Author: Oligotropos

Wait a minute!

When it comes to multiple relationships such as in Poly- and Oligoamory, there is a phenomenon that we are confronted with surprisingly regularly: Waiting. Waiting, for example, for our loved ones (regardless of whether they are currently travelling to us or, as usual, three people are in each other’s way in a far too narrow cloakroom corridor when we set off…), having to wait and see how our relationships with each other will develop and hopefully strengthen – but of course also often: waiting to discover whether a multiple relationship situation will ever occur in our lives.

A few years ago, on the subject of the podcast “Zeitfragen” on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, the authors Andrea and Justin Westhoff have created a contribution¹ in which they address many relevant aspects of waiting and show how the associated patience, endurance and perseverance have very different sociological and psychological dimensions. Among others, they quoted the sociologist Dr Andreas Göttlich from the University of Constance, who explained in detail: »Waiting is an “experience of time” – and of course depends on external circumstances, on how and what you are waiting for. In general, we can say that it is a phenomenon or a form of behaviour that is rarely actually value-neutral. So waiting is often emotionally charged, and “hoping” and “fearing” describe just such emotional charges of waiting, which of course depends on how we subsequently evaluate the expected.«

With regard to multiple relationships, I consider the keyword “the expected” to be particularly worth mentioning here. After all, in interpersonal contexts involving poly- and oligoamorous relationships, people now often talk at length about those famous individual needs for which entering into several relationships with different people could possibly help to hopefully fulfil them better. This narrative is heard and read so regularly in multiple relationship settings that it has long since become a regular “expectation” in itself being embedded in the overall approach.
And “expectation” is actually a rather amusing objective, as we humans are trying to actively gain the upper hand over a circumstance to which we are in reality passively at the mercy of. “Expecting”, that almost sounds like “executing” – to realise a longed-for state that we strive for by waiting, that we want to make sure to bring it about in this way…
The problem? We all know it: when people don’t fulfil our expectations, it’s almost the worst thing they can do to our minds, because high personal expectations almost inevitably lead to the experience of frustration, which I already define in Entry 22 with the help of the Brockhaus dictionary as an “experience of (actual or perceived) disadvantage or denial that arises as an emotional reaction to an unfulfilled or unrealisable expectation (disappointment), e.g. as a result of the failure of a personal plan or the partial or complete lack of satisfaction of primary and secondary needs.”

In this day and age, and especially in Western industrialised nations, this is mostly due to the fact that we have difficulties with the passivity of waiting, which is often perceived as being externally imposed. After all, we live in a society in which individuality, independence and autonomy are strongly emphasised characteristics, almost internalised basic values. Thus, “having to wait” – even for our loved ones – is something that we quickly perceive as a power imbalance to our own disadvantage. This is a delicate circumstance for multiple relationships, because nowadays we mainly experience “having to wait” in public spaces where hierarchies exist, for example: At work, at government offices – or when it comes to specialised personnel (e.g. in healthcare or the employment of skilled craftsmen). And – on the other hand – no matter how equal we would like our personal relationships to be: They will probably never be completely free of delays and waiting.

However, when we engage in romantic relationships – and possibly even in more than one – there may well be times when “waiting for each other” does not necessarily have to do with mere impatience or even power issues. Sometimes it’s simply the case that you don’t know what’s coming and you can’t influence it – and then you start to worry as a result of the fear of the unknown; a state that the psychologist Kate Sweeny, professor at the University of California in Riverside, has even termed “toxic waiting” ².

The extent to which each of us suffers from such situations – or copes with them with a relatively pronounced composure – depends on our individual “waiting ability” to varying degrees.
The most famous experiment is probably the world-renowned psychological “marshmallow experiment“, which the US personality psychologist Walter Mischel conducted in many variations with preschool children at Stanford University in California between 1968 and 1974. Mischel actually wanted to research free will, and impulse control via ”reward deferral” seemed to him to be a good measuring instrument for this. In fact, it became a multi-layered waiting experiment, because it not only recorded the time that each individual child was able to resist the temptation – alone in a room with a marshmallow (!) – but also documented their waiting strategies. The children were also promised that they would receive an additional marshmallow if they waited successfully, thus doubling their reward. The little ones were left alone with the coveted sweet treat for a maximum of 15 minutes and were kept under (covered) observation: One in four ate the sweet immediately, 30 per cent managed the full time. Each of them tried to distract themselves somehow; some ran around, some tried to cheat.
What was more fascinating, however, were the results of follow-up observations of the successful test subjects decades later: those who waited patiently proved to be more stress-resistant overall in their later lives and, above all, showed greater social skills.

In 2014, sociologist Bettina Lamm from the Lower Saxony Institute for Early Childhood Education and Development at the University of Osnabrück repeated the experiment with children from Germany and a comparison group of children from Cameroon, in which she confirmed Mischel’s result of 30% “test winners” for Germany – whereas the Cameroonians, however, scored a sensational 70% of “patient” children. How did this come about?

The German children reacted in a predominantly “normal-squirrelly” way while waiting – just like we adults probably would. The children from Cameroon, on the other hand, all started with an additional social restriction: Due to their adult peers, they were used to the fact that promises were usually not kept. Therefore, they should have internalised that “it’s not worth waiting (anyway)”. However, when they were shown the second marshmallow before the test, the aforementioned high percentage waited patiently, playing, singing or chattering until the test was over, promising success.
Evaluations showed that the small gesture of “previous marshmallow showing” had obviously demonstrated enormous reliability on the part of the experimenters, to which the children responded with a high level of pre-confidence.
Socially speaking, this is actually an impressive promise of commitment: Look, I am prepared/ready and willing to contribute to your needs in a moment. If I am worth your time, we both gain something.

Interestingly, Bettina Lamm was thus able to underpin Walter Mischel’s findings on stress resilience and social competence with a further level, which in my view also establishes an important correlation for multiple relationships: In a way, “being able to wait” is already a preliminary stage of trust towards our attachment figures and loved ones!
In the words of Bettina Lamm:
»If you think about it, this ability to postpone a momentary need and resist the temptation to work on longer-term goals is definitely a skill that you need at many points in your life. When it comes to studying for an exam instead of pursuing a leisure activity or perhaps encountering problems in a relationship: dealing with them and not immediately breaking out of the situation. That means it’s definitely plausible.«

Personally, especially for romantic contexts, I would even go one step further based on this result.
In its passive quality, ’waiting‘ also has something to do with ’serving‘, which – for example – we can still recognise in the English language when using the words “waiter” or “waitress”.
And for me, this represents the beneficial counterpart to the somewhat active-aggressive ‘expectation’ mentioned at the beginning: When we “serve” a cause, we make ourselves a little smaller, become a little more dedicated, more receptive and softer than before. Yes, this also echoes the aforementioned hierarchy (which used to be a very real one when in the old days servants “waited tables”). In this case, however, it is a freely and willingly performed “service” for our loved ones, just as I already explained in Entry 34 that, in my view, »the core of the “romantic narrative” is the voluntary self-sacrifice performed for the community.«

And since “waiting” is about personally invested (life) time, this brings me full circle to the fact that the invested waiting time is a trusting gift in return for the demonstrated reliability, constancy and commitment of our other relationship partners.
The absolutely decisive key here is precisely the applied amount of free will that even Walter Mischel originally wanted to reveal with his “marshmallow experiment”.

Incidentally, Dr Andreas Göttlich from the University of Konstanz calls this the “gift exchange”, an important form of interpersonal synchronisation and therefore a social ability with an extremely positive dimension: »This is the only way to build trust, because if I immediately reciprocate every gift that is given to me, then there is actually no social bond. In this respect, it would be an example for a kind of social relationship that can only last if a certain amount of time is involved and if the people who are engaged in this social action can also wait, otherwise it is not a gift, but simply a transaction.«
This alone is certainly worth considering because, unfortunately, in the early stages of polyamorous relationships, events frequently occur too quickly or in too rapid succession, which often puts undue strain on the potential long-term development of trusting relationships – to the detriment of all parties involved.

Thus the German aphorist Georg-Wilhem Exler once stated quite appropriately that “waiting means that what you are waiting for is more important than what is now.”
In these words I recognise a lot of precisely the oligoamorous added value that I always refer to on this bLog as “more than the sum of its parts” – and which I describe in Entry 9 as the concentrate of a joint emotional contract, 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.”
After all, these “voluntary yielded oligations, self- commitments and care” are not something that you can put straight into your shopping trolley and consume immediately, as if you were buying them from a supermarket shelf. They are more like seeds and sprouts for a vegetable patch that need to be tended, nurtured, watered and regularly cleared of weeds by everyone involved so that the result ultimately provides sufficient nourishment for all those involved. Until that point is reached, we have to wait time and again, investing mutually and devotedly our time, thereby trusting (in advance) that there will literally be a fruitful, shared reward.
This is precisely what makes the ambivalent virtues of patience and the ability to wait so valuable for a polycule, especially when it comes to several participants gradually gaining confidence in a new, previously unfamiliar situation with each other.

In my opinion, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer provided the most beautiful summary of today’s topic with another harvest metaphor, which I would like to share with you in conclusion:

»Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break the ripe fruit when it has barely set the sprout; but greedy eyes are all too often deceived by the fact that the seemingly delicious fruit is still green on the inside, and disrespectful hands ungratefully cast aside what has brought them such disappointment.
Those who do not know the bitter bliss of waiting, that is, hoping while being deprived, will never experience the full blessing of fulfilment.
He who does not know how one feels, who anxiously wrestles with the deepest questions of life, of his life, and waits, longingly watches until the truth is revealed to him, can dream nothing of the glory of this moment in which clarity shines forth, and he who does not want to court the friendship, the love of another, waiting to open his soul to the soul of the other until the latter arrives, until it finally arrives, to him the deepest blessing of a life of these souls in each other remains eternally hidden.
We have to wait for the greatest, deepest, most tender things in the world, things do not come in a storm, but according to the divine laws of germination and growth and becoming.« ³

¹ Deutschlandfunk Kultur: Soziales Alltagsphänomen – “Über das Warten” 04.08.2016 (Link only in German language!)

² ‘Two definitions of waiting well’ ; February 2016; Kate Sweeny, Chandra A Reynolds, Angelica Falkenstein, Sara E Andrews, Michael D Dooley

³ Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘Advent’ from ‘Barcelona, Berlin, America 1928-1931’, DBW Volume 10, page 529

Thanks to Maxim Abramov on Unsplash for the photo!

Ideal for what?

The protagonist Robin of Loxley roams exasperated through the dense forest in the 1984 TV series “Robin of Sherwood” (Season 2, Episode 2 “The Children of Israel”). He has quarreled with his companions and their current adventure does not seem to be progressing well. And because he is so preoccupied with his own thoughts and not paying attention to where his path is taking him, he suddenly encounters in a gloomy ravine a manifestation of his current spiritual advisor – the forest and hunting god Herne. Herne asks him why he has come – and the frustrated Robin admits that he has actually had quite enough and would almost like to break faith with him. After a short dialogue, however, the wise Herne dismisses Robin with the following words:
Herne: “Your arrows must be ready!”
Robin: “The target is to far – my aim is lost!”
Herne: “Then aim again.”
Robin: “To what purpose? To what end?”
Herne: “There is no end and no beginning. It is enough to aim.”

Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, the godmother and originator of modern Polyamory, was an idealist. She drew her ideals from her belief in the socially transformative power of love – as perhaps only those who experienced her youth and young adult phase in California in the 1960s could have imagined –, from her neo-pagan, natural-religious world view – on which she orientated herself throughout her life – and from literature, especially the work of the American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein.

Morning Glory, who at her beginning was still simply called Diana Moore, regarded love as the great changer and questioner of circumstances of which most other people assumed that they “simply had to be that way because they had always been that way”. And at the same time, love was also an incentive for her to always approach such circumstances with a measure of compassionate appropriateness and attention to the inherent dynamics of real life. For all the endeavours that Morning Glory later pursued on this basis, this was an important, both mindful as well as down-to-earth foundation, from which her new organic concept for ethical multiple relationships (yes, Polyamory!) benefited in particular in 1990.

However, Morning Glory originally encountered the topic of love as early as 1965, when she embarked on her own spiritual quest and thereby turned to neopaganism and the new witchcraft movement, both of which sought to emphasise the words “Perfect Love and Perfect Trust!” in their core beliefs and ritual circles. Nature-spiritual neopagan witchcraft of the late 1960s combined a view of the earth as a living, energetic organism with feminist ideas that propagated an independently feminine, emotional-psychic and creative-empowering spiritual existence – and with this as a background, celebrated a world-connecting holistic concept of creation with a strong emphasis on responsibility for one’s own actions. The witches’ covens of her time constituted themselves autonomously, without hierarchical super-organisations, and aimed to be internally free of class conceit, social status or gender boundaries. Concepts such as “community”, “integrity”, “consistency”, “responsibility” and the aforementioned “trust” among each other were of great importance to them – as the key to a targeted and personally effective transformation of the existing reality by means of one’s own will.
Those familiar with the subject will easily recognise some of the elements that were incorporated into the formulation of Polyamory 25 years later…

Finally, in 1973 – Morning Glory had already experimented with an open marriage herself – she met during a neopagan convention her later long-term partner Timothy “Otter”/”Oberon” Zell, a member of the group “Church of All Worlds” (CAW), who ultimately introduced her not only to the self-actualising ideas of “humanistic psychology” according to Abraham Maslow, but also to the progressive ideas of the above-mentioned US science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein. In particular, two works of the latter, “Stranger in a Strange Land“ and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress“ (see also Entry 47, last third), outlined fictional but plausible alternative models of society, characterised by equality, diversity, interdependence, inclusion and liberal sexual morals – mostly practised in small, accessible social units.
As the CAW tried to align their own local groups with this literary model, the nucleus of “Polyamory” ultimately emerged from a participation of this kind (since 1984 there was a “throuple” relationship with Oberon Zell and another woman, Diane Darling), from which Morning Glory finally gained the experience for her breakthrough with an article published 1990 in the CAW members’ magazine.

Having written these last three paragraphs for you to read, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart almost seems to have been a kind of “Holy Hippie Mother Mary” of multiple relationships: Spirited, self-contained, full of ideals, passionate, yet determinedly on the path of becoming-self-realised (the “self-actualization” according to A. Maslow).
I suppose she was all of these things in a certain way. And at the same time, she wasn’t, because she was also simply “one of us”, which is always cheerfully recognisable in the interviews and stories by and with her.

Curious? Here are two better-known examples:
When she was about to become a member of a Dianic (i.e. dedicated to the goddess Diana) and therefore all-female witches’ coven at the age of 20, she rebelled against the requirement to practise celibacy – i.e. chastity – for the duration of her affiliation with the group. She expressed her protest as a sexually active and self-determined woman by choosing the name “Morning Glory” for herself – which indeed is also the term for the plant of the same name (and botanically derived witch names are not uncommon…) – but also the somewhat bawdy description for a well-known masculine phenomenon… She nonetheless proudly identified with this name from then on and kept it until her death in 2014.

In 1985, when she had already been married to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart for 10 years, they jointly developed a process for transforming goat kids into unicorns (yes, you read that right) – a technique that was successfully carried out several times on various kids thanks to the interweaving of the initially still very malleable keratin strands of the budding horns. Although the approach was even patented, Morning Glory eventually turned away from this form of “growth manipulation” after a few attempts, as she was ultimately unable to reconcile it with her nature-based religious values.

So Morning Glory was definitely someone with ideals, but she was certainly not a “saint” – if this is to be understood as a metaphor for a person who is “above all things”. How could she be, since from 1984 until her death she shared in a highly dynamic multiple relationship that fluctuated between at least three and a maximum of six participating loving partners over a period of 30 years.

Will one always be true to one’s ideals during such a long time? Never argue? Never feel inferior or neglected at some point? Never succumb to the temptation to dress up the truth in a more colourful cloak for one’s own benefit (to quote Walter Moers¹ at this point)?
I think that would be superhuman – and in my opinion especially and most of all Morning Glory’s “gift of Polyamory” proclaims to the world how much in particular profound humanity must have shaped a significant part of her values and ideals.

After all, the text “A Bouquet of Lovers” ², in which she used the word “polyamorous” for the first time in 1990 in the magazine “Green Egg“, is not intended as a manifesto of principles and rules – and it doesn’t read like one at all. It is rather a…, I would say, a written “enabling” of how a multiple relationship could be practised in an ethical way for all those involved.
For as I wrote already in Entry 49, Morning Glory was first and foremost a practitioner who was acutely quite aware of her own weaknesses and those of her fellow human beings. From her own observation and experience, as well as from Abraham Maslow’s humanistic psychology, she knew that people were perfectly capable of acting altruistically, consciously and intentionally (purposefully); but that they were also capable of exactly the opposite in terms of selfishness, thoughtlessness and impulsiveness – the latter in particular, the less pronounced their own degree of self-actualization would be, whereas the pressure of their own perceived neediness would be intense.
This is precisely why her polyamorous legacy contains no “Thou shalt…!” but all the more “Golden Rule” – which in itself is actually more of a golden “It would be best…” : “Treat others as you would like others to treat you.”

This is why e.g. jealousy and self-doubt also have a place in Polyamory. And that is why insincerity, lack of confidentiality and disloyalty can also occur in Polyamory – because those who want to pursue ethical multiple relationships are (only) human beings themselves.
Otherwise, Polyamory would also be a dogmatic and rather tyrannical relationship philosophy if its ideals were imposed in such a rigorous way that its sympathizers would regularly despair at the uncompromising and inflexible nature of its demands…

Ideals however, according to the US psychologist and psychotherapy researcher Stephen Hayes, who has already been quoted several times on this bLog, are rooted in our personal values. Values that are aligned with social standards, for example, or we hope that they will improve our quality of life, promote inner enrichment or even mature our personality.
Thus, in order for values to become ideals, we must take precisely that step in which we separate mere personal utilitarian thinking from an inner striving for meaning.
Because – in very practical terms in terms of Polyamory – I could otherwise lie to my partners in complete agreement with myself because I would be able to gain an advantage or quickly satisfy a need – whereby I agree to accept collateral damage, e.g. potentially causing suffering to other people involved.

However, Polyamory is also idealistic. It is – thanks to Morning Glory! – about a deeper meaning, an inherent ethic: How do we maintain a loving relationship with several people without inflicting involuntary or even arbitrary suffering – in which all participants are instead granted an extended relationship framework where they can benefit from jointly provided resources and shared joy?

Therefore, if we still keep bumping our heads against the ideals of Polyamory, there may be two reasons for this.

• On the one hand, it could be that our own values at the moment are honestly not in line with those of Polyamory. For example, we may place less emphasis on truthfullness, personal integrity and accountability in our path of need fulfillment than is desirable and necessary in a more complex, ethical multiple relationship philosophy.
At this point, we would have to put our current personal values to the test and adjust them if necessary – or admit to ourselves that we (for whatever good reason) have so far given our utilitarian thinking a more important priority over the above-mentioned gain in meaning. This is not necessarily a fault of Polyamory or of us – but perhaps we are simply not suited to each other at this particular moment.

• On the other hand, it may be possible that – without actually realising it – we have elevated our ideals so far above the values of our self-image that we regularly experience ourselves as failing to live up to them. And this is neither good for us, because we increasingly experience our own actions as deficient and/or inadequate (and this is considerably detrimental to our self-assessment in terms of relationship management) – nor for Polyamory, which at some point must seem to us to be such an ambitious and far-fetched endeavour that it leads to the familiar admission : “I tried, but it was too difficult…”.

Yet both of the above points unite in a much friendlier synthesis in which we and Polyamory can perfectly coexist, I would even say thrive:
Because it is allowed to fail! A bit like in the proverb falsely attributed to Albert Einstein: “It is allowed to fail. Only those who have never tried have really failed.” But it is actually meant to be even more gentle, much more human: not being able to manage everything properly (straight away) is an indispensable part of the experience of ethical multiple relationships.
At the same time, a certain amount of selflessness is expected at any rate. Remaining on the ground after the fall and either blaming “the others” and/or instead indulging in self-pity are not exactly ethical options. Instead, the visionary words of the Austrian writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (who has also been featured on this bLog on various occasions) – which can currently be found a thousand times as a meme on the social networks – apply: “Stand up, straighten your crown, move on!” Because no matter how they turn out, experiences require our courage to want to make more of them based on the surplus insight we have just gained.

Which brings me full circle (oh, how fitting!) to Robin Hood in my opening scene. Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart conceptualised her Polyamory in such a way that it is not (only) about hitting and achieving a particular goal, but above all about our intentions and the path we take in doing so.
In particular, the tiny word “ethical” in “ethical multiple relationships” emphasises that the process and the effort behind our actions are, strictly speaking, almost more important than the desired or hoped-for result.

To always want to exist in an ideal state, on the other hand, is simply unrealistic – it was also Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach who once reassuringly said “Ideals are guiding stars; they light our way and give us the strength to achieve our goals.”
The Oligo- and Polyamory would be – to stay with this image – orientation aids, signposts or maps for such a way, in other words, practical enablement.
But of course we still have to decide, choose the route and walk it all by ourselves.
In the words of Erich Kästner: Let it be love! ³

¹ Walter Moers “The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear“ (Volume 1 + 2), The Overlook Press 2006

² The text of “Bouquet of Lovers” is available HERE.

³ The quote “Let it be love” derives from the novel “The Flying Classroom“ (1933) by the German writer and publicist Erich Kästner and is spoken by one of the main characters, “Martin Thaler”.

Thanks to Sam from DGSstudios on Pixabay for the AI-generated image!

And thanks again to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart for personally providing the private photos of him and Morning Glory. All rights reserved by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, CAW.

Bad connection?
#Noamory

In Germany and many other European countries, the telephone code 112 is precisely the number that can be used to make an emergency call. I therefore consider it very appropriate that my 112th Entry ventures into territory that concerns the fainter and louder alarm signals in the otherwise happy realms of ethical multiple relationships.
Because just as there are of course many good and even wonderful reasons for the emergence of such multiple partnerships, there are unfortunately also some that are unfavourable or even potentially destructive in the medium term.

As with all close romantic relationships, multiple relationships are fundamentally about connection between people. Therefore, it is already important to pay attention to precisely this basis: How do these connections look like – and why do we enter into them – or why is it that sometimes we don’t?
Concerning this subject, significant scientific findings have been available since 1940, when the British child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby laid the foundation for what later became known simply as “attachment theory“, a concept that has been repeatedly expanded and refined by numerous psychologists and behavioural researchers right up to the present day. Bowlby himself documented his most important findings – which will also be the subject of this Entry today – between 1969 and 1980, and these became established as authoritative primarily because at about the same time the American-Canadian developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth succeeded in confirming his conclusions on the basis of practical observations in interpersonal relationships.

John Bowlby was a paediatrician and child psychiatrist, just as Mary Ainsworth was a field researcher investigating the importance of the mother-child connection. Both personalities initially investigated human attachment behaviour at its literal basis, the very first relationship that every human being enters into, even before birth, so to speak: the bond with the mother.
However, the fact that we are reading about their findings here today on a bLog about ethical multiple relationships and that the knowledge they gained has not been exclusively reserved for medical and paediatric experts is due to the fascinating fact that we humans are “learning beings”. Learning beings, as Bowlby and Ainsworth recognised, who, by means of this “first of all attachments”, would internalise essential principles with regard to each of their subsequent relationships.
To be specific (and as joyful as it is scary): The nature of the early caregiver-child bond* significantly influences our entire relationship behaviour in later life.

After this sentence, I thought for a while about whether I should include the following disclaimer right here or at the end of today’s Entry. I believe that after a statement like this, it’s a good idea to reduce the tension a little – so I would like to add two things straight away:
On the one hand: Continued research has shown that in average human biographies numerous hybrid types and nuances may arise, adding several facets to the subsequent theory so that a particular attachment type does not represent a lifelong judgement.
Because on the other hand – and this is certainly the really good news: attachment behaviour can undergo transformation and whats more, it can be actively changed – under the important prerequisite of becoming aware of our current (acquired) attachment behaviour and its consequences in the first place.

When it came to adults, attachment theory has for many years been one of the tools used by scientifically open-minded couples therapists and relationship coaches. In monogamous relationships, their services were and still are mostly activated in the case of difficulties – or as I wrote at the beginning of this Entry, in an emergency situation. Analysing the complaints of those affected or by own observations of the dynamics the way concerned parties interact with each other, it was and is possible to attribute eventual problems within a relationship to the respective attachment behaviour of the participants. In this way, therapists and coaches – as well as researchers – were also able to identify certain patterns that have become well known by now: Why certain patterns are regularly repeated both in behaviour and in the choice of partner – and in this way sometimes would lead to a recurring experience of seemingly identical conflicts.

But where and why do multiple relationships, Oligo- or Polyamory, come into play here? Surely if in such arrangements relationship problems were about to arise, one could simply turn to a support person who would be open to the corresponding relationship model?
Or do multiple relationships offer further challenges that transcend a mere monogamous war of the roses?
In my opinion as the author of this bLog, yes, although I don’t think the word “challenges” is entirely appropriate, and therefore I would describe it primarily as an effect of the extended dimension inherent to multiple relationships.
Because it is precisely this “extended dimension” that does not usually exist in monogamy: “whether“ or “why” a couple gets together is rarely questioned, especially once the two main participants have obviously successfully started out together.

Such a “starting out” may also occur in multiple relationships, for example when a mutual yearning arises among several participants at roughly the same time with regard to all the others who might become also involved in a joint subsequent relationship.
However, there is also the even more likely case that there is already at least one couple or group that at some point may be joined by one or more other individuals.
Anyway, this is precisely where the special case of the “multiple” relationship lies: is it possible to love more than ONE other person and be romantically involved with each of them at the same time?

Once more, the obvious answer on this bLog is of course “yes” – however, its emotional, rational and social justification is rather different from the one that applies to the normative and socially established two-person relationships of monogamy – where the mere “joining together” alone is usually not a fact to be questioned.

For ethical multiple relationships, however, precisely this question also arises – and the people involved, believe me, occasionally ask it themselves: Are we allowed to do this? And if so, what motivates people like us to pursue several romantic relationships at the same time?
The best answers to this would certainly be “Of course!” and “Obviously: For love’s sake!” or “Well, because they all want to be together with one another!”

Even Mr Bowlby and Mrs Ainsworth would be highly satisfied with these answers, as we shall see. But.
But the possibility of engaging in multiple relationships – and the courageous people who allowed themselves to be involved in this experience – gradually revealed that there were still more answers hidden in the romantic thicket of interpersonal affairs.

Because ever since the feminist Morning-Glory Zell Ravenheart first established the word “polyamorous” for ethical, non-monogamous relationships in 1990, more and more people finally gave themselves permission to follow her example and actually engage themselves romantically and intimately in “multiple” relationships. Over the years, some of them may even have worked with Bowlby’s attachment theory at workshops or other type of community meeting.
However, as far as I know, it was the American author Jessica Fern who in her 2020 book “Polysecure” ¹ was the first to emphasise the importance of our acquired attachment behaviour specifically for the polyamorous context. And in particular with regard to the above stated question of “why”, which can have a considerable impact on the arrangement of a multiple relationship network.

So, enough of the colourful context, but in order to remain comprehensible, here are the four “attachment types” according to John Bowlby as a super-concise short summary:

• Securely attached (according to Bowlby type B)

A securely attached child experiences sufficient sensitivity in its first years of life when its attachment behaviour system is activated. Its attachment behaviours were perceived and correctly interpreted by the attachment figure(s), whereupon prompt and appropriate action was taken. This means that the attachment figure is memorised as reliable by the infant, with the result that the child can largely predict the behaviour of its attachment figure. In the event of strong emotions such as separation, the child will show clear attachment signals such as crying, calling, etc. If a reunion occurs, the child will greet its attachment figure(s) and seek out their company, e.g. to calm down through physical contact. However, after a short time, a securely attached child will return to its original activity (playing etc.).²

Adults with this acquired attachment behaviour feel secure in relationships and are well able to balance closeness and autonomy. They have a fundamental trust in other people and can both give and receive emotional support. They perceive conflicts and differences of opinion as normal and resolvable.³

• Dismissive-avoidant attachment (according to Bowlby type A)

Such a child has not experienced its attachment figure(s) as sensitive during the first years of life. It has experienced that its attachment behaviours were either perceived and interpreted too late, not at all or incorrectly. As a result, the child begins to express attachment signals less and less frequently as it wants to avoid further disappointments. As a result, it is increasingly dependent on regulating itself in the event of strong emotions. When the caregivers leave the room, the child may look after them briefly, but will soon return to its own activities. In some cases, own strong emotions are compensated for with an increased urge to explore. When reunited, an dismissive-avoidant child does not seek closeness. If the caregiver takes the initiative and picks the child up, it will quickly make it clear that it wants to be put down again by turning its head away and changing its body posture: due to previous bad experiences, this child avoids openly expressing its attachment stress on a behavioural level.²

Adults with this acquired attachment behaviour tend to distance themselves emotionally and avoid more intense closeness. They may even find closeness/intimacy uncomfortable and often maintain a certain distance in relationships. They may have difficulty trusting their own emotional needs or relying on others.³

• Anxious-ambivalent attachment (according to Bowlby type C)

This child does not know how its attachment figure will react when its attachment behaviour system is activated. In everyday life, it experiences its caregivers inconsistently – sometimes sensitively and sometimes not. Due to this inconsistency, the child is unable to develop reliable expectations regarding the reaction of its attachment figure(s). The child therefore constantly seeks closeness to the caregiver(s), which has a negative effect on its exploratory behaviour: such a child will be reluctant to engage in other activities and reacts stressed, irritated or even irritable when separated from the caregiver(s). This can lead to very heterogeneous behaviour, especially when reunited. The child may strive for contact with the attachment figure, but at the same time show signs of anger and rage or even reject the attachment figure altogether.²

Adults with this acquired attachment behaviour often feel a strong dependency on others, long for closeness – and at the same time are afraid of rejection. They often worry intensely about whether their needs are being met and whether they are really important to others. They can quickly feel insecure or overwhelmed if they feel they are not getting enough attention.³

• Disorganised/disoriented attachment (according to Bowlby type D)

Such a child has either been neglected, abused, mistreated or traumatised by their attachment figure(s). The person who is supposed to offer the child security and protection is also the person who frightens it. Children with a disorganised attachment style are notable for their rapid succession of contradictory, incomplete or confused behavioural strategies. This means that the child may approach the caregiver, but then suddenly stops from one second to the next. If the caregiver is absent, the child may show direct signs of anxiety, but then rather seeks out the proximity of strangers instead of the caregiver. Another possible behaviour may even be a kind of “petrification“ as long as the caregiver is in the same room.²

People with this acquired attachment behaviour also show contradictory behaviour as adults. Although they long for closeness, this can also trigger fear or mistrust. They often avoid closeness or alternate between strong impulses to move closer and withdraw, as their early relationship experiences were characterised by insecurity and perhaps even trauma. This can be reflected in intense, chaotic relationships and, due to their traumas, they themselves often feel internally fractured and therefore frequently have difficulty establishing stable relationships at all.³

Enough of all the creepy stuff! (ok, except for the solid, secure attachments) – I would like to call out – but the thought-provoking impulses for successful or unsuccessful ethical multiple relationships start right here. With a little help from Wikipedia, I’d therefore would like to look at the effects of the attachment experiences listed above on us in adulthood – including the way we approach intimate romantic relationships.

►First, let’s look once more at the secure attachment as an “accident-free” and healthybehaviour pattern, since such a secure attachment style is evident in people who have internalised a positive self-image and a positive image of others – which is ultimately fundamental for establishing relationships of any kind.
Securely attached adults tend to agree with the following statements:
“It’s relatively easy for me to get emotionally close to others.”
“I feel comfortable relying on others and having others rely on me.”
“I don’t worry about being alone or others not accepting me.”
Securely attached adults therefore generally have a positive attitude towards themselves, their loved ones and their relationships. They often report greater satisfaction and involvement in their relationships than adults with other attachment styles. Securely attached adults feel comfortable both with intimacy and independence.

Okay. What else can I say? I think that such a person would feel at home in any type of relationship, whether mono, oligo or poly – and would probably also be well liked and appreciated. Of course, their relationships might also fail – but if they do, it won’t be because of the type of attachment.

►An insecure dismissive-avoidant attachment style is found in people who have a rather positive view of themselves but a negative view of others. They therefore tend to agree with the following statements:
“I am comfortable without close emotional relationships.”
“It is important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient.”
“I prefer not to depend on others or for others to depend on me.”
Adults with this attachment style usually desire a high degree of independence. They see themselves as self-sufficient and cannot imagine themselves as part of a close, day-to-day relationship. Some even see close relationships as relatively unimportant. People with this attachment style sometimes try to suppress and hide their feelings, and they tend to deal with perceived rejection by distancing themselves from the sources of rejection (e.g. their attachment figures, loved ones or relationships). Nevertheless, they still show strong physiological reactions to emotionally charged situations and content, which they then often try to divert and channel by concentrating on other topics.

In the world of ethical multiple relationships, the so-called “Solo Polyamory” comes to my mind in this section: People who cultivate several individual relationships with different people, but which in turn are not connected to each other. “Solo polys“ often live alone and socialise with their partners in a selective way, e.g. at weekends, at events, for certain activities or in special places.
Questions that arise accordingly would be, for example, why we would separate ourselves from our loved ones in this way, or why we want to keep them at a distance because of the chosen relationship model.
It also raises the fundamental question of whether we permit ourselves a choice of partners with this kind of “poly-Amory”, so that we obtain “a suitable pet for every plaisir” – thereby creating the possibility for us to quickly change the field of activity if the tension within a particular relationship increases – which is why we pursue all our relationships with a maximum degree of non-network parallelism anyway… What’s more, would there be any indication that we might start exploring new relationships when we can no longer stand the intensity in the established ones? And how do the pending partners feel about this? Do they feel sufficiently seen and valued by us – or are they at risk of only ever receiving a part-time investment from us?

►An insecure anxious-ambivalent attachment style is found in people who have a negative image of themselves and a rather positive image of others. They therefore tend to agree with the following statements:
“I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close to me as I would like.”
“I feel uncomfortable when I don’t have close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don’t value me as much as I value them.”
Adults with this attachment style seek a high degree of intimacy (yes, this also includes speedy or intense sexuality), approval and responsiveness from their loved ones They sometimes value intimacy so much that they may even become overly dependent on such an attachment figure. Compared to securely attached adults, such people tend to have a less positive self-assessment. They can develop a feeling of anxiety that only subsides when they are in contact with a attachment figure. They often doubt their value as an individual and blame themselves for a perceived lack of attention from their partners. In their relationships, they can sometimes display a high degree of emotionality, anxiety or overcompensation.

I know this attachment style best myself, because unfortunately it is my own starting point. Within ethical multiple relationships such as Oligo- and Polyamory, it isn’t particularly rare rare because, in case of doubt, it is precisely the possibility of winning over a number of intimate attachment figures due to the increased need for closeness that makes multiple relationship models interesting for people of this disposition.
The problem with this attachment style from the outset is the endeavour to achieve the greatest possible closeness and emotional merging, so that the ‘impact energy’ is usually quite intense when getting to know each other – and often attempts are made to bring about this desired compatibility, e.g. by means of early-initiated sexuality. That way, the “groundwork” of a thorough getting-to-know-each-other process with the exploration of mutual preferences or dislikes can thus fade into the background, which can lead to potential problems if the relationship continues. Additionally, the NRE (“New Relationship Energy”) can be particularly powerful as a result, which can be rather unsettling for existing partners if everything else is dropped entirely for the sake of a new love.
Furthermore, such a high degree of closeness and attachment within multiple relationships occasionally leads to a blurring of individual boundaries, so that at some point it can be difficult, both objectively and emotionally, to work out which aspects of a situation can be attributed to whom, which has an unfavourable effect on the overall dynamics of the relationship. Insecure, ambivalent people tend to be particularly unhelpful in this respect by occasionally lapsing into a kind of “micromanagement” due to their inner dilemma, in which they try to put on a strained hybrid performance of “Wait, I’ll fetch you the stars from the sky…” and overbearing nagging (“No, no, we have to do it THIS way….” ) for their partner(s).

►Disorganised attachment patterns are exhibited by people who have an unstable and fluctuating view of themselves and others, which is predominantly negative in both cases. Losses or traumas (e.g. abuse) in childhood and adolescence can lead to agreement with the following statements:
“I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others.”
“I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to completely trust others or to depend on them.”
“I sometimes worry that I will get hurt if I allow myself to get too close to other people.”
Individuals with an anxious-preoccupied attachment style are characterised by a strong desire for closeness and intimacy in their relationships, but often experience a high level of anxiety and insecurity about the accessibility and responsiveness of their attachment figures. They therefore tend to feel uncomfortable with increasing emotional closeness. These feelings are linked to sometimes unconscious, negative views of both themselves and their loved ones. As a result, they often consider themselves unworthy of attention from their attachment figures and at the same time often lack trust in their partners’ intentions. Similar to the dismissive-avoidant attachment style, disorganisedly attached adults seek less closeness to their parters and often suppress and/or deny their feelings. For this reason, they find it much more difficult to express affection. Individuals with this attachment style tend to have a negative self-image and a volatile or split view of others, which can contribute to interpersonal dysfunction.

A disorganised attachment style poses the toughest challenges for any form of genuine, intimate connection, yet unfortunately I have also found some traits of this type of attachment within myself.
The main problem especially when it comes to multiple relationships is that the person concerned has the ability to create for itself a mini-universe of several different people there, between whom they can emotionally ‘switch’ (back and forth) as required. For those in their environment, however, this behaviour can appear strangely inconsistent and sometimes even unpredictable – or at least unreliable.
Due to the network character of polyamorous relationships, however, a person with a disorganised relationship can often be “cushioned” for a while – as the diversity of relationships means that the inner conflict and contradictions of the affected person do not become apparent as quickly as it might in a strictly two-person relationship. Nevertheless, at the same time, it is precisely this “imposing” and “enduring” of disorganised symptoms in a multiple relationship that can, in turn, cause great suffering, precisely because of the variety of participants involved, long before the triggering person is ready to face up to their buried traumas. The danger of “disorganisation”, of course, lies in the fact that the effects – as a result of all-sided, sometimes contradictory compromises – may by then have already insidiously and irreversibly fractured the overall relationship for all those involved.

Phew. My conclusion from this important – and now almost too lengthy – Entry:
Additional studies have unfortunately shown that people with insecure or disorganised attachment styles are also more susceptible to psychological problems such as depression and anxiety disorders, they are more likely to have impaired self-esteem, and that it is therefore more difficult for them to develop healthy attachments in adulthood.
Observations have also shown that unfavourable attachment strategies and traumas in relationships even attract each other with above-average frequency – insecure-avoidant and insecure-ambivalent, for example, surprisingly (and despite seemingly quite different needs!) regularly find themselves together in the same “relationship boat”…

On top of that, multiple relationships usually “throw more than just two” people together, which can result in extremely unfortunate compensation strategies, especially if the degree of unconsciousness for one’s own biographical attachment experiences is (still) rather pronounced.
And to emphasise once again: in their early stages, ethical multiple relationships must, if only for reasons of self-preservation alone, very honestly face up to the question of whether the mere desire for “multiple relationships” does not actually stem from a lack of need, which unfortunately three of the four types of attachment covertly carry within them.
Because fear of loss, fear of commitment and possessive behaviour always cause unrest, suffering and drama in any relationship. And that’s something that we, as people who love so much, certainly don’t want to inflict on our favourite loved ones.

Nevertheless, with today’s Entry, which is certainly not just painful to scroll through ot to read due to its length, I would like to urgently sensitise people to reflect on these unhappier aspects of their own potential relationship- and attachment behaviour, very much like the above-mentioned author Jessica Fern. I also encourage you to explore this together with our partners and loved ones, who may be able to provide important impulses for us through their “view from the outside” – even if this kind of realisation will certainly not always be easy for everyone involved.
But it is precisely this process of awareness that can ultimately enable us all to actually change a possibly negative attachment style bit by bit.

In this sense – and in the best, securely attached way: Let it be love, genuine trust and truly feeling safe – and what’s more: because you all want to be together with each other from the bottom of your hearts!

*I write caregiver-child attachment here because it has been proven that in the sensitive phase of the first years of life, it is solely decisive how these main caregivers show affection – regardless of whether it is the mother, father, family members, foster parents, etc.

¹ Jessica Fern „Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Non-monogamy“, Thornapple Press (2020)

² Type descriptions created with references from the Master’s thesis by Nadine Madlen Blaßnig “Bindung im Erwachsenenalter: Eine Studie zum Zusammenhang von Alkoholkonsum, Mentalisierungsfähigkeit, Selbstwert und Bindung“, 2018 Alpen-Adria-University of Klagenfurt; quotes from Kißgen, J. (2009). “Diagnostik der Bindungsqualität in der frühen Kindheit – die Fremden Situation“; in Julius, H. et al. (eds.), “Bindung im Kindesalter. Diagnostik und Intervention”, Göttingen: Hogrefe (only in German language)

³ Description taken from “Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair“ by Daniel P. Brown and David S. Elliott, WW Norton & Co (2016)

Thanks to engin akyurt on Unsplash for the photo!

Last but not least: There are numerous tests online to determine your own attachment type. Not all of them work in accordance with Bowlby and Ainsworth – but you can start there for a basic assessment. In any case, I think it is more effective to look directly at the type descriptions (on Wikipedia, for example, or here) and reflect on the relevant characteristics for yourself.

Because it’s close to our hearts

March has arrived – and with it some significant dates: on the 7th we committed “Equal Pay Day“, which at the achievement of equal wages among women and men; on the 8th we celebrated International Women’s Day, which campains for global visibility, entitlement and empowerment of female issues since 1921 – and very modestly, Oligoamory is turning a great 6 years old these days!

In this sense, March is a truly feminist month – entirely in accordance with the birthday of Oligoamory, which explicitly owes so much – indeed, everything – to women and feminism: After all, it was the feminist and neopaganist Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart who first established the word “polyamorous” within the context of ethical non-monogamous relationships in 1990 – which allowed me to promptly launch my own variety 29 years later, in the shape of my “committed-sustainable oligoamorous micro-communities”.

The two anniversaries mentioned in the first sentence of this Entry are particularly important to me in this context, which I realized especially when I was trying to come up with a headline for today’s article. I started by tinkering around with “Because we care”. However, the English word “care”, which comes across as so helpful at first glance, actually stands for a certain kind of burden, as it originally derives from the Old Germanic/Old Saxon word “cara”, which meant something like “lament” or “worry”… And I didn’t actually thought this analogy was all that exciting.
At the same time, nevertheless, in everyday life it is simply what it’s all about in the end: “care work“ is a euphemism of sorts used today to describe the mostly unpaid labour of providing and looking after, in which it is still far too often primarily women who deal with everything related to household and home, the people living in it, their health and, last but not least, procuring and preparing food.

Nonetheless, it goes without saying that things also have to be “taken care of” in ethical multiple relationships – and in Entry 93 I already tried to answer the question of who in poly- or oligoamorous relationships has to be responsible for handling tasks relating to the kitchen, housekeeping and potential children. For, of course, in relationships that consist of “more than two” people, caring for and looking after each other is one of the deciding core factors.

However, multiple relationships, which by their very nature consist of several participants, also present the challenge of increased complexity – especially with regard to the aspect of “care work” to be performed – precisely because it is not always obvious at first glance who is actually contributing and who is benefiting based on individual strategy. Or rather, at which point a relationship succeeds due to a high degree of joint cooperation and a pronounced sense of togetherness – or whether individual participants start to dominate the proceedings by gaining a growing advantage at the expense of the other contributors.

In fact, this process is so extraordinarily complex and – as we shall see – intertwined between people and, even more abstractly, between living beings in general, that various branches of science, from evolutionary biology to game theory, have been trying for decades to find out more and more about the background to this topic using increasingly sophisticated models.

Because as computer and programming technology increasingly got up to speed from the 1980s onwards – soon becoming capable of more than efficient analogue calculations in room-filling installations –, it provided further effective tools for mapping the patterns of interaction within larger groups without having to view and analyse hours of video footage from flocks of birds, pedestrian zones or flat-share kitchens.
Now small programs with certain attributes could be pitted against each other, which is even regularly organised competitively as an incentive by repeatedly calling on programmers worldwide to create software units that subsequently encounter each other within a virtual setting (e.g. ICPC or Kaggle competitions).
The tasks that programmes designed in this way have to tackle in this context correspond, for example, with the so-called ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ (which itself dates back to 1950 and was devised by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher): Two prisoners are in custody, but each could gain an advantage in the length of their sentence by denouncing the other prisoner because it would shorten their own time behind bars – while letting the other one stew a little longer. So one could pull this trump card and get out faster – or keep quiet in the hope that the other party will also keep quiet (a kind of “win-win”) – because of course there would also be the possibility of being betrayed by the other side, which would either keep you in prison yourself – or indeed together – for longer (“win-lose” or “lose-lose”). Programming that proves its worth here advances to the next stage – whereas software that loses out too often due to incorrect assessment of its opponent will be ruled out.

In an article for Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)¹ this January, Nikoleta E. Glynatsi, a mathematician at the RIKEN Institute for Computer Science in Kobe (Japan), explained that, from a mathematical point of view, such situations often seem straightforward at first: “Maths shows us that you should always act selfishly because it is costly to be selfless and one can never be sure whether this generosity will ever pay off.”
Interestingly, however, her continued experiments revealed that neither the most aggressive programmes nor those that relied on simple ‘tit-for-tat’ tactics prevailed. This was because some programs had a long-term memory (i.e. a kind of ‘remembering’) concerning the earlier behaviour of their counterparts – and how they had previously ‘dealt’ with other programs; in contrast, simpler programs mainly acted purely randomly. It became apparent that in the long term, the best results were not achieved through rigid approaches such as ‘never give in’ or ‘always co-operate’, but rather by using flexible strategies: “One should react to what the other person is doing and mirror their behaviour to a certain extent – albeit depending on the context.” explains Glynatsi.

In my last Entry 110, I quoted the neurobiologist Herwig Baier, who described how an organism needs to have its individual past, present and future in mind in the truest sense of the word in order to be able to carry out complex decisions in a useful way: It would have to be able to remember past events, focus on current requirements and, if possible, foresee the effects of its actions for the future.
The importance of this “memory of experience” mentioned above was now also confirmed in December 2024 in the recent study² by Mrs Glynatsi.
For human contexts, this immediately puts psychology back on board.
For example, the psychologist Felix Brodbeck from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich extracts this from Glynatsi’s research work:
“The longer the memory, the more likely it is that cooperation will be appropriate to the situation. I would even be tempted to say that without memory, cooperation is not possible at all. A longer memory makes it possible to incorporate past experiences into current decisions. This not only builds up trust, but also minimises the likelihood of conflict. In contrast, those who are only looking for short-term gains risk damaging long-term relationships, whether in their private life or at work.”
Or, as the journalist Doris Tromballa put it very aptly at the end of her BR article mentioned above: “Those who act flexibly reduce the risk of being exploited and at the same time avoid being perceived as selfish.”

Research such as that carried out by Mrs Glynatsi and her team is likely to become of far-reaching significance for our society as a whole.
After all, on the one hand, the processing power of super- and quantum computers is increasing several times over every year, so that the assessment, evaluation and prediction of human interaction will also prove increasingly accurate when mapped in virtual spaces. Where – on the other hand – this kind of data will most certainly be taken up and integrated by the rapidly developing parallel research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). AI, by the way, that we already all interact with today, from search engines to graphics programmes!
Which in a way also points the way to the moment that has become known as “technological singularity” – and describes the threshold at which artificial intelligence could possibly surpass human intelligence in the future…

That is, as far as the potential of computer ‘brains’ that analyse and emulate (simulate) human interaction in this way are concerned.
But what about the ‘original’ – our own brains?
Indeed, the idea that we humans are capable of a similar ‘singularity’ on our own is not entirely new and was already popularised by the US thriller author Dan Brown in his 2009 book “The Lost Symbol”: The world’s human population is currently still growing demographically. In purely physical terms this means that ‘more brains’, more potential human minds, are being added day by day. But also Dan Brown already pointed out that brain mass alone wouldn’t be the decisive factor. As an optimist, he rather projected an accompanying rising learning curve of human consciousness, an accelerating increase in insight and knowledge, which could one day – by crossing its own ‘singularity threshold’ – catapult mankind to groundbreaking possibilities, creative talents, abilities, and achievements.

Humanity – as a kind of unified, biological supercomputer? God complex? Absurd tech fiction?
No, I don’t think so. But I do believe that for this we need something more than just literary optimism – and that brings us back to the anniversaries I mentioned at the beginning of this Entry.
Because in my opinion, we as humanity could perhaps have experienced our ‘singularity moment’ some time ago. Or rather: this would already be absolutely within our reach.
If – yes, if – we were to do as the programmes do – and exploit our entire human potential to the utmost.
However, as long as we continue, as we have done for centuries, to undervalue and put aside the female part of humanity (not to mention other sexes and genders…) and to continually disadvantage and set back people of other ethnic origins, world views, handicaps, ages or identities, it is as if we are, in a sense, severing a huge part of our great human spirit. Lest it become wasted, because the ideas, perspectives, impulses, experiences and inventions that the individuals oppressed in this way might otherwise have contributed to the greater whole evaporate unheard and unused – or rather, could never even arise in the first place due to a lack of educational participation.

But for our own ‘singularity leap’, if it is not to be realised first – or only solely – by an AI in the future, we need all of us! Really all of us, with the greatest possible, unlocked mental and spiritual potential. Integrative and inclusive.

Bold words. Which are certainly important to take to heart, even without ‘singularity’ as a goal…
Why am I still an optimist like Dan Brown – and what do multiple relationships have to do with it, after all, which is what this bLog is supposed to be about?
Once again, science has provided a clue to the answer.

In her latest book “Mother Brain – How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood”, science journalist Chelsea Conaboy³ dispels another prejudice about women, which is that pregnancy and the birth of a child puts their minds in a kind of ‘unpredictable limbo’, causing them even to lose their intellectual capacity (which for centuries also served as a male argument for excluding women from responsible functions and jobs).
In fact, Conaboy summarises scientific evidence that the brains of parenting mothers – as well as fathers, co-carers and other close attachment figures – really do change when caring for a child. What’s more, in a fundamentally beneficial way for the entire future life of these people!
In her book, she vividly describes how everyday “care work” is inextricably linked to certain interdependent neurobiological processes – precisely because we care.
The author further concludes that these results are rather obvious because of the human capacity for lifelong learning – due to the equally lifelong plasticity of the human mind – and would thus also have considerable significance for all other areas of interpersonal caregiving, providing and support.

In other words, when people enter into relationships, their brains experience a transformation. This effect has even been proven to be amplified by the ‘care factor’: What is “close to our hearts” promotes our ability to become, to be and to remain even better “care workers”.
This also confirms another benefit that medical experts have been emphasising for a long time. That even a single relationship – and the incentives we experience through it – boosts the health of those involved. And yes, in this case, ‘more is (even) better’ – especially if these relationships are a ‘matter of the heart’ in which we – corresponding to the words of the above-mentioned psychologist Felix Brodbeck – cooperate appropriately, minimise conflicts and build up trust.

By which I want to back up all you people out there in relationships today: Just one relationship can not only change your life – it fundamentally changes you; indeed, it is apparently enough to have been part of a caring relationship for a while in your past for this inner metamorphosis to stay with you for a lifetime.

So if it is ever suggested to you who are even part of multiple relationships that you “are wired differently”, then happily agree with that and feel proud that this corresponds with every single one of your loving connections – both as scientifically confirmed as well as an actual deep inner human truth that connects us with all other inhabitants of the world capable of entering into a relationship. Precisely because it is close to our hearts.
And by the way , it was the American astronomer, visionary and futurist Carl Sagan, who once said:

»Who are we, if not measured by our input on others?
That’s who we are!
We’re not who we say we are, we’re not who we want to be – we are the sum of the influence and impact that we have, in our lives, on others.«

¹ The article “Kooperation oder Konkurrenz – Was ist besser?” first published on BR on 15th January 2025 on Bayern 2 can be found in the ARD archive of the Tagesschau (only in German language) HERE

² Link to the study by Nikoleta E. Glynatsi, Ethan Akin, Martin A. Nowak and Christian Hilbe “Conditional cooperation with longer memory” from 6th December 2024 HERE

³ Chelsea Conaboy, “Mother Brain”, ‎ St Martin’s Press, September 2022

Thanks to Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash for the photo!

Freedom of choice?

February is traditionally the month of purification – and even the Latin word “februare”, from which it takes its name, means exactly that, namely “to purify oneself” or even “to atone (for) something“.
In addition, February is also a month of extremes. For example, since the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582 at the latest, it is not only rather short – and therefore often passes more quickly than expected – but is also dedicated to the aforementioned “purification” and inner reflection, which is often preceded by debauchery of a bodily nature, which is still recalled today in many places by carnival customs.
Both tendencies – the debauchery and the (sobering) purification – were certainly perfectly plausible in the past, especially when people had to spend long, dark winter months together in their dwellings, predominantly idle and confined to small spaces.

But even these days – hand on heart – we are still far from being completely free of both phenomenons in our relationships – and this is often all the more true for multiple relationships.
Insecurely attached, as many of us unfortunately grew up, we often tumble over each other in this way. Our level of neediness is high – but we keep telling ourselves that it is purely interpersonal magnetism and an expression of our personal freedom. Thus, we may even push aside some of our personal values, for which we would have put both hands and our conscience on the line yesterday, only to feel ashamed of ourselves a short time later – but as David Houston and Barbara Mandrell sang back as early as 1972: “How can it be wrong – when it feels so right?“
In this way, we are our worst prosecutors – and at the same time, when it comes to our own good reasons, our most lenient judges…
Our parents, and in some cases our educators and teachers, picked on us with their own issues at a time when we were far from understanding what was actually going on, where this excessive energy and vehemence came from, which was far too often passed on to us unchecked and unresolved. And if there is a psychic law of conservation of energy, as there is in physics – …and the assumption is likely – then our biography continues to influence all our relationships with ambigious love, suffering and blurry resentments. Still powerful in a way of which astrology says that the stars do not force – but do incline.

As mammals and herd animals, as human beings, we need others; we are dependent on them for our survival, but at least as much for our social well-being.
In this respect, our primate nature allows us to learn primarily through observation, adaptation and imitation – even the dawn of a very intellectualised 21st century in the western world cannot eliminate this from our genes.
And that’s where we stand today, with our limited free will.

And even for that, the benchmark is not that low.
In issue 4|2024¹ of the magazine “Max Planck Research”, Herwig Baier (German-American neurobiologist; Director of the Department Gene-Circuit-Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence) states: “Being free” would mean that internal and external influencing factors would trigger behaviours adapted to them in a way that exceeded a simple stimulus-response pattern. In the corresponding article, he specifies that organisms would therefore have to have their individual past, present and future in mind in the truest sense of the word in order to be able to make complex decisions in a meaningful way: They would have to be able to remember past events, focus on current challenges and, if possible, predict what their actions would lead to (and by the way, we’re not talking about extraordinary personalities like Marie Curie or Nelson Mandela – but humble zebrafish!).

It’s a good thing that the aforementioned issue 4|2024 has another article¹ up its sleeve immediately afterwards – which, to the delight of my bLog and its theme, is about our freedom in our “choice of partner”.
There, demographer Julia Leesch concedes that, despite the freedom presented by the media – depicting a supposedly large selection of potentially available, compatible and with just a little initiative accessible candidates – there are clear factors for all of us which determine how we establish our relationships – and that in this regard we are primarily dependent on the people we actually meet (in real life). She adds that it is also crucial, of course, what our own preferences are – but also by whom our interest would ultimately be reciprocated. Many dating platforms and apps, for example, would offer a relatively large age gap with distinctly younger suitors in order to suggest even more “choice”. However, when compared with reality, there would be relatively few actual relationships in “green life” that would have a higher age gap between the parties involved.
The same would apply to the myth of “opposites attracting”, according to research associate Yayouk Willems from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development: Instead, the overwhelming majority of relationships analysed in over 199 studies showed a wide range of similarities: “There were hardly any people in established relationships that were really fundamentally different from one another.” ²
On the contrary. The results of the studies would even indicate that whether we could imagine a relationship with other people would ultimately not be decided primarily by charisma, humour or beautiful eyes, but by comparatively unromantic factors.
Incidentally, these were often: IQ, level of education, as well as (hear, hear!) drinking and smoking behaviour.
Thus, what we have literally already experienced in life – and therefore strive for or rather want to avoid – plays a rather distinct role…

In my view, the studies provided further important findings, particularly for ethical multiple relationships, because – as Yayouk Willems continues: “Personality traits such as whether someone is more introverted or extroverted seemed to matter far less than expected. Although she was also surprised at first glance, she now considered the results to be comprehensible. People apparently paid much more attention to the way they spent time together in a relationship and what values (!) the other person stood for. Differences in specific character traits, on the other hand, were probably more likely to be equalised.”
Which clearly reminds me of my 33rd bLog Entry, in which I introduced the singer “Alice im Griff”, who at that time had written a tragic love song about a destructive discrepancy concerning the basic values between herself and her loved one.
I also quoted the US psychologist Steven Hayes recently in Entry 104, who attested to our inner desires that “Values are the expression of our individual striving for meaning and purpose in our lives. A basic need that would always be in danger if, in trying to fulfil it, we began to give priority to external requirements or socially standardised aspirations at the expense of self-determination and the (self-)chosen quality of our actions.”

So when we choose our loved ones, we are actually on a somewhat chaotic search for a kind of “community of values”.
Another Max Planck demographer, Nicole Hieckel, explains that although we may only have limited biographical freedom in our choice of partners, our external freedom has nevertheless increased significantly – which would have an almost “liberating” effect on the actual shaping of our relationships – with a simultaneous increase in our (oligoamorously so important) personal responsibility: “The importance of relationships for personal fulfilment has become more important nowadays. This also changes our expectations regarding relationships. Do I feel close to my partners? Do I feel valued? The desire for emotional intimacy in particular is much more important today. If this expectation remains unfulfilled, the signs for the survival of a relationship are more unfavourable than they were for past generations.”
She emphasises this change in values and the freedom that comes with it: “Many people today feel more strongly that their own identity has several dimensions. […] Alternative social spaces have opened up in which people can realise themselves. […] For many, the idea of finding emotional closeness is still very important. But nowadays it involves a kind of self-realisation that was not usually available to people in the past.”

The Max Planck journalist Sabine Fischer, who wrote the authoritative article to which I refer here, concludes that this self-realisation would thus lead to its own unique kind of freedom: That relationship models would diversify, allowing them to be renegotiated and personalised – literally: “…from polyamorous relationships, in which the participants have equivalent loving relationships with a number of people, to same-sex and open models, in which people allow each other to have sex with other people outside the relationship.”
To this end, she once again cites the above-mentioned demographer Nicole Hieckel , who very impressively bridges the gap between that new creative leeway, shifting value orientation and personal biographical restrictions:
“This is where great freedom arises, because there is no longer such an established institutional framework and relationships are becoming more based on negotiation processes. […] At the same time, it might also be possible that less conventional ways of life give people more room to define themselves. […] Negotiating a relationship beyond traditional norms and practices, be it in terms of sexual monogamy, a gender-independent division of labour or the demarcation between shared and personal property, requires resources, above all the ability to communicate. This is demanding, and in that respect, people are not equipped with the same competences. Freedom also means that everyone takes on a great responsibility to shape their own relationship in a sustainable way.”

Now that Mrs Hiecke has used several oligoamorous keywords in just one sentence, I (almost) no longer dare to come up with my own summary.
Because when it comes to our relationships in this day and age – and our perspectives on pursuing them with multiple partners – even the verdict of science is somewhat ambivalent.
Especially as we will probably have to perform a balancing act for some time to come between, on the one hand, our will – but tempered by what we are really able to achieve mentally and emotionally – and, on the other hand, the promised possibilities, which are not as unlimited as we might like to imagine.
Like a more or less experienced person on a slackline, we will not only occasionally sway between both poles; we will certainly freeze sometimes because we don’t dare or don’t know the next step – and in extreme cases, we will also simply slip down on one side or the other from time to time. In this way, we will experience feelings of elation, because for a while we will intoxicatingly believe that we have mastered the system – only to succumb on another day to the awful and utterly sobering feeling that we have failed ourselves…
However, neither the one would be a final victory, nor the other a complete setback, as both are part of being human (and not just in February!): passionate exuberance as well as (re)focussing on the essentials.
It seems important to me to keep realising that in both cases we always take ourselves along with us. So that we not only need a strict prosecutor and lenient judges as internal authorities, but above all, so to speak, an understanding (legal) counsellor in the form of a loving (self-)attendance³, who is quite aware of our partly limited, partly generous abilities and resources in our above-mentioned search for emotional closeness.

In her opening remarks, research assistant Yayouk Willems described some of our key reasons for choosing a partner as “almost unromantic”. For me, the most beautiful symbolization of the synthesis that such an embodiment of “unromantic” can come across as utterly and deeply romantic is the following dialogue performed by Susan Sarandon (as Beverly Clark) and Richard Jenkins (as private detective Devine) in the movie “Shall we dance“ (2004). There, the two sit together in a scene and the following dialog ensues [in which you may, of course, replace the words “marry” and “marriage” with any type of relationship you hope for]:

Beverly Clark : “Why ist it, do you think, that people get married?”

Detektiv Devine: “Passion!“

Beverly Clark: “No!“

Detektiv Devine: “It’s interesting. Because I would’ve taken you for a romantic. Why then?“

Beverly Clark: “Because we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness’.”

And in this sense I wish us all that not only public prosecutors, judges and legal counsellors play an important role in our lives, but hopefully above all these good witnesses that our hearts desire.

¹ MPG research magazin 4|2024 currntly still in translation: https://www.mpg.de/mpresearch

² nature human behaviour – T. Horwitz, J. Balbona, K. Paulich, M. Keller: Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of 22 traits and UK Biobank analysis of 133 traits (Published: 31 August 2023)
Previous version: Correlations between human mating partners: a comprehensive meta-analysis of 22 traits and raw data analysis of 133 traits in the UK Biobank (19 March 2022)
Summary: Opposites don’t actually attract (by Sciencedaily)

³ The trauma therapist Maria Sanchez, for example, points very strongly to the importance of such an “inner self-attendance”. About her approach I wrote a few lines exactly one year ago in Entry 98.

Thanks to Eli Pluma on Unsplash for the photo!

Beyond thinking

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!

Being in between

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

»You are in this time of the interim where everything seems withheld. The path you took to get here has washed out. The way forward is still concealed from you. The old is not old enough to have died away, the new is still too young to be born. You cannot lay claim to anything in this place of dusk. Your eyes are blurred and there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart and you can see nowhere to put your trust. You know you have to make your own way through. As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander this call which is loosening your roots in false ground, that you might become free of all you had outgrown.
What is being transfigured here is your mind and it is difficult and slow to become you. The more faithfully you can endure here, the more refined your heart will become for your arrival in the new dawn.«¹

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:

»Though we know one another’s names and recognize one another’s faces, we never know what destiny shapes each life. The script of individual destiny is secret; it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind’s light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.
To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart. It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion. No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation and a promise.«²

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!

“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 queer–anarchist 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!

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 version “Laugh, 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!

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!