Author: Oligotropos

Undetected leitmotif*…

“Polyamory isn’t for me. If I want to disappoint two people at the same time, I’ll visit my parents.”
This sentence I read last month in a forum about different types of relationships – and I have probably never seen a more terrible confession regarding the attitude towards multiple relationships.

Whereby “terrible” is of course again a highly subjective choice of words on my part. I could also have written “enlightening” or “interesting” – because according to the “Four-sides model” of the German communication psychologist Friedemann Schulz von Thun, every message contains a self-revelation, which first and foremost unveils something about the person speaking.

And thus the above statement is also immediately contextually far less hair-raising than it might appear at first glance. Rather, it speaks volumes once again of how much we – confronted with multiple relationship patterns (or even thoughts thereof!) – very quickly see ourselves in emotional spheres of family constellations. Above all, however, probably if we have experienced asymmetries there in our biography with regard to claims, entitlement, trust or belonging.

For a mammal like Homo sapiens, its own small human bunch is the most primordial and first learning space in terms of family relationships (as “familiar” still means “well-known/trusted”). And this is not only about the positioning of one’s own “self ” in such a structure or the development of individuality. Because inseparably connected with this, a developing being also perceives all dynamics of internal relationships IN such a (family) structure, which gradually will form a repertoire of own (possible) roles and role reaction patterns.

Unfortunately (especially when it came to negative experiences) we were not mere spectators of such happenings. The supposed spectacle was often literally too close to us. And not only when we ourselves were directly affected, e.g. by a fearful, dismissive or preoccupied attachment style of our parents (e.g. Entry 14). Just as often, we certainly had a possibly unavoidably uncomfortable front row seat to dramas that played out between our parents, between any siblings – and our parents – or we were again directly affected when it came to resonances between existing siblings and us.
Especially in nuclear families, as we have mostly formed them since the beginning of modern times, conflicts arising from this often presented themselves – despite several parties possibly involved – as merely two-sided affairs, in which the focus was not infrequently on “being right” or ultimately only about “winning” (the latter also readily secured by an allocation of “blame”).

Such “two-sided affairs” have, moreover, most probably also accompanied later all those readers into their monogamous relationships (i.e. me as well) who have not from the beginning entered into a multiple relationship consisting of several equally positioned partners [and to this group I would like to apologize a bit here, because I can indeed not contribute so much about their basic relationship patterns from my own non-experience].

In my opinion, the seduction of carelessly agreed and unconsciously executed monogamy (and from my point of view this concerns more than 90% of all monogamous arrangements) even consists precisely in the fact that it favours “win-lose” situations¹ in case of conflict – by the only permitted concession of only two participants – and thereby nonetheless ensures continued operability. In other words, one of them gets its way – and the other one backs down for the sake of peace (meaning: in order not to jeopardize the overall performance).

Accordingly, when I read a sentence today in which someone equates a multiple relationship with the relationship to one’s own family, I immediately and involuntarily think of the image of a family table with a tablecloth on it that is too small, which it is pulled by two ends in such a way that it is a matter of one party trying to cover its side of the table nicely – at the expense of another party (which is also tugging at the cloth), which in the end should not and cannot succeed – and which in the last consequence will thus also look stupid and literally “exposed”, so to speak.

Especially all those experiences in which we have ever perceived ourselves of being “on the losing side” in such a way have thus contributed to a kind of “inner registry” that the psychologist Dr. Verena Kast calls “resentment” in my Jealousy-Entry 36. To repeat: “resentment” (from French re-sentir) – a repeated re-experiencing of an internalized, generalized conflictual experience that is emotionally emphasized and linked to a particular relationship theme.²
The ugly thing about “resentments” here is that they create in us, so to speak, a sort of ever-present “emotional preserve”: I disappointed my parents once when I was 17 (maybe I chose a different education than they wanted and wasn’t supported), I disappointed them when I was 25 (raised eyebrows when I chose where to live, there were hardly any visits…) – and if I will meet them tomorrow, I’m sure to disappoint them all over again by some means (even if I’m 48 now and they’re almost 80…).
The idea of being in an intimate relationship with two (or more) people can then quickly be perceived as similarly stressful: Then I would have (e.g.) two favourite people in my life…, …certainly I could never satisfy both of them…, ….both would make me feel that in their own way (negatively) for sure…, …that is something I don’t want to experience any more.
Objectively, the two situations are not related in time or occasion: But our resentments do not care, because our brain can involuntarily switch the setting with them due to their “generalized” (see above) – i.e. simplified/schema-like – nature.

Resentments, therefore, make use of our fears in the sense that they evoke “re-experiencing moments” when we have “already once” suffered an (approximately similar) defeat or exposure.

While talking about exposure…. A few days ago I had a fascinating dream that seems to me to fit well with today’s topic.
In the dream I was naked with several equally naked people of different sexes in a kind of oversized, waterless shower tub (and no, I never attend either Tantra or Bodywork seminars 😉 ). The other “occupants” of the shower tub seemed to be engaged with each other in some sort of activity – that much was clear – but whether this was merely an intense conversation or even sexual activity apparently didn’t matter to the dream, it remained insignificantly blurred. I, meanwhile, had at my side a likewise unclothed (and quite clearly recognizable) quite pleasant female companion (a dream character who bore no resemblance to any human being I know). We exchanged a few merry words while watching the people across from us in the shower tub. Thereby, we quickly developed a confidential relationship (yay, dreams are something great…) and we moved closer to each other – eventually skin to skin. Finally, I put my head on her arm, which she had rested on the edge of the tub and cuddled more and more to her side. Ultimately, my companion bowed her pretty face to me and began to kiss me extensively, which I gladly returned. A really good, very intimate kiss, by the way, of the “brain reward” type.
Just in this absorbed moment I suddenly had to think of my real favorite person K. in the real world (and also in the dream the existence of K. was consistent) and what she would say about it – and how I would have to explain it to her – and within a fraction of time various scenarios about it piled up in another part of my head. My brain used the opportunity to end the dream with this last impression – and while waking up endowed me with the self-doubt of whether (and how?) I would be able to deal with being desired by more than one person.
For the dream, my brain and my mind, neither nudity nor the intimate situation were in any way shameful. Also, the fact that I had been together with another lover, who was also part of a multiple relationship context, was – if at all – only a trigger. But the question about the ability to cope with the double desire by two people and my (obviously insufficient!) self-efficacy in this context, THAT on the other hand…. …created the actual stress.

“Luxury problems…”, one or the other may now think. For me, however, this is not a luxury problem but a real one, because I struggle within myself with the fact that I am “not enough” (a very exemplary and quite genuine family resentment on my part). And in a multiple relationship context, for example, this can cost me dearly in a moment in which I merely begin to believe that I have to justify myself or my dedication towards an additional partner.
Most people who have already lived with me in intimate relationships could probably predict that I would most likely try to evade such a situation by staying under the radar or by evading/distracting (= flight).
If, however, I should be seriously pushed to an unavoidable statement, there would be the danger – to be honest – that I would become pretty quickly rebellious despite all my oligoamorous wisdom (= fight).

Stress narrows our perspective, takes away equanimity and erases options that we might have had access to if we had a calm mind. Coach and couple therapist Reinhardt Krätzig writes about this phenomenon in his book “With the Key of the Psyche” (published in 2020):
»Our brain experiences stress as evidence of an existing danger. Danger now implies real, perhaps life-threatening danger. In order to be able to face it appropriately, a shift occurs in body and the mind. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is activated, we become restless, feel uncomfortable and insecure.
In this state, our heart rate accelerates and our breath is short and shallow. We scan our surroundings, go into fight or flight mode. Now you experience the world more as a dangerous place where you have to protect yourself from harm. In order to survive, all senses must be directed outward, the energy-consuming and much too slow consciousness gets less oxygen, so it is cut back and used only for sense processing. You don’t think about what you’re doing any more, you just do it. The only reference point for action now available is experience. Under stress, these are the experiences from other difficult, demanding circumstances. Since this has been going on all one’s life, one suddenly finds oneself with one foot back in childhood and has as a reference point for present action only the behavioural patterns developed at that time in response to difficult situations.
Caution. This happens not only in the case of major, conspicuous stress that is visible to everyone. Something similar also happens in the case of very subtle stress, especially that which arises when one’s own life issue is being touched. Everyone at some point has experienced a partner suddenly falling into a strange mood. In most cases, something had touched a sensitive spot in the psyche of the other person. This immediately triggers this stress mode, combined with recourse to childhood coping patterns. To an observer, something like this seems irritating and out of place, but it happens to everyone at some point, including yourself.
When dealing with such a burdened person – for example, a relationship partner who is currently arguing with you – it makes no sense at this moment to appeal to their consciousness or reason and perhaps ask them to pull themselves together. Since the control panel of conscious guidance is currently unoccupied – as long as the subjective suffering continues – nothing can implement the appeals and requests anyway. The most important and strongest resource for self-regulation (consciousness) is not available. This also has nothing to do with a lack of will, slackness or laziness. The question of intelligence does not arise here either. The same thing happens with extremely intelligent people, who are just as limited under stress as less intelligent people.«

Incidentally, the “life issues” characterized by Krätzig could, in his opinion, be identified particularly well in the case of a reaction that was extremely inappropriate to the triggering occasion: So what kind of experience “makes us jump out of our skin”, “drives us mad” or “pulls the rug out from under our feet” ?

In Entry 26, I add that, strictly speaking, our fear of fear makes things seem even more threatening. “Caught by ourselves”, I write there, “an awkward feeling.”
My dream or rather my subconsciousness has uncovered this fact for me once again. Difficulties in dealing with desire? Fear of not being able to satisfy (demands)? When asked about this while awake, I would probably deny it forthrightly, because I don’t really perceive myself that way. But my subconscious has shown me that there is still a (probably not so small) part of me that thinks like that about myself.

In our self-chosen relationships today, our favourite people and lovers are not our parents or siblings of the past. And thus it is beneficial if we are able to realize in a quiet moment that also the former two-dimensionality of conflicts long ago will (hopefully) no longer present itself today in their former pettiness and inexorability of “won” and “lost”.
With goodwill and a portion of self-humour towards ourselves, we can figure out our “life issues”, e.g. by looking at ourselves, when sometimes our “control panel was unoccupied”, when it was hard to talk to us, because a resentment had pulled us into an old world of “who is not in favour of me is surely against me” (or when we tried to smooth the inner churning ocean with the third bar of XXL whole milk chocolate…).
Once we have unmasked a life issue, the chances become better and better over time to deprive it of its exuberant status as the all-dominating (but unconscious) “leitmotif” of our emotional reaction and to gradually diminish it to a clown’s hooter that will only occasionally resound in between.

By the way, Coach Krätzig also has a “positive test” up his sleeve for exploring our life issues: He says that what we ourselves lack (or have lacked) most in life, we often bestow upon others as compensation. Is that care? Comfort or security? Practical help? Loyalty? Community? A sympathetic ear at all times? Or…?
I am curious what you will discover!

* Leitmotif: A melodic theme now often used in film scores or game soundtracks, which almost unnoticed in countless alterattions and variations as an underlying element resonates through the entire music of the corresponding work.

¹ The negative consequences of a “win/lose situation” (winner-loser strategy: lack of willingness on the part of the conflicting parties to find an appropriate, rational solution to conflicts. Provocations, punitive behavior and threats [power] are used in the hope of emerging from the conflict as winners themselves) I already briefly address in Entry 26.

² This wording, as a matter of fact, is derived from the Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung.

Thanks to Jonathan Sautter on Pixabay for the photo!

One for all – all for one!¹

As the author of a bLog, one is necessarily critical regarding one’s own texts. Again and again, I therefore regularly look again at entries written by me months – or meanwhile even years – later, and even in my eyes there are rather powerful but also sometimes less profound articles.
There is, for example, my Entry 16, about which I kept thinking whether I should consider it the weakest in terms of content – even a partner of mine said at the time that I had been too hard on myself when writing it, because successful communication would always depend on the contributions of all participants.
However, when I revisit Entry 16 today, I find its conclusion highly topical and universally applicable – even if I had chosen the contextual approach in a somewhat roundabout way back then.

In order to clarify what I mean, I would like to pick up the thread again today, because in my own relationships and also in those of close acquaintances, I have regularly noticed how quickly in “default mode” we are disposed to regard the perception of our part of the world all too readily as the presumable entirety.

Why is it so important to me – concerning Oligoamory – to once again very thoroughly examine exactly this complex ( which, strictly speaking, has a well-known and quite comprehensible mechanism)?
Because I would like to close a potential loophole in the oligoamorous “firewall”, which could present itself to a possibly well-meaning, but in the heat of the moment perhaps a little too self-convinced mind – specifically in relation to what I have established in my last entries as oligoamorous basic philosophy:

Already on my starting page I invite my readers to build (multiple) relationship networks in which all participants could hopefully experience themselves as “more than the sum of their parts” by interconnecting and combining skills as well as resources. In Entry 64, which was the last article of a three-part series on “Meaningful Relationships,” I reinforce this key point in Oligoamory with the holistic thoughts of the early modern philosopher Shaftesbury, which could be summarized as follows: What is good for you is beneficial for a greater whole – and if something is beneficial for the greater whole, this in turn benefits you.
The latter, by the way, even the primatologist Frans de Waal (mentioned by me already in Entries 11 and 59) had derived from our biologically closest cousins: In evolutionary terms, cooperation could develop because through proven favours in a group by an individual showing solidarity, the probability increased that this individual would probably one day be among those “favoured” by the solidarity of others.
So far, so good.

However, we humans – especially in loving relationships – are not merely a holistically functioning ecosystem, nor are we a mere bunch of monkeys. Because “what is good (for us)”, that which is “beneficial (for us)”, is something we must – and want to! – decide for ourselves. I would even say: We must and should decide on this ourselves.
To remain with the example of the primate group: For us, on the one hand, it would be a bit too arbitrary to be at the mercy of whether or not some bananas would be left over for us during the distribution today. And on the other hand, only we ourselves can really know whether we would prefer to have a banana today at all – or a coconut or anything else – and we also want to decide autonomously about that for ourselves.

Why do I say this? Because I am convinced that a huge potential for conflict in close human relationships lies in the paternalism: “I already know what is good for you…!”

And this can sprout the strangest blossoms in loving relationships, to which I would not want to provide any support by the pretext of a superior oligoamorous group benefit for the sake of “the sum of the parts”.
If we look at monoamory (e.g. classical marriage…), this is already a problem for historical reasons alone: Because there – over several centuries – the role of the husband evolved into that of a provider of livelihood, and the role of the wife evolved into that of a dependent recipient. This distribution of roles already contributed to the fact that until today a certain “master attitude ” still characterizes our thinking, for example, when it comes to questions of occupation and earning (the most) money in general. In this way, even a parent-child relationship is reproduced in the constellation of a subsequent loving relationship: the one who provides (most) is allowed to decide, has the (supreme/ultimate) “power of disposal”.
This gets really complicated, unfortunately, because the mentioned “provider mentality” can meet in us humans a more or less established “wellfare mentality” – a comfortable attitude, which yields only too gladly, and is content with the fact that there is already someone else, who “cares”.
And this does not at all refer only to physical or material well-being. The title line of the languishing jazz song “Someone to watch over me“ by George and Ira Gershwin from 1926 is the perfect example for me in this respect, as this sentence wants to be pronounced with four childlike kissing mouths (try it yourself in front of the mirror…), thereby longingly proclaiming the desire for the quasi omnipotent all-round caretaker².

Even we, who believe ourselves to be emancipated from such a world of paternal “shoe-boxes” (or at least their moralizing superstructure), are far from being completely free of such thinking.
For me, this is evidenced by the fact that multiple relationship contexts (from polyamorous dating sites and forums to actual relationships) among other things regularly struggle with the imminence of genuine narcissism.
And that’s unfortunately not so surprising, because narcissism is either attracted by the possibility to become the undetected commander, decision-maker and object of adoration for a very long time – which is simply easier to disguise by a higher number of people involved (because from the point of view of a narcissist “someone else” is always to blame)… Or narcissism is virtually invited by people who want to hand over responsibility to “the community” so that a narcissistic personality quickly feels: Here I can lead and/or excel.
It is not that narcissism does not also exist in usual relationships of two – but an insecurely acting multiple relationship model is clearly more susceptible to tolerate such patterns.

But it doesn’t have to be narcissism that lies behind the urge to impose what one considers good for oneself on all others as supposedly beneficial.
In the vast majority of cases, it is simply our conviction about ” our own movie” that is at work, as I have already described in Entry 11. This conviction can even go so far that we see ourselves in the role of the romantic self-sacrificer who gives it all, really everything, for the community – and for the sake of a higher overall performance.

At the end of the day, though, I still haven’t had to engage in any real communication for this, and it’s just like I said in Entry 16, that I’m merely “imposing my personal reasons that I associate with a topic on any opportunity for communication – and thereby on my entire social group.“

Many “heroines and heroes in their own movie” (Entry 11) are often outraged by such an attribution, since – on the contrary – they are quite convinced that they communicate all the time and even very MUCH. Only, unfortunately, they would talk their mouths off, could even speak with the tongues of angels, however, the unwilling objects of such an expended amount of communication would simply and unfortunately not be able to receive the guiding message. Or perhaps they would simply be stubborn.

Already in Entry 4 I do not refer to “communication” as an absolute value in relationships, but call it a “flexible variable” (like a volume regulator on a mixing console, for example). The fact that this “regulator” is generally present does not say anything about the quality produced. Because especially in today’s world we often adopt – as far as our attitude to the “regulator” is concerned – an unhelpful attitude, which in linguistic terms is called “metacommunication”.
“Metacommunication,” however, is a mode of conversation that is one level behind – or rather above – real communication. In the truest sense: for we talk “about” something or someone – but not “with” them. Our modern means of communication make this even easier (and more habitual) in a way that is not very helpful, e.g., by allowing us to conjure up additional (meta)interlocutors out of thin air by means of our always-accessible communication devices and applications. In doing so, however, we are most likely only opening another echo chamber that will confirm us in our own opinion – or we will experience frustration in the experience of what appears to be yet another incomprehensible entity (in addition, “meta-partners” of that kind often miss and lack situational gestures, facial expressions or voice colouring). However, the actual purpose is still not helped – it would be as if we had only talked about the ” regulator” or the mixer all the time – but failed to put it into operation.

We can only counter the occasionally unpleasant course of (contentious) conversations with genuine communication, in talking with one another, if we make an effort to disclose that different sides may start from completely different premises, that misinterpretations may exist – and that misunderstandings want to be cleared up. Ambiguity, irony and sarcasm are not funny in this context – they are a hindrance. Rather, we have to ask how our interlocutors use certain terms, we have to agree on how the parties involved assess the current situation – and it is very important that everyone really (wants to) talk(s) about the same topic. Only in this way can we discover commonalities and identify more precisely which points are seen differently and why.

So it’s better to keep your options open? Or as an acquaintance once said to me, “Let some differences between friends simply exist and don’t really address them in detail…”?
In the Oligoamory from my point of view absolutely impossible.
Because the emotional contract behind every relationship (Entry 9) is not a tool, a mere label or an option – but a fact that manifests itself immediately with the establishment of a relationship. The emotional contract is always there, is ” performed in the background” – whether we want it or not.

Sure, sometimes you may take a bit of personal freedom of thought from it a way. I’ll give you an example of my own:
In Entry 31 I mentioned that one of my partners owns a horse. “Owns a horse” is, strictly speaking, already too superficial as a description – sometimes I say: “You can take K. from the horse but not the horse out of K.”. By that I want to express that this partner is connected with the whole being to this horse theme.
I, on the other hand, don’t particularly care for horses. Well, over the years with that partner I now know a little more than where only front and back are on a horse – but I would probably not keep such an animal on my own, for many reasons (horse manure, for example). Since the partner has now a time-consuming profession, it results that I take care of the animal occasionally, stable care, feeding, yes and also the little loved disposal of horse droppings.
As a motivational aid in my head, I sometimes stand on the paddock and tell myself that my action is an anytime terminable bonus, which I would not have to perform compulsorily. And that is often a reassuring thought and whistling I empty the wheelbarrow.
But would I seriously play this card?
It is actually the case that I was not asked for this service by the partner in question. Ok, a little bit it was simply the purely practical necessity, which arose to take care of a pet as a living being, which belonged to our household anyway. But the result of this was and is to a large extent a self-commitment that I initiated myself completely on my own (!).
A self-commitment, however, emerges from the personal “desire to assume responsibility” that I have already cited in several entries (otherwise I would have been better off leaving it out altogether). And in this sense regarding a circumstance in which I have taken (unasked) a contribution option to our overall housekeeping. And as an adult I surely have to confess: Not because I had nothing better to do, but because I consciously wanted it that way.
This self-commitment has thus at the same time immediately become part of the emotional contract as a “enjoyable voluntary obligation” (see definition).
This “enjoyment” for my partner in turn emerged from my investment in commitment and integrity. An investment in an entity, therefore, in which I obviously felt secure and involved enough when I made the investment.
But this is precisely where my investment has entered into our shared “more than the sum of the parts”, where individual “enjoyable voluntary yielded obligations, self-commitments and care” can no longer be easily separated.
It is precisely in this capacity that Oligoamory is “holistic,” which is why I used the example of the baby rattle in Entry 57. Of course, it would theoretically be possible to remove individual contributions from the emotional contract once again: I stop mucking out – You don’t go shopping anymore – I don’t keep our budget book anymore – You don’t call when it’s getting late at work anymore… etc. In the end, however, it would be just like the rattle: You would take the structure apart component by component and in the end… nothing would remain! It is probably because of this effect that breakups are so sobering: after stripping away all the bits and pieces that have been brought in, all that remains is a somehow uneasy emptiness, but what – as in the case of the rattle – was actually the operating sound – that is, what had filled the whole thing with life – that also escaped in the process, and no one would have been able to lay hands on it…

So as a “hero in my own movie” I can take care of my personal need satisfaction and try to find out what is good for myself.
If, with this goal of a succeeding life, I want to contribute to my group/community as a free individual, then I can possibly contribute to its overall good and the well-being for all in it.
But what I can never know or even decide is what is good for YOU or any other specific person.
This is the limit, the firewall, which we as individuals cannot realistically cross and therefore should not cross out of hubris.
What a nifty paradox of Oligoamory. It only performs smoothly if our intentions are aimed at the shared centre:

One for all and all for one!

¹ Wonderful phrase that gained eternal valor with Alexandre Dumas‘ novel as “Un pour tous, tous pour un!”.

² Featured prominently even in Star Trek Voyager Season 5 Episode 22

Thanks to FOTORC on Pixabay for the photo!

Grandissimo!

Just last month, the Austrian newspaper “Der Standard“, which regularly reports in detail and with an open mind on numerous topics concerning all kinds of varieties of non-monogamy, once again published an online article in which a number of different relationship models in this context were portrayed.
Apart from many aspects I was familiar with, this time, however, the following passage made me sit up and take notice:
»Psychotherapeutic experiencee shows that most people can imagine having relationships of whatever kind with different people simultaneously. They usually just would not be willing to accept this behaviour on behalf of the person they are in a relationship with. If “my” relationship companion also desires other lovers, this constitutes a narcissistic injury. Dealing with this requires the will to pay attention and a lot of self-reflection. Therefore, choosing mono-relationships is often easier, because we know how that works.«

“Narcissistic injury”? Does this have anything to do with genuine narcissism and, accordingly, is there perhaps even a kind of pathological self-sabotage in most of us, so that truly functioning polyamorous relationships are actually already doomed to failure by our “basic psychological mindset”?
I wanted to clarify this question also for myself and in doing so I came across some interesting correlations that I do not want to withhold from you as my readers.

First of all, the German Wikipedia simply and directly explains: »Narcissistic injury refers to both a specific behaviour by which such an injury is inflicted and an experience by which it is felt. […] In this respect, the narcissistic injury has a communicative function. Specifically, this means that narcissistic injuries are attacks on the narcissism and identity of other persons. They are intended to attack their feelings of self, to shake their self-assurance and self-confidence, and to question and thus weaken their self-esteem and self-worth. Humiliation, exposure, belittlement, devaluation, degradation and ridicule are used as means of offence; fear, pain and shame are experienced, but also frustration, anger and possibly the desire for revenge.«

“Ouch!”, a part of me wants to exclaim. That doesn’t sound at all like the kind of loving (multiple) relationships I want to promote by Oligoamory:
So if additional loved ones are possibly added to an existing relationship, the already existing partners may experience an attack on their identity, a questioning of their self-worth and feel the new situation as degradation, whereby they feel fear, pain, shame, frustration, anger and possibly the desire for revenge…?

As much as one or the other of us may consider the above formulations drastic or even exaggerated, they are sadly close to reality. Because it only takes a quick visit to any multi-relationship/polyamory/non-monogamy online forum to turn up numerous posts and cries for help from desperate existing partners – and the content is very similar in all of them:
“My husband has opened up our relationship and now there is a new partner with whom I can’t get along at all…” or “Our polycule has been joined by another guy in whom my partner is now very interested and I don’t know where to turn in my jealousy, which I never thought I would ever experience to such an extreme…”

What’s going on there? Just a resurgence of old encrustations of mononormativity? Outdated possessiveness, resentment and petty-minded jealousy?

The psychologist Bärbel Wardetzki¹ explained the actual process behind this in a most exciting way in a contribution for Deutschlandfunk in 2020:
“Actually, the basic reaction is first of all a good sign: A slight like a ‘narcissistic injury’ is a completely normal human reaction. Thank God. Because it shows that we are sensitive, that we are vulnerable to certain things. Especially in loving relationships. That’s where almost everyone is confronted with slights at some point, that’s where we usually locate slights like narcissistic injuries first. That’s where they hit the hardest, wounds us the most.”

But what is it exactly that is actually “injured” – and do the other acting persons “cause” it?
On this point, Mrs Wardetzki clarifies: “When we are injured in such a manner, it concerns very often our narcissistic needs. And these are usually needs that, when fulfilled, strengthen our self-esteem. Because ‘narcissistic’ first of all means nothing more than ‘relating to the self-worth’.”

So, in contrast to my Entry 32, which is actually referring to pathological narcissism, Mrs Wardetzki explains that each of us basically possesses a natural “healthy narcissism” that is closely linked to our self and our sense of identity.
And therefore this “healthy narcissism” can be injured.
Neurobiologist Joachim Bauer² elaborates on this in the above-mentioned Deutschlandfunk contribution:
“For example, if I let a test person hear that someone else has spoken badly about her/him/it, the self-systems reacts. If I slight someone by treating her/him/it unfairly when distributing resources, then the disgust systems in the brain react. Or if someone is offended by a group excluding him or her and the impression is created: ‘You don’t belong to us any more’, then the pain systems react. The pain systems of the human brain respond not only to inflicted physical pain, but also to social exclusion and humiliation.”

In order to understand even better why such events have the power to shake us to such an extent, it is useful to know another psychological ego concept at this point, which is our so-called “grandiose self” ³.
Our “grandiose self” is formed in its healthy form in the best case during our growing up, starting with the moment of our birth. As a human child who is increasingly discovering the world, our environment will make us (hopefully) competent and so we increasingly gain the expectation that most things in life will run reasonably smoothly and – even if not – that we have gained skills to cope with nearly all life situations that come our way.
Quite soon, however (e.g. when we are part of a larger family – or at the latest from kindergarten onwards), we have to start making corrections to this self-concept: For we will meet other people who, again in terms of their grandiose selves, can advertise themselves louder, more aggressively, or merely more strategically skilful than we can to the world around us – our first “slights/injuries” will occur accordingly.
The neuroscientist Bauer adds: “We can only survive as human beings if we have a certain resilience to minor slights. And we acquire this resilience, this ability to deal with it, by having a strong inner self within us. And people acquire this strong inner self as children, especially during the time when they are growing up. When there are people around them who make the child feel: You are welcome in this world, if you make a mistake, the world won’t end, we like you the way you are”.

But is that why slights are the issue of the injured party alone? Do we simply have to realise that the expectations we have about life can be exaggerated? Do we simply have to learn to bear it when they are not met?
Psychologist Bärbel Wardetzki answers rather cautiously here: “In itself, we cannot offend another person because we do not know where his or her sore spots are. Every slight targets a sore spot, a injury of the self-worth that may have occurred a very long time ago. As a rule, people are slighted by us, although we don’t even notice it.” And she adds: “Injuries are also difficult to avoid because each side assumes that it is acting in good faith. Only in rare cases there is deliberate offending, usually there is no intention.”
The latter statement, by the way, agrees perfectly with my Entry 11, which tells about the “Black Flittermouse Man” who always wants to perform heroic deeds in everyday life – but is regularly not entirely successful in doing so.

Of course, psychology and neurobiology point out an important aspect: The more incomplete our competence strengthening has evolved in our adolescence and in our personality development, the more insecure we are likely to react in situations of distress (and thus we also experience our partners in a similar way).
A person with a poorly built self-esteem, for example, will be more likely to confuse the attributions of external and self in the case of an unilateral breach of an agreement, such a person might be quicker to think in terms of blame or self-condemnation such as: “Yeah, you can get away with it with me…” and will act more helplessly in general when it comes to actually pointing out what exactly went wrong.

At the same time, even those human relationships we enter into in our adult lives continue to be places of learning and (self-)experiencing concerning our self-awareness. And this especially with regard to such important areas as reliability and responsibility on the one hand – but also appreciation and acknowledgement of maturity on the other.

I will try to illustrate this by means of an extreme: In 2013, the psychoanalysts Richard B. Ulman and Doris Brothers demonstrated in a study* on rape victims why their horrific experience ultimately led to a quasi complete erasure of the personal “grandiose self” – which resulted in the subsequent traumatisation: For it was not only the assaultive event and the complete loss of control that contributed to this massive psychological damage, but precisely the accompanying destruction of one’s own self-construct of a safe and self-determined individual.

“Damage” in our relationships thus arises above all when participants get into situations in which they see themselves curtailed in their efficacy (influence on an event) and if they are compromised in the reflection of their inalienable intrinsic value (appreciation/acceptance).

This happens in such a way very often when the emotional contract underlying the relationship (I remind: “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.”) is changed, especially unilaterally and/or very quickly.

For out of healthy self-interest alone, we humans usually do not react very well when something is to apply differently today than it was agreed yesterday – especially when we neither know nor can well assess the motives behind the potential change.

Consequently, a monogamous person does indeed not normally have to expect that another lover will be brought home tomorrow; and even a participant in an established multiple relationship should be able to count on the fact that the addition of another favourite person will not lead to a unilateral or arbitrary shift of previously negotiated commitments.
Nevertheless, these things can happen – or they can definitely manifest themselves in such a way from the point of view of the injured person. And the acting person, in turn, still does not need to have acted in any culpable, deliberate or even consciously hurtful way.

Is this then the (multiple) relationship death sentence, because we would have to fear that a large part of us has emerged from our individual upbringing with a somehow incomplete self-worth? A damaged self-worth, which can therefore never really be sure of itself – and thus holds an ever-ticking, highly sensitive mortification bomb ready for those close to us?

In my 63rd Entry on »Meaningful Relationships«, I wrote that “in human relationships, freedom and security form a pair of opposites in which one cannot be obtained for the sake of the other.” And I quote a fellow bLogger there who expressed: “Let go of trying to control other people’s actions; let go of fear and attachment. By doing so you may lose some people along the way, but it will most likely be the weakest contestants. You know, the ones that made you feel like you didn’t have real, meaningful relationships in the first place?”

Such “weak contestants” will hardly have ever really conceded nor confirmed our very own grandiosity.
Nor will they ever have entered into resilient emotional contracts with us, thereby signalling a willingness to regularly account for their own contributions therein – for the sake of our informed choice!

“Meaningful relationships” (as I described them in my Oligoamory-Entries 62, 63 and 64) contain the awareness of the inevitable human risk of possible slights and injuries, precisely because of the precious price of sensitivity and vulnerability among each other, by which I quoted the psychologist Wardetzki at the beginning of this Entry.
Relationships that do not contain the amount of trust and kindness to be able to explain oneself in front of each other, to show oneself as fallible and also capable of revising one’s own point of view and one’s own actions, can therefore never be truly “meaningful relationships”.

To be “grandiose” therefore also means in our loving relationships to venture out again and again like a fool in a fairy tale; not so much in the belief concerning our own invulnerability – but rather in the confidence that there we can never meet a completely bad fate.
We will probably be slighted, yes, and for our part we will most likely hurt our loved ones more than once.
But since we all know about our foolishness and therefore do not have to hide it from each other, loyalty, honesty and perseverance will always lead us back to each other.
So, to paraphrase the quote from “Der Standard”, I would say as a conclusion:
Oligo may not be easier – but it is hopefully more predictable, because now we know how that works.

¹ Publications by Bärbel Wardetzki on the topic (only German literature):
Mich kränkt so schnell keiner! Wie wir lernen, nicht alles persönlich zu nehmen. dtv, München 2005
Weiblicher Narzissmus. Der Hunger nach Anerkennung. Kösel Verlag 1991; 19. überarbeitete Auflage 2007
Nimm´s bitte nicht persönlich. Der gelassene Umgang mit Kränkungen. Kösel Verlag, München 2012
Und das soll Liebe sein? Wie es gelingt, sich aus einer narzisstischen Beziehung zu befreien. dtv premium, 2018

² Publications by Joachim Bauer on the topic (only German literature):
Selbststeuerung – Die Wiederentdeckung des freien Willens. Blessing, München 2015
Wie wir werden, wer wir sind: Die Entstehung des menschlichen Selbst durch Resonanz. Blessing, München 2019
Fühlen, was die Welt fühlt – Die Bedeutung der Empathie für das Überleben von Menschheit und Natur. Blessing, München 2020

³ In a clinical psychological context, the “Grandiose Self” is also occasionally referred to as the ” Great Self” or the “Grandiose Self-Object.”

* Ulman, Richard B.; Brothers, Doris (2013). The Shattered Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Trauma. Taylor & Francis. p. 114.

Thanks to Austin Neill on Unsplash for the grandiose picture!

Yes, we’re open

Three weeks ago I received most remarkable fan mail, in which among other things the following sentence was written: “I really like your bLog – and as far as open love is concerned you seem pretty much advanced in that department.”
As soon as I read it, there was a part of me that thought rather grimly “I think if you had a proper conversation with me, you’d have to realise very quickly how little ‘open’ I actually am…”.
»Open«… »Closed«…, in fact one encounters these two classifications rather often on the continent of non-monogamous relationships. In essence, I regard both descriptions quite useless in communicating with each other, just like, for example, the widespread scene word »sexpositivity«. Especially in a environment that claims pluralism, tolerance and heterogeneity for itself, I consider such purely dualistic phrases to be profoundly problematic.
Dualistic? Profoundly problematic? What do I mean by that?
That the wording in itself contains merely an either/or-alternative – and therefore immediately assumes an exclusionary quality. For you can either love »open/openly« or…, yes, OR – and this implies the alternative thus inevitable in purely binary phrasing – you love »closed«. Either you are »sex-positive« or…, yes, OR you are »sex-negative«.
Open and positive instantly comes along with a nice nimbus of diversity, cheerfulness, life-affirmation and alternativeism; closed and negative, on the other hand, is pooh-pooh, carries the stigma of narrow-mindedness, possessiveness, dependency and establishment.
Gee, dualistic expressions are something great, they nicely simplify the world, because you can only be one OR the other – and if you are NOT the one thing, well, friend, then unfortunately, according to the rules of logic, you are obviously the other…
In other words: breeding ground for new categories and exclusiveness instead of integration and wholeness – and by denying scope for hues, nuances and shades of grey already in the wording itself, all that somehow isn’t really queer – and oligoamorous…?

As the author of this bLog, I believe first of all that the »open/closed« debate out there is causing more confusion than helpful self-inspiring clarity for most lovers. I am relatively sure, for example, that this fan I mentioned above was actually addressing my “open relationship”, to which I refer here sporadically. Yet I have never ever written an Entry on the subject of “open love / loving openly” – for good reason, since I personally have a problem concerning the explicit combination of these two words.
Because »love« means to me, in terms of quality, a kind of “energy” between living beings. In this way, love for me also just “is” – as some Buddhist-inspired, esoteric or hippie circles like to put it – as many other proponents of “free love”: It certainly represents a value in itself, possibly existing out of itself, perhaps it is also fed from a spiritual or cosmic source. In that sense, I would even agree that love can be seen as a kind of all-enveloping (or even all-pervading) matrix that circulates between all things and in which everything else is contained. But!
Certainly in this way I can possibly get in touch with this all-embracing love, I could also perceive myself as part of it and feel embedded in it….
However, if »love« has this particular quality, which other natural sources and stores of energy also share (such as air and water masses, but also atomic particles, photons and quanta), then in my view a correlation of some kind only arises when such energies begin to flow, align themselves with a destination, when a field of tension develops.
Accordingly, if I were to say about myself that I “love openly”, then I would perceive that as if I were to say “I have water/electricity/music etc.”. So at best I would have made a statement about myself, that I obviously had access to the corresponding energy, perhaps I had ample supply of it myself – but yet I would neither have watered a garden nor refreshed a thirsty throat, I would not have illuminated any darkness, nor charged a battery, struck a chord or made anyone dance.
As far as I’m concerned, »love« – at least between human beings (or more precisely: between living beings as a whole) – usually has an “alignment”, a directionality – and thus almost always also includes some kind of aspect: E.g. a colouring, an incentive, a reference, a meaning, an information – and thereby, of course, immediately establishes some reciprocity and a dimension of its own.
For between the “energy” and my (achieved) effect there is still me – and I decide – to stay with the analogies above – whether I pass on the energy through a wide nozzle, a shower head, a lens, fine wire, a keyboard or by means of a gong.
Ideally, love therefore receives its coherence (its context of meaning) precisely through our respective individuality – and wonderfully enough, this coherence, which I emphasise so often in my Oligoamory, can thereby present itself in completely different ways.
Anyway, in my opinion, exactly this is not “open” at all – and in this respect, “loving openly” would make about as much sense to me as setting fire to a barrel of paraffin or bursting a water tank: also a form of energy release – but in essence aimless, connectionless and far from any sustainability.
So when we are not basking in that blissful feeling of being omnipresently surrounded by universal love (and that tends to be something we each experience in our core selves largely individually), we are always, in a way, “loving closed” in one way or another – “closed” in a positive sense of “congruent” (inner agreement) and perhaps even “continuity” (aware of the intention). And that is something very good because we can experience two things with this kind of “directed energy”: On the one hand, responsible self-care as well as the care for others, because thereby we are operating within the sustainability triangle of permanence, suitability and appropriateness (Entry 3, last paragraph). On the other hand – and because the previous may sound a bit too boring – we can achieve that highly valued state that is generally referred to as “flow“: The sensation of being whole; the blissful feeling of a state of complete immersion. Well, that sounds more like love – doesn’t it?

But perhaps this current “horror angustatis” (Latin: abhorrence of closedness) only exists since the advent of modern computer networks, where “openness” stands for flexibility, accessibility and universality, while “closedness” has the charm of protectionism, secrecy and vintage IBM flange plugs.
Although everyone knows, at least since the first “Tron“ movie in 1982, that energy always thrives on momentum, dynamics AND directionality 😉

However, I believe that our western thinking about relationships and their openness/closedness is still surprisingly strongly influenced by a certain ancient heritage. And in detail, I am referring to the almost two and a half thousand year old story by the Greek philosopher Plato about the so-called “spherical creatures“.
In my view, the basic idea behind it is simply fascinating: angry gods tear happily and completely living spherical beings in half as punishment, thereby creating us humans both in our sexuality as well as in our longing and our henceforth perpetual neediness.
Mr. Plato was even downright enlightened at his time: thus he had the gods tear apart female, male and bisexual spherical creatures – generating lesbian, gay and heterosexual “halves”, which from then on would be desperately searching for each other and recompletion in the eons to come…

A load of antique old tosh, mothballed, outdated?
Hardly: just search the internet for the keywords “dual soul”, “soul mate” or “twin flame”. For there you are: the “better half”, the “missing other”, which will make you “whole” again.
Deeply ingrained in our Western civilisation, older even than Christianity, there was and still is the belief that “out there” somewhere our complement must exist, the missing piece to our life’s puzzle, thus the answer to our questions about existence, satisfaction of our sublimely felt – but unfulfilled – longings and needs as well as regarding our desire for completeness and wholeness.
Apart from the fact that this parable also laid the fatal foundation for our mononormative “only-ONE-lid-for-only-ONE-pot” paradigm, it has, of course, also caused a lot of damage in terms of entitlement concerning our potential partners: Because any person who would not complete us to 100% – that is, “heal” us – couldn’t possibly be our actual “missing half”. Thus we would have been mistaken and would have to set out again, parallel or serially (depending on disposition or chosen strategy), in our quest for the perfect match. Forever, again and again, cursed by gods and fate….

I have only used the word “anti-oligoamorous” twice on this bLog – but the above narrative fulfils this offence in any case.
Because the bad thing is that this old tale has also influenced the way we often think about ourselves: as somehow incomplete, just half-something. Whereby wholeness and salvation would not only be extremely difficult to obtain, but completely unattainable on our own – and if it were at all, then only through external contribution, lying beyond our own possibilities.
Still worse: according to the legend, in this way we all are born “in the minus”, so to speak, both in terms of our social gender and biological sex – and also in terms of our desires and needs. And even if we were to achieve the highly improbable luck of finding our “other half”, then we would only just be able to reach our “original state”, in a sense as completion and maximum at best “Level 0”.

And that is surely not the image of humanity I am advocating with Oligoamory.
Those who have read bravely through many entries of my bLog know that I am a strong supporter of our personal wholeness and of our individual realization of becoming whole. We are by no means “imperfect beings” – on the contrary, we are already complete and it is precisely because of this that we can achieve this fantastic mode of existence in our loving relationships of experiencing ourselves as “more than the sum of our parts”.
Which immediately reminds me again of the “spherical creatures”, who in this way – even if they were to reunite – could (or would?) never grow beyond themselves because they would literally have always “concluded” their striving by finding their twin nature.
Is this perhaps the origin of a somewhat rebellious and resistant element in some parts of the non-monogamous scene against all kinds of relational “close(d)ness”, e.g. against the often reviled “RCR” (“Romantic Couple Relationship” as a fighting term of relationship anarchy) or polyfidelity¹ arrangements that are sometimes eyed with suspicion? Not infrequently, those concerned are described as “naive”, “unvisionary” or even as “regressed” – without the accusers noticing that this is precisely how they themselves get entangled in the “either/or trap” mentioned at the beginning…

It is possible, however, that good old Plato was aiming at something quite different. Modern psychological and philosophical reflections² on his story suggest that the wise Greek was already trying to point to what he perceived even in his time as an increasing fragmentation of the human mind. This would make Plato’s story the first illustrious testimony to the fact that most people since antiquity would have been suffering from a “reality of separation/splitting”, and privately wished for a way back into their personal “continuum” (see Entry 26). So Plato would have written his somewhat strange parable as an urgent appeal to our self-love – and I consider that an exciting idea when I think about it: For Plato “wrapped up” his story in a literary dialogue that dealt specifically with “Eros” (yes, Eros as in “eroticism”). However, Plato’s contemporaries did not understand “Eros” as a mere form of sexual desire, as we do today, but in a sense as an underlying force that flows through the cosmos and holds all things together³.

Thus we have come full circle. When I was an apprentice, the 50kg Portland cement sacks always had the nice saying written on top “It depends on what you make of it”.
This is exactly what is true for me in terms of my understanding of love: Open, i.e. “unbound”, love is certainly abundant – but in this condition it is largely insubstantial and still without shape. However, we humans as creators of our daily reality can access its enormous potential, give it direction and intention through our efforts, set things in motion.
But in this process we are not just like a member of the fire brigade who has merely chosen the right hose and nozzle for the resulting jet size, but we ourselves are the conduit and we ourselves are also the valve for this great manifestation called »love«.
So presumably Plato meant to say: first make sure that you become whole yourself, so that you are not a broken vessel that cannot hold the power you are accessing; make sure that your valve is not clogged or cracked, so that you can achieve the effect exactly as you intended.

And in this way it is again coherent for me concerning Oligoamory that we lovers always act externally responsible when we first and foremost apply good self-responsibility. Whether we subsequently choose our relationship models to be “open” or “closed” is then merely a question of personal preference.
But to love openly or closed? Both sounds somehow contradictory to me – and that is why I prefer to leave the closing words to the Austrian writer Ernst Ferstl, who succeeded in making these opposites stand side by side in a beautiful proverb:
“Taking people close to your heart means always being open to them.”

¹ Polyfidelity: Form of [polyamorous] non-monogamy in which all members are considered equal partners and agree to restrict sexual or romantic activity only to other members of their own group.
Definition for example: https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Polyfidelity

² E.g. the philosopher Simone Weil addressed the myth of the spherical creatures in her book Intuitions pré-chrétiennes, published in 1951. She believed that the misfortune of humanity lies “in the state of duality”, the separation of subject and object, and interprets the splitting of the spherical beings as a “visible image of this state of duality, which is our essential deficiency”.

³ The philosopher Empedocles († ca. 435 BC), for example, dealt with the question of the circumstances of the creation of the world. He assumed an eternal cycle driven by two opposing moving forces, one attracting and uniting and one repelling and separating. They ceaselessly strive to suppress each other. All processes in the universe, including human destinies, result from their endless alternating struggle. Empedocles called the unifying force “love”, the separating force “strife”.
In this sense, Plato, too, with his famous “Platonic Love“, wanted to achieve that a “true lover” (who would, of course, also be a philosopher!) would strive for higher and higher forms of affection beyond initial erotic desire all the way up to “cosmic love” in the end.

Thanks to Tim Mossholder on Unsplash for the picture!

Faithful, loyal, trusty and true

When I finished the German part of my bLog article, I realized during the translation that there is no consistent Anglo-American equivalent at all for what the Germans call “Treue”.
It was probably just a little surprise, however, that my people, especially, would use just one word for such a complex matter, whereas a glance across the borders shows that there are completely different approaches to this in other countries.
As a lover of words, of course, I found this perspective rather captivating. An Anglo-American speaker would thus be able to express certain nuances while accessing a matter of… – yes, there are several possibilities:
If s*he would be referring to circumstances concerning belief and a feeling of belonging, s*he could choose “faithfulness“ and “faithful“. If matters of attachment and support were concerned, s*he would possibly choose “loyalty” and “loyal”. Talking about dependability and reliability, s*he might use the words “trust” and “trusty”. And in matters of verity and honesty the expressions “trueness” and “true” would possibly be appropriate (and by the way, the English word “True” is etymological the closest distant descendant of the once shared Saxon word “treowe” ¹, which developed in Germany to the all-covering “Treue”).
And there are even more Anglo-American expressions in the field of faith, loyalty, and trust: “staunchness” and “staunch”, for example, if one would refer to a certain steadfastness; “fidelity” if talking about integrity and sincerity; “constancy” and “constant” if referring to persistence and responsibility; “devotion” and “devoted” in matters of commitment and allegiance and still more…
Here, language fascinates me once again – and I think it is remarkable how many of the possible shades and nuances in the various expressions directly affect oligoamorous core issues.

Which brings us to the heart of today’s topic.

Because in the social networks, on a dating platform (once again…) to be precise, I had another peculiar run-in the other day. Since I always present my dating profiles as non-monogamous in a straightforward and transparent way, I had answered one of those “thousand questions”, that many profiles contain so that you can tell something about yourself, as follows:
»What do you think about fidelity?«
My answer: »Mononormative “fidelity” – which, strictly speaking, usually means “sexual exclusivity” – is often worthless because people don’t understand that loyalty and commitment is what really matters – and all other modalities are matters of agreement between the parties involved.«
Promptly I was thereupon addressed by a woman who replied that I would have arranged that with my answer quite nice, but genuine fidelity would be in her opinion much more than just that and would certainly go far beyond loyalty and commitment…
Wham!
Since the lady in question then surprisingly quickly vanished from the corresponding network (perhaps she had found a “genuinely faithful” companion…), I was left owing her an answer, which I would therefore like to make up for here on my bLog.
Her statement prompts me to examine two positions: First, whether “genuine fidelity” actually outranks or overrides loyalty and commitment. –
And secondly: Whether, if “fidelity” is spontaneously felt by many people (especially in monogamy) as something “much more”, what this “more” then consists of.

Fidelity

The German Wikipedia comments on the keyword: »Fidelity (“to be staunch, to be constant, to trust, to be true, to believe, to be devoted”) is a virtue that expresses the reliability of an agent/protagonist towards someone else, a collective or a thing. Ideally, it is based on mutual trust or loyalty, respectively.«[…]
“Woho!”, I already want to exclaim at that point: Thus, fidelity is based “ideally” on trust and loyalty! Then according to my idealistic conception fidelity itself cannot go beyond these two fundamental qualities.
After all, it would be similar to my example concerning needs from Entry 58 about a barrel with its various barrel staves (the boards from which the barrel is made): The content of the barrel “fidelity” could not rise higher than the extent of its staves “trust” or “loyalty” would provide. If, therefore, in such a fidelity-balance there would be less of either trust or loyalty, then the barrel capacity “fidelity” could not rise any further than its shortest stave of the least inferior quality would allow. So without trust AND/OR loyalty, there can be no fidelity – or, if there is little of either, there is at last not all too much fidelity to be found.
Our focus therefore shifts to precisely those two underlying assets.
Which in turn puts me as the author in the very fortunate position of being able to say that on this bLog I have already given both topics extensive coverage since Entry 3, especially trust in Entry 15 and Entry 43 (as well as expanded to include the complex of responsibility and accountability in Entry 42).
In addition to the Wikipedia definition of “trust” cited in Entry 43, another perspective adds that trust is above all an expression of emotional (self-)security towards other people and one’s own existence – and thus the basis of any close, interpersonal relationship. In this sense, “trust” is also directly associated with the ability for devotion, because the social and behavioural sciences have worked out that our primordial trust is founded precisely by the fact that as children we surrender ourselves, as it were, unconditionally to our caregivers, from where our ego formation takes its (hopefully) centred beginning ². So, in our loving relationships, in a way, we are also always searching for the (re)experience of such a sustaining connection – and for mammals and horde beings like Homo sapiens, it would have been evolutionarily absurd (and deadly) to limit this possibility to only one other being.

Therefore, lets have one more look at loyalty, which to my forum critic seemed like a kind of “Fidelity light”. Wikipedia says here:
»Loyalty: refers to the inner bond – that is based on common moral maxims or guided by a rational interest and its expression in behaviour – toward a person, group or community. Loyalty means to share and represent the values (and ideology) of others in the interest of a common higher goal, or to represent them even if one does not fully share these values, as long as this serves the preservation of the jointly represented higher goal. Loyalty is manifested both in one’s behaviour toward those to whom one is loyally attached and toward third parties.[…]
Loyalty in loving relationships is the inner bond within the relationship based on mutual trust, commitment and a basis of shared values and principles of volition and action as an attitude constitutive of the relationship, as well as its expression in behaviour (communication, action) internally and externally (towards the participants, as well as towards others). In addition, loyalty also includes safeguarding and representing the other participant’s own interests, even if one does not fully share them oneself, especially if this serves to protect the other’s basic psychological needs (especially if reputation, dignity, trust, integrity, discretion are affected).
Loyalty is often seen as a requirement of fidelity in loving relationships. However, it does not mean blind allegiance or submission to interests or demands of that relationship, but rather requires, if necessary, a conscious confrontation with any value-conflicts while preserving one’s own integrity and values as an expression of loyalty to oneself, which is a prerequisite for loyalty to the other participants (without loyalty to the “I”, loyalty to the “you” is simply not possible). This applies in a similar way to loyalty in friendship.«

“Blimey!”, I have to say here, I couldn’t have expressed it more completely. And it is a pleasure for me that the basic values of trust and commitment are again emphasized by name in this paragraph.
By the way, did you recognize what is at the core of this concept of “loyalty”? It is the “Golden Rule” (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) that I just quoted in Entry 64 and the “inclusive thinking” of other people’s interests into one’s own thoughts and actions that I emphasized in Entry 53. For loyalty, as defined above, characteristically shows this ingenious quality of “going the extra mile” with the other(s) – even if the desired goal may not always match 100% with the comfort zone of one’s own ego.
In which case “trust” and “loyalty” are obviously mutually dependent: For how could I accommodate other people in this way, grant an advance of devotedness towards them, if I were not to trust them?
And with this exactly no blind obedience or dependence is meant, because all this is perfectly possible under preservation of one of my oligoamorous favourite values (since Entry 3!), integrity, which means: “acting in continuously sustained accordance with the personal value system”. And as a result, “I” and “relationship/community” are also always engaged in a dynamic correlation.
I think I could write a lot more on this complex, which is apparent throughout my entire bLog virtually since its very beginning – and could only ever sum it up far less eloquently than the 1993 edition of the Brockhaus encyclopedia’s definition of loyalty:

»Attitude of constancy in a relationship (e.g. marriage, friendship), which is not given up for the sake of one’s own advantages, and on which the other person can therefore trust.²«

And I would like to add: Show integrity. Establish trust first. When it begins to emerge, work to maintain and nurture it. Speak and act in a committed and accountable manner! Take responsibility for more than just the immediate square meter on which you stand. Be reliable; recognize yourself as part of the whole.

“more”

Even the German Wikipedia explains in its article on “Fidelity”:
»Colloquially, the term “fidelity” is often used as a synonym for sexual exclusivity in romantic relationships, in terms of the ideals of monogamy. In this context, fidelity is supposed to express that a partner does not engage in sexual contact with other persons outside a couple’s relationship. If he/she does it anyway, this is automatically understood as infidelity, i.e. a breach of loyalty, by those who consider such partners to be committed to mutual fidelity. Sexual behaviour that is considered illegitimate is prosecuted in those legal systems where “adultery” of this kind is punishable. However, there is a growing view in liberal societies that the question of whether people in a long-term sexual relationship must be faithful to each other is negotiable.
Because, in general, the attribute “faithful” is not always associated with the idea of an exclusivity requirement. For example, no one seriously expects that a “faithful/loyal” customer would never choose a competitor’s offer. In comparable cases, “fidelity” means the long-term maintenance of a (here: business-) relationship.«

As an oligoamorous chronicler of ethical non-monogamy I do smile a bit, because the sentence “However, there is a growing view in liberal societies…” I would of course have rephrased into “However, there is a growing view in liberal societies that the question of whether people in faithful (long-term) relationships must be sexually exclusive to each other is negotiable.”

Anyway.
In order to get to the bottom of what makes people perform an almost proverbial idolatrous “Dance around the Golden Calf” concerning the ideal of fidelity, I have talked to friends and acquaintances and have also looked into myself – after all, one fine day I too set out from the shores of Mono-amory to cross over to Oligo-amory…
Nevertheless, what was finally gathered under that widely diffusely felt (or rather hoped for) “more” turned out, when examined more closely, to be quite predominantly a pitiable “less”.
Because here, to say it in advance, there were all kinds of manifestations of personal anxieties (or more precisely: fears) to be found.
This was particularly evident in that almost all respondents referred very rarely indeed to the benefits of supposedly “genuine fidelity”, but almost always brought up scenarios in the first place when “fidelity” would be lacking – and in the majority a reference to exclusive sexuality was significantly noticeable:
Fear and envy that something would be shared with other people that one could not experience oneself, in the particular way, intensity or frequency.
Fear of other people’s alien energies, which would thus be carried into the relationship (see: The tale of Anday and Tavitih).
Fear that this could jeopardize the harmony of the already existing relationship.
Fear of feeling inadequate, of coming off as worse in a downward comparison, of being pushed out of the relationship, of being replaced.
Fears of losing control over the relationship and its aspects and the partner(s).

These surprisingly circumstantial ways of describing fidelity rather indirectly – or what it might ensure or prevent as a metaphysical “passepartout” –, psychology calls “secondary motivations” – and, of course, they are a hallmark of a substantial “proxy war theater.” But the true battleground, of course, packs a punch of its own. Because there, unfortunately, it often does not work out so well at all, regarding the above mentioned“emotional (self-)security, towards other people and the own existence” – in other words, concerning the basic value “trust” on which the whole house of loyalty and faithfulness should be built according to numerous clever definitions.
And just this lack reveals how the word ” fidelity ” should rather serve the individual often as a control device, a regulating parameter which is supposed to prevent one’s own fear, to prevent that fear has to be felt at all.
Especially when sexuality comes into play as well, such shocks to our fragile self, which is often not as well established as it would be beneficial for us, are therefore quite conceivable: Sexuality is highly energetic and extremely intimate – and in my oligoamorous opinion, not something you “just do” (like meeting acquaintances or shopping), but something that every human being deeply owns, feels and emits with its oft-cited “core self”. Additionally, sexuality is something like the most materially (physically) tangible, literally graspable expression of being attached to another human being.
Which, with a shakily set up self, sparks the anxious question: How (else) am I otherwise able to determine that another person [“my” partner] truly belongs (to) me?

In my opinion, a strong sense of trust and perceived loyalty would be the better answers at this point. And I want to emphasize that I am in no way preaching against sexual exclusivity: For it can of course be bestowed quite deliberately (and there are several people who “dedicate ” themselves very consciously in this respect exactly because of the intensity of sexuality). But as soon as exclusivity is demanded under the guise of “genuine fidelity”, some private kind of fear is most likely the underlying cause.

“Ethical multiple relationships,” indeed, ethical relationships of every kind, as I wish them to become true for Oligoamory, mean, however, that we cannot remain in the shell and dictate of our fears. Rather, I hope that all involved in such ties will courageously face their constraints so that they may continue to empower themselves to be and to remain a truly co-supportive part of their relationship(s).
“Real faithfulness”, “true devotion” or “genuine fidelity”, which thus are actually characterized by mutual trust, loyalty, commitment and a high level of attunement to each other, will therefore probably remain as rare for a long time to come, as it has been since words to define those qualities had been created…

¹ Online Etymology Dictionary: “true”

² Brockhaus Encyclopedia, 19th edition (1986-1994 / 2001) Volume 23; F.A. Brockhaus, Mannheim

Thanks to jakob-wiesinger on Pixabay for the photo!

Wayward Hazard! or: Am I queer?

When the two partners who were living with me at that time and I started to come out as polyamorous in our circle of friends and acquaintances almost eight years ago and we started to live our relationship constellation openly, first of all the two women were confronted with strange reactions almost immediately.
Remarkably, first by the men in our circle of acquaintances, who suddenly established a strangely invisible zone of inexplicable distance (both socially and actually spatially) between themselves and the newly declared non-monogamists – as if they had suddenly been seized by a strange kind of dread…
When asked, the cause of this male reserve revealed itself to be a rather astonishing conception, which is difficult to reproduce vividly in written form: By their commitment to ethical non-monogamy, the women concerned had obviously granted themselves a kind of frowned upon freedom of norms, which now made them appear peculiarly unpredictable, even downright dangerous, as it were.
Not only that these women, although they already were in a relationship with me, had thus invalidated the socially binding 1+1 formula (i.e. the given mononormative model, which provides exactly one female for exactly one male: So how should they be treated at future social events? As half-single?, almost-partnered?? or even as fair game???).
No, by their new lifestyle-philosophy, these women had practically also called attention to their sexual nature in an uncontrollably primal way, since they now constantly pointed directly to it in an almost obscene way with the choice of their relationship model, virtually a lascivious display of female self-efficacy…
Consequently, from now on these women were, so to speak, “ticking time bombs”, or better: treacherous floating mines, which – since they had just professed their own needs in such a frivolous way – behaved downright unpredictably: At any time they might now be willing to arbitrarily expand the circle of their potential partners! And precisely the absence of any mononormative framework that would have normally granted tactful consideration before – like, for example, existing relationships, engagement, or even marriage – would now no longer guarantee protection against such advances. Even more: presumably these polyamorous she-wolves were already shamelessly scouting the surroundings for a thicket and male prey, always ready to drag another mate in this way into the yawning gorge of their opened relationship, perpetually on the hunt, constantly hungry…

And as the men already reacted so unsettled, it was only a small step to the women in our circle of acquaintances, who for their part could no longer risk to leave friends, fiancées or husbands alone in a room with the poly-she-wolves, now that apparently rampant fellow females had openly embraced such a truly questionably unrestrained form of anarchy. For thereby these morally detached hormone bombs had propagated their facultative availability for every man in the room like an all befogging scent mark. And already the vernacular knows that opportunity – which means temptation – makes thieves, therefore nobody in his right mind should leave “her” guy with such seduction unobserved…

The most eye- or rather ear-catching further change in our social environment affected all of us – especially whenever a conversation in our circle of friends turned occasionally into a discussion. Because by our declaration towards ethical non-monogamy, we affected individuals had obviously experienced a strange change in our thinking, our perceptiveness and our perspectives, which from now on presumably made it more difficult for us to think and argue like “normal people”. Probably in order to draw our attention to this “translation problem” that had arisen, our conversation participants from now on remarkably often introduced their contribution to us with the preface “Well, you know, I’m not polyamorous, but…”, which was usually followed by an objection to our opinion and a rectification according to the other person’s point of view. And by no means only when it came to viewpoints on relationships. However, from that time on it seemed important to regularly point out a fundamental incongruence between their own and our possible point of view by previously stating “Well, I’m not polyamorous…”, no matter which topic began to unfold.

I myself “got it” actually with full force not before I went in search of like-minded people on the strange dating planet, a planet that – as I naïf learned only too soon – was administered basically and unswervingly by the hand of the hetero-as well as mononormative empire.
In addition to some, at least in detail explained rejections, which I have already written down in my Entries 40 and 44, I received in a short time brush-offs like “…such a togetherness would scare me…”, “…our relational needs are not alike in any way…”, “…someone like you is beyond dispute for me…”, “…there are surely other women who might be able to handle that…”.
Eventually, I experienced the culmination in the forum of a very elite dating portal, where a discussion participant wrote: “Get out of here, we here have a hard enough time just finding one partner for us at all!”
What a gloomy collection: fear of togetherness, assignment of strange needs (although we all share the same according to Abraham Maslow), assignment of a deviant personality (“like you”), assignment to an odd circle of people – and last but not least: prescribed shortage by the “for-every-pot-there-is-only-just-one-lid”-model.

After some time (ok, it had been two years) it really started to gnaw at me.
What was the common principle behind all these phenomena?
It wasn’t until this spring, when I watched the American short film “Two Distant Strangers“, which was tied to the Black Lives Matter campaign, that I understood:
It’s all about nothing more and nothing less than discrimination.
More specifically, discrimination against a person on the basis of a single characteristic.
A single characteristic, which for the discriminatory environment overwrites all other characteristics, traits and qualities of a person. And thus dehumanizes this person, his diverse personality, and reduces it to this single aspect.
Compartmentalization and a Reality of Separation in the flesh.

I don’t want to compare my situation to the suffering of black or colored people in the United States. But the resulting movie exemplifies numerous mechanisms of discrimination in a frighteningly knowledgeable and routine manner: Discrimination as experienced by every minority, every non-conformity worldwide.
While I was watching the movie in it’s first minutes, I still thought that the black main character could at least behave a little more moderately, a little more de-escalatory, so as not to draw too much attention to himself.
But the longer the movie ran, the more I understood that this couldn’t be the way: The attributions of the condemning environment are far too arbitrary; far too random, unpredictable and impulsively chosen the looming myriad of issues that others might take offence at.

“I am a human being!” is something I have wanted to exclaim out loud increasingly often over the past two years. “I am a human being with a complex personality. A person who – besides the fact that he is committed to ethical multiple relationships – is also very interesting in other ways and has all kinds of other exciting facets to offer!”
But my ethical multiple relationship was “the one characteristic”. It was the hurdle, the barrier, the wall, around which hardly anybody wanted to look any more once he*she*it took notice of me.
I admit that it is an important characteristic of mine. Yes, even a characteristic that I consider quite descriptive concerning myself. Also one that I tend to bring up quickly because I know it can seem unusual to many people as an approach towards close-knit relationships.

Exactly because of that I sympathise with Carter James, the main protagonist in “Two Different Strangers”: It makes no sense to diminish my characteristic, to hide it, to cover it up, to disguise it, to appease it, to relativize or to moderate it: It is inalienable, immanent, essential, inherent, distinctive – and contributes unmistakably to who and what I am.

Davon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, the two directors of “Two Distant Strangers” thus answered for me in an unforeseen way a question that I had been asking myself for a long time, that many people in the polyamory scene have been asking themselves, and that quite a few people in the field of ethical non-monogamy have been pondering for years:
Am I queer?

For the Oligoamory (at least – and for myself) I answer today: YES.

But not because in the short film the black graphic designer Carter is bullied and victimized by a white police officer. Thereby I would be agreeing with queer writers like Phillip Ayoub¹ or also Mortimer Dora¹, who want the (self-)attribution of “queer” to be understood in such a way that the term should only be used by those who are also oppressed by it.
But by supporting such a resentful justification I feel I wouldn’t do any service to an optimistic philosophy like Oligoamory with it’s positive view on humanity.

For as a multiple-relationship approach, my Oligoamory stands anyway comfortably and dryly under the roof of sexual emancipation as erected by LGBT+ and Queer people since the beginning of the 20th century. Some of these correlations I have already outlined in my series on the history of Oligoamory involving parts 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.
Thereby and all at once I completely respect the testimony of these people, who have thus prepared the way for me to be able to write here today about this subject at all.
And that’s why I don’t want to simply leave just another “fancy subject” under that meanwhile most solid and highly conspicuous roof, but earn my place – as small as the Oligoamory might be – in that edifice of courageous deeds and keen thought.

In this regard, as a bLogger and occasional philosopher, I was fascinated by feminist, philosopher, and professor Gudrun Perko‘s perspective on “What is queer?”

According to Gudrun Perko, the term “queer” (which she interprets as “being against the norm”) encompasses the entire spectrum of those who do not conform to hetero- and mono-normative conceptions of sexuality, binary gender, or traditional types of relationships. The common denominator is that the prevailing social stereotypes are questioned and dissolved, and that people should be enabled to live their lives according to a variety of sexual orientations, gender identities, or forms of relationships free of established conventions.
Gudrun Perko developed from this point of view the so-called plural-queer approach, which radically openly includes all people “who do not match the social accepted conformity or do not want to match it”. This kind of plural-queer approach also embraces the stricter U.S.-interpretation of Queerness, which vehemently critiques hetero- and mono-normativity, gender binarity, repressive models of identity, and the exclusion of certain groups of people. At the centre of the plural-queer variant stands the effort to achieve the “greatest possible diversity of human kinds of being and existence in their incompleteness”. ²

By choosing her approach, Gudrun Perko addresses a queer central theme known as “deconstructivism”, which could be roughly summarized as follows: Asking for that which is excluded – and opening up to it by means of inclusion.
And it is precisely in this rationale that I see the active application of Scott Peck‘s integrative phrase “Is there any reason why xyz shouldn’t be allowed to participate?” (Instead of: “What’s the reason why xyz should be allowed to participate?”, see Entry 33), which constitutes every positive group formation- and community-building-process.
In that spirit, I wish that this deconstructionist “Why not ?” is hopefully also a hallmark of Oligoamory.

At this point, it is also easy to see that, as a result, the struggle against intersectionality (intersectionality = simultaneity of different types of discrimination against one person) has always been part of the queer DNA. As I have already briefly indicated in Entry 50, “being political” is thus queer key business par excellence: Linking topics and initiatives with issues such as ethnicity, culture, origin, and people without a collective concept of identity, but also, e.g., feminism, religious persecution, ableism or ageism, is imperative if the house cited above should endure for future generations.
In Entry 50, I cited that “politics is the constant struggle between changing or preserving existing conditions”. With my Oligoamory I wish to contribute at least to a diversification, if not a change, of these “existing conditions”. And in that mindset, I feel comfortable under the queer roof, standing thankfully on the shoulders of those who have been advocating and standing up for it over decades.

Queer theory, by the way, has brought me yet another surprise through the authors Heinz-Jürgen Voß and Salih Alexander Wolter, since they critically ask whether such queer openness and incompleteness could not all too easily be a characteristic of neoliberalist tendencies through the back door – where it should be considered whether this could be at all desirable and supportive for the basic idea?³.
From within my Oligoamory I say, “Yes, indeed, if it is done in a Shaftesburyian sense! (see previous Entry).” For as early as the beginning of the 18th century, the philosopher Shaftesbury defined neoliberalism in terms of his concept regarding freedom and autonomy as “a basic cosmopolitan attitude without supreme, centrally controlled institutions and as an expression of a multipolar world of sovereign, voluntarily cooperating elements”.
To my mind, I recognize both anti-oppressionistic and anti-capitalist thinking, which was fed by Shaftesbury’s faith in humankind as conscious, discerning and therefore (socially) responsible beings.

Consequently, to be oligoamorous means to be queer – “against the norm” – consciously transgressing, deliberately contrary.
To be oligoamorous means to be unconventional due to a peculiarity, to stand out and potentially to irritate somebody just because of it.
Oligoamor means to remain humanly inclusive and therefore to remain aware towards society.
To be oligoamorous means to be this from the inside out: Not as a label, as a fashion, as a phase; fad or performance, but as a rainbow-colored unicorn zebra among many black and white ones, which wears its multicolored fur with conviction because it neither can nor wants to get out of its skin.

In his book “Dignity: What makes us strong – as individuals and as a society” (published 2019), the author and neuroscientist Gerald Hüther points out that, in his view, Article 1 of the German Basic Law and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights (“Human dignity is inviolable”) poses the problem that this sentence is often perceived by many people as unspecific and somehow empty, precisely because most of them cannot (yet) comprehend their own dignity in everyday life.
I believe that exactly this is different in the world of non- and antinormativity, in the world of minorities: Because they put their colorful otherness and distinct divergence on the line each single day, the people in these circles are usually highly conscious of their value and their indefeasible dignity that goes with it.

It was and is therefore the contribution of queer communities as well as individuals to keep our society awake and attentive to the fact that human dignity is not an elusive, already trivial good without any actual value, but a basic prerequisite for a more humane world, which is not yet an implicitness – not even in our most private circles.

¹ Phillip Ayoub; David Paternotte (28 October 2014). LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe?. Palgrave Macmillan.
Mortimer, Dora (9 Feb 2016). „Can Straight People Be Queer? – An increasing number of young celebrities are labeling themselves ‚queer.‘ But what does this mean for the queer community?“

² Gudrun Perko: Queer-Theorien: Ethische, politische und logische Dimensionen plural-queeren Denkens. PapyRossa, Köln 2005

³ Heinz-Jürgen Voß, Salih Alexander Wolter: Queer and (Anti-)Capitalism. Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart 2013

Meaningful Relationships (Part 3)

»The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds.
Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future«

Revelation of Sonmi; David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, 2004

With the third part of this series I would like to add another central keystone to the arch of oligoamorous thinking.
In the preceding parts 1 and 2, I have worked towards the in my view crucial theme of “categorylessness” regarding the circle of participants in significant relationships, by which I mean to propose that – especially when our most trusting and intimate relationships are concerned – we should no longer subject ourselves to predetermined frameworks regarding their characteristics and their degree of possible interaction.
In this way, we could regain for ourselves the freedom of experiencing our close relationships in all their nuances, facets and shades – and likewise, we would thereby have the chance to free ourselves from the limits of a dictate of social standardisation that may restrict us in our freedom of thought, imagination and creativity, both in loving as well as in the actual arrangement of our relationships themselves.

Anyone who has read this last sentence might now be surprised at its supposedly “radical” character and ask me whether this is not in the end precisely the call for “total liberty” in matters of love and relationships, which I myself have so often criticised since the beginning of my bLog project as a rather selfish and impulsive proclamation of unrestricted personal freedom in multiple relationships…
No – I don’t think so at all.
My answer to this is: If the category (of a relationship) is no longer relevant, then the quality of the respective connection inevitably becomes significantly more important.
The authors of the polyamory guidebook “More Than Two¹“, Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert, wrote on this very topic in the conclusion of their book:

»It is important, and useful, to come back often to the root of Polyamorie: Love.
We have relationships because we, as human beings are wired to love. And without love as the core of our relationships, and as the principle we come back to in everything we do in those relationships, the other principles – as indispensable as they are – aren’t going to get us anywhere. Love is the great clarifier of values. Without it, whatever framework we create will remain hollow, ultimately lifeless.«

With this, in my view, quite excellent description, this team of authors reinforces my oligoamorous conviction that, precisely because of this, the symbiosis of freedom and commitment in human relationships isn’t an awkward contradiction, but – on the contrary – is a profound “core component” (see also Entry 7).
And when we accept love as our “clarifier of values”, we are also accepting the (highly oligoamorous) qualities of wholeness and integrativity – and we are thereby also embracing the “Golden Rule” – both in the Gandhian sense of “We are one, you and I. – I cannot harm you without harming myself.” as well as according to the literal maxim “Treat others as you would wish them to treat you likewise.”

As far as I am concerned, the basics of this correlation were first and foremost set out in detail by the English politician, author and Enlightenment philosopher Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713).
Shaftesbury wrote that although the order of nature is only fragmentarily known to us [which any quantum- or astrophysicist will surely gladly confirm even today], e.g. the physical design and function of living beings would always reveal a common purpose, a goal of life. Each of them would possess a natural endowment that should serve its individual well-being, its “private good”. This is defined as that which is in harmony with the natural destiny of the living being. Instincts, passions and emotions would aim to achieve and maintain this optimal state for the individual.²

About 220 years later, by the way, Shaftesbury’s astute thinking received fascinating support on account of the emerging science of psychology.
There, at the beginning of the 20th century, the two Freudian students Carl Gustav Jung (on the basis of analytical psychology) and Alfred Adler (on the basis of individual psychology) had rejected the overly causal ideas of their mentor and had instead reached the view that a living being had always to be regarded as an “individual”, which, according to Adler, for example, would always strive towards its “optimal state (Shaftesbury!)” as a goal in order to overcome the vulnerability at the beginning of its life. Jung and Adler also agreed that every living being should thus be considered in-dividuus (from Latin: in-divisible) in its development, a lifelong process that C.G. Jung even called “individuation” (meaning: “inseparability”/”becoming whole”).
It is quite obvious here that psychology thereby adopted a holistic approach (see Entry 57), which intended to describe a living being and its existence as “more than merely the sum of its (experiential) parts”.

In his time, by the way, the philosopher Shaftesbury had also already acknowledged the underlying principle of holism, for he concluded that every living being would likewise always be linked to the well-being and continuity of its species or community. Therefore, the individual being as a “private system” would always also be integrated into a “more comprehensive system” [an almost “ecological” thought!]: into the system of its species, into the totality of the plant or animal world [i.e. into biodiversity!], into the global (eco)system [keyword “Gaia hypothesis“], the solar system and finally the structure of the universe. All systems would ultimately together form the structure of the cosmos, and each of them would be determined by its relation to the whole. The systems would support each other and thus stand in a relationship of interaction to each other and at the same time to the totality.
This proved for Shaftesbury that the individual systems could always contribute to the whole, as it also revealed to him at the same time that there was a pronounced consonance between what was individually beneficial and what was beneficial in general.

Shaftesbury’s conception thus includes in my view exactly the incentive to heed the “Golden Rule” in every kind of relationship, as well as the invitation to approach all our relationships precisely for this reason in-dividually (i.e. holistically and NOT compartmentalised).
The approach of Shaftesbury wanted and wants to show that the goal of every human being should be the accomplishment of his*her life as a free individual, contributing and embedded in his*her community [attached and free at the same time!]
As a prerequisite, even Shaftesbury demanded: As a communal being, humans can only realise the autonomy to which they are predisposed without interference if the (superordinate) systems to which they belong are also free and thus a free interaction is possible.

I don’t think I’ve read a more apt endorsement of this kind of dynamic concerning self-chosen relationships, not even by the formidable community researcher Scott Peck himself:
Starting point is invariably the individual who, by virtue of the fact that he or she (quasi “by nature” or by means of his or her cooperative goal-oriented disposition) carries within him or her an awareness of what is beneficial, is therefore concerned about more than just his or her own well-being – which in turn enables him or her to envisage the well-being of (his or her) entire system AND thereby to recognise his or her own prosperity as part of it.

To my mind, this last sentence merges the need-management of Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Marshall Rosenberg with the definition of interrelated intimacy (see footnote³) by S. Cohen, L. Underwood and B. Gottlieb.
The “categorylessness” that I would like to attain is thus by no means an egocentric “total liberation strike” as a quick fix against assumed annoying restrictions by our fellow human beings.
On the contrary, categorylessness regarding our meaningful relationships requires, in my view, empowered individuals who are able to make conscious volitional decisions and who at the same time are prepared to accept the responsibility that this involves for their creative potential.

In 2011, neurobiologist and author Gerald Hüther wrote in his book “Who we are and what we could be” that »…adulthood would mean a certain desire to assume responsibility…«, as well as the following quote (originally Entry 4):
»There is no freedom without attachment. But attachment is not dependence. We humans are capable of forming our relationships in such a way that we feel attached without being dependent. But to do so, we would have to take care of others, or at least be willing to share all that we have with them. Our food, our living space, our attention, our strength, our knowledge, our skills, our experience.«

However, to ensure that our human disposition to avoidance in these matters does not very quickly lead primarily to life avoidance, we have no choice but to continue to do our best again and again when it comes to forestalling our fears with confidence, confronting our desire for control with occasionally very stout-hearted trust, and countering our tendencies to compartmentalise and divide on both small and large scale with the integrative “Why-NOT-question?” (Entry 33).

In the end, I would therefore like to present here once more F. Veaux and E. Rickert from “More Than Two”, who could have said what they wrote there about loving connections likewise in the Shaftesburyian sense about self-awareness, almost all interpersonal relationships, as well as regarding our relationship to the environment as a whole or our responsibility for ourselves and for our planet:

»As we researched and collected people’s stories, we were struck by how often it seemed like the people who were able to navigate their way through situations that would have devastated others did so by being awesome: They did the hard work, they cared about each other, they didn’t give in, they reasoned with their overpowering emotions. They honored their loved one’s agency even when they were afraid of losing what they valued most. They faced their own deepest fears for the sake of themselves and the people they cared about.«

¹ Franklin Veaux & Eve Rickert: “More Than Two – A practical guide to ethical polyamory”; Thorntree Press; 1. Edition (1. September 2014)

² “Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times” (first edition 1711, anonymous, 3 vols.)
Example: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/authors/shaftesbury

³ S. Cohen, L.G. Underwood and B.H. Gottlieb in “Social support measurement and intervention“ – A guide for health and social scientists“, Oxford University Press, 2000 [quoted for the first time in Entry 14]:
»Thus, intimacy is a cardinal process, defined as feeling understood, validated and cared for by partners who are aware of facts and feelings central to one’s self-conception.
Contributing to this perception is trust (the expectation that partners can be counted on to respect and fulfil important needs) and acceptance (the belief that partners accept one for who one is).
Empathy is also relevant because it signals awareness of an appreciation for a partners core-self.
Attachment also contributes to perceived partner responsiveness, notwithstanding its link to interdependence and sentiment, because of the fundamental role of perceiving that one is worthy of and can expect to receive love and care from significant others.«

Thanks to Dallas Reedy on Unsplash for the picture!

Meaningful Relationships (Part 2)

…and HAPPY 2^nd BIRTHDAY, OLIGOAMORY!

»There is an epidemic at large in society…
that threatens more than 40% of the population. Its impact on our health is equal to smoking. It is worse than obesity. It puts us at greater risk of heart disease, dementia, depression and anxiety. It inhibits our task performance, creativity, sound reasoning, decision making and willingness to be vulnerable and trusting. Untreated, it is exhausting. The bottom line, it reduces our lifespan by leading to premature death, if not suicide. This epidemic derails our ability to live and work epic.
The epidemic is loneliness.
Our society is sick. People at large are struggling with loneliness and depression and feeling increasingly isolated and alone. Look around, fewer people are marrying, divorces are rising, addictions are up. Required isolation, work from home and virtual connection is the new norm. And, the economy is struggling. Just a few years ago, when people were asked how many deeply meaningful relationship they had, the majority responded, zero! People are lonely.
Our sense of community is eroding and we need to fix it. Loneliness is contrary to how we are wired. We’re wired for connection and belonging. You can’t do this alone.
If you want to know how to deal with loneliness, don’t be fooled by deceptive confabulations telling you it’s safer to do life alone. Don’t be guided by conspiracy theories claiming that no one has your back and most people are selfish and out for themselves. And do not buy into bullshit beliefs suggesting that asking for support is selfish, weak, vulnerable or dependent.«

I didn’t write that.
The above quote is from the website¹ of Drs. Jackie and Kevin Freiberg, who are currently highly renowned and popular authors, consultants and speakers in the USA.
Sometimes, as a bLogger, it is good to take a look at what is called “the blogosphere” on the “World Wide Web”: the through interactions linked network of weblogs worldwide.
Using the keyword ” meaningful relationships” I received quite a number of hits there, the contents of which were surprisingly unanimous – even though the authors were, by nature, drawing on a wide variety of individual motivations and sources.
The Freibergs, for example, who are currently something like “celebrity coaches”. Since they are used to literally “taking the bull by the horns” rhetorically through their appearances at large events and in front of JetSet or “IT!” audiences, they have unmistakably highlighted a large part of the concepts that have been so important to me in Oligoamory since the first hour in just the few lines above: Individual isolation vs. community building, the choice of true “affiliations”, the erroneous “praise of aloneness” (including its negative psychological and physiological consequences) – and all this under the keyword “meaningful relationships” [to which they add after this introduction a 6-issue strategy: 1) Dare to open up / 2) Grow your self-awareness / 3) Be Courageous / 4) Be Curious / 5) Be authentic / 6) Be Humble ]. Just reading the headlines of their 6 issues, I couldn’t nod my head more vigorously: Right, that’s exactly what we need as ” toolkit” to be capable of estabishing meaningful relationships.

The bLogger Matt Valentine comes to a quite similar assessment on his bLog “Buddhaimonia²”. He summarises:
»It’s one of the coolest things in the world to see people helping to push each other forward, not to mention one of the most powerful as well.
We all seek meaningful relationships, but most of us go about it all wrong. It’s not our fault, the conditioning we’ve received through decades of life has left us needing love, confidence, security, and spontaneity in various quantities and that often affects the way we pick our relationships in a way that ends up hurting us.«

Mr. Valentine for his part focuses on 4 basic requirements in his contribution to “Meaningful Relationships”, which he calls 1) Trust [or the potential for it]; 2) Acceptance of each other’s imperfections; 3) The willingness [and ability] to be yourself; and 4) An undying support.
The overlaps with the Freibergs above are obvious – though Matt Valentine puts a little more emphasis on the “interpersonal level”, to which I also dedicate a lot of attention in my Oligoamory. In fact, like me, he points out in particular (see Part 1) that in “meaningful relationships” we need to experience that we are fully accepted in our “whole being”, without ifs and buts, PLUS the factor of encouragement of being allowed to strive for the best version of ourselves.
In his previous quote, Mr. Valentine also points out (as I tried in my barrel-stave-example concerning happiness in Entry 58) that this is unfortunately not our predominant experience of life at present, in which we often choose our current relationships purely on the basis of situationally felt “neediness” (or rather in order to temporarily eliminate this neediness). As a Buddhist, he too regards this, in a sense, as a result of our present “Reality of Separation” (see Entry 26), in which we are normally accustomed to choosing such strategies as a way of securing our “need fulfilment”.
In this way, however, we will not be able to build or even experience meaningful relationships, much like the Benjamin Franklin quote: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Even more: in meaningful human relationships, “liberty/freedom” and “safety/security” form a pair of opposites in which one simply cannot be obtained for the sake of the other. The important relationship building blocks “trust”, “loyalty” and “unwaveringness” (wonderfully old-fashioned word: combines “commitment”, “honesty” and “perseverance”!) actually can only arise from freedom. “Security”, on the other hand, is something that suits a financial institution rather than a beloved person, because in the light of day, “security” ultimately means that there is obviously a “residual reservation” regarding our trust, a not-quite-complete confidence, concerns and anxiety concerning the true quality of our fellow human beings…
And if this is so – how could we ever fully support our loved ones on our part – or accept support from them with an open heart?

The best and most like-minded entry I have found regarding “Meaningful Relationships” on the WWW was provided by bLogger Elle on her site “ofironandvelvet.com³”.
She writes on the above question:
»The most important thing I’ve learned in trying to build more meaningful relationships in the past 2 years, is that you cannot do it successfully unless you are willing to let them go.
Deep and secure relationships are not built on fear. You cannot hold on to someone simply because you fear you might not find someone else or worry they might never come back.
It is important to understand that (and behave as if) the most important relationship you will ever have is the one you have with yourself. The same goes for the other person; they have to be free to do what is best for them, and you have to be willing to accept that even if it hurts at first. And if you are not willing to accept it, then let them go.
Let go of trying to control other people’s actions; let go of fear and attachment. By doing so you may lose some people along the way, but it will most likely be the weakest contestants. You know, the ones that made you feel like you didn’t have real, meaningful relationships in the first place?«

The bLogger Elle takes a similarly broad view on creating “meaningful relationships” for one’s own life as I do by Oligoamory; in her introduction she writes, i. a.:
»For as long as I can remember, I’ve always craved deeper, more meaningful relationships in my life. Be it with my parents (who were kind, but sort of distant), my siblings (geographically far), my cousins (scattered across different countries), and with my friends. […] I had other friends or relations, but it was always sort of… shallow.«

In her ensuing text, it is therefore hardly surprising that advice No.1 is “Get to know yourself”, which of course reminds me of the core theme of Oligoamory par excellence, which I first described in more detail in Entry 46.
In addition, however, Elle’s bLog-entry on “ofironandvelvet” contains two additional points of interest that in my view are also central concerns regarding Oligoamory.

►On the one hand, there is “interdependence” that has often been emphasised on my bLog: in addition to “mutuality” and “interrelatedness” – which were also mentioned in Part 1 –, Elle points out that exactly this “interdependence” also involves two further important consequences:
It emphasises – firstly – that interdependence only really harmonises if it presents itself as actual “reciprocity“. She explains that all participants in a relationship must therefore be willing to invest in the relationship of their own accord and thus take the necessary steps to do so.
From this she concludes – secondly – that in “getting to know ourselves” we have to put ourselves previously in a position to define our own boundaries AND to observe them if necessary. By which she thus calls for solid individual “quality management”, quote: »Decide what you are willing to accept or not from someone else and stick to it. Of course, this is not about anticipating every possible outcome, but it’s important to understand your limits. […] Unfortunately, I feel like we only learn this lesson once we get burned.« [As a highly sensitive person, I can only agree from the bottom of my heart.]

►On the other hand, Elle advocates with the introduction to her article for a “category-free approach” towards “meaningful relationships”, which has also been part of the “DNA” of Oligoamory from the beginning. In contrast to the concept of Relationship Anarchy, which mainly refers to a lack of categories with regard to the “nature” or the ” mode” of a relationship, concerning Oligoamory it is rather a question of our “social circle(s)” (see also Affiliates or Dunbar Circles) to which I refer with the phrase “lack of categories”.
So what do I mean by that?
The ” Reality of Separation” of the present, which I often lament, has also strongly influenced our thinking about “close/intimate relationships” – and thus our approach to them – and has arranged or categorised them according to measure.
The vast majority of people I know thus strictly regulate both the permitted range of their feelings and the extent of their (self-)permitted horizon of expression and experience in their relationships.
And what do I mean by that???
For example, that I am only allowed to share my bed with only one person (preferably in wedlock!), that I can have at the most an intimate conversation with my best friend (and nothing more!), that I can only be seen arm in arm with the rest of my friends at a party or in the soccer-arena (socially acceptable!), and that I am not asked to do more than admire the embroidered floral tablecloth and listen to gossip during teatime with my family (wipe your mouth).
However…
Could I actually be friends with my mother-in-law? After all, she is “part of the family”…
And would I overwhelm my soccer-buddies with a real emotional confession? We are “just friends”…
And my “best mate” – how would he react if I admitted that he was allowed to hold me for a while and that he somehow smelled good? Nah, that’s not possible…
And then there’s my wife, I can’t talk to her straightforward the way I talk to my friends, but we have sex and because of our wedding she’s also family now…
So confusing…
Why do we think like that? Why do we impose limits on our relationships in a way that defines in advance what is possible there and what isn’t? Or rather: Why do we unquestioningly adopt social categories that are obviously meant to determine what might be feasible for us in a certain kind of relationship? All the “classic” characteristics of a “Reality of Separation” are apparent to me here: Anxiety, control and compartmentalisation.

If, in contrast, we wish for meaningful (close/intimate) relationships as fully encompassing relationships that involve the whole person (and by intimate relationship I refer with Robin Dunbar to the small handful of people with whom we want to share ourselves, our lives, completely), then it is clear to me from Part 1 and what has been compiled here today that, in the light of the aforementioned weighing up of freedom against security, I no longer wish to adopt these “socially established categories” unquestioningly any more.

For example, the woman who currently lives with me is for me an intimate lover, a familiar favourite person, my best friend and family at the same time. But in contrast to the often common socially normed categories, regarding myself none of these positions is thereby “fully taken” in the sense of “already occupied”. Because in my heart I would rather have “accessible spaces” instead of “one-off assignments”.
In this way, I hope to represent on a small scale – that is, within myself – what I also wish my network of relationships on the outside should be: an organic, integrative being.
If I wouldn’t do that, it would mean that I would always be holding back some part of myself because of fear or caution. And that would mean not being able to come to terms with myself either, preferring to remain in obscurity – secure in the shadows of artificial, lifeless categories.

If I have understood anything today from consulting the various bLogs, it is that for me this ill shadow provides the social dilemma of our ubiquitous present social loneliness, including the sense of isolation within alleged “company”. If we do not want to fall victim to this epidemic one of these days, it is up to us to start today to strive for truly meaningful relationships in our lives.
For me, at least, there is no better medicine.

¹ The website of the Freibergs: epicworkepiclife.com; the quoted excerpt HERE

² Matt Valentine’s website: buddhaimonia.com; the article in full length HERE

³ Elle’s bLog: ofironandvelvet.com; her full article HERE

Thanks to Anna Shvets on Pexels for the birthday-picture!

Meaningful Relationships (Part 1)

»Everybody wants to be loved – nobody wants to get hurt. But you can’t have one without risking the other.«

[quote from the character “Cleo” (portrayed by Riann Steele) in the British sitcom “Lovesick“]

The first time I took note of the phrase “meaningful relationships” in the context of ethical non-monogamy was in the by now widely available Polyamory guidebook “More Than Two¹“ by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert. In their comprehensive work, the two authors call for efforts to establish “meaningful relationships” wherever possible. “Meaningful” in this context encompasses “sense-giving”, “significant” and “relevant”.
What F. Veaux and E. Rickert consider in their view as the most important aspect of “meaningful” they define in the middle of their book, where they expand it with the term “empowered relationships”:

»People who are empowered in their romantic relationships can express needs and ask for them to be met. They can talk about problems. They can say what works for them and expect that their partners will try to accommodate their needs as much as they can. It’s not possible to make a person feel empowered, just as it’s not possible to make a person feel secure. The best we can hope to do is to create an environment that welcomes participation and encourages empowerment.[…]
Non-Monogamous relationships often highlight the gap between our perception of our power and the reality of our power. It is often easier to see someone else’s power than to see our own. If our partner begins a new relationship, we might see how he invests in the new relationship, and we feel powerless – without recognizing how the established structures, history, commitments and shared life experience in our already existing relationship give us a tremendous amount of power.
Without this strong internal sense of trust, security and worthiness, we will find it nearly impossible to be aware of our power in our relationships. When we feel unworthy, we feel disconnected.[…]
Empowered relationships rely on trust. Trust your partner to want to cherish and support you. Trust that if you make your needs known, your partner will want to meet your needs. This requires courage. Building relationships on a shared understanding of needs means having the courage to stand in the face of a negative emotion an d ask, “What is this feeling telling me? Is there a need that is not being met? Is there something I can do to enlist my partner as my ally in dealing with this?” If you’re the person whose partner is experiencing emotional hardship, it can be tempting to read this chapter as a way of saying “You have the responsibility to deal with your own emotions, so I don’t want you putting restrictions on me.” That is partly true, in the sense that you can’t solve someone else’s problems for them, and if your partner places restrictions on your behavior, those restrictions rarely resolve the underlying issue. But it’s a mistake to put what Douglas Adams calls a “Somebody Else’s Problem Field²” around a partner’s distress. If you care, you will help. Behaving with compassion means working together to overcome relationship issues. That’s how relationships become strong and healthy.[…] Resiliency in the face of adversity is a powerful tool for building happy relationships.«

Strictly speaking, Veaux and Rickert’s preceding text describes what the scientists S. Cohen, L. Underwood, and B. Gottlieb emphasized in their “Guide concerning social support measurement and intervention” (first cited by me in Entry 14):
“Thus, intimacy is a cardinal process, defined as feeling understood, validated and cared for by partners who are aware of facts and feelings central to one’s self-conception.
Contributing to this perception is trust (the expectation that partners can be counted on to respect and fulfil important needs) and acceptance (the belief that partners accept one for who one is).
Empathy is also relevant because it signals awareness of an appreciation for a partners core-self.
Attachment also contributes to perceived partner responsiveness, notwithstanding its link to interdependence and sentiment, because of the fundamental role of perceiving that one is worthy of and can expect to receive love and care from significant others.”

With regard to all the above statements, “the door”, as the witty saying goes, “swings in two directions” – and I have already dedicated a separate bLog-Entry to both of those “directions”:
In Entry 46 I first made it clear that – as Veaux and Rickert also describe – we ourselves are first invited to explore and get to know our “core self” so that we can develop a good understanding of our own self-worth in the first place.
And in Entry 53 I describe how important it is for us humans – especially as participants in a (loving) relationship – to be “considered” by the other participants. All the relationship experts cited above agree that a trusting relationship is fundamental for this, which enables both a positive climate for the expression of self-efficacy and the experience of “being-perceived-and-respected-in-this-self-efficacy”. Finally, this form of perceived self-efficacy is crowned by the all-round contribution to the striving for identity, life design and meaning that is expressed in this way by each participating individual.
Only in this way, however, do the essential supra-personal common identity, a vision for co-existence and a sense of community emerge for a relationship at the same time – and rather in a version in which all participants can perceive themselves and in which they can therefore accept themselves and the others in a benevolent way.

From here, it is only a small step to realize that this “bundle solution” can only be obtained as an inseparable comprehensive package, which is why it only works holistically. Because, to quote myself from my Holism-Entry 57 »’Holistic’ is every request, every thought, every action, if the resulting process benefits as many participants as possible (or even better: all!), who are involved in the process.«

However, in order to really be able to do this, we have to train – besides self-acknowledgement and considerations about others – another incredibly important characteristic that has always been shimmering in the background on my bLog (e.g. in Entry 33), namely “ambiguity tolerance“. In view of global crises and widening social gaps, this edgy expression is currently being discussed more frequently these days –since “ambiguity tolerance” simply means that individuals are able to view unfamiliar stimuli in a neutral or open way. Ambiguity-tolerant persons are able to perceive ambiguities, i.e. contradictions, culturally conditioned differences or strange information that appears difficult or incomprehensible to understand without reacting immediately aggressively or evaluating it one-sidedly biased.
Thus, “ambiguity tolerance” is presently a rare, yet highly sought-after commodity. And that’s no wonder, since we as “children of a Reality of Separation” (see Entry 26) reflexively tend to judge others and to “declare ourselves as separate from something” due to our habitual automatisms. And, unfortunately, both in terms of “the others” as well as in terms of possibly contradictory or unconsolidated parts of our core self³. Which is precisely how we usually block our way to sustainable relationship conduct, which, as the psychologist and community researcher Scott Peck pointed out, intends to be based on tolerance and integration: »Community, togetherness and loving relationships require it that we hold on a bit when things get uncomfortable. All of it requires a certain amount of commitment. Our individualism must be balanced by commitment. […] Perhaps the most important key to achieving this goal is recognising differences.«
I have already quoted this text passage in Entry 33, the Entry in which I also mention a song by the singer/songwriter ‘Alice im Griff’. Her song shows for me rather distinctively where self-denial (dating an AfD-voter) verges ambiguity tolerance (allowing an omnivore eater his meat dish) on a personal level. Ambiguity tolerance, with Scott Peck’s famous integrative phrasing of the crucial question “Why not?” has in a sense to be our everyday “bread and butter” in ethical multiple relationships – especially when following an oligoamorous model. Precisely because we can very quickly put ourselves at the “other side” of that question when it comes to “imposing ourselves” – and thus for the other participants to “endure ourselves”. I describe this correlation in detail in Entry 43, at the end of which I summarize »Without the ‘imposition’ that we all probably occasionally are for our familiar group in this way, we also couldn’t become their hero and sources of all-round well-being the next time or the day after. To be human, to be with each other, means to accept both occurences regularly – in respect of us as well as in respect of the other participants.«

Nevertheless, we still often have a hard time with the emotional burden of impositions and endurance – so that we regularly still take refuge in (artificial) separation³, hoping that “all of that” has as little to do with us as possible. But at the same time this also immediately robs us of our ability to empathize and to change our perspective empathetically. And what was the wording of Gandhi in Entry 54?: »You and I are one: I cannot hurt you without hurting myself.«…
Our recurring flight into separation is thus, with regard to the holistic “we”, more or less as if we ourselves were to cut off an arm or a leg: Always painful and dramatically disabling.

We should no longer do this to ourselves. And “ourselves” I consider at this point in a global, almost transpersonal sense. Because separation is artificial, it has to be, since it is always only a rather deficient shelter when in our fear or similar distress we no longer know where to put ourselves.
Unity, connectedness is our actual and natural state (see also Jean Liedloff in Entry 26), our genuine, whole and healthy state.
In his brilliant work “Cloud Atlas“, the author David Mitchell makes one of his main characters realize:
»All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so. Moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I feel my own, and I know that separation is an illusion. My life extends far beyond the limitations of me.«

With our step into the world of ethical non-monogamy, if it really has earned this term, we have already overcome many conventions.
And by beginning to think of our human connections holistically, we can refrain from separative categories in relational matters such as “friends”, “acquaintances”, “family”, “loved ones” for the purpose of no longer limiting our emotional expression or experiential possibilities.
Oligoamor it becomes, if we strive therein with our quality management to follow fundamental ethics encompassing all times and many cultures; ethics, which Immanuel Kant once described in 1785 in his “Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals“ as follows (and which exists however in many other forms world-wide):
»Act in such a way that you utilize humanity both in your person and in the person of everyone else at any time as an end (=goal), never merely as a means (=tool/method).«
The centuries-old Buddhist and Hindu Dharma teachings state it even more compactly:
»Do not harm anything or anyone – not even yourself.«
And F.Veaux and E. Rickert concretize:
»Cherish your partners. Cherish yourself. Trust your partners. Be trustworthy. Honor other’s feelings and your own. Seek joy for everyone involved.
Own your shit. Admit when you fuck up. Forgive when others fuck up. Don’t try to find people to stuff into the empty spaces in your life; instead, make space for the people in your life. If you need a relationship to complete you, get a dog.«

I couldn’t say it any better.

¹ Franklin Veaux & Eve Rickert: “More Than Two – A practical guide to ethical polyamory”; Thorntree Press; 1. Edition (1. September 2014)

² Douglas Adams, “Life, the Universe and Everything“; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Book 3; 1982 Serious Productions, Ltd.

³ “Oh, come on, Oligotropos. A little bit of separation or detachment is pretty human and healthy, in order that everything doesn’t dissolve in such a big mush of indifference…”
Is that so? The philosopher Hannah Arendt, whom I quoted for the first time in Entry 39, spent her life dealing with the scientific processing of the phenomenon of how gruesomely mass-murdering Nazi- and concentration camp commanders could at the same time interact with their families in the evening as loving fathers and husbands or even experienced subtle emotions during the tunes of classical violin concerts.
Modern research has revealed that they succeeded in doing so only through a categorical and almost dissociative “situational separation” in their minds, which reached a sad climax during the nationalist world-view of the Third Reich. The fact that this required a social climate of isolationism and divisiveness that had developed over a rather long time, and which is a sad by-product of an occidental-dualistic mindset, is shown, however, by movies such as “The White Ribbon“. This mindset is still part of what is called “Reality of Separation” in Entry 26 to our present day.

Thanks to Tyler Nix on Unsplash for the photo!

Oligotropos and the Oligoamory

The beginning of a new year usually offers an opportunity to look back on previous achievements. And since I had also done this for the first time in January 2020, I would like to start a small “tradition” herewith, providing another summary of my expedition results on the remote island of Oligoamory so far.

The inaugural year 2019 was marked by the disclosure of Oligamory’s “general parameters”.
This included the realisation that Oligoamory had much more in common with e.g. community building and the search for self-chosen relatives than with just another feasibility model for multiple amorous arrangements. Concerning this, two milestones were to establish the correlation that freedom and commitment are not mutually exclusive opposites, and that an invisible “emotional contract“ presumably begins to form almost simultaneously behind all incipient human close relationships, which contains reciprocal or universal attributions regarding the scope for the shaping of the relationship by its participants.
This revealed a background that calls for a high degree of awareness, both in terms of one’s own potentials and limitations in terms of relational capacity, as well as in terms of compassion and communication with the other parties involved.
In this way, it also began to emerge that “good oligoamorous relationship conduct” requires a constant commitment to all-round trust (including trust in oneself!) – and the courage to face new developments and one’s own “blind spots”.
In this sense, Oligoamory turned out to be a kind of “path of development in loving relationships”, where all participants assist and motivate each other in bringing forth the “best version of themselves”.

Thus I entered the year 2020 – where it really became psychological quite often.
In January, building on the ideas above, I invited my readers not to stray too far into some more tempting distance in their search for the supposedly “best” or “better” catch, but to first explore appreciation, care and satisfaction in themselves and in the relationships they already have.
Since wherever we go we “take ourselves along”, this is literally one of the most important “home-chores”, since a mutual wholeness – as is the aim of Oligoamory – needs a committed centre. And this, I tried to show with Entry 43, must be highly human and built on an all-round trust, so that all participants are allowed to show themselves vulnerable to each other.
The confession of one’s own insecurities and the realisation that “trust” always also contains the very important part of “trusting oneself” led to three entries that were very strongly influenced by humanistic thoughts:
Already back in 2019, I invited people to become a courageous “somebody” in Oligoamory, which I expanded on in Entry 44 with the component of authentically showing up as the same person in all aspects of one’s life. Our fellow relationship participants benefit from this attitude when it comes to the values of consistency and coherence, which are so important to Oligoamory, making it easier for all partners to assess and appreciate each other.
Entry 45 specified this by promoting a day-to-day relationship that would strengthen the important variable of “familiarity” – characterised by a tolerance of human fallibility that might eventually grow into acceptance and, in the best case, even respect.
In Entry 46, I finally concluded that awareness and self-knowledge have their starting point in our self-worth – in the sense that we should be worth it to ourselves to feel “secure enough” in our loving relationships to be able to allow ourselves and others to be whole. The oligoamorous spark of every benevolent sympathy is hidden in the (self-)realisation that others are much more similar to us in most aspects of human existence than we usually superficially believe.

This was followed by my four-part “History of Oligoamory” 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 in which I showed that concerning Oligoamory

1. our potential is usually always greater than that which we believe ourselves to be capable of;
2. every sense of self begins with the permission of individual feeling and an access to one’s own inner life;
3. multiple relationships have a better chance of success when they represent a balanced synthesis of self-realisation and (small-scale) community building;
4. there needs to be a constant process of awareness raising, perception, entitlement and participation so that all those involved may also recognise themselves as valuable in a broader perspective.

In Entry 51, I subsumed the results of this series concerning the dimension and suitability of Oligoamory as a deontological state of mind (sounds complicated, but basically means that in any target-achievement, the approach to the target is more decisive than the ultimate target – according to Václav Havel‘s quote: »Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something has meaning, no matter how it turns out.«), a humanistic view of humankind (who would have guessed…) and a commitment to awareness and attentiveness.
Consequently, the following Entry 52 revolves once again around the topics of “assuming (overall) responsibility” and “personal accountability” within a relationship.
Entry 53 then expanded on an older Entry (14) about how we might be able to recognise and manifest our significance in a model of shared values – corresponding to a committed loving relationship. The oligoamorous answer is to “include the other participants into one’s own decisions” and equally to experience how oneself would be “integrated” into theirs.
In order to enable this experience, I showed in Entry 54 that for this purpose in such a ” shared whole” – as a (loving) relationship-network represents – , there must be a high degree of agreement on the perception of integrity and commitment, as this is the only way to establish equal worthiness and mutual respect for each other.
Since such consensual ideas are not automatically established from the beginning, I added in Entry 55 how our own conscious acknowledgement of the other participants can help in this process by allowing us to admit our own heterogeneity and our own points of conflict – precisely because this gives us the chance to finally let go of our reflexive standard reactions of compensation or avoidance.
To this end, in Entry 56 I call for allowing and enduring all feelings as deeply as possible (not only the “pleasant” ones)! and thus to agree to the permission to really let oneself be taken over by the emotional energies, as these are the source of true empathy and identification.
With this step, I finally “outed” my Oligoamory in Entry 57 as a holistic system in which feeling, thinking and acting in relation to each other (especially regarding the persons involved!) constitutes the pivotal point. In this way, each individual in Oligoamory is both an protagonist and at the same time an experiencing part of the whole, whereby a high degree of “feeling alive” can be achieved.
Which “tools” and which questions would be useful for the first steps into Oligoamory was the subject of Entry 58…
…and in Entry 59 I devoted myself once more to the multiple-relationship evergreen “jealousy”, this time focussing on the more mundane aspect of “envy”, which revealed that most of us still very often think in terms of inner downward comparisons, as well as not taking good enough care of ourselves regarding the implementation of co-creation and self-efficacy.
Finally, Entry 60 substantiateded what “devotion” means in Oligoamory: the courage to face one’s own fears over and over again in a loving relationship in order to actively prevent relationship-poisoning through acquired assumptions and a still unresolved, hidden fear of life.

Dear readers, how quickly is a year’s summary completed.
At the same time, I realise how much a bLog with such a topic is basically a self-revelation online and in XXL…
For personally I must confess that for a long time no year with its events in the world outside has confronted me with old fears and internalised resentments as much as 2020.
And since I am diligently writing about the “ideal Oligoamory” here, this has made it very clear to me where the limits of my own ability to relate and love really exist in that respect.
Current example: In 2020, I, Oligotropos, experienced a federal and state government which, in my perception, behaved like my former authoritarian parents: Despite not knowing exactly what was going on and sometimes being powerless in the face of a highly complex issue, restrictions were imposed at intervals that were difficult to calculate, using a paternalistic diction of the vocabulary of blame and punishment, which in their very wording usually implied that they were unappealable…
“Woah, that Oligotropos… Is he also such a covidiotic contrarian now…?”
STOP
Indeed, it is very easy to see here how quickly things can go off the rails. And if they can do this in this way in public discourse, then how soon will this be the case in our personal (loving) relationships?
In the light of day, an UFO-dwelling observer who could not know my inner state, and who would only watch me through a telescope interacting with my surroundings, would surely be deeply puzzled by my statement above. She, he or it would probably even say:
“That Oligotropos-guy? He virtually lives in self-isolation under normal circumstances already…! Why has he suddenly gone off the deep end? Almost nothing has changed for him! Well, yes, he now wears a mask when he goes shopping. But before, he didn’t go on holiday, didn’t eat out, never visited a disco, hardly ever went to the cinema, rarely met acquaintances, barely left the house, hardly ever travelled out of town… – what’s wrong with him now?” And this UFO-dweller would be completely right.
For beneath my surface, invisible to UFO-dwellers, I am (to quote Mrs Estés again from Entry 60) dragging my own skull-teeth rattling fears and chests full of preserved resentments (to quote myself from Entry 35) with me.
I cannot know what judgement the history books will make about our present time and the present political decision-makers – but unfortunately I notice how I react to the present time and the political decision-makers – and I am passing judgements already.
I obviously wear glasses – and probably hearing aids too – that translate what is happening “out there” at the moment as “personality-relativising fundamental criticism” ¹ towards myself. I, who come from the above-mentioned, highly authoritarian parental home, consequently see values such as freedom (of action), autonomy and self-determined thinking curtailed at present. Maybe, if my birth family had been more caring and genuinely compassionate, I would certainly judge somewhat differently and probably be much more likely to see the numerous prudent acts of protecting human life, of resourcefulness and solidarity, for which, however, I have a much less biographically conditioned perception.
So what will happen in my own loving relationships if, for example, my existing partner says to me that …because we are just about to add the new patio, it would be better if I just wouldn’t/stop….
Regardless of what the second part of her sentence would actually be: my inner biographical highway (see Entry 36) has already switched to “patronising restriction of my personal freedom” – and in the discussion that would inevitably ensue, I will hear almost every one of her arguments as “personality-relativising fundamental criticism” ¹ – to hell with radical honesty or non-violent communication…

And then it would take a lot of trust, even more love, a lot of unravelling of the sad pile of bones and shards² and plenty of courage on all sides to restore even such a supposed “trifle” to some degree of adequacy appropriate to the original beginning of the conversation. And allt this, when in a different mood I could possibly have heard in the basic message also care for our resources and a request for support…!

Dear readers: If you have ever wondered in which visionary cloud-cuckoo-land of multiple relationship paradise your Oligotropos imagines to exist – and whether his fingers would never have wavered over the keyboard when writing down his ideals, then I freely confess: Yes, the fingers have wavered (just recently – and massively – by half-time of Entry 58…) and no, a “multiple-relationship paradise” in which fully integrative goodwill prevails everywhere and where the constant courageous wind of acceptance and enduring blows, he himself has not (yet) realised either. For I too carry myself along everywhere I go, haunted by the ghosts of my past and just as regularly sabotaged by my all-too despondent assumptions about what might come.

Therefore, I would like to encourage all of you out there to take good care of ourselves, precisely because we will regularly fail and despair due to our own disposition. In that case it is good if there is someone else with us willing to untangle the pile of bones or shards² scattered all over the place. And it is an enormously important contribution to a more understanding and peaceful world if we can admit to each other that our own enthusiasm sometimes carries us off course in our zeal, so that we suddenly fall back into the old familiar dictate of our habits and fears. Ingrained – but very uncharitable – pathways that all too readily want to suggest to us that whoever is not unmistakably “in favour of” – must surely be certainly biased “against” us. Yet these are often old voices from our past that haunt us and still want to belittle our living present – to deprive us of the air and the vision to perceive what actually “really IS“.

In respect of that, the Irish folk singer Ursula O’Keeffe from Kenmare once wrote the following words:

»One day when our wings got strongwe take our chance to fly;
And when our branches have grown tall
we reach up to the sky.
That day then life will come and gently open up the door
And memories of our childhood days will haunt ourselves no more.«³

I wish us all – since our lives are finite – that we do not let too much time pass until that day, before we get together and prove ourselves as bold flyers and strong trees.

¹ The keyphrase “personality-relativising fundamental criticism” has become a somewhat cheerfully cautious signal here at home through many discussions and occasional arguments when things threaten to get too heated. This is often the case when one party in a discussion feels shaken in the foundations of its existence by some remark of the other party, feels devalued or even ridiculed. Very often in these cases it has turned out that the person concerned is suddenly caught in an old programme in which former inner critics and evaluators have turned the received communicative message into a nasty self-deprecation, flanked by a musty jumble of resurgent former rejections.In the rarest of cases, however, it is the case that interlocutors (even in controversies!) who have affection for us want to achieve such an effect.Then it is good to quickly find out the actual reason for the strong inner turmoil in such a moment, in order to reveal which underlying fears or bitterness(es) have just been triggered – in the hope that this perception will lead the conversation back to constructive cooperation.

² With the “pile of bones” I refer once again precisely to the “skeleton” from Entry 60, which the psychologist Clarissa Estés uses there as a symbol for our inner tangle of longings and fears.

³ Refrain of the title “One Day”, 1992 © by Fairing (Irish: féirín = gift); this is the band name of Ursula and Frank O’Keeffe from Kenmare, Ireland. Their musical home is Sliabh Luachra, a remote rural area in south-west Ireland, north-east of the Kerry Mountains.