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"[I]nstitutionalised monogamy has not served women's best interests. It privileges the interests of both men and capitalism, operating as it does through the mechanisms of exclusivity, posessiveness and jealousy, all filtered through the rose-tinted lens of romance." - Victoria Robinson, "My Baby Just Cares for Me: Feminism, Heterosexuality, and Non-Monogamy" (1997)

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"Polyamory is not an identity that dictates having multiple partners but rather a fluid process of checking in with oneself to see what feels appropriate with a given person in a given situation." -- Polyamory in the 21st Century by Deborah M. Anapol (referenced in Many Love: A Memoir of Polyamory and Finding Love(s) by Sophia Lucido Johnson)

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Positioning

I'm reading some of the more popular books about nonmonogamy/polyamory, and there's a zeal and confidence about ENM that I don't currently relate to, and I don't think the majority of people relate to, either. There's a lot more people ashamed about sexuality and their desires than there are people enthusiastically embracing them and finding a productive path forward (ENM vs. cheating). I can't decide if I'm projecting my own insecurity and shame here, though. Right now I'm picking apart my insecure attachment style as it relates to my adoption, which is obviously a painful process, and I'm wondering if that pain is clouding my perspective on my life in general. Right now, I feel inclined to write a book that's more focused on the failure of monogamy than the success of polyamory, the sadness that accompanies being disavowed of your belief in a romcom ending for your story, and figuring out a way forward as best as you can. I feel like trying and failing and trying again is more relatable than succeeding -- more people are aspiring than being aspired to.

Sophia Lucido Johnson's Many Love starts with an anecdote about polyamorous dating, but that's really about building community and mutual support. The characters are all dating, but it's about being able to rely on other people to care for you in a crisis (like your cat suddenly falling ill). Maybe the book that's more fulfilling for me to write is a book about not being alone, about building community and a safety net so that you can never be completely abandoned. The thing I care about isn't sex, it's intimate friendship and strong bonds that I have forged via sex.

One of SLJ's goals with Many Love is to "flex the possibilities of what can be meant by the word 'relationship' -- in other words, how can our friends be a part of our love lives?" (xxix) I think the blurriness is the way we solve the problems of monogamy. If the boundaries aren't as rigid, we can't maintain them, and stringent monogamy can't exist in its current form, a toxic ooze that seeps into every other relationship and eats away at intimacy with everyone beyond your primary partner.

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Citizenship, Interpretation

Cracked the spine on Beyond Monogamy: Polyamory and the Future of Polyqueer Sexualities by Mimi Schippers today. It's the first new book I'm reading for reference and just the first few dense pages of the introduction have been so energizing and exciting. It's so reassuring to have someone bringing academic and theoretical work together that aligns with my unarticulated feelings and lived experiences. I've deployed my more extensive deep-reading highlighting strategy, and already the pages are lit up with color for key words, takeaways, etc. It's reminding me of how much I loved getting my BA in Women's Studies over a decade ago, and I can feel my repressed desire to go back to school rattling the bars of its cage.

Mimi talks about the way non-monogamous people are outside society, refused citizenship for not aligning themselves with our culture's norms and embracing their place in a broken, repressive system. I feel that deep in my bones. I feel (and am meant to feel) like an outsider when my home state requires I answer how many sexual partners I have when getting STI tested. I feel forced into hierarchical polyamory by wanting to access the privileges of legal marriage. What if one of my partners is better available to care for me when I'm sick, but it's not my spouse? These are all features, not flaws, with a system trying to enforce a heteronormative, monogamous, even racist social structure.

Having an academic text that legitimizes my experience and puts it in context of theory feels so powerful and reassures me I'm on the right track. It helps me figure out where my book could sit in the larger scheme and discussion of nonmonogamy: not academic, but personal, a translation of the brilliant work done by theorists and researchers, padded out with personal experience to draw the reader in (and maybe titillate them). When I talked to C.O. about my idea, she immediately reassured me that academics cannot be the only ones talking about these ideas -- they have to be massaged and brought to the masses if these ideas are going to have real impact and influence. I believe I'm the person to do this work, and it feels exhilarating. This is the book I've been working on my entire life, and it feels like a reason to have lived.

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"...those who do not look or act like 'normal' (white, middle-class, gender-conforming, and monogamous) heterosexuals are still denied the rights of citizenship." -- Mimi Schippers, Beyond Monogamy: Polyamory and the Future of Polyqueer Sexualities

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Saying no, reclaiming time

One of the weak justifications I gave K when we first started discussing my past as a writer was that I simply did not have time. From my texts: "I probably still have the skill, but it's just not been a priority at this time. I have seasons. This season is skeeball, indoor cycling, and maybe crocheting. It was a lot easier to write when I didn't have to be employed, ahaha." His response: "Those all sound so cool and like more fun than writing, tbh."

Almost four months later, months full of his loving encouragement and well-natured bullying, I'm close to 10,000 words into my first book. But I was right: the structure and pace of my life has to change in order to get to 80,000. To create the book, I have to also create time. Slowly, laboriously teaching myself to crochet can wait.

"Saying no has more creative power than ideas, insights, and talent combined. Saying no guards time," writes Kevin Ashton in HTFAH. One of the things that challenges me the most is where to cut. Do I see my friends less? Do I put aside skeeball, a hobby that scratches my insatiable itch for competition? How about cycling, which is reshaping my body in a way that stokes my confidence and provides me with much needed health benefits? Do I spend less time supporting my spouse, M, or do I spend less time growing my relationship with my partner, K? Nonmonogamy has taught me well that time is the most finite resource in this life. There is no increasing time, only reclaiming it.

Ever since I reinvented myself six years ago after my move to a new city, I've developed a terminal case of FOMO. Therapists have encouraged me to slow down, friends are shocked when I show them my calendar nightly appointments with no days off. When I first arrived here, it was chains of dates; now, it's split time between two partners, my cherished hobbies, and close friends. The time I use to recoup is during my hours working from home, which has begun to take a toll on my productivity and my boss's esteem. The latter of which will eventually drive me away, it's only a matter of time and my deteriorating resolve.

So where do I cut? So far, I've begun in what was not initially an obvious place: excising alcohol. When I previously have thought about the problematic drinking I developed during COVID lockdown, I never thought about it in terms of time wasted, but the evidence was all in front of me. Hangovers have kept me from working hard, professionally and domestically. In the first year of lockdown, despite having nowhere to go, I read an unusually low number of books... because I couldn't read while buzzed. I logged hours and hours playing mindless games and watching dumb TV. In moderation, good, but drinking was helping me sink into malaise and keeping me incapacitated to climb out.

This month, since a time beyond memory, I have spent almost as many nights sober as I have drinking even one drink. The nights I do drink are more moderate. Magically, sobering up has created time. My mind does not need to rest in the day because it sleeps better at night. I don't wake up still needing to recover. I find my accomplishments, rather than my distractions, relaxing. And when I do distract, it penetrates deeper to peacefulness, like letting your muscles rest after a hard workout.

But alcohol was the toxic panacea I was using to "cure" all my other ailments. K diagnosed the biggest one, and now that I know the root of my unhappiness it only grows faster with my attention on it. It's the structure that holds my life together, it's the scariest thing to destabilize, and it's constricting my time, energy, and soul itself.

I gotta quit my damn job.

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Setting intentions

Creating this blog as a place to dump thoughts as I work on my book. It's a place to document experiences that may come in useful while I draft, as well as to process my feelings as I evolve as a writer and creator. I want to set my intention here to not create a personal journal, but to practice writing for an audience and synthesizing my thoughts effectively.