in the same house or that everyone spends an equal amount of time together. But it does suggest more fluid boundaries while extending the opportunities of more actual time that is available to be together. Kind of a mi casa su casa sort of mentality. I don't think it's a good plan when people end up feeling excluded and left out, disconnected and as if they don't really belong. If lovers can flow more organically into and out of the days and hours of each other's lives so that they spend time on their own, with other friends and activites, as well as in dyads, triads, quads, so on and so forth with various loves and their various loves, meandering into and out of each other's arms and space as fierce (and happy) individuals who are choosing to live interdependently in a close knit family of friends sort of way...well, this is my dream for polyamorous relationships.

Some polyamorous people keep their different love relationships quite separated from one another and while this might work just fine for them, I think it more often adds to the potential of people not getting enough time and attention from their lovers and also possibly feeling excluded from the warmth of companionship. Again, there is only so much time in a day and while every relationship deserves some one on one privacy, if you throw in some family style dinners, play time and parties where everyone is invited, a willingness to share in another's chores and errands etc., everyone can get more time to share in the juicy love that's available in unlimited abundance.

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.