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

[taligalicia.livejournal.com]

I'm a monogamist. I understand polyamory, however...I find it slightly insulting that you would claim my choice to be self denying or dishonest to myself or my partner. I think it's a lifestyle choice. Sure I meet other men who I think. if I were single I would totally fall for them" but I don't see that as being dishonest, nor do I see it as denying myself anything if I choose not to persue the other man.

[hunrvogt.livejournal.com]

I will never, ever understand the women that blame the "other" women rather than blaming the one who broke the promise. It boggles my mind. It really does. Especially when they verbally condone it.

Option 2 should be about honesty and communication too. In fact, strong monogamous realationships require honesty and communication every bit as much as I suspect strong polyamorous ones do.

I do think it's fair to identify an element of self denial in option 2. Option 3 is about pleasure regardless of pain. While option 1 meets the classical definition of Hedonism in terms of optimizing pleasure (major pleasure, little to no pain).

For me the self-denial is almost un-noticeable. The best comparison I could think to give you probably relates to materialism. I tend not to find myself voraciously materialistic, but I suspect with my life in private industry and your life in academia, that I am more materialistic than you. From where I sit, acquiring material goods takes a certain commitment to a specific professional career choices. Your career focus seems to be more on knowledge and variety than on amassing material wealth. From where I sit you deny yourself goods and services because you have chosen a different path. Both Dr's different paths and focuses.

Not exactly your original point on bullying, but perhaps that makes sense on the monogamy front?

[massaria.livejournal.com]

Yeah but you could take this story and use it to verify the postulate that if you are honest, things go wrong anyway. I'm not saying being honest isn't the way to go, but I know that every single time I have been honest with someone in a situation like this it has not gone well.

Even when you are honest doesn't mean things will go well. People often don't want to hear the truth and put blame where it is convenient, rather than justified. It takes a very self assured person to know the "truth" from all sides and act based on was is, rather than what they think should be.

Even when you are in a polyamorous relationship or some other non-exclusive relationship and everyone is communicating things can still go very wrong and be very painful. It's often not that people are eschewing communication, but exactly the opposite; the communicate but they don't *agree* or don't want to believe that truth.

[callistabee.livejournal.com]

I guess, that I don't believe honor, honesty and sexuality are related variables. That is to say, I believe they can be present or not in any model of a relationship. People are either concerned about the welfare of their partners or they aren't and their actions will be driven by their motivation.

I have a high twitch factor with the word "honesty". You write about how painful bullying is, and so often people use the word "honest" to hurt others with impunity. Opinions so often masquerade as "honest" responses that need to be shared regardless of how they land. Unless the honesty is truly delivered with the the goal of making thing better, as far as I am concerned it can be left unshared.

Honesty on how you relate and want to be related to in a relationship is imperative for a healthy relationship. I do not draw any negatives from that. Self Denial is a somewhat negatively charged word for self discipline or good self choices. No one I know responds to everything in their environment. We all make choices and hopefully we make the choices that are best for ourselves and the people we love.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

"Self-denial" is a bit of a loaded term. It strongly implies "denying a part of yourself" as opposed to "denying something to yourself". Someone who chooses to be monogamous even though attracted to more than one individual isn't denying that attraction any more than someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet who chooses to consume a sensible, nutritionally-balanced meal. Or someone who chooses to focus on a specific set of crafts and hobbies rather than diving into every new interest that comes along.

It's good that you're happy about the particular life choices you've made, but given that several readers have had the same reaction I did, you might want to figure out if you could describe it in a way that doesn't imply that yours is the only honest and rational choice.

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

Oh, whew! I'm not the only one who had an extremely visceral reaction to that paragraph! (now I don't feel so dumb)

I think of polyamory like... coffee.
It's great for other people, but it gives me hives.

:)

[mushroom-maiden.livejournal.com]

my heart hurts, Reia.

[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.

[eurika.livejournal.com]

With your permission, I would like to repost your entire post. I don't have to credit it as your work and can just say "a friend" or I can attach your LJ name to it. It is just such a great post, that I would like to share it with others.

[madryn-1960.livejournal.com]

It's funny how everyone always blames the woman. I'm not speaking of polyamory here, about which I know nothing (nor do I wish to), but monogamy. If a man cheats on his partner with another woman, it is almost always the woman who gets the blame. Why? Is his dick isn't it? If he has a partner to whom he knows he should be loyal, and he breaks that bond of faith, that responsibility rests squarely with him. The "other woman" has responsibilities only to herself, and the people in her life. I blame the bible, which states clearly that women are responsible for everything men do.

Oh, and there's plenty of honesty and pleasure in monogamous relationships too, Babe! You don't have constantly seek to be with someone new to have a good time if you're with the right person. There is great joy and fulfillment in a commited monogamous relationship.