communication vs bullying

[kareina]

The author tammypierce has been posting recently on the topic of bullying, prompted by a now-famous incident of bullying which ended in the suicide of the victim. Today's post on the subject discussed the fact that many women are inclined to blame other women when their men "cheat" on them, and when this happens words like "slut" tend to be used. This is a topic which is important to me, and I wound up leaving a rather long comment in reply. Since it was a long comment, I decided that it was worth sharing here, as well, since not everyone I care about will see it there.

I, for one, am grateful that there is a good alternative to the whole "cheating" culture. Polyamory, with its emphasis on honesty and communication between all parties involved, as well as communication with anyone with whom one of the people in the relationship would like to be involved, avoids many of the problems such as you describe here.

There are some people out there who claim to be genuinely monogamist--they say that they literally never find anyone else even a little bit attractive once they've found their "one true love". This is very, very rare. Most people are human, and will find more than one person attractive in their life.

In the latter case they have a variety of choices 1) they can choose the polyamory approach and form stable, honest, communication-filled relationships with more than one person. 2) they can deny that aspect of themselves and choose only one person with whom to be involved, "forsaking all others" with whom they would otherwise be compatible 3) they can claim to follow the party line and do monogamy whilst lying about who they are with and "cheating" on their "partner".

To my eye it is an easy decision. I will always choose truthfulness, honor, communication, and love over self-denial or dishonesty.

I, too, have been a victim of the "blame the girl" mentality, where people who should know better chose to bandy around the word "slut".

When I in high school I fell head over heels in love with an intellegent young man, who had the best library. We were together for a while and then he felt the need to end the relationship for reasons I never did understand. I was heartbroken, and still totally smitten with him. A couple of years later my best friend, who had always been a self-described "flirt", who often stated that she wanted to have lots of fun before "settling down", started dating my first love. Meanwhile, I started dating someone else, and the relationship had its ups and downs, as they do, and we eventually decided to go our separate ways.

Sometime later, when my best friend was in the hospital with mono, my first love was visiting my house, and we discovered that the attraction we had felt for one another was still there. We did the right thing and called my best friend to ask her if she was ok with our spending time cuddling and kissing. She told him to do whatever he wanted, and we enjoyed some very sweet affection (not sex; I was still too young to be willing to go that far).

Much to my surprise, when my "best friend" got out of the hospital she wrote me a note expressing her unhappiness with my betrayal and stated that she never wanted to speak with me again. She then spread rumors about me claiming that I was a "slut" (never mind that I'd kissed only three people in my life at that point), and my final year at high school was very difficult and painful as a result.

Even though that incident took place many years before the term "polyamory" had been coined, my instinct was to approach everyone involved with honest communication. Her choice to close off communication and spread hurtful rumors broke my heart just as much as the ending of any other relationship can do. This incident underscored for me the paramount importance of communication in all relationship, romantic or not. People who choose to eschew communication are the ones who also choose paths of bullying, hate, and violence. That is not a path that I find acceptable.

Comments

[imdonnan.livejournal.com]

From the 30,000 foot view, there are times when the truth can hurt. For example, if a child walks up to an overweight adult and says "your fat". Social norms would say that a responsible parent would apologize to the adult and pull the child aside and explain why their *truthful* comment was not nice.

Ok is if you look at it one way, the bare bones fact is we live in a world of denial. The word I like to use is choice. Not to sound too lofty ‘cause lord knows I have made some bad choices that I would not want to repeat but... You choose to not eat candy all the time. You choose to go to school, get education and a degree rather than spend the same amount of time watching TV. You choose not to yell at someone when you are mad at them (you choose to be mad too). The list goes on and on. In each case a choice was made to deny instant gratification for the long term good.

Relationships are far more complicated but there is still ‘denial’ in open and closed relationships. In both styles honesty is the best policy. So in a way if you are in a poly’ relationship you make the choice to tell your primary partner that you are twitterpated with someone new and ask for approval. If we want to be devoid of denial why tell anyone? Just do it. Then when you are found out you lay out the facts. You saw. You wanted. You did. *Truthful* but not nice.

IMHO being a monogamist is not buying into the cheating culture anymore than polyamory. Monogamy also has an “emphasis on honesty and communication”. We both know someone that was polyamory that had a wide variety of old and new “friends” and at the same time he was only honest some of the time. Does that make polyamory, across the board, buying into a cheating culture?

Each type of relationship has a pro and con. I don’t think either promotes dishonesty or denial more than the other. What you do with the truth and choices are up to you in the type of relationship you are in.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

It is very interesting to see which aspects of what I thought I was saying each reader sees and responds to. From what I could tell when I was writing (and can still see in the word on the screen) I stated that today's poly culture emphasizes honesty and communication, I stated that I see monogamy as requiring an aspect of self denial for all but those rare few for whom falling in love really does mean that they are truly interested in only one person. I did not, in any way, address in the original post the fact that monogamist relationships also require communication and honesty to work, but I did state that in a reply to one of the comments. I did state that the cheating culture is based on a combination of dishonesty and lack of communication.

Then, for reasons of balance I contrasted what I see as the biggest advantages of the poly community with the biggest disadvantage I see for each of the other two options. Since Monogamy also requires honesty and communication, I contrasted the right to love whomever thou wilt on the poly side, with the limitations of loving the first (or current, depending on the strictness of one's definition) person to whom you commit on the monogamist side. I then contrasted the both of them against the dishonesty inherent with the cheating culture side of the triangle. The balance of the sentence made sense to me when I wrote it, but, clearly, to very few (any?) of my readers.

To me, the whole point of the essay is that I have joy that we've got choices--one can buy into the cheating point of view, one can choose monogamy, or one can choose polyamory. One of these choices I totally disprove of. One of them I see as appropriate for a much more limited subset of the population than Hollywood would have us believe is true, and the other is the one I am happy with for me.

I don't equate monogamy with buying into the cheating culture, but I do know that a terribly high percentage of the "cheaters" out there *claim* to be doing monogamy. Perhaps if there were less of an emphasis on monogamy in our culture, fewer people would lie about doing it...

And the "bad example" you refer to above is one of the reasons I've always chosen communication and honesty, and asked it of my partners. I don't every want some busy body coming up to me and saying "do you know what your partner has been up to?" (as happens as a result of that person's actions more than once), without being able to say "why, yes, as a matter of fact, I do."

[imdonnan.livejournal.com]

One of the aspects of poly that has not been talked about is 'temping fate'. Wonder if you find someone you that you connect with more than your primary person? The connection could be they are better in a conversation or intamamently they are better fit or or or...

It seems that most poly's seem to be fishing for bigger fish to trade up to or they like the feeling of a new relationship. If you are the person on the other side you have to keep moving too because you never know when the music will stop and you will not be in a chair. This can put the whole relationship on uneven ground. Your looking, their looking, they hit a homerun for the weekend while you count the dustbunnies alone or visa-versa.

It comes down to what you are comfortable with. All of that aside, I am ok if people want to be poly as well as those that are not. I am ok with straight, bi or gay. I hold no judgement on my part other than I feel that people should know the pro's and con's. No one style should be a perfect fit for all of us. Everyone needs to find the type of relationship that works for them.

[madryn-1960.livejournal.com]

I make no judgement about what people do in their own lives (as long as abuse is not involved) but, yes, I often wonder if poly folks are tempting fate. I don't wanna be counting dust-buniies whilse my man is out cruisin' for a better/more interesting bed-mate. He might come home for his dinner later, but...what if he doesn't? Any anyway, I know what I'd been doing with dinner, the schmuck! That's why poly is not for me, I guess.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

lol! Your perspective is so very, very different from mine. Poly, for me, has *nothing* to do with seeking better/more interesting bed mates, and everything to do with acknowledging that some friendships include a love of a romantic sort. It brings me great joy to see people I love happy, even when that happiness stems from their falling in love with someone other than me. I don't have any need to be the one to cause happiness in the people I care about, it just matters to me that they be happy. Besides, even better than to have someone I love fall in love with someone new and to be happy is to have both(or however many) of us fall in love with the same person, and have that person love both(or however many) of us in return. I honestly don't care if sex is involved, I'm all about the loving connection. Sometimes it is nice to spend time with one or more of my loved ones, others it is nice to know that they are spending time with people they care about whilst I'm busy doing something I enjoy.

[madryn-1960.livejournal.com]

I guess that's the difference between "friendship" love and "marriage" love. The intensity is just not the same. I love to see my friends happy, and in intimate relationships. I love to see my husband happy too, and sharing time with his friends, but I doubt many women would be happy to see their husband being intimate with another woman, and I certainly would not. You see it as self-denial, I see it as self-discipline, and an affirmation of my love and his that neither would seek deep intimacy with another.

I think it's the "depth of feeling" point that you're missing. When you find the right one, the feeling is so strong and deep and lasting, that by it's very nature it must be exclusive. Anyway, each to her own. We're both happy with what we have, which is the main thing. But you do often seem to imply that mono partners are missing out, which is entirely wrong. We think poly people are missing out, actually...

[kareina.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think that the happy mono people are missing out. However, based on the statistics on the number of people who cheat (remembered from school psychology classes, so I can't really cite a source on that one), I do think that the vast majority of people are missing out. At one end of the spectrum there are people who are happily committed in a monogamistic relationship, at the other end of the spectrum there are people who are happy to have multiple relationships, each one of which has an amazing depth, richness, and intensity.

In between are the vast majority of people who are not 100% happy with what they've got, but because society says that they are "supposed" to be monogamist try to live that lifestyle, and fail--some of them time and time again. (Or, in some cases one of the two finds the monogamy easy and truly wants no one else, but the other partner cheats, and then the "faithful" one is devastated and blames themselves, when, really, the problem isn't them.)

I submit that while some of them might be happier if they just had a different partner (that mythical "right one" for whom they are truly willing to "forsake all others") many more of them would be happier if they lived in a culture which accepted that monogamy isn't the only alternative, and if they quit "cheating" and instead choose to communicate with their various partners about what they are doing with whom.

I don't wish to convert happy monogamists into a poly life, but I do want people who are poly by nature to never, ever, lie to their partners and claim to be monogamists--because when they do they give a bad name to both the monogamists they claim to be, and to the poly community, which teaches that one must be honest with all of one's partners (of whatever degree of connection) about the fact that they aren't the only person in one's life.