Entry 109

Beyond thinking

Where trust leads the way, even the burdened mind can follow…

Welcome to the new year 2025 – and welcome to the retrospective 2024!
If I look at these last twelve Entries in my “travel diary”, most of them were about the most important elements which constitute the “oligoamorous construction kit”: precisely those elements which are essential for a solid basic structure.

For example, the January-Entry was about the connectedness between all those involved in a multiple relationship and the February article centred on the certainty of being accepted with your whole personality in such an arrangement.
In March, in which we celebrated an incredible 5 years of Oligoamory, I once again strongly encouraged everyone to give the magic of love between more than two people a proper chance before it is suffocated under a tangle of prejudices and resentments amongst themselves. Nevertheless, in April, in the 100th Anniversary Entry, I immediately included advice on how to ensure favourable resource management in this regard – both materially and ideally.
Consequently, I dedicated the May-Entry to the perceived level of satisfaction in our relationships – especially with regard to the challenges of modern life.
In June, I reminded us not to forget that all the relationships we entered into as adults, with their inherent responsibilities, were the result of the shaping of our personal freedom; to this I added in the July-Entry the paradox of the mutual gain that would result from the voluntary self-restraint of all the participants involved in such relationships.
Consistency and sustainability, the basic principles of any form of genuine commitment, were once again my theme in August – which prepared the way for the September-Entry, in which I appealed to remain true to the core values of ethical multiple relationship conduct even in less favourable situations. To illustrate this, I chose an almost melodramatic example for the October-Entry, in which I outlined how our search for comfort and acceptance would be able to plunge us into treacherous depths, misunderstandings and seemingly inexplicable despair if we unquestioningly were willing to surrender to the expectations of our normative society.
Life as a person with a desire for multiple relationships in a standardised society with its dog-eat-dog mentality also accompanied us into November – along with the need for authentic wokeness, beyond glaringly simplistic populism.
I concluded this colourful package in December with a call to not only endure the “in-between” that our way of life inevitably entails, but rather to embrace it as a source of one’s own self-confidence.

When I look back at this colourful list from the past year, I am delighted on the one hand by its diversity – and its significance.
On the other hand, the content also makes me think again – especially in view of the present global situation which is proving to be extremely challenging and thus the omnipresent discord that can currently be felt in far too many places.
After all, “places” is not just a fixed term that describes actual locations such as Kharkiv or Khartoum. “Places” can also refer to environments for encounters, such as our interpersonal relationships.
And in the end, the world’s lack of peace also seeps its way into these places; it strains, wears them down and exhausts them with the daily large and small reports from the outside world: from diffuse, threatening global wars and crises to more personally tangible points of contact such as climate change, inflation or labour shortages.
And once such constant drops of insecurity have started to undercut the stone of our steadfastness and tolerance, a treacherous morass of increasing irritation forms underneath, in which also our social flexibility is threatened to submerge.
Our close relationships ultimately begin to suffer as a result – no matter how nicely that Oligotropos may write about resource management, freedom of choice or awareness…

These days, there are election posters plastered all over my federal republic. Some of them feature keyword slogans such as “Hope” or “Confidence” ¹.

These are certainly fine words that our country will truly need in the future. And as far as our relationships and the love within them are concerned, we absolutely need hope and confidence as well.
However, when the constant drops of insecurity fall and fall, their frequency even seems to become stronger and more regular… – then sooner or later hope and confidence also become such a diluted substance that even they can no longer carry us through our everyday lives.
At some point we have waited long enough – for the miracle that won’t come anyway; for things to take a positive turn one day; for things to turn out not to be so bad after all and for us to be able to hold out a little longer.
No.
At some point we simply run out of steam, our patience is at an end; even our confidence is finally worn through, so that we feel sore, defenceless and exposed – an unbearable state, there’s nothing more we can do.
In this state of mind, our focus becomes rushed “What? The weekly shopping bill has increased by another €20 – there was such a rise just a few weeks ago…!” “The car is broken again – has the mechanic been sloppy despite all his assurances when I picked it up the other day?” “Our colleague – what’s wrong with her that she’s using us as a mental dust bin during the lunch break – only to burden us with extra work half an hour later for some unpleasant little thing…?” “And then our loved ones, how they keep looking at us…, am I too tired, too fat, too imperfect, not sexy enough in their eyes once again???”

That’s how a lot of people are feeling at the moment. Too many. And because we feel this way, and under stress, we start to cling to insinuations and assumptions. We feel ashamed of ourselves for all too human little things (which also happen to us); at the same time, we try to assign blame somewhere, because that’s all we can do at the end of our tether – and damn it, someone else will have to improve the situation or at least change it to make it more bearable for us right now.

When we have long since overstepped achievements such as sustainability, freedom of choice and authenticity in this way and they already ring hollow because they no longer provide any support; when even hope and confidence are depleted in such a situation – I asked myself what we are currently lacking the most.

What we lack above all these days is trust.

Above all, the trust that comes from a wealth of accumulated experience, about which the American writer, journalist and cultural critic Henry Louis Mencken once said that “it is a feeling of being able to believe a person even when you know that you would lie in his place.”
Or rather, this trust that is open-mindedly bestowed, of which the German poet Damaris Wieser wrote some time ago that it is “the abolition of the constant control we exert over our fellow human beings”.
Indeed, even more: precisely the kind of faith that the Lebanese-American philosopher Khalil Gibran called “an oasis of the heart that is never reached by the caravan of thinking”.

A wealth of experience? Something that is bestowed?? Beyond thinking???
Does this really have anything to do with this much sought-after and urgently needed trust? Did the English writer Samuel Johnson have a point 300 years ago when he wrote that “there can be no friendship without trust, no trust without integrity” ?

The German ethymology dictionary “Duden²” (and the Online Ethmology Dictionary) defines:

»‘to trust’ – the common Germanic verb Middle High German trūwen, Old High German trū[w]ēn, Gothic trauan, English to trow, Swedish tro belongs in the sense of ‘to become firm’ to the word group discussed under ↑true. The original use of the word in the sense of “believe, hope, have faith in” developed into the meaning “to trust”
You’ve read the details on ↑true here on my bLog already in Entry 66:
»The current form dates back to Middle High German triuwe. Comparisons from other Germanic languages are Gothic triggws “faithful, reliable”, Old English [ge]trīewe “faithful, honest” (modern English true: “faithful, truthful, proper, genuine”) and Swedish trygg “sure, confident”. The word group belongs to the Indo-European *deru “oak / tree,”. The adjective true therefore actually means “steadfast, firm like a tree”

Ok…, after so much linguistic history, let’s realise that “trust” is in a sense intrinsic – I can only experience it (as I can with the stability of a tree…) when I commit myself to it or rely on it to see whether it will endure.
The German proverb, which can still be read as an inscription on the beams of some old half-timbered houses in my country, is therefore also appropriate:
“Trust springs from loyalty – and also leaves with it.”

That trust requires fidelity or – as I often prefer to say here on my bLog – loyalty, I have already noted in the aforementioned Entry 66, when I quoted Wikipedia: “Treue (mhd. triūwe, nominalisation of the verb trūwen “to be firm, to be sure, to trust, to hope, to believe, to dare”) is a virtue that expresses the reliability of an actor towards another, a collective or a thing. Ideally, it is based on mutual trust or loyalty[…].”

Which puts Samuel Johnson well on track with his approach to integrity – because the definition of integrity as a component of loyalty is one of my favourite Wikipedia quotes since the early Oligoamory-values-Entry 3: “…the continuously maintained consistency of one’s personal value system and ideals with one’s own speech and actions.”

Trust is therefore something that we humans actually can only “experience”. We can neither be convinced of it nor get others to trust us through factual thinking or intellectual arguments. So Khalil Gibran’s oasis is indeed safe from mere reason. This is in a way good news from a spiritual and romantic point of view – but for our crazy times it also holds the challenge that we cannot decide to trust by merely keeping our wits about us, but that this step must be taken on a different level.

The contemporary aphorist Dirk Hintze has expressed this seemingly tricky, almost contradictory correlation in an extremely clever way:
“Trust is a borrowed gift.”
After all, when applied specifically to our interpersonal relationships, we bestow our trust primarily when we, for our part, have already learnt from the recipients that they are, to use a metaphor, a “safe depository” for it. Thus, trust has obviously already been reciprocated by the other party, e.g. in some form of predictability, reliability or the aforementioned integrity.
This basic idea is confirmed above all by the cross-check: if you remove predictability, reliability and integrity from a relationship, then that’s immediately the end of the story – and it becomes clear that although acknowledgement and appreciation are “bestowed” in the form of trust, this “gift” immediately disappears into thin air as soon as the experiences that gave rise to it are no longer perceived.

And Khalil Gibran is absolutely right when he describes that no thinking is necessary for this, indeed it is even detrimental: the experience of trust is an inner treasure trove of situations to which we have intuitively given meaning at the moment of encounter. The vast majority of these past experiences we could therefore no longer even recall on the basis of reason – today, however, the result is that another person has our trust – or not.

Damaris Wieser, in turn, substantiates that “trust” is part of the sphere in which love and freedom are at home as well. Because their antagonists (opponents) are called control and security – and trust is not about the latter: the branch is going to hold – and I “expect” that before I put my foot on it – I put my foot on it – and it will hold in fact.
The fact that nowadays, on the other hand, we lapse into micromanagement when under stress – and have to scrutinise every branch in the forest, no matter how far-fetched, as meticulously as it is superfluous – therefore explains a great deal about our present situation…

All that remains for me to do is to raise my hat to Henry Louis Mencken, who, in my reading, expanded the scope of trust to include “more than the sum of its parts”, just as I often wish for here on the Oligoamory-bLog: the experience of trust in others exceeds even my own ethical self-demand. Through my trust, I receive back even more than my own commitment.
All the more so because the “door of trust” swings in both directions: it’s not just about constantly demanding trustworthiness from others, but also regularly demonstrating it yourself through your own predictable and predominantly unambiguous behaviour.

Accordingly, what we really want to experience, especially in our close relationships, is what is known in research as “Identification-based trust”. It consists of the following four important dimensions of experience:

  • Close coordination, openness and regular communication (who would have guessed…?)
  • Identification with the values, goals and needs of those involved
  • Community between the confidants
  • Mutual sympathy and the development of an emotional bond

Will we ever be able to reach this ultimate stage beyond private relationships? I believe that our society as a whole would have to be organised much differently than it is at present.
To do so, we sometimes even may have to invest trust, just as perhaps an intrepid dandelion plant instinctively trusts in sufficient light and nutrients as it breaks through a paved surface.
For our world has long since proven that such seemingly unfounded optimistic confidence is far less absurd than it may appear at first glance.
When, in November and December 1989, a significant part of the “Iron Curtain” fell in what was then Czechoslovakia in the course of the “Velvet Revolution“, an anonymous graffito appeared on a wall in the capital Prague shortly before Christmas – with the words:

“In a world full of mistrust, trust is the revolution.”




¹ Electoral campaign Bündnis90/Die Grünen on the occasion of the upcoming federal election in February 2025

² Duden Volume 7: Das Herkunftswörterbuch, Ethymologie der deutschen Sprache, reprint of the 2nd edition (1997), Verlag Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus AG

Thanks to Enrique on Pixabay for the photo!

Entry 108

Being in between

The old is no more – the new has not yet become…:

This encouragement from the Irish philosopher, former priest and writer John O’Donohue is almost emblematic for a way of life in ethical multiple relationships – and not just in one but in several aspects.

After all, already by choosing our way of life we put ourselves “between two stools”, in a manner of speaking: We do not desire monogamy in its restrictive exclusivity and with its narrow focus on only one (permitted) lifelong partner. However, we nontheless want to prove that we are committed, dependable and trustworthy – which is why we choose a type of romantic relationship such as Oligo- or Polyamory. Because a purely erotic “open relationship” in itself – or perhaps “Free Love“, which is primarily aimed at unrestricted/non-patronized sexuality – does not offer us an inner home in which we would feel comfortable in the long term.
And then there we are – with this longing, after we have gradually brought it to the surface within ourselves… Because then we may face the challenging task of discovering other people who may feel the same way as we do.
Not an easy endeavor in a world where the majority of society primarily takes a conservative and normative approach to love and relationships…
And anyone who has ever ventured into the labyrinthine world of dating for such purposes – whether offline or online – can tell you a thing or two about how different all the other questing human beings out there can be compared to your own wishes and desires – and how many frogs you have to kiss in the hope of a fairytale outcome.
Many frogs will even pull away from us – because it is not without reason that multiple relationships have the tricky fascination of being “somehow queer“. And who has enough courage to take such a risk?
This is something that all those who have long been part of the queer spectrum, all the splendid lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and otherwise colourful beings can testify to – because they all know very well what it is like to be regularly “in-between” in the truest meaning of the phrase.

Unfortunately, in this way it can also happen that we too might get “stuck in between” for quite some time. Feeling trapped in a state where we have made a decision in favour of a specific relationship model and are no longer willing or able to follow the old “washed-out path”. But the “new” takes its time and cannot be realized by force – how could it, if it is to become love – but confidence is one of those things in such phases of apparent standstill – which our Irish priest probably knew very well and therefore used the soothing words “as far as you can”: Because enduring uncertainty is one of the greatest quandaries our hearts and souls can find themselves in.
Maybe that’s why O’Donohue alluded to the “call” (of the inner voice), which shouldn’t be squandered or allowed to fade away. Applied to our situation, I would specify: Don’t back down, don’t give up on your dream and don’t blame the relationship philosophy. Instead, benevolently allow yourself this time for (even more) change.

And what if we are “lucky”? If we don’t have to date at all – and rather suddenly find ourselves in a multiple relationship situation simply because it happens, or rather comes upon us?
If we fall in love with people who are already in love or partnered elsewhere – or, oh bliss, several other people who are already in love or partnered elsewhere fall in love with US?
Then, believe me, we need John O’Donohue’s blessing above all the more. Because even if you think you’ve cleared up everything inside yourself, even if you’ve consumed all the available books, podcasts, online videos etc. on the subject of Polyamory to prepare yourself well in theory – in the end, it still won’t get you ready for reality.

No, all too often it is precisely then that we are surprisedly overtaken by doubts that lie dormant deep within us. And instead of the desired moment of arrival and the “inner home”, feelings come crashing down on us that rather resemble a “draughty inner railroad platform” – or as the Irish philosopher called it, a “place of dusk”.
In this uncomfortable place, we question many things: Have the others perhaps really lost sight of our hearts? Are we just a kind of “life’s souvenir” for them, a convenient “feature” of their relationship and love life, convenient in everyday life and enjoyable between the sheets? Do all the others involved always secure themselves the bigger pieces of the shared cake by being cheekier or louder than us – thereby enforcing their claims more recklessly?
So, have we even made a realistic commitment to the right relationship model for us? Shouldn’t we perhaps have stuck with good old monogamy after all – with just one romantic partner, all to ourselves – that would probably have been enough effort, turbulence and flickering heart, but then only just that one time – and not, as now, on several occasions…

Because sometimes we literally get “in between” when there are several loved ones (and, ok, that doesn’t happen in monogamy – but it does occur in almost every family or other form of community): When it comes to arguments, conflicts of loyalty – or when we feel pressured into taking sides of any kind, even though we actually want nothing more at such a time than a return to agreement and understanding on all parts.

If, as is currently the case (this is the December Entry after all), we are also surrounded in many places by frenzied glitter, harmony-demanding sounds and the annual gift-giving rush aimed at mutual attention, then these questions can sometimes come crashing down over our heads and the “call“ and our inner voice, which – in whatever way – have brought us onto the path of multiple relationships, become so muted that they seem almost silenced…

Long before we developed first an industrial and then a service society with its thousands of mundane products and liabilities, our ancestors must once have been more conscious of the fact that we humans cannot press an “inner button” and then immediately appear 100% ready for the market as a finished product.
In their legends, however, mysterious, powerful mythical figures played a role who ruled over our lifetimes, by which I mean, for example, the Norns, eerie sisters who were said to spin, measure and cut off the thread of our lives.
The Germanic tribes gave them strange names, which sound gloomy and odd to us today: Urd, Verdandi and Skuld. But their names were simply part of the whole – marketing, we would say at this point.
With a little imagination, you can still recognize today’s German word “gewo(u)rden” in the word “Urd” – the Norn “Urd”, “that which has become”, therefore stood for the past.
With the middle sister “Verdandi” it is a little more complicated – but not so much if we replace her “V” with a “W” and, thanks to Urd, already know that it is about the German word “werden”. For this Norn carries its present participle in her name – and present is now: “Verdandi” is therefore “that which is just becoming”: NOW – that what is happening.
Last but not least dear Skuld, who had her name shortened, probably because the grammatical forms of “werden/become” were already strained enough by her other siblings. “Skuld” (you can recognize the modern English word “should”) meant “‘ought/might'” – meaning “what is yet to happen”, in other words: the future.
That is why these Norns had excellent and powerful names that we can still pay attention to today: For we can no longer change what “has become”; it is what is becoming now that matters, that’s where we can do something – because what the future should be…, what is yet to come… – is still by no means to be regarded as certain or unchangeable.

Hundreds of years ago, those very Norns had special power particularly at the end of the year, because our ancestors cultivated another custom along with the mystery of time, which concerned the so-called “Twelfthtide or Rauhnächte” – also known as the “Twelve (magical) Nights of Christmas“.
Before exact calendars and clocks were developed, the sun and moon were used to measure time, but this posed the somewhat impractical problem that a solar year has 365 days and a lunar year only 354 (28×12) of them. This meant that 11 days were lost “in between”.
Resourcefully, our ancestors designated these 11 days as “sacred interim”, added a further initial holi-day – and so, from the winter solstice until the New Year, they slipped “between the times” – a period that they dedicated to celebration and inner contemplation by freeing themselves from toil and labour (incidentally, this is also the reason why we to this day sometimes refer to the period after Christmas as “between the years”…).

So while today we often feel torn or doubtful at the edge of our “inner railroad platform”, back then “being in between” was something special, something healing and something cosmically good.
This is exactly what the priest O’Donohue wants to assure us with his Celtic blessing: to endure this “in-between-time”, even more precisely: to listen to ourselves and realise that there is a change in us in the becoming (Verdandi!), which prepares us for what should still come (Skuld!).

But we should also take our doubts seriously and accept them as part of this transitional period. Have our favourite people possibly lost sight of our hearts?
Has their interest in us waned – or have they even lost it because we are changing?

These questions are as good as they are important, because – in accordance with my topic today – “interest” is also our keyword here:
The word, which (according to Wiktionary) roughly means “great attention / intellectual curiosity”, is made up of the two original Latin words “inter” (= between) and “esse” (= to be). So it’s all about “being in between” again! The Romans also used “inter esse” in the sense of “Condition or quality of exciting concern or being of importance” (…of course, if you want to know more…) – which gives us our answer straight away, if you like: Yes, we are important.

However, “Those who get in the centre of things quickly get in everyone else’s way” is also an English proverb – and thus draws attention to the ambivalence and challenge that “being in between” entails. As our queer allies I mentioned at the beginning can confirm: “being in between” is far from comfortable.

In the midst of our loved ones, we are all allowed to deal with such existential questions time and again. Without appeasement such as “It’s not that bad” or dismissiveness such as “Others are much worse off…” or even patronising “Don’t fuzz, I was never bothered by something like that…”.
Above a home for disabled people in one of my previous places of residence was a sign crafted by the inhabitants themselves with a pinch of self-irony, bearing the inscription “Nobody knows how heavy the burden is that someone else is carrying” – it has become a guiding principle for me that I now think about regularly – especially when things get rough in interpersonal relationships and I’m tempted to resort to the above platitudes.

We are in our relationships with each other – but each and every one of us is also on our very own path and in our very own way in the process of becoming our very own “I” or “self”. We can’t relieve each other of these task – but we can support each other. And sometimes that just means being there for one another above all else – regardless of whether we’re in between or already at the centre of things.

I would therefore like to close the last Entry of 2024 with another quote from John O’Donohue, who wrote in such an incredibly humane way:



¹ from “Benedictus, A Book of Blessings” by John O’Donohue, Bantam Press, 2007

² from “To Bless the Space Between Us“ by John O’Donohue, Convergent Books, 2008

Thanks to Magne on Unsplash for the photo!

Entry 107

“But now it’s my turn!“

The world is showing us how it’s done: Regardless of whether Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election in the USA with simplistic but nonetheless noisy slogans – or in Germany, the current Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz causes the governing coalition to collapse by dismissing his disfavored finance minister: “But now it’s my turn!“ Finally being able to assert your own will unchallenged, to really kick ass – how wonderful that must be…
And what happens on a large scale – and because it happens on a large scale, eventually we ourselves also want to claim our share of it in equal measure. On the one hand, because it now seems to be in vogue to seize the opportunity when it presents itself without too much consideration. On the other hand, because this is accompanied by a “now more than ever” / I don’t care at all” – feeling, since the world seems just to be going crazy anyway – and at least you don’t want to be the last one in the seemingly omnipresent closing-down sale.
After all, it would be stupid to wait any longer. Not to mention all these petty obstacles and regulations that make something that is actually quite simple unnecessarily complicated. Probably communists, eco-freaks, feminists or otherwise queeranarchist folk devised something like this…
Whatever.
I want another date now! And then I want sex right away as well. What I don’t want is to think about annoying counter-reasons like transparency, honesty, entitlement and egalitarianism (that word alone ^^!) beforehand, to hell with it, as otherwise I won’t get a chance at all. Otherwise everything will once again be overthought, dissected and discussed out of hand. Those who want something will find ways, those who don’t will find reasons. And all of this has really stood in the way of our happiness for long enough now, no longer:
Today it’s our turn!

It’s perfectly possible to try such an approach in the world of non-monogamy. And this is also done, not uncommonly at all, which contributes both socially and in the media by providing multiple relationships such as Polyamory with a persistently dubious reputation.
Above all, however, it leaves both the initiators of such “crowbar strategies” and those who unexpectedly became part of such behavior frustrated and often heartbroken: “Multiple relationships? It’s just a mess, constant irritation and pain, I’ve tried it, it isn’t working anyway…!”

Functioning democracies and ethical multiple relationships, such as Poly- or Oligoamory, therefore seem to struggle with similar problems. Even in argumentative discourse. What’s going on there?

I would like to try my hand at an answer – above all, of course, in terms of multiple relationships. But there are always parallels with democracy, which is in the nature of things.

After all, “Polyamory”, for example, which was conceptualized in 1990 by the pagan priestess and feminist Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, is actually not that old in order to provide romantic relationships between more than three people with “relationship rules of the road” (Fun fact: Morning Glory actually used the phrase “rules of the road” verbatim in the very first text in which the word “polyamorous” appeared for the first time in modern context¹.)

Would it not have been enough to stick with the “free love-movement” that emerged from the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s? At its time, this was an anti-establishment statement that broke with outdated moral rules and called for the self-empowerment of those involved, thereby also declaring the pursuit of immediate physical and emotional satisfaction to be an aspiration and an entitlement for all people.
From the flower children and hippies on the streets of San Francisco, an almost quintessentially American agenda: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.² Incidentally, precisely those principles of which Donald Trump is currently saying that he wants to make them “more valid” again in the US…

Breaking with outdated rules, revolutionizing traditional views and empowering people is great and holds its very own power. Without this revolution in the 60s and 70s, people would probably not have dared to explore their sexuality and their lives in different types of relationships for many more years to come.

A little more than 20 years later, it was precisely this exploration that led to new insights:
Simply empowering people is only half of a success story. This can be observed quasi iconically in one of the oldest ” entitlements” of mankind – by which I mean the Bible from Genesis, chapter 1, verse 28, which has long been translated and propagated as “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Which gradually led to a “self-service mentality” towards our planet, the consequences of which we are now confronted with in the most dramatic way in the 21st century…
Because if in this way entitlement and self-empowerment have been turned into an authoritarian and defiant “But now it’s my turn…!” often enough, then it is obvious that one day there will probably be nothing left that can be distributed or shared any longer.

Almost 20 years after the “sexual revolution”, not only did our planet show the first alarming signs of wear and tear, but also many relationship experiments proved that the factor “sustainability” urgently needed a place in the equation.

And “sustainability” is known to come in two stages:

►The first stage is the realization that a merely unleashed self-service mentality will gradually deprive itself of the basis of existence. A revolution that once began for good reasons will ultimately consume itself when it has finally destroyed its last foundations due to arrogance and selfishness.
Resources therefore have to be managed and distributed so that the greatest possible added value is retained for all those who wish to participate.
The latter principle is as important in ecology as it is in healthy relationship hygiene: Ego-tripping and non-transparent action in order to gain an advantage at the expense of others accelerates the descent into the abyss (even if this may seem quite comfortable for those who act purely selfishly until shortly before the end…).

►It was probably the second stage that prompted Morning Glory to think about a concept such as “Polyamory”: To ensure continued viability and longevity, self-empowerment must be extended to include the protection of resources and protective rights for the benefit of one’s own integrity.
Oh!
It was precisely at this moment that the “easy and simple answers” of the original revolution came to an end.
A plain: “Of course you can have as many partners as you want and have sex with whom you want and as often as you want…” at this moment became “…but the other participants are also to be perceived and heard as whole individuals, they have their own rights like you do – and concerning a whole from which you want to benefit and in which you want to participate, you are asked to contribute in return so that everyone involved experiences added value and things remain as balanced as possible.”
At the latest with this expansion, the word “ethical” was added to the word “multiple relationship”, which now brought together all the well-known values, in particular transparency, honesty, entitlement and equality – but also predictability, reciprocity, consensus and an effort to achieve long-term viability.

“Just so complicated again…” I hear people sighing in the US and Germany. Couldn’t we at least once allow ourselves to believe in the promise that we can achieve what we are striving for, plain and simple, without too much regulation?

My personal answer is: No, I don’t think so.
A “Yes!” would of course be so nice and straightforward here – but in my opinion, it wouldn’t be honest at this point to suggest it.

“In the past, when the opportunity presented itself, you just grabbed it, you didn’t ask much, you just did it…” Ok, that’s where we were already at the beginning: Exactly, it’s this “promise” of simplicity that is so tempting when it comes to quickly satisfying needs (of whatever kind).
As a result, what I call with a little tongue-in-cheek “regulations” or “values” above is perceived as incredibly obstructive, cumbersome and therefore negative, because it seems to be standing in the way of the direct path to the supposedly already obvious goal.

Folks, this is precisely the illusion that is being so heavily exploited by populists these days:
a) It is only this unnecessarily “complicated stuff” that separates us from the realization of our direct happiness. If it were gone, we would have immediately achieved it in the most excellent way.
What’s more:
b) Gradually, everything has been made more and more complicated to prevent us from ever being able to attain happiness (plus blame: insert a causative grouping of your choice here).

And that is a terrible distortion of the facts.
Because those “rules & regulations”, those values, are by their very nature a fundamentally good thing – and it is fantastic that they exist and have been compiled by many courageous people on the basis of their own experiences.

Global society – and also the society of those who wish to live in multiple relationships – is more and more often behaving like a person who doesn’t care about solidarity-based health insurance because they have a robust physical condition and will always enjoy their maximum fitness.
But what happens when that is no longer the case? What about the moment when we are the ones in need of protection and consideration? If we are dependent on this to get back on our feet at all? If we are also dependent on the people in our immediate surroundings to give us the necessary leeway to do so – at a time when we ourselves would not have the strength to provide it on our own?

What I am trying to say is that the values of ethical multiple relationships are indeed complicated. They also have complicated names – and their contents are complex, sometimes demanding. This will lead to them being discussed on a regular basis, sometimes controversially.
This, in turn, can mean for your own perception that some allegedly quick routes to the desired destination can be given a “Stop!” simply because of these conditions.

“In the past, you were allowed to open up a snack bar on every corner… And with a lot of honest work, you had made it after a few years.Today, you need hot and cold running water in your shack, there has to be a protective screen in front of the chip fat – and if you hire someone, you have to pay social security contributions for them on top of that…”
Yeah, bloody complicated, everything used to be better in the old days – today it’s all just worse…

No. Exactly not. Okay, today you can still exploit yourself – but with your employees, fortunately, it’s no longer that easy. The screen is designed to protect you and your employees from accidents, the hot water to protect your customers from stomach upsets and thus save you from claims for compensation.
But it is precisely with the above arguments that positive achievements can be declared to be obstacles, “superfluous things” that are unnecessary for the promised success.

If we apply this to our relationships (and our democracies), I would like to say that we may sometimes personally feel regret or frustration if the path to our goal is not as straightforward as we would like it to be due to other concerns.
However, these “concerns” almost always affect other people or our immediate surroundings, of which we are also a part.
And in reverse, this also means that next time it will be us who will benefit if someone else can’t simply cut through our personal integrity as a shortcut just because it seems to be a hindrance to their personal goal. And this doesn’t always only happen when we are healthy and resilient – analogous to the health insurance example above – but rather sometimes when we need protection, respect, solidarity, connectedness or just a little kindness, simply because we are a fellow human being.

Ethical multiple relationships and democracies are therefore very similar in these characteristics – and it is up to all of us to protect both.
After all, even the pushbacks that rise up now and again – and sometimes rage fiercely – are something the two are regularly confronted with.

Votes (personal and national) turn out differently than we would like, coalitions and relationships break down, partners do not come together. Sometimes it is difficult, at times devastating, occasionally we feel rejected by the world – but also by our closest fellow human beings – despite or because of our commitment to the ethical but therefore more complicated answer and because of this we may even believe as a result that we have failed.

In the US crime/mystery series Castle (Season 4, Episode 3 “Head Case” ), the protagonist Richard Castle (played by Nathan Fillion) encourages his daughter Alexis with the following words: „Rejection isn’t failure.“ To which she replies: „It sure feels like failure.“
And he answers:
„No, failure is giving up. Everybody gets rejected. It’s how you handle it that determines where you land up.“




¹ The original document from the magazine Green Egg from 1990 can be found e.g. HERE as a source.

² The quote is of course from the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776.

Thanks to Alana Jordan on Pixabay for the photo!

Entry 106

Long live the Queen!

The noble singer is deeply unhappy. He strides through the ballroom and shares his anguish with the whole world by singing:

»I don’t want my freedom
There’s no reason for living
With a broken heart!

This is a tricky situation
I’ve only got myself to blame
It’s just a simple fact of life
It can happen to any one…
You win, you lose
It’s a chance you have to take with love
Oh, yeah, I fell in love
But now you say it’s over and I’m falling apart

It’s a hard life
To be true lovers together
To love and live forever
In each others hearts
It’s a long hard fight
To learn to care for each other
To trust in one another
Right from the start
When you’re in love

I try and mend the broken pieces
I try to fight back the tears
They say it’s just a state of mind
But it happens to everyone…
How it hurts deep inside
When your love has cut you down to size
Life is tough on your own
Now I’m waiting for something to fall from the skies
I’m waiting for love

Yes, it’s a hard life
True lovers together
To love and live forever
In each others hearts
It’s a long hard fight
To learn to care for each other
To trust in one another
Right from the start
When you’re in love

It’s a hard life
In a world that’s filled with sorrow
There are people searching for love
In every way
It’s a long hard fight
But I’ll always live for tomorrow
I’ll look back at myself and say:
I did it for love…
Yes, I did it for love – for love…
Ooh, I did it for love!«

What you have just read are the lyrics¹ to the ballad It’s a Hard Life by the famous British rock band Queen, which was both written and first performed by their brilliant lead singer Freddie Mercury in 1984.
The song packs a lot of features of the “romantic narrative” – from the self-sacrifice (see Entry 34) that one should take upon oneself when entering into a loving relationship, to the utter establishment of meaning through the other beloved person (which then provides a purpose for one’s own life), to the all-consuming pain when this aspiration proves to be in vain. And also the gambling-effect to give “romantic love” just another try for the sake of one’s own fulfillment resonates at the end as well…

In this way, the British poet who was born in Zanzibar has offered us an elegy, a lament, a dirge – and thus actually a kind of prayer for redemption from the pain he has just experienced. And so many of us who have heard it since then and still hear it today can empathize with this grievance and this plea.

Invocations and lamentations about unhappy love seem to have been around since time immemorial – but does this torment still have to hit us so hard and with such force even in the 21st century, which has brought us an increasingly colourful variety of relationship concepts and philosophies? Has the “romantic relationship of two” therefore perhaps outlived its purpose – and would we experience less suffering and more serenity if we were to have more “pragmatic relationships of two” instead? Just more sober, without any romantic entanglements – but at the same time more satisfactory…?

Just a month ago, the grand dame of relationship (dynamics) research, Esther Perel, once again provided a surprisingly fresh explanation of what actually stands in the way of our relationship harmony – and which mental and practical steps would be beneficial to follow in order to enjoy our happiness in love.

Almost as a clear-sighted answer to the “prayer” cast into a song by Freddie Mercury, she explained in a conversation with New York Times author and podcaster Lewis Howes on September 18th, 2024²:

»Your soul mate used to be God, not a person. You know, the „one and only“ was the devine.
And with this „one and only“ today I want to experience wholeness and ecstasy and meaning and transcendence.
And I am going to wait ten more years… We are waiting ten years longer to settle with someone, to make a commitment to someone. For those of us who choose a „someone“… And if I’m going to wait longer and if I’m looking around and if I’m choosing among a thousand people at my fingertips, you bet that the one who is going to capture my attention, (who) is going to make me delete my apps, better be the „one and only“!
So, in aperiod of proliferation of choices, we at the same time have an ascension of expectations about a romantic relationship that is unprecedented. We have never expected so much of our romantic relationships as we do today in the west. It’s an enormous amount of pressure: We crumble under the weight of the expectations because a community cannot become a tribe of two. This (talk here e.g.) is a party of two. And with you (Lewis) and me, together we are going to create best friends, romantic partners, lovers, confidants, parents, intellectual egos, career coaches… I mean – you name it. And I’m like „Seriously!? One person for everything? One person instead of a whole village?“
So that’s the first myth. And the notion of unconditional love that accompanies this, is that when we have that „one and only“, I have what you call „clarity“, but translated into certainty, peace and freedom, you know, or safety. […]
Keep a community around you. Keep a set of deep friendships, really deep friendships, deep intimacies with partners, with friends, with mentors, with family members, with colleagues, you know, that! So that’s the first thing for me in having good relationships is diversify. For some people that will include sexuality – for the vast majority it won’t.
But the notion that there isn’t a „one person“ for everything and that (this) doesn’t mean that there is a problem in your relationship when that happens.
The second thing is stop constantly looking at people as a product, where you evaluate them – and you evaluate yourself. You know, in our market economy everything has become a product, we included. And so, (falling in) „love“ seems to have become the moment that the evaluation of the product stops: You have finally been approved when you have been chosen and when you choose (yourself).«


Wow, Mrs. Perel! These few lines of the interview are almost an oligoamorous revelation for me, as they summarize much of what I myself have compiled in various places on this bLog.
For me, the most important message is that we are creating the “tricky situation” that Freddie Mercury sings about with our expectations on the one hand – but also with our attitude of oblivious dependency on the other. And even Immanuel Kant, the “father of Enlightenment“, would probably be just as stunned, because it is not the ability to use our intellect³ that is supposed to free us from our self-inflicted dependency these days – but rather the “romantic love” for another person.
However, it’s indeed a tricky situation with this “self-inflicted dependency”, because Esther Perel also points out, as I did in several of my oligoamorous reflections as well, that we are currently part of a type of society that very strongly promotes the isolation of the individual and its evaluation according to performance criteria. Thus, the romantic attachment to another person is often encumbered with the further burden of having to serve as proof that, beyond entitlement or achievement, we are still worthy of being loved for our own sake…
Accordingly, if things start to crumble within our relationship – or if we are even faced with the break-up of that relationship (of which, according to the current majority rules, we are only allowed to have “one and only” of the romantic kind!), whether at best because of a “change of affection” or at worst because of past disloyalties – then we fall as deeply as described above in “It’s a Hard Life”: We fall apart inside; our reason for existence, the meaning of our life itself, is called into question.
And Freddie Mercury and Esther Perel agree on one thing: once we have submitted to a system that functions according to these rules, all we can do is hope again for something “that falls from the sky”, like winning the lottery, to which we cannot contribute in any way except by purchasing another ticket… Expectation and dependency – a vicious circle from which we cannot escape.

But neither Freddie Mercury would have been the brilliant songwriter that he was, nor Esther Perel the clever expert on human love psychology, if they hadn’t both packed a lot more message into their contributions.

First Master Mercury, who begins the opening cadence of his song with the first bars of “Ridi, pagliaccio!” by the Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallos (the melody is often better known in the translated versionLaugh, Pagliaccio!” from which a kind of catchphrase has arisen, describing a situation in which a person feels like crying and yet has to present a “happy facade” to the outside world instead…):
Although the style of the song and the accompanying video superficially suggest otherwise – the lyrical self has been abandoned, it is suffering, it has high ideals of love that have (once again) been disappointed by another party… – it is in fact trapped in precisely the “self-induced” vicious circle of dependency (“you win – you lose”) that I described earlier. So Freddie Mercury didn’t just want to give the world another melodramatic love ballad – he was obviously very aware of that ambiguous fact within his composition and left some subtle clues as to what his real “theme behind the theme” was.
As the author of this bLog (and a self-confessed romantic), I particularly enjoy the chorus in the Queen song, in which Mr. Mercury nonetheless allows the values that nevertheless really matter to shine through: Being loyal, caring for each other and showing consideration for each other – all based on trust that has been built up with one another (I can hear the scientists Cohen, Underwood and Gottlieb from the last paragraph in Entry 14 – oligoamorous capital stock!).

Which brings us to Esther Perel, whose explanation I particularly liked in that she advised in the best oligo- and polyamorous way to urgently “diversify” one’s own “relationship portfolio” – but did so without the stereotypical reference to personal need satisfaction that is otherwise so often insisted upon in polyamorous networks (By this I mean the pseudo-argument that “only one person can never possibly fulfill all the needs of another” – and that just for this reason alone one would be obliged to maintain several romantic relationships… My explicit criticism thereof see Entry 85). It would also be too easy to (mis)understand her remarks in this way – which would immediately put us in the “self-assessment trap” she herself criticizes – since in that case we would be “in need” of others in order to be allowed to experience ourselves as “whole” (and the message of despair from “It’s a Hard Life” would have triumphed…).
Indeed, that is not what the controversial relationship researcher was getting at with her statement. Esther Perel is concerned with a very important philosophical as well as humanistic, both queer and oligoamorous principle: (self-)empowerment.

And it is precisely this self-empowerment that would be the best remedy for the two disastrous sides of the same unhappy love coin: dependency and expectation.
When it comes to shaping relationships, Ms. Perel therefore calls for conscious proactivity. For me, this also implicitly indicates that we are required to once again re-examine our established and existing relationships in terms of their degree of self-empowerment: In which relationships am I allowed to exist as a whole personality – combined with the flexibility and freedom not to function as a “passe-partout” for every case of doubt and desperation on demand?
However, by adding that for her – despite “diversification” – community, deep friendship and intimate togetherness are the true yardsticks for healthy relationships, Esther Perel picks up on Freddie Mercury’s loyalty, commitment and consideration, which are repeatedly echoed in the chorus of “It’s a Hard Life ” – whereby both the artist and the scientist agree in their understanding of what the “core currency” of genuine relationships at eye level is.
And both also agree that our search for comfort and acceptance can drive us into treacherous shoals such as misunderstandings and seemingly inexplicable despair if we unquestioningly abandon ourselves to normative social expectations, which meanwhile harnesses basically good ideals in front of a strangely garish cart in order to spur us on to unrealistic performances even in our intimate romantic relationships – in return for the promise of gratifications that are impossible to achieve by humble human standards.

So today I sit in awe of both the 40-year-old song lyrics of a genius who died far too early and the life experience of an attentive expert on relationships and people who shared her insights just a few weeks ago.
The oligoamorous universe – it revolves and expands like its great archetype.
Once again, I am grateful to be part of it!



¹ The lyrics of “It’s a Hard Life” HERE on Genius

² Lewis Howes in his series THE SCHOOL of GREATNESS in conversation with Esther Perel on September 18th, 2024: “Relationships Have CHANGED Forever ” as an excerpt in English with German subtitles, e.g. on Facebook.

³ Immanuel Kant in his essay ” Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment? from 1784

Thanks to Megan Watson on Unsplash for the photo!

Entry 105

By the fire of the ancestors

A -koo-chee-moya. We are far from the sacred places of our grandfathers. We are far from the bones of my people. But I ask, on this day of sorrow and uncertainty, that the wisdom of my father find me and help me understand my dilemma. Speak to me, Father. Speak to me in my dreams.
This is what Commander Chakotay – who has indigenous roots – 1st officer in the US science fiction series Star Trek: Starship Voyager (Season 2, Episode 26: “Basics Part 1” ), invokes – and in this way asks for a vision and inner guidance.

At present, there appears to be relatively little talk about ethical multiple relationships such as Oligo- or Polyamory. No comparison to the time just over 5 years ago, for example, when much more regular (admittedly sometimes sensationalizing) press articles and television reports kept our way of life more present on the media stage than at the moment.

The latter in particular does not necessarily have to be a bad thing. If the public waves of attention no longer rise that high, then this might be a sign that some things have settled down since then. That the former unsteady “goldfeverish mood” with all its uncertainties and efforts towards permanent reinvention has subsided somewhat. And for many people involved in ethical multiple relationships, this in turn could mean that they are simply going about their everyday relationship life at this very moment, reasonably contentedly and largely free of trouble.
Which is to be wished for all of you – and I do so from the bottom of my heart!

At the same time, in such quieter times, the worry occasionally creeps in that this is precisely not the case.
For example, the social pendulum has been swinging back in a more conservative direction since the COVID-19 pandemic (at least in Germany). The much-cited “younger people” of our demographic statistic are regularly surveyed scientifically – and lo and behold: surprisingly traditional ideas emerge there, especially when it comes to the pursuit of monogamy with the search for “the one” life partner – and the desire towards a rather straightforward nuclear family…

In other words, was the break-up of conventional cohabitation models from the 1990s onwards just a kind of belated “experimental phase”? A kind of delayed last flowering of the bohemian 70s and the tawdry 80s, which attempted one last time to celebrate the unbiased flow of love and a way of more open-minded togetherness?
That might have been the case – especially compared to our present crisis-ridden times, with worldwide trouble spots such as in the Middle East or in the Ukraine, the resulting price and energy crisis, global climate change and a resulting mistrustful fear of pandemics still lurking, which could be carried around the globe by streams of refugees all too soon.
After all, currently there seems to be hardly any room left for love and togetherness; people tend to focus on themselves and first and foremost on their immediate surroundings. Because once again, it is our ever-scarce resources to which we must pay attention; tight resources that seem to dictate the order of the day…

Like Commander Chakotay above, at such a time, it may be opportune to gather around the fire of one’s ancestors – and contemplate, for a more hopeful vision, for perspective.
What would it be that the “ancestors of ethical multiple relationships” might bestow upon us?
And who would these “ancestors” even be…?

Well, here first of all I can think off the courageous people of the Kerista commune in San Francisco, who were the first to coin the term “Polyfidelity” in 1984¹ (that is: polyamorous fidelity and loyalty among several participants in a closed group) and, of course, the great lady of Polyamory, Mornig-Glory Zell-Ravenheart, who first coined the word “polyamorous” ² as a term for ethical multiple relationships in 1990.

First of all, these “ancestors” would probably draw our attention to the fact that their own path and their own vision did not exactly emerge in harmonious times of world peace either.
In 1984, for example, the first Soviet nuclear missiles were deployed in the former GDR, the troop withdrawal agreement between Israel and Lebanon was terminated (today, as back then, striking similitudes in the unholy holy land…), in the months of July and August alone there were four major airplane hijackings by politically and/or spiritually motivated terrorists, and in Germany the forest inventory report already declared 50% of the trees to be incurably damaged.
And in 1990, the Soviet Union disintegrated into individual states in a highly volatile process, in August the Gulf War with Iraq began (best known for “Operation Desert Storm” led by the USA), in Germany the terrorist attack on the Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble took place and in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam the world-famous painting “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt was vandalized by an attack with sulphuric acid…
So even back then, there were plenty of reasons to “take cover” from the rest of the threatening world and take refuge in the petty details of once own private life.

And nonetheless, in 1984 the Kerista commune experimented with a new form of coexistence in a group that contained several people who were romantically and erotically deeply attached to each other. And since the Kerista commune had already been active since its beginnings in 1956 and had undergone another internal transformation in 1971, its members were strong enough in their practiced nonconformity to even record this process and ultimately derive the first successful idea of multiple loyalty and faithfulness – “Polyfidelity” – from it.
About the neopagan priestess Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, who was also a longtime member of the liberal spiritual movement Church of All Worlds (CAW) since 1974, I have already written in detail in my “History of Polyamory” [Parts 1 | 2 | 3 | 4], especially in Part 3 (Entry 49). Morning Glory endeavored to create a practically viable, ethical foundation for multiple participants who were romantically as well as erotically bonded. In addition to a social alternative, it was also important for her to emphasize entitlement, commitment and honesty – as well as trust towards the dependability of such an arrangement for its members.

For the Kerista people and Morning Glory, the greatest possible degree of acceptance and inclusion was important in their approach, as exclusion – and precisely the drawing of boundaries so often prevalent in the outside world due to small-scale particular interests – would have poisoned the emergence of any communal spirit in the bud.
These visionary “ancestors” therefore placed their confidence in the power of the human community and its solidarity. I say confidence here because they had all experienced first-hand in their close (multiple) relationships what I usually call the phenomenon of “more than the sum of its parts” on this bLog.

In my Entry from last month, I mentioned the American psychologist Steven Hayes³, whose clinical experience emphasizes how important it is for us as individuals to be well attuned to our personal values. Periods of insecurity caused by our everyday lives and our environment can weaken this connection, or even cause us to lose it completely at times. In this way, external stress is joined by a literal inner turmoil in which it quickly seems to us – and we are talking about multiple relationships here – as if Oligo- and Polyamory were dead, or at least “very ill”: Multiple relationships were probably just a kind of “phase” after all, we ourselves probably only chose this model because we wanted to patch up some other kind of inner hole in ourselves, everyone (!) else would only be looking for monogamous partners anyway (and if we didn’t identify ourselves as such, we would be “unattractive” or “off the market”). “…); indeed: functioning, ethical multiple relationships based on honesty, commitment and the idea of long-term stability wouldn’t actually exist anywhere, at least we don’t know even a single one for miles around, so what’s the point at all…?

A-koo-chee-moya.
By the fire of our ancestors, we can confess our inner feelings of confusion and insecurity.
By the fire of our ancestors, however, we may also recognize in the light of its flames, which push back the darkness, that the basic values behind good relationship management are neither dead nor relativized by a sometimes indifferent world.
That this was not the case when they first emerged, just as it is not the case today.
For me, that is the beautiful and comforting thing about ethical multiple relationships. It’s that little word “ethical” that tells us: there are values here.
These values are sometimes edgy, annoying, difficult to adhere to, they sometimes lead us into justifications and discussions.
At the same time, they are constant. And they reflect something that has obviously always been intrinsically and deeply important to us. Otherwise we would not have been attracted to this particular fire, because in the warmth and brightness of its flames and its glow we sensed a like-minded mirror of our own inherent spark…
This is precisely what is important, because this glow leads us back to the set of our own inner values, which the psychologist Hayes emphasizes in his explanations. Values that are independent of external threats and turbulence, as they have been with us for much longer than these. Values that therefore endure even when the Christopher Street Day parade through Bautzen or Frankfurt/Oder has to be protected by police forces. Values that nevertheless endure, even if we are unfortunately not part of an ethical multiple relationship ourselves right now. Or even don’t know a single relationship of that kind for miles around and the silence sometimes seems almost deafening.

A mindset with values such as open-mindedness, integrity, equality, transparency, honesty, commitment, loyalty and sustainability stands for itself. For this, I don’t even have to be part of a close relationship with several people. I already encounter it when I go shopping, interact with my fellow creatures – whether I sign a petition or excercise my right to vote.
As these values nonetheless originate from the “fire of our ancestors”, they also have their own power (of attraction), their own light. And so we are by no means alone, because this light can be perceived and found. By the others in us, yes, certainly that as well. But we can also recognize it vice versa in them and discover it for our own part – since we now know again through our confirmation by the fire what to look for and towards which values we have always oriented ourselves anyway!

Incidentally, the Swiss poet Max Feigenwinter – with his work “Be silent and listen “ * – has put a kind of vision quest into lyrical form for me. Or, to be more precise, it’s nearly a first gentle answer to such a yearning:

maybe in the middle of the night
it dawns on you


maybe you will unexpectedly hear
a new message

maybe you suddenly sense
that peace on earth is possible

maybe you painfully experience
that you have to leave things behind

maybe you feel
that something will change

maybe you will be asked
to get up and leave

be silent and listen
gather your strength and set out
so that you find the place
where new life is possible



¹ The document from the book “Polyfidelity: Sex in the Kerista Commune and Other Related Theories for Solving the Problems of the World, Performing Arts Social Society 1984″ can be found HERE as an original source.

² The document from the magazine “Green Egg” from 1990 can be found HERE as a source.

³ Steven Hayes: “A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters“, Avery (27. August 2019)

* My heartfelt thanks to Mr. Max Feigenwinter for his personal permission to use his work “Be silent and listen”. The original in German language “Schweige und höre“ stems from the book: “Einander Engel sein” by Max Feigenwinter, Verlag am Eschbach; 1st edition (June 17, 2013) – all rights of use remain with the author.

Thanks to Benjamin Nelan on Pixabay for the photo!

Entry 104

Faster, higher, stronger?

It seems that 2024 is set to be a year of superlatives. My two previous Entries already referred to this year’s European elections and the UEFA European Football Championship.
And now the XXXIII (33rd) Summer Olympic Games have just ended with a brilliant closing ceremony in Paris, France.
The phrase I use as today’s headline “Faster, higher, stronger!” (quite correctly derived from the original Latin compatatives “Citius, altius, fortius!” ) is therefore fittingly the traditional motto of all Olympic Games that have taken place since 1896, proposed by the French philologist Michel Bréal at the First Olympic Congress in 1894.

“Faster, higher, stronger!” – meanwhile, we all seem to be driven and even spurred on by this maxim outside of the Olympic Games – and especially in ethical multiple relationships, the comparison to Olympic “multiple disciplines”, which have to be accomplished, comes to mind.

Accordingly, in those times in my life when I was involved with more than one partner, the proceedings were easily on a par with modern pentathlon: Schedules, individual and shared time had to be coordinated, the formal side of life had to continue – only now with more people involved (trips, shopping, handover times, meals and “other household expenses” increased…), additional sensitivities and needs of several people involved had to be considered, communicated, balanced, precious me-time and self-care had to be accommodated – and last but not least, lightness, love and togetherness had to find their place in all this…

And in those times in my life when I was “Poly-single” (or rather: “Oligo-single” – and personally I was still lucky enough to almost always have at least one companion by my side), I often felt incomplete and drove myself to busy activity on the dating planet – which, as anyone who has ever fallen into the lottery-like hamster wheel of dating knows, in turn demanded resources on its own – first and foremost, life time. And after a number of dates, I could perfectly understand, both physically and emotionally, the frustration of somebody, who seemed to have just narrowly missed out on a bronze medal.

We people who engage in multiple relationships are often like the Olympians themselves in this respect: Outside of the “Games”, they are for four years often as invisible as we are as a subculture. But the rest of the busy world doesn’t care. Bills need to be paid, liabilities need to be met – and above all: Smile!, whether you’re a woman, a man or a diverse person, because nobody usually asks how you’re feeling deep down inside. The Olympians will then be allowed to step out from behind the curtain at least once every four years – but then they will also have to prove their skills, which they will hopefully have honed in the meantime.
However, for anyone practising alternative lifestyles, the curtain tends to remain permanently closed – instead, we have to compete on a daily basis with a normal-normative environment where the conditions seem to predominantly match for everyone else. By which I want to point out that non-normativity per se can be a constant stressor in itself. This can become acutely apparent, for example, in situations where the only people you can discuss your unique concerns with are those in your family of choice. And that’s where things can sometimes get tight when it’s your own family of choice that poses the respective challenges…

This is where looking at the mono-normative world quickly becomes a rushed look over one’s own shoulder: “#§$%! – all the others seem to be getting by somehow…” As a result, we look for the problem primarily in ourselves and react with even more hectic activity: Optimizing the Google calendar, driving faster than is good, creating yet another dating profile (and now receiving even more silly “new-people-in-your-area-discovered!” emails), drumming up at least another 15 minutes of kitchen table conversation together in the evening (which boosts our popularity status immensely and really takes the stress out…) or booking a vacation for the polycule¹ on our own so that all of us might finally get a break…

Whenever this happens to me, I have to think of my current favorite author Matt Haig, who wrote in his book “Notes on our nervous planet” (Canongate Books Ltd., 2019):

»But just as there is only one planet – a planet with finite resources – there is also only one you. And you also have a finite resource – time. And, let’s face it, you can’t multiply yourself. An overloaded planet cajoles us into overloaded lives vut, ultimately, you can’t play with all the toys.
You can’t use all the apps. You can’t be at all the parties. You can’t do the work of 20 people. You can’t be up to speed on all the news. You cann’t wear all eleven of your coats once. You can’t watch every must-see show. You can’t live in two places at once.
You can buy more, you can aquire more, you can work more, you can earn more, you can strive more, you can tweet more, but as each new buzz diminishes there comes a point where you have to ask yourself: what is all this for? How much extra happiness am I acquiring?«


Whew.
Matt Haig reminds me of a very important asset, which even made it into the subtitle of my bLog project here: Sustainability. And it is so important to remind ourselves that sustainability should not just be a buzzword reserved for abstract discussions about fair trade coffee, whether Germany is an eco-friendly business location or electric cars vs. public transportation.
In my Values-Entry 3, I break down this somewhat unwieldy term, which has become much worn out in so many debates, to highlight how important sustainability actually is for our relationships.
To this end, I first of all had used three further technical terms, namely consistency – in other words: constancy and coherence of values, efficiency – in other words: suitability, and sufficiency – in other words: viability. Regarding Entry 3, I was also allowed to borrow a sustainability triangle as a graphic aid to show that none of these aspects can achieve its effect without the other two.

So the day we find ourselves part of a terrible rat race in our multiple relationships, it is enormously grounding to realize once again what really matters in connection with our loved ones (and ourselves!). And the legendary Chinese philosopher of the 6th century BC, Lao Tzu, expressed in my view even better, with all the wisdom and nonchalance of the Far East, what this can mean for us:
“When I let go of what I am right now, I become what I might be.”
Sounds too much like a fortune cookie?
Just think one more time about that almost tongue-in-cheek statement!

Because the quote alludes to our self-image: The more hectic and driven we act, the more we gradually solidify it – as well as our position in life within it, up to a state that the US psychologist Steven Hayes calls “psychological rigidity” ². We are becoming increasingly inflexible in our reactions and in our choice of means, so that in some cases we can hardly find our own way out of our misery; and at that point we have long since lost the visionary power of “what might be”.
I also don’t believe that Lao Tzu meant that we should completely renounce ourselves, as is propagated by some modern gurus of Asian philosophies.

The aforementioned Steven Hayes, for example, recognized in his research that underneath all the hectic pace and the overflowing jungle of to-do lists, all his patients eventually regained their very own core values after a while: The individual consistency, the constancy, which had by no means disappeared, but had merely become overgrown by a bloating of outward trappings.
Hayes therefore logically identified the loss of consistency as the greatest source of psychological stress – as a result of the loss of contact with all the values that are actually of the utmost importance to us personally. For “Values”, Hayes added, are the expression of our individual striving for meaning and purpose in our lives. “Meaning and purpose” in turn represent a basic need that would always become compromised if, in trying to fulfill it, we began to give priority to external “shoulds” or socially standardized ambitions over self-determination and the (self-)chosen quality of our actions.

The mere experience of consistency in our relationship with ourselves or in being together with our loved ones is therefore already one of the most important stabilizing pillars when we feel an increasing emptiness or declining sensitivity in our everyday lives.

The link to the “sustainability pillar” of sufficiency (viability) is very easy to recognize at this point: In fact, “less” is very often the famous “more”. In other words, not “Faster, higher, stronger!” – but rather “Attentive, at eye level, approachable”. After all, we want our relationships to be places of trust, where we feel safe and can take off our everyday armour. Instead, we sometimes manage our relationships like a tedious meeting or work through our affections like an overflowing inbox…

And the “efficiency pillar, which I translated as “suitability” above?
I believe that when we read or hear the word “efficiency” today, we can hardly perceive this term without associating it with performance and effort.
Which brings us back to the rat race, because today the demand for performance means that it must always be us who are supposed to guarantee suitability and profound effectiveness ( yes, that’s how the word was once intended!).
However, suitability and profound effectiveness are passive forces that promote a result, an effect, a consequence.
In other words, something that happens to us in our relationships. Something almost imperceptible, for which we can’t really “achieve” much in the sense of ” accomplishing” or “getting it done”. But all the more with “participating”, “contributing” and “belonging”…

In the US police procedural drama “Bones”, the protagonist Dr. Temperance Brennan (played by Emily Deschanel) gives the following speech on the occasion of a death in her family of choice [Season 10, Episode 2: “The Lance to the Heart“]:

»But in a real sense. He’s here. Sweets is a part of us. Our lives… who we all are at this moment, have been shaped by our relationships with Sweets. Well, each of us is like a delicate equation. And Sweets was the variable without which we wouldn’t be who we are. I might not have married Booth. Or had Christine. Daisy certainly wouldn’t be carrying his child. We are all who we are because we knew Sweets. So, I don’t need a… a God to praise him or the universe he sprang from, because I loved him. I used to try and explain love, define it as the secretion of… chemicals and hormones. But I believe now, remembering Sweets, seeing what he left us, that love cannot be explained by… science or religion. It’s beyond the mind, beyond reason. What I do know – loving Sweets…loving each other, that’s what makes life worthwhile. Right now… I don’t need to know more than that. Which is embarrassing coming from an extremely intelligent, fact-based person like me.«

Oh, goose bumps… And I could add that it’s a shame that such thoughts too often only occur to us when someone has already died.
At the same time, it is usually precisely these threshold situations in which it suddenly becomes very clear what is actually truly important, what really (!) matters.

This means, that our relationships shape our lives, touch and change us; they are our lives. There is nothing that we have to “do”, “achieve” or “merit” in return.
In many of my early posts on this bLog I referred to multiple relationships as having the invisible quality of being “more than the sum of their parts”. A quality that is obviously attracted to love, authenticity and a sense of community. A strength that arises from togetherness, connection and reciprocity – without the need for performance…
Not a rigid Olympic feat of strength, but rather a receptive surrender and commitment.
Is this magical perhaps? Or mystical? Maybe sublime?

If not even the fabulous Dr. Temperance Brennan was able to explain it, then I don’t have to either.😉



¹ “Polycule” is a humorous portmanteau of “Polyamory” and “molecule” and refers to a group or a number of people who are engaged in ethically non-monogamous romantic relationships with each other. As these “structures” or clusters can sometimes look like hydrocarbon rings, complex molecules or other medium-chain compounds when drawn for graphic illustration, the tongue-in-cheek term “polycule” was coined.

² Steven Hayes: „A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters“, Avery (27. August 2019)

For more Matt Haig, more about sustainability and especially our relationship resources, see Entry 100!

Thanks to andreas N on Pixabay for the photo!

Entry 103

Head and Foot – or: The Blind One and the Lame One

A friend recently asked me how my bLog-Entries usually came about. And I replied ” It’s quite different – sometimes it can even be just one word that sticks in my mind – and a complete Entry emerges from it.”
That’s how it is today, for example, with the word “dependency symbiosis”, which I had picked up some time ago in a completely different context than the universe of multiple relationships.
I was initially confused by this phrase because it appeared to me as if it consisted of two very different halves that didn’t fit together at all – indeed, they seemed to contradict each other.
And then, once I had turned the whole thing over in my mind and then in my heart, I smiled, because all of a sudden I found the term almost somewhat pretty in its symbolism – and in this case especially for the universe of multiple relationships.

According to Wiktionary, “dependency” means being “dependent on, or subordinate to, something else”. And with that, the poor little word “dependency” generally loses most of its charm straight away. Because being “dependent”, being reliant on someone or something, sounds kind of sticky, attached, dependent and restricted. As a result, “dependency” becomes immediately suspected of being the antonym (= the opposite word) or in some ways even the antagonist (= opponent) of our much-loved and longed-for “freedom”.

And then there is the word “symbiosis”. Here Wiktionary defines: “A relationship of mutual benefit, especially among different species” or “The state of people of different types, races, cultures, communities, etc., living together”. Therefore, symbiosis seems to be something good and worthwhile for those involved.

However, this also reveals that the dependency that was initially perceived as negative in our original pair of words and the symbiosis that seems so promising aren’t really opposites at all. Because in order to benefit from the advantages of a symbiosis, the participants would presumably have to get involved in this “being dependent upon each other” for such a symbiosis to come about at all… After all, this is the inherent secret to the success of any symbiosis: for it to work – and “work” in this case means that all those involved experience (additional) benefit – those parties need „not only merely “consume”, but also “provide” voluntarily”, as I wrote in the last Entry.

Today’s Entry is intended as a little ” Reminder” regarding ethical multiple relationships. Because the danger that we ponder too much in our relationships – and often from an overly self-centered point of view on top of that – still seems very high to me.
Especially in a world where we are regularly bombarded with memes on social media that state in calligraphy letters against a romantic photo background “True love sets you free!”.
And now here I am, preferring instead to write “True love… …is symbiotic!” – and I can almost hear the tips of some readers’ hair begin to bristle at this sentence.

Okay, more regular consumers of my bLog will know that “dependency” in relationship matters is not fundamentally a bad thing for me, at the latest since my “Declaration of Dependency” in Entry 24. There I wrote – as a kind of conclusion – that »according to oligoamorous standards, “mutual interdependency” per se is therefore not a deficiency in need of treatment which has to be eradicated, and it is neither toxic nor pathological in its conscious form.
Such a well-adjusted, or even better: well-established, reciprocal joint venture is rather a committed, dynamic and open relationship that benefits from regular negotiations and (re)adjustments.«


For me, however, it is also something more than that. Because at the end of the day, I feel that Oligo- and Polyamory is all about nothing less than true, romantic love between folks who are attached to each other in this way. And as I furthermore stated in Entry 34, based on my life experience so far, »the core of the “romantic narrative” is the voluntary self-sacrifice offered to the community.«

The latter sentence in particular always comes across as incredibly dramatic when you read it, which is why I immediately deprive this dynamic of its (high) tension in the associated Entry.
Symbiosis, if it is meant to be romantic (and not just a relationship of convenience), therefore also requires precisely this self-sacrifice.
And that is probably why we somehow feel such an uncomfortable pinch when we hear the term “self-sacrifice”, because it is not possible without the above-mentioned “dependence” and thus a partial surrender of our full “non-dependence” concerning our greatest possible freedom.

That is also one reason why I have prefaced this Entry with Entry 102, in which I celebrate the very freedom that allows us to make choices about our desire to participate and take up responsibility.
For surely it must be after all an expression of the core of our being, which seeks development, if we find within ourselves the desire to participate in a “symbiosis” (I repeat: “A relationship of mutual benefit”) and thus willingly assume responsibility for our own contribution to the prosperity of this structure.

In relationships, we are therefore initially always dealing with voluntary self-limitation – an extremely romantic motif, by the way. For example, as self-sacrificing and romantic as some gentlemen with stiffened collars acted in 1863 when, in the face of a wild scramble for a leather ball, they resolved henceforth only to move it fairly and gentlemenlike just by using their heads and feet – and in this way became the founders of modern soccer
Today, during the run-up to the final of the current UEFA Euro 2024, I think soccer is a very apt metaphor in this context. After all, what did these people want to achieve back then when they voluntarily limited themselves – and accepted “less”?
They wanted to create “added value” for everyone – because they believed that with brute strength and physical effort, someone would eventually be able to put a ball in the goal anyway (which sooner or later wouldn’t have been very interesting, except for people who wanted to watch the most pimped-up and reckless protagonists at work…).
Out of their self-limitation, however, emerged a dynamic, exciting and inclusive game in which people of all ethnicities and genders, with their diverse talents in endurance, skill, agility, courage, resourcefulness and luck, compete internationally for attention and prizes to this day.

So after a while, the advantages of reciprocity and interdependence, as in a symbiosis, may come to us after all – even if we realize that we must obviously (voluntarily!) give up part of our personal freedom if we really want to participate and benefit.
And in the vast majority of cases, this refers to the “fair-weather face” of love, about which I wrote in the previous Entry: »Hand on heart: if there wasn’t something in the relationships we enter into that we wanted to “enjoy” – as mentioned above – we probably wouldn’t be in them…«
It’s like soccer again: Sure, with present-day rules (which I agreed to and limited myself by) I can’t knock down the guy in possession of the ball to get access to the leather like in the ol’ times. Instead, I have to stalk the opponent and dribble the ball off his foot, after which I can pass it to my teammates or (hopefully) score myself… But at the end of the day, I’m not just a dull thug who has perhaps even accepted collateral damage for personal success – I’m a sought-after ball artist in a successful team!
And because it’s not about the strongest or most assertive players on the field – because that’s not how symbioses work – maybe next time it will be me who gets the ball to shoot at the goal anyway – because I’m in the best position to do so.

Ok – in my relationships I can benefit by contributing. And through romantic self-restraint, I experience added value that I would otherwise never have been able to enjoy or create on my own.
But what about this implied (= action that suggests a certain declaration of intent without this declaration having been expressly made in the action [e.g. consent to a loving relationship]) responsibility for the prosperity and sustenance of such cohabitation and love?
Why did I write in the previous Entry »However, if we are serious about our desire to share in a (loving) relationship, then responsibility is also involved at the same time – self-responsibility and also responsibility for the well-being, the “state of health” of the relationship«?
Even the Wikipedia entry on Symbiosis shows different degrees of interdependence and actually suggests “[Certain organisms] can generally live independently, and their part of the relationship is therefore described as facultative (optional), or non-obligate”. Wouldn’t that also be a way to handle human, romantic relationships with multiple participants?

I believe that such thoughts creep in primarily when we realize that neither love nor we personally are always able to operate only on the side of the above-mentioned “fair-weather face” of contribution and enjoyment.
On this subject, the Buddhist Shaolin master Shi Heng Yi recently said something very touching in his series “positivegedanken” on Instagram, which even brought to mind parts of the Christian wedding vows:

»And loyalty means knowing that there will be moments when we might disagree.
But precisely because I know that this might be a difficult time for one person, because there will be a lot of criticism and a lot of embarrassment – or whatever – that’s exactly why this person needs support now.
If everyone always talks positively, favourably and optimistically, then it’s [easy] to find a crowd of people to surround yourself with.
But there is a core [of people] that is not only there in good times, it is there above all in times when others run away. And every person should have a core like that – and sometimes that’s no more than a handful.
But what’s the beauty of it? That it gives you stability. Because you know that no matter what comes your way: I have a job, I don’t have a job – they’re there. I have a girlfriend, I don’t have a girlfriend – they’re there.«


Master Shi Heng Yi thus clarifies that the important concept of loyalty is not a “fair-weather standard” at all, but one whose value is precisely proven when it prevails in conflicts with one another – and gets confirmed that way.
And “loyalty”, which is already listed as a basic value of Oligoamory in Entry 3, has the following great definition on the German-language Wikipedia “The intrinsic solidarity that is based on shared moral maxims or guided by a rational interest and its expression in conduct towards a person, group or community. Loyalty means sharing and defending the values of others in the interest of a common higher goal, or defending them even if one does not fully share them, as long as this serves to preserve the jointly shared higher goal. Loyalty is demonstrated both in behavior towards the person to whom one is loyal and towards third parties.”

Both elements are contained here: The romantic, voluntary self-restraint (“…to represent these even if one does not fully share them…”) and the responsibility for the greater entirety, which is to be preserved and supported (“the preservation of the jointly represented higher goal…”), which are entwined by our desire for – and our free choice of – “intrinsic solidarity”.
The bottom line is that even the “(dependency) symbiosis”, which might initially be viewed with a frown, is not at all a fair-weather event. Because once united, the door of weal and woe swings in every direction for all those involved.
“You see, and that’s why I would avoid such a symbiosis right from the start…!”
Really? That would be exactly the wrong lesson to draw from the above. For it is precisely the symbiosis that makes it possible to absorb grievances or misunderstandings in a completely different way than we could ever succeed in acting as mere individuals.

Nowadays, a soccer team is usually put together in such a way that talents complement each other as much as possible to achieve top performances.
But centuries ago in the Middle Ages – a time when people were probably much more fundamentally aware of their imperfections and dependencies than we are today – the double figure of “the Blind One and the Lame One” was created, to which the German folk-rock band Ougenweidecreated another acoustic monument in modern times on their album “All die weil ich mag” (1974) with the setting of a text by the German poet Christian Fürchtegott Gellert¹. In the song, a lame cripple and a blind man meet. After a short negotiation, the blind man carries the lame man, who in return guides the blind man in the right direction. The song culminates with the lines:

Conjoined, this pair realises
What no one could do individually.

You do not have what others have
And others lack your gifts.
From this imperfections
The sociability springs forth.

If he did not lack the gift,
Which nature chose for me,
He would be for himself alone now
And not be troubled for me…

Do not burden the gods with complaints!
The advantage they deny you
And bestow on him will be made common:
We must be sociable only!

“Sociability”, as the people of the Middle Ages (and even Mr. Gellert in the 18th century) once called it, has a slightly different meaning today: We now say “community” or “companionship”.
“Dependency symbiosis”? Perhaps it’s a word that should be consigned to the past as well. We could call it “solidarity” these days. Or, in a romantic relationship involving several people, we could simply call it: love.



¹ Incidentally, the German poet and moral philosopher Christian Fürchtegott Gellert saw himself in continuity with the ideas of the English philosopher, writer, politician, art critic and literary theorist Anthony Ashley Cooper – 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, whom I admire and quote in Entry 64.

Thanks to Mary Taylor on Pexels for the photo!

Entry 102

The choice is mine!

Just the other weekend in June the European elections were held. And no matter how each of us may judge the outcome of this election, there were certainly three issues that played an important role, which also permeate the dynamics of our ethical multiple relationships like a root network.
These concern the values of freedom, participation and responsibility.
Both curse and opportunity of these three values, however, is that they are huge concepts of enormous scope which, nevertheless, have no crystal-clear external definition boundary – accordingly, their specifications usually occupy several screen pages in the vast majority of online encyclopaedias.

Perhaps we therefore should stick to the basics when it comes to our relationships.
For I believe that the connecting anchor word of the three terms is “participation”.
And freedom, on the other hand, we need if only to be able to openly declare ourselves as belonging to an identity or lifestyle of ethical multiple relationships (regardless of whether we are already part of such a relationship or not!) – which for example would not be possible or permitted in several autocratically governed states.
In this country, eyebrows are certainly still raised – or we’re told the stereotypical “… well, if it works out for you – but that’s nothing I would consider…” – nevertheless, in our society in the Federal Republic of Germany, we are free to be romantically involved with as many partners as we want at the same time.

So, by now, we are quite used to this degree of freedom for our individual decisions – it’s almost like breathing.
Indeed, the freedom of the individual: precisely because our legal system in this country attaches such great importance to it, we can be concerned with such non-conformist philosophies of life and partnership models as Poly- and Oligoamory at all. This is because romantic (loving) relationships are considered personal privacy in this country (according to Wikipedia: “…the non-public area in which a person exercises their right to free development of personality, undisturbed by external influences.”).
In this respect, however, our ambitions regarding multiple relationships also have limits: as of today, for example, we are not allowed to marry more than one of our favorite people and officially authorize this with a federally legitimized contract. This is where our freedom (still) reaches a legal limit: where our private sphere passes into public domain.
However, the same public domain in turn attaches great importance to our freedom of opinion and the free development of our personality. If we proclaim out loud on the streets that we love Fritzi, Luka, Renée and Robin and that we are currently in a romantic relationship with all of them with mutual knowledge and approval, then that’s ok (except for the aforementioned raised eyebrows…) – and we are free and entitled to do so.

Even more: If we (and Fritzi, Luka, Renée and Robin) don’t necessarily insist on a official ceremony followed by the signing of a civil contract at the registry office in order to feel that we belong to each other, then we also have a large deal of freedom when it comes to the way we arrange our relationship. So large that I even refer to this freedom in Entry 28 as a privilege (ask someone from Rwanda or Myanmar what freedom concerning multiple relationships looks like in those countries…).
And because individual freedom is a privilege, freedom also has exactly the same shadow that every privilege has: “the thing that you own – but are not aware that you own it”. And in this way, freedom is once again similar to our breath: we perform it constantly – even when we sleep – and normally never have to give it a single thought in order to be aware of it.

But when it comes to relationships at last, our attitude of great personal freedom may become difficult if we regard it as an “absolute” asset that no circumstance can or may diminish.
Because with participation (!) in a relationship, responsibility suddenly enters the field.
The German philosopher and professor Michael Pauen wrote: “A responsible person is considered to be someone who […] can make a deliberate decision and also realize it through an action, even though they could have acted differently. According to this view, a free action takes place without coercion and is not random. In this view, freedom is the condition for the possibility of human self-determination.” ¹
Ah! So my freedom has enabled me to choose whether I want to participate in a particular relationship – a decision that I could have denied myself to that extent…
The German philosopher, theologian and educator Georg Picht went even further: “Therefore, responsibility is first and foremost a claim on oneself and for oneself. The individual is both the subject of his or her own responsibility and the authority to which he or she must answer.” ² And in my opinion, this sentence is quite splendid, as it does not require a dogmatic system, state authority or religion as a justification – and is therefore also valid on an anarchist or atheist basis.

Thus, responsibility arises out of my freedom due to my desire for participation (in a relationship) – and then my free choice of actual participation.
This is an important conclusion for me, because in the world of multiple relationships, the freedom of those involved is often very strongly emphasized – and frequently in this way, as I wrote in Entry 87, »“freedom” is used as a kind of “defensive right” against any perceived paternalism, against any supposedly unjustified liability – but therefore, unfortunately, sometimes also too lightly against some real responsibilities.«

This is precisely why it is important for me to show once again that “responsibility” is not imposed on us from outside, as if a heavy cloak is laid over our shoulders by our loved ones, but rather that it is an accompanying co-pilot of our own individual freedom.
In contrast to other types of non-monogamy and open relationships, this is why the basic values of “commitment” and “continuity” are so strongly emphasized in Poly- and Oligoamory.
Let me outline this briefly: Of course it’s also possible to show commitment in a short-term relationship, for example by sticking to a given promise. Yet real commitment is based on a sum of such experiences that my loved ones share with me – and I with them – because commitment as a perceived attribute requires the observation of predictability and reliability – qualities that call for a longer period of time in order to fully develop.

Participation, which according to Wikipedia can also be read as “involvement, partaking, co-determination, co-decision, inclusion”, therefore automatically entails responsibility – which actually becomes obvious when you read these terms again.
But why do we still too often believe that this responsibility is imposed on us by the other parties in the relationship?
Because once we are part of a relationship, it is very easy to shift our point of view – our perspective on what has happened.

In Entry 9, I wrote about the “mysterious emotional contract” that would emerge invisibly the moment people entered into a relationship.
What was that again…?
The “implied acknowledgement and agreement – as a result of a mutually established emotional close-knit relationship – regarding the totality of voluntary yielded obligations, self-commitments and care which have been reciprocally contributed and are potentially enjoyable by all parties involved.”
Once again “Ah!”: I have entered into a relationship, as shown above, out of free will and free choice, – also for the reason that I can “enjoy” something in it; something that contributes to my “cocktail of needs”.
And to “enjoy” something that does not come from myself, I need to have it contributed by other people.
The scientists S. Cohen, L.G. Underwood and B.H. Gottlieb added very precisely to this in 2000:

Contributing to this perception is trust (the expectation that partners can be counted on to respect and fulfil important needs) and acceptance (the belief that partners accept one for who one is).
Empathy is also relevant because it signals awareness of an appreciation for a partners core-self.
Attachment also contributes to perceived partner responsiveness, notwithstanding its link to interdependence and sentiment, because of the fundamental role of perceiving that one is worthy of and can expect to receive love and care from significant others
.”
[For detailed information and source see Entry 14]

The German-American philosopher Hans Jonas called this relational experience somewhat complicated:
“Responsibility, for example for the welfare of others, not only ‘sifts’ given intentions to act for their moral permissibility, but also obliges to acts that are not intended for any other purpose.” ³
Oh boy – I’ll try to interpret that for you to some extent:
Responsibility in a relationship does not arise because it is imposed on me from outside, e.g. by moral authorities (law, church, state, “the good”, at the request of other partners, etc.) – and then I “must” or “should” act in this way, but rather by the very fact that I am actually part of a relationship, since enjoying the well-being of all those involved (and contributing to it) is already the main purpose of the relationship out of its own accord, so to speak.
By which Hans Jonas also implies that a relationship is only truly a relationship if the parties involved not only merely “consume”, but also “provide” voluntarily.

In short, neither a “responsibility light” nor a “participation light” can exist in committed romantic relationships. Both would be contradictory, although I have regularly heard the desire for the two, especially in multiple relationship contexts.
Yet if we are serious about our desire to share in a (loving) relationship, then responsibility is also immediately involved right from the start – personal responsibility and also responsibility for the well-being, the “state of health” of the relationship.

The playwright and lyricist Bertold Brecht expressed this connection very wisely in his short poem To Read in the Morning and at Night:

My love
Has told me
That (s)he needs me.

That’s why
I take good care of myself
Watch out where I’m going and
Fear that any drop of rain
Might kill me.


I am not sure whether we literally “need” each other – Marshall Rosenberg, the father of “Nonviolent Communication“, suggested the somewhat gentler expression “contribute to each other”, which I personally appreciate very much. Because hand on heart: if there wasn’t something in the relationships we entered into that we wanted to “enjoy” – as mentioned above – we probably wouldn’t be in them in the first place…

Freedom, that quality of being able to choose and decide between different options without coercion, therefore remains a privilege – particularly with regard to the specific relationships we enter into and the choice of our underlying relationship model.
Only freedom enables us to participate in a way that is worthy of the name; enables us to really get involved in our romantic relationships and to actively shape “the totality of voluntary yielded obligations, self-commitments and care“ out of our own free will.

Let us therefore no longer treat the responsibility associated with this as an annoying by-product of the trials and tribulations concerning our relationship housekeeping.

We should assign it the same significance as our desires for freedom of life and participation in love, because the three are inextricably linked.
So let’s apply to it the same level of passion, idealism and conviction that the next time it comes down to it – and we have a choice – we can welcome it just as well:
“Responsibility? Sure – that’s (also) me!”



¹ Michael Pauen: “Freedom, guilt, responsibility. Philosophical considerations and empirical findings.” In: Gunnar Duttge (ed.): “The self and its brain” Göttingen 2009, p. 78.

² Georg Picht: “The Concept of Responsibility.” In: “Truth, Reason, Responsibility. Philosophical Studies.” Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1969 / 2004, p. 321.

³ Hans Jonas: “The Principle of Responsibility. An attempt at ethics for technological civilization.” Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1979 (new edition 1984, pp. 174-175).

Thanks to Jon Tyson on Unsplash for the photo!

Looking for more about Europe? Then read Entry 10!

Entry 101

Happy & Content

Sometimes, when I gather with my family of choice (which also includes my polyculeª), we indulge in a homemade tradition, especially while raising a toast or at the beginning of a meal, when we cheerfully exclaim to each other in chorus: “Happy… – and content!”
This little ritual originated a few years ago, when we had been studying “Non-Violent Communication” according to Marshall Rosenberg for some time whilst working on the culture of our communal conversation. Rosenberg once said that people often wish for “happiness” in their relationships – but that they actually mean “contentment”, as “happiness” is only a rather limited, situational experience, whereas “contentment” is a desired, lasting state. This was also explicitly confirmed by the German happiness researcher Stefan Klein ( to whom I will return later in this article) in his book “The Formula of Luck – or How Good Feelings Arise” ¹ , which indicated that also the Swiss writer and philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel was already on the right track with his insight he put down in his diaries around the middle of the 19th century, writing “The true name for happiness is contentment”.

Hence, we humans long for contentment – and our interpersonal relationships in particular are affected by this to a very considerable extent.
How do we fare in this respect?
“From the outside”, for example, people who dedicate themselves to a life of multiple relationships are often diagnosed of being constantly on an ongoing pusuit for renewed happiness whilst never being able to join Goethe’s Faust in the joyful sigh “To the moment I’d like to say: ‘Tarry a while! You are so fair!.”

Let’s have a look at the bigger picture:
On March 20th of this year, the time had come once again: in the latest World Happiness Report (which focused on the years 2021 to 2023), Germany dropped 8 rankings from 16th to 24th position. Quite surprising countries such as Costa Rica, Lithuania and even the United Arab Emirates now register higher in Fortuna’s favour than we do in Germany.
What is going on in our otherwise quite lively republic that we are gradually struggling to keep up with the top group of happier nations and increasingly are on the verge of “mediocrity” just as it unfortunately too often feels in our everyday lives.
And what could we possibly adopt from the 23 happier competitors ahead of us?

For example, we live in a country where even immigrants are soon introduced to the somewhat feisty phrase “Frohes Schaffen!” (“Happy work!/Happy toiling!”) during their first German lessons. When I was working in the garden the other day, one such newcomer – who happened to pass my small building site – wished me with pursed lips and a somewhat alienated and astonished emphasis (as if he couldn’t quite believe that people in this country would actually bestow such words on each other as they would elsewhere share a traveler’s blessing or the hope for a safe reunion): “Well then, – Happy toiling…”.
The Austrian-American philosopher, psychotherapist and communication scientist Paul Watzlawick addressed such phenomena in his aptly titled book “Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein” (“The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness“)² and wrote about this type of motivation, among other things: Those who, contrary to the claim of the issuers of such messages (such as “Just be spontaneous…!” or “Simply be joyful once in a while!”), would not be able to appear “spontaneous”, “joyful” or “happy” would soon feel somehow “faulty” and would then develop feelings of guilt (which was not entirely unintentionally imposed in the first place…).

The latter (“guilt–”) impression in particular was also taken up in October ’23 by the German cabaret artist Urban Priol, who stated in a television interview³ after a prolonged visit to Canada: “When a social problem arises in Canada [current Happiness Report ranked 15th, by the way], people look for a solution together, while in Germany they first of all look for the culprit…”

Accordingly, we live in a country in which we all still regularly have to deal too much with more or less concealed allocations of guilt, which we receive – but probably also too often hand out among each other. And supposedly well-intentioned support in the form of stereotypes such as “Just be happy for now!”, “It can always be worse…” or “Others are much worse off…” are downright counterproductive negative psychology, which is unfortunately still encountered far too regularly in our society.
I even believe that we are currently in a phase where we need to pay even more attention to the way we interact with each other – be it romantically, amicably or just from one human being to another.

Thus wrote the British author Matt Haig (Great Britain is currently in 23rd place in the World Happiness Report…):
»It might seem a stretch to tie psychological healing with political healing, but if the personal is political, the psychological is, too. The current olitical climate seems to be one of division a a division partly fueled by the internet.
We need to rediscover our commonality as human beeings.

[…] There is n o panacea, or utopia, there is just love and kindness and trying, amid the chaos, to make things better where we can. And to keep our minds wide, wide open in a world that often wants to close them.«*

He adds, particularly with regard to our lives in western industrialized nations:
»Even when the world is not overtly terrifying us, the speed and pace and distraction of modern existence can be a kind of mental assault that is hard to identifie.
[…]
That is the biggest paradox, I think, about the modern world. We are all connected to each other but we often feel shut out. The increasing overload and complexity of modern life can be isolating.
Added to this is the fact that we don’t always know precisely what makes us feel lonely or isolated. It can make t hard to see what the problems are. It’s like trying to open an iPhone to fix it yourself. It sometimes feels like society operates like Apple, as if it doesn’t want us to get a screwdriver and look inside to see what the problems are for ourselves. But that’s what we need to do. Because often identifying a problem, being mindful of it, becomes the solution itself.«
*

In terms of interpersonal relationships, especially when they are supposed to be loving relationships, the above-mentioned ” allocation of guilt” is therefore a huge burden – and often an “invisible elephant”. This is because people resort to allocating guilt especially when, in their insecurity, they hope to at least be able to display themselves in a more favourable light by using a downward comparison (for the personal consequences of a downward comparison and a covert “You’re not ok the way you are!”, see Entry 98). In the medium term, that way we are belittling the people in our immediate surroundings, but ultimately, by continuing to think this way, we are also belittling ourselves.
And “belittling” is, of all things, the complete opposite (antonym) of the empowerment desired for all participants in ethical multiple relationships. Why it is important to cultivate “empowered relationships” in Poly- and Oligoamory, I have described on this bLog particularly in my three-part series on “Meaningful Relationships” 1 | 2 | 3, with the focus on Part 1.

Accordingly, in our culture and society (especially in the more “unhappy” cultures and societies!) we are faced with the increasing dilemma that this leads to an unsettling feeling of disconnectedness and thus, to a certain extent, “homelessness”. Using the example of a hostel for displaced people, Matt Haig, whom I have already quoted, explains:
»A vounteer there told me the idea is that ‘the people here are lacking more than somewhere to sleep, they are lacking belonging. The problem is homelessness not houselessness. When you are homeless you are missing more than just a bedroom.«

Concerning the important qualities of feeling-at-home and belonging – and that it is so fundamental to experience these in our close romantic relationships – I have been talking about on my bLog since Entry 5.
So it’s high time now to take a look at the “lucky dogs” (at least the “luckier dogs”…) ahead of us and hopefully learn from them what we could gain for ourselves.
Regular top candidates in the periodic “World Happiness Reports” are, for example, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Switzerland as well.

The German psychologist and happiness researcher Judith Mangelsdorf (German University of Applied Sciences for Health and Sports, Berlin), for example, on the one hand attests to the high level of perceived social support in all of these countries.: She explains that if you were to ask people in these countries, they would subjectively have the feeling that folks would be there for each other, that they would care for each other and that in this way the commonality within their country would really contribute to the well-being of all.
On the other hand, she mentions the subjective experience of freedom: That residents would enjoy the feeling of being able to make their own decisions and shape their lives freely.
Happiness researcher Stefan Klein confirms this in his book “The Formula of Luck”:
»In case of doubt, being free to make your own decisions is worth more than having your wishes fulfilled. For most of us, control over our own destiny is an essential prerequisite for happiness and contentment. To experience the feeling of being at the mercy of others is one of the most unbearable sensations. Both humans and animals react to this with severe mental and physical disorders. If something desired can only be obtained at the price of dependency, those who choose freedom usually fare better.«
As far as I’m concerned, by the way, these are all factors that I also would like to experience in my relationships if I want to feel comfortable in them…

Questions put directly to the inhabitants of the affected countries yield even more specific results – especially with regard to the above-mentioned allocations of guilt and the downward comparisons.
In Finland, which is currently ranked 1st, already pupils are learning to recognize and identify their emotions. Teacher Annika Lehikoinen comments: “Teenagers are highly emotional, and they learn that it’s okay to experience all their feelings. It’s very important that they understand: Even if I have negative emotions, I still have to encounter everyone else with appreciation.” This is where Matt Haig resonates and I hear him saying “Often recognizing a problem, being mindful of it, becomes the solution itself.”

The Canadian economist John F. Helliwell has analyzed Finnish society in even greater detail. He points out:
»In Finland, your own contentment is closely linked to the contentment of others. Finns trust each other, they look after each other. And they have a very high level of equality of opportunity. Finns compare themselves less and are not in competition with each other like people in many other countries.«
The Finnish psychologist Frank Martela underlines this by describing that it is not so much a matter of Finland having the most exceptionally happy people, but rather that there are very few extremely unhappy people in Finland. This also contributes to people comparing themselves less with others. It would be precisely this equalisation that makes a difference. One Finnish proverb would say: “There’s no need to be envious.” Because even if someone else has or can do something special: I still lack nothing because, after all, nothing has been taken away from me.

Happiness researcher Klein becomes very explicit about this in his “Formula of Luck”. In his 13th chapter (“The power of perspective”), Klein names five “traps” that would directly counteract the experience of contentment and happiness. Traps four and five are – hardly surprisingly – entitled “Sideways Glances” and “Envy” and Klein writes bluntly: “If you compare yourself, you lose” – as people could very easily undo even the contentment they have already gained by means of these inner adversaries.

And in the same chapter, Klein agrees with the approach of Finnish teacher Annika Lehikoinen: a lot of unhappiness could be avoided if we were able to understand why we react the way we do and to what. The way forward therefore would be to pay more attention to our perception in the immediate present than we are used to. For it would be enormously beneficial to train the ability to notice emotions before they become distorted by comparisons, thoughts and memory.
At the same time, people would often deprive themselves of their comfort because they would usually experience their genuine contentment only too nebulously, especially because – if things were running smoothly – they would be only too willing to let their attention slip away. But particularly good feelings, such as the pleasant sensation of sitting opposite a familiar person for example, should be fully savoured.

Klein therefore refers to the Socio-Economic Panel, which also in Germany has brought “happy circumstances” to light by means of its surveys:
Accordingly, the most satisfied people in Germany are by far those who likewise prioritize the happiness of their fellow human beings. In the best-case scenario, this would create a community that feels connected and supports each other with mutual help – even in cases where political conviction is required (“…if the personal is political, then so is the psychological…”).
It’s the basic foundation for belonging and any true sense of community.

Having said all this about the source of happiness and contentment in our close and very close relationships, it seems right to me today to leave the closing words as well to the author Matt Haig, who wrote:

Maybe happiness is not about us, as individuals.
Maybe it is not something that arrives into us.
Maybe happiness ist felt heading out, not in.
Maybe happines is not about what we deserve because we’re worth it.
Maybe happiness is not about what we can get.
Maybe happiness is about what we already have.
Maybe happiness is about what we can give.
Maybe happiness is not a butterfly we can catch with a net.
Maybe there is no certain way to be happy.
Maybe there are only maybes.
If (as Emily Dickinson said) “Forever is composed of nows” maybe the nows are composed of maybes.
Maybe the point of life is to give up certainty and to embrace life’s beautiful uncertainty.



ª “Polycule” is a humorous portmanteau of “Polyamory” and “molecule” and refers to a group of people who are involved in ethically non-monogamous romantic relationships. As these “structures” or clusters can sometimes look like hydrocarbon rings, complex molecules or other medium-chain compounds when drawn for graphic illustration, the tongue-in-cheek term “polycule” has been coined.

¹ Stefan Klein, “The Formula of Luck – or: How good feelings arise”, [“Die Glücksformel”] Fischer 2012; expanded new edition 2014 [German edition only]

² Paul Watzlawick, “The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness”, ‎ Norton & Company; Reprint Edition (1. Juli 1993)

³ Urban Priol in SR-Gesellschaftsabend No. 294; broadcasting series of the Saarländischer Rundfunk [German language only]

* All in-depth quotations in this Entry by Matt Haig are taken from: “Notes on a nervous planet”, Canongate Books Ltd.; Main Edition (28. Februar 2019)

I would like to thank the Tagesschau (News Portal) archive for the article on the World Happiness Report 2024 Finland remains the happiest country (as at: 20.03.2024 11:28 a.m.) and the interview with Judith Mangelsdorf “One of the strongest factors is togetherness (as at: 20.03.2024 2:59 p.m.)

And of course thanks to Zachary Nelson on Unsplash for the photo!

Entry 100

Resource Cake

Festive weeks on the Oligoamory-bLog – and one anniversary follows the next: The 100th Entry can be admired today! Behind the speedy succession of outstanding milestones (just last month we celebrated 5 years of Oligoamory) this time, however, there’s first and foremost arithmetical finesse: Since I had written 4 articles every month in my first year of blogging, the 100th Entry is the result of the sum of 61 diligent months, after my project had become a monthly edition in year two.

Of course, there are nevertheless candles and cake for the nice round lot – and the latter is a kind of symbol for my topic today, which always plays an important role in the world of ethical multiple relationships: Resources.

A resource, according to the German-language Wikipedia, is “a means, [a] condition as well as [a] characteristic or [a] quality for pursuing goals, coping with requirements, carrying out specific actions or allowing a process to proceed in a certain goal-oriented manner.” The Wikipedia entry also adds: “A resource can be a material or immaterial asset, […] in psychology for example also abilities, personal characteristics or a mental attitude, in sociology for example education, health, prestige and social connectedness. In psychological and psychosocial contexts, the terms ‘strengths’ or ‘sources of power’ are also frequently used.”

Three sentences from an online encyclopedia and it becomes clear that no one who is involved in a structure of several romantic partnerships – and possibly with several physically existing loved ones – can avoid this topic.
Because for truly practicable multi-person networks rooted in green life, personal resources are a decisive – how do we say nowadays? – “benchmark“, precisely in terms of their feasibility, their establishment and their sustainability.
Why this is so important, I already outlined in the first year of this project in my “Dating”-Entry 30” by asking: “Do I currently have the capacity in my life to appreciate a (further) WHOLE person as such?”
This question naturally arises when engaging in any form of romantic relationship – but when it comes to a life with even more than just one other “relationship participant”, the challenge of providing and allocating resources can increase accordingly (at least it sometimes seems that way…).

Which brings us to today’s title photo with the (anniversary) cake as an allegory for our resources. Which I think is pretty fitting, because of course a cake like this is usually there to presumably be shared with others.
At the same time… – as it lies there, pre-cut in its plastic tray – this resource, for its part, seems to be part of something bigger as well. And that’s wonderful: After all, I’ve been stating about ethical oligoamorous multiple relationships almost from the very beginning (and it says so on my starting page) that they constitute an experience that is “greater than the sum of its parts”...

However, the current climate change and the turn towards a new ecological mindset also remind us that resources are not infinite. This also applies to our personal resources in relationships. It is no coincidence that the subtitle of the Oligoamory project is “committed-sustainable relationships” (and I already talk about the “sustainability aspect” in the last section of Entry 3).
Limited resources mean that they should be managed carefully, but this sometimes also leads to division and rationing: Who receives which, when, from what and how much – and instead of a lavish cake, a purely functional pie chart with its colored larger and smaller segments comes to mind…

This tendency does not stop at multiple relationships – after all, sharing in a cake to which everyone contributes is only one side of the coin. The British author and journalist Matt Haig describes the other side as follows:

»Although it is said that the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the last person who read everything, this is a technical impossibility as he died in 1834, when there were already millions of books in existence. However, what is interestingis that people of the time could believe it was possible to read everything. No one could believe such a thing now.
We all know that, even if we break the world record for speed reading, the number of books we read will only ever be a minuscule fraction of the books in existence. We aredrowning in books just as we are droening in TV shows. And yet we can only read one book – and watch only one TV show – at a time. We have multipled everything, but we are still individual selves. There is only one of us. And we are all smaller than the internet. To enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale. To focus on the few things we can do, rather than the millions of things we can’t. To not crave parallel lives. To find a smaller mathematics. To be a proud and singular one. An indivisible prime.«
¹

So let’s hope that we haven’t chosen multiple relationships out of our multiplication reflex of not missing out on anything. In any case, the temptation to pursue several relationships as “parallel lives” is quite real in Polyamory (my concern about this in Entry 2!). Self-care, on the other hand, is advisable if multiple relationships should prove “sustainable” in terms of our resources.

Concerning that, according to my experience, I would generally differentiate between “external” resources (e.g. money/income, means of transportation, housing, infrastructure, access to support, constitutionality, etc.) and “internal” resources (e.g. resilience, empathy, openness, relationship skills, ability to deal with conflict or criticism, etc.) – although there are certain overlapss:
A typical phenomenon for overlaps is the timing, like for example: Do I just have to deal with my mother’s admission to a nursing home, who received her dementia diagnosis last week? Or am I in my third trimester of pregnancy?
Get me right: When love enters our lives, it often doesn’t necessarily ask whether it’s a good time. However, sometimes there are serious external circumstances and processes that occupy us already factually – but also mentally and psychologically – to such an extent that we may not be the best version of ourselves – also with regard to our ability to be confronted with additional, groundbreaking decisions beyond the current stress (further typical “overlapping resources” are therefore e.g. health, integration/participation, as well as social inclusion and personal contacts in general).

Indeed, especially the important “resource time” itself – seemingly a mathematical external factor that literally squeezes our lifetime into the pie chart segments of the clock face: Time for eating, sleeping and the commitments we have made, e.g. often work – but also other obligations and relationships of various kinds that we want to maintain. As a result, we begin to allocate – and divide – and the organizational effort involved grows proportionally with the increasing scarcity that we ourselves are creating.

The author Matt Haig is right, however, when he points out that – controversial to the saying about love – that not everything always “becomes more when you share it”. Because at the end of all duplication, multiplication and any “more”, we ourselves – with our senses and sensations that allow us to experience all that – remain indivisible (see last third of Entry 98: in-dividual).
And precisely because this is the case, there is a danger that we will begin to deplete our lifetime – particularly when it comes to our relationships! – until we feel as the fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien makes the poor troubled Bilbo say in The Lord of the Rings (Vol.1 “The Fellowship of the Ring”):
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.“
At that point there is nothing left of cake, pie and enjoyment. And forget about sustainability…

As far as our resources are concerned, however, we can also be misled by two further factors, which in turn will probably lead to us literally “loading too much onto our plates” – causing us to be unable to get off a potential (pre-)worry carousel in good time.

On the one hand, this is due to the unfavorable biographical learning experience, which I already mentioned in Entry 27 and Entry 98, quoting the words of Friedrich Schiller “He who is strongest is most powerful alone”.
Such a manifested conviction usually arises from the negative (life)experience that one cannot rely on others, which often results in the attitude that “…if you want something done, you’d better do it yourself!”

On the other hand, this can happen if we overdo it with the beautiful oligoamorous principle of “thinking the other participants into the equation” from Entry 53, and try to co-manage the sovereignty hemisphere of these other participants in the relationship in a certain form of anticipatory concern.

I’m writing this paragraph because it’s something I keep catching myself doing – precisely because I sometimes forget that the other people involved in the relationship are also truly WHOLE, competent people.
Then I find myself – while I’m about to arrange an appointment – juggling with distances and navigation applications, fiddling with meal plans or comparing the pros and cons of entire weekend schedules with the known likes and dislikes of the possible participants.
And before I’ve even come close to successfully slaying such a coordination monster, I sometimes receive an email from one of my loved ones telling me how she*he can easily travel the (in my eyes terrifyingly annoying) kilometers to my place, what she*he is contributing to lunch and that we don’t need so many plotted activities because our coming together would be the most important priority. Period.

But sometimes I don’t – and I get tangled up unnecessarily in a mess of well-intentioned, anticipatory obedience, seasoned with a few subliminal patronizing suggestions due to the omission to inquire in time on my part…

Incidentally, such an unfavorable “cat-and-mouse game with yourself” can be taken to extremes. Because it’s of course good and right to be clear about your resources – and about what capacities are (still) available for (further) interpersonal relationships. However, asking yourself what you have to offer another person because you already have such a jam-packed life is above all a self-deprecating but ultimately rather insubstantial endeavor – since it is in the eyes and hearts of the others who hopefully choose us for their own – and uniquely good – reasons.

By which I mean to say: Even BEING in a relationship can still occasionally make us forget that we don’t have to bear the weight of the universe on our shoulders alone. Or that only our shoulders might be the most appropriate on which it should rest…
After all, it is also an important resource to acknowledge the limits of one’s own sphere of controllability.
For one thing, that we can finally free ourselves from the fact that since we are NOT alone, we still always have to be strong in everything.
Because, for another thing, the other (relationship) parties involved are absolutely great, capable – indeed – WHOLE human beings, with ideas, talents and resources all of their own, which probably relate to domains and potentials that are luckily quite different from ours.
Ideas, talents and resources that in turn allow us the extraordinary and beneficial experience of drawing from something greater than the mere sum of its parts…

Of course, in ethical (multiple) relationships, it remains true and important to think about the effects of one’s own plans and actions on other participants. Selfishly managed resources, which are allocated as we see fit, primarily with a view to maximizing our own benefit, render us incapable of relating and unlovable.
In line with the words of Matt Haig above, the German social pedagogue and conflict researcher Klaus Wolf, for example, already worked out at the beginning of this millennium that individual self-nurturing coping styles such as optimism or dedication (in the sense of: turning towards, opening up, accepting) are among the most essential personal resources.²
And that is precisely why sharing in intimate relationships also allows us to experience this unique sentiment with regard to our resources, which for me was most impressively put into words by the deeply perceptive Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke³:

Rest!
Being a guest for once.
Not always entertain your own desires
with meager fare.
Not always grasping for everything with hostility;
let everything happen for once and know:
What happens is good.



¹ Matt Haig: „Notes on a Nervous Planet“, Canongate Books Ltd.; Main Edition (05. July 2018)

² Klaus Wolf: Sozialpädagogische Interventionen in: Karin Lauermann, Gerald Knapp (Edt.): Sozialpädagogik in Österreich. Perspektiven in Theorie und Praxis. Volume 3. Publishers: Hermagoras/Mohorjeva, Wien, p. 92–105, esp. p. 95; 2003

³ Excerpt from: Rainer Maria Rilke – The Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke, written in 1899, first publication by Insel-Bücherei in 1912

Thanks to MatissDzelve on Pixabay for the photo!