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Falsch verbunden?
#Noamory

Die Zahlenkombination 112 steht in Deutschland und vielen Staaten Europas für genau die Nummer, mit der ein telefonischer Notruf getätigt werden kann. Daher halte ich es für sehr passend, mit meinem 112. Eintrag Terrain zu betreten, der mit den leiseren und lauteren Alarmzuständen im Reich ethischer Mehrfachbeziehungen zu tun hat.
Denn so, wie es natürlich viele gute und sogar wunderschöne Gründe für das Entstehen solcher Vielfach-Partnerschaften gibt, gibt es leider auch manche, die ungünstig oder womöglich mittelfristig zerstörerisch sind.

Wie in allen romantischen Nah-Beziehungen geht es auch in Mehrfachbeziehungen grundlegend um Verbindung zwischen Menschen. Daher ist es wichtig, genau dieser Basis bereits Aufmerksamkeit zu widmen: Wie sehen diese Verbindungen aus – und warum gehen wir sie ein – bzw. warum tun wir es manchmal nicht?
Maßgebliche wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse gibt es dazu seit dem Jahr 1940, als der britische Kinderpsychiater und Psychoanalytiker John Bowlby den Grundstein für das legte, was später schlicht als „Bindungstheorie“ bekannt wurde, welche von zahlreichen Psycholog*innen und Verhaltensforscher*innen bis in die Jetztzeit hinein immer wieder erweitert und verfeinert wurde. Bowlby selbst verschriftlichte seine wichtigsten Erkenntnisse – um die es auch heute in diesem Eintrag gehen wird – zwischen den Jahren 1969 und 1980, die sich vor allem darum als maßgebend etablierten, weil es der US-amerikanisch-kanadischen Entwicklungspsychologin Mary Ainsworth parallel dazu gelang, seine Befunde anhand praktischer Beobachtungen in zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen zu bestätigen.

John Bolby war Kinderarzt und Kinderpsychater, so wie Mary Ainsworth Feldforscherin hinsichtlich der Bedeutung der Mutter-Kind-Bindung war. Beide Persönlichkeiten untersuchten also zunächst menschliches Bindungsverhalten an seiner buchstäblichen Basis, der allerersten Beziehung, die jedes Menschenlebewesen eingeht, quasi noch vor seiner Geburt: Die Verbindung zur Mutter.
Daß wir allerdings von ihren Erkenntnisse heute hier auf einem bLog über ethische Mehrfachbeziehungen lesen und ihr gewonnenes Wissen nicht nur medizinisch-pädiatrischen Fachkreisen vorbehalten blieb, verdanken wir dem faszinierenden Umstand, daß wir Menschen „lernende Wesen“ sind. Lernende Wesen, so erkannten nämlich Bowlby und Ainsworth, die mittels dieser „ersten aller Beziehungen“ Wesentliches hinsichtlich jeder ihrer darauffolgend aufgenommenen Beziehungen verinnerlichen würden.
Konkret (und so freudig wie gruselig): Die Art der frühkindlichen Bezugspersonen-Kind-Bindung* beeinflußt maßgeblich unser aller Beziehungsverhalten im Erwachsenenalter.

Nach diesem Satz habe ich länger überlegt, ob ich den folgenden Disclaimer an dieser Stelle oder erst am Ende meines heutigen Eintrags schreiben sollte. Ich glaube, nach einem solchen Satz ist es im Zweifel gut, etwas Spannung zu reduzieren – und darum sogleich dazu zwei Dinge:
Zum einen: Fortgesetzte Forschung erwies, daß in einer durchschnittlichen menschlichen Biographie viele Mischformen und Grautöne entstehen, die der gleich folgenden Typenlehre zahlreiche Facetten hinzufügen, so daß ein bestimmer Bindungstyp kein lebenslängliches Aburteil darstellt.
Denn zu anderen – und das ist gewisermaßen die richtig gute Nachricht: Bindungsverhalten kann sich verändern und kann aktiv verändert werden – mit der wichtigen Voraussetzung, sich des momentanen (erlernten) Bindungsverhaltens und dessen Konsequenzen bewußt zu werden.

Wenn es um Erwachsene ging, gehörte die Bindungstheorie viele Jahre lang zu den Werkzeugen von wissenschaftlich aufgeschlossenen Paartherapeut*innen und Beziehungs-Coaches. Deren Dienste wiederum wurden und werden in monogamen Beziehungen nach wie vor zu allermeist im „Un“-Fall – oder wie ich zu Beginn dieses Eintrags schrieb, im „Not“-Fall aktiviert. Unter Zuhilfenahme von Beschreibungen der Betroffenen oder durch eigene Beobachtungen deren Dynamiken im Umgang miteinander war und ist es so möglich, eventuelle Problematiken innerhalb einer Beziehung dem jeweiligen Bindungsverhalten der beteiligten Parteien zuzuordnen. Therapeut*innen und Coaches – aber auch die Forschung – konnten so ebenfalls etwas mittlerweile gut Bekanntes identifizieren: Warum sich bestimmte Muster sowohl im Verhalten als auch bei der Partner*innenwahl regelmäßig wiederholten – und in dieser Art teilweise zu einem stets erneuten Erleben scheinbar gleicher Konflikte führt(e).

Wo und warum kommen hier aber nun die Mehrfachbeziehungen, die Oligo- oder Polyamory, ins Spiel? Wenn es dort Beziehungsprobleme gibt, könnte man sich doch auch schlicht an eine Hilfsperson wenden, die dem entsprechenden Beziehungsmodell gegenüber offen wäre?
Oder bieten Mehrfachbeziehungen noch andere Herausforderungen, jenseits eines monogamen Rosenkriegs?
Als Autor dieses bLogs meiner Ansicht nach ja, wobei ich das Wort „Herausforderungen“ nicht ganz zutreffend finde, sondern es vor allem als eine Auswirkung der erweiterten Dimension der Mehrfachbeziehungen halber bezeichnen würde.
Genau diese „erweiterte Dimension“ gibt es in der Monogamie meistens nicht: „Ob“ bzw. „warum“ ein Paar zusammenkommt, wird selten in Frage gestellt, speziell, wenn die beiden Hauptbeteiligten erst einmal offensichtlich erfolgreich gemeinsam starten.

Auch bei Mehrfachbeziehungen gibt es diesen „gemeinsamen Start“, wenn sich z.B. bei mehreren Beteiligten zu einem ungefähr gleichen Zeitpunkt ein Begehren hinsichtlich all der anderen ebenso Beteiligten regt.
Allerdings gibt es auch den noch wahrscheinlicheren Fall, daß es bereits wenigstens ein Paar oder eine Gruppe gibt, zu dem oder der irgendwann eine oder mehrere andere Person(en) dazukommen.
Genau da läge dann ja der Spezialfall der „Mehrfach“-Beziehung: Ist es möglich, mehr als EINE andere Person zu lieben und gleichzeitig mit diesen in romantischer Verbindung zu sein?

Die auch in diesem bLog auf der Hand liegende Antwort lautet natürlich „Ja“ – jedoch ist die Form der emotionalen, rationalen und sozialen Rechtfertigung eine noch sehr andere als bei den normgesellschaftlich etablierten Zweierbeziehungen der Monogamie (bei denen das bloße „Zusammenkommen“ allein eben meist kein zu hinterfragendes Faktum ist).

Für ethische Mehrfachbeziehungen stellt sich aber genau auch diese Frage – und auch die Beteiligten, glaubt mir, stellen sie sich gelegentlich selbst: Dürfen die das? Und wenn ja – was treibt sie dazu, mehrere romantische Partnerschaften zugleich zu führen?
Die besten Antworten darauf wären selbstverständlich „Selbstverständlich!“ sowie „Klar: Aus Liebe!“ oder „Na, weil sie alle zusammen miteinander sein wollen!“

Auch Herr Bowlby und Frau Ainsworth wären mit diesen Antworten höchst zufrieden, wie wir noch sehen würden. Aber.
Aber die Möglichkeit zum Führen von Mehrfachbeziehungen – und die mutigen Menschen, die sich auf diese Erfahrung einließen und einlassen – deckten nach und nach auf, daß hier im Zwischenmenschlichen durchaus noch weitere Antworten im romantischen Dickicht versteckt waren.

Denn seit die Feministin Morning-Glory Zell Ravenheart 1990 zum ersten Mal das Wort „polyamor“ für ethisch-nichtmonogame Beziehungen etablierte, gaben sich schließlich immer mehr Menschen die Erlaubnis, ihrem Vorbild zu folgen und sich tatsächlich „zu mehreren“ romantisch-intim zu verbinden. Im Laufe der Jahre werden sicher auch einige von ihnen bei Workshops oder anderweitigen Szene-Treffen möglichweise mit der Bindungstheorie nach Bowlby gearbeitet haben.
Meines Wissens nach war es aber erstmals die US-amerikanische Autorin Jessica Fern, die 2020 in ihrem Buch „Polysecure“ ¹ die Bedeutung unseres erlernten Bindungsverhaltens speziell für den polyamoren Kontext betonte. Und das eben auch gerade bezüglich der Frage des „Warums“, die auf die Ausgestaltung eines Mehrfachbeziehungsgeflechts erhebliche Auswirkungen haben kann.

Genug des bunten Rahmens, um verständlich zu bleiben deshalb hier nun endlich in superkonzentrieter Kurzform die vier „Bindungstypen“ nach John Bowlby.

• Sicher gebunden (nach Bowlby Typ B)

Ein sicher gebundenes Kind erlebt in seinen ersten Lebensjahren ausreichend Feinfühligkeit bei Aktivierung seines Bindungsverhaltenssystems. Seine Bindungsverhaltensweisen wurden von der Bezugsperson wahrgenommen und richtig interpretiert, woraufhin prompt und angemessen gehandelt wurde. Dadurch ist die Bindungsperson für das Kleinkindes als verlässlich gespeichert, mit der Folge, dass das Kind das Verhalten seiner Bezugsperson weitgehend vorhersagen kann. Bei starken Emotionen wie einer Trennung wird es deutliche Bindungssignale, wie weinen, rufen etc. produzieren. Kommt es zu einer Wiedervereinigung, wird das Kind seine Bezugsperson begrüßen und deren Nähe aufsuchen, um sich z.B. durch Körperkontakt zu beruhigen. Doch nach kurzer Zeit wird sich ein sicher gebundenes Kind danach wieder seiner ursprünglichen Tätigkeit (spielen etc.) widmen.²

Erwachsene mit diesem erlernten Bindungsverhalten fühlen sich in Beziehungen sicher und können Nähe und Autonomie gut in Balance halten. Sie haben ein grundsätzliches Vertrauen in andere Menschen und können sowohl emotionale Unterstützung geben als auch empfangen. Konflikte und Meinungsverschiedenheiten empfinden sie als normal und lösbar.³

• Unsicher und ablehnend-vermeidend gebunden (Typ A)

Ein solches Kind hat im Laufe der ersten Lebensjahre seine Bezugspersonen nicht als feinfühlig erlebt. Es hat erfahren, dass seine Bindungsverhaltensweisen entweder zu spät, gar nicht oder falsch wahrgenommen und interpretiert wurden. Das Kind beginnt aufgrund dessen immer seltener Bindungssignale zu senden, da es erneute Enttäuschungen vermeiden will. Dadurch ist es zunehmend darauf angewiesen, sich bei starken Emotionen selbst zu regulieren. Beim Verlassen des Raumes einer Bezugsperson schaut das Kind ihr vielleicht kurz hinterher, widmet sich aber bald darauf wieder intensiv seiner Tätigkeit. Z.T. werden so eigene Emotionen mit verstärktem Entdeckungsdrang kompensiert. Bei der Wiedervereinigung sucht ein unsicher-vermeidendes Kind keine Nähe. Ergreift die Bezugsperson die Initiative und hebt das Kind hoch, wird es durch Abwendung des Kopfes und der Körperhaltung schnell verdeutlichen, dass es wieder abgesetzt werden möchte: Aufgrund von schlechten Vorerfahrungen vermeidet dieses Kind seinen Bindungsstress auf der Verhaltensebene offen darzulegen.²

Erwachsene mit diesem erlernten Bindungsverhalten neigen dazu, sich emotional eher zu distanzieren und vermeiden intensivere Nähe. Nähe kann ihnen sogar unangenehm sein, oft bewahren sie eine gewisse Distanz in Beziehungen. Sie könnten Schwierigkeiten haben, ihren eigenen emotionalen Bedürfnissen zu vertrauen oder sich auf andere zu verlassen.³

• Unsicher und ängstlich-ambivalent gebunden (Typ C)

Dieses Kind weiß nicht, wie seine Bezugsperson bei Aktivierung seines Bindungsverhaltenssystems regieren wird. Im Alltag erlebt es seine Bezugsperson widersprüchlich – manchmal feinfühlig und manchmal nicht. Durch diese Unbeständigkeit ist das Kind nicht in der Lage verläßliche Erwartungshaltungen bezüglich der Reaktion seiner Bindungsperson zu entwickeln. Darum sucht das Kind ständig Nähe zu der Bezugsperson, was sich negativ auf sein Entdeckungsverhalten auswirkt: Solch ein Kind wird sich nur zögerlich anderen Tätigkeiten widmen und reagiert bei Trennung von der Bezugsperson gestresst, irritiert oder sogar gereizt. Vor allem bei einer Wiedervereinigung kann es zu sehr heterogenen Verhaltensweisen kommen. Es kann sein, dass das Kind sich um den Kontakt mit der Bindungsperson bemüht, zugleich aber Anzeichen von Ärger und Wut zeigt, oder die Bezugsperson zurückweist.²

Erwachsene mit diesem erlernten Bindungsverhalten empfinden häufig eine starke Abhängigkeit von anderen, sehnen sehnen nach Nähe – und haben jedoch gleichzeitig Angst vor Zurückweisung. Oftmals sorgen sie sich intensiv darüber, ob ihree Bedürfnisse erfüllt werden und ob sie für andere wirklich wichtig sind. Sie können sich schnell unsicher oder überfordert fühlen, wenn sie das Gefühl haben, zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit zu bekommen.³

• Desorganisiert gebunden (Typ D)

Solch ein Kind wurde von seiner Bezugsperson entweder vernachlässigt, missbraucht, misshandelt oder traumatisiert. Die Person, die dem Kind Geborgenheit und Schutz bieten sollte, ist zugleich die Person, die es ängstigt. Kinder mit einem desorganisierten Bindungsstil fallen durch rasch aufeinander folgende, widersprüchliche, unvollendete oder konfuse Verhaltensstrategien auf. Es kann also vorkommen, dass sich das Kind der Bezugsperson nähert, dann aber von einer auf die andere Sekunde stoppt. Bei Abwesenheit der Bezugsperson kann es direkte Anzeichen von Angst zeigen, dann aber eher die Nähe fremder Personen, statt der Bezugsperson, aufsuchen. Eine andere mögliche Verhaltensweise wäre sogar die Versteinerung, solange sich die Bezugsperson im gleichen Raum aufhält.²

Menschen mit diesem erlernten Bindungsverhalten zeigen auch als Erwachsene widersprüchliche Verhaltensweisen. Sie sehnen sich zwar nach Nähe, aber genau diese kann auch Angst oder Misstrauen auslösen. Oft vermeiden sie Nähe oder wechseln zwischen starken Annäherungs- und Rückzugsimpulsen, da ihre frühen Beziehungserfahrungen von Unsicherheit und vielleicht sogar Trauma geprägt sind. Dies kann sich in intensiven, chaotischen Beziehungen widerspiegeln und aufgrund ihrer Traumata fühlen sie sich selbst oft innerlich gespalten und haben so häufig Schwierigkeiten, überhaupt stabile Bindungen aufzubauen.³

Genug des Gruselkabinetts (ok, bis auf die soliden, sicheren Bindungen) möchte ich rufen – aber die Denkanstöße für ge- bzw. mißlingende ethische Mehrfachbeziehungen beginnen genau hier. Mit etwas Hilfe der englischen Wikipedia möchte ich die Auswirkungen der oben aufgeführten Bindungserfahrungen auf uns im Erwachsenenalter betrachten – inklusive der Art, wie wir uns zu romantischen Nahbeziehungen positionieren.

►Betrachten wir zuerst wieder als „unfallfreies“ Verhaltensmuster die sichere Bindung, denn solch ein sicherer Bindungsstil zeigt sich bei Personen, die ein positives Selbstbild und ein positives Fremdbild verinnerlicht haben – was für Beziehungsaufnahme jeglicherArt schließlich grundlegend ist.
Sicher gebundene Erwachsene neigen dazu, den folgenden Aussagen zuzustimmen:
„Es fällt mir relativ leicht, anderen emotional nahe zu kommen.“
„Ich fühle mich wohl dabei, mich auf andere zu verlassen und dass andere sich auf mich verlassen.“
„Ich mache mir keine Sorgen darüber, allein zu sein oder dass andere mich nicht akzeptieren.“
Sicher gebundene Erwachsene haben daher in der Regel eine positive Einstellung zu sich selbst, zu ihren Bezugspersonen und zu ihren Beziehungen. Sie berichten oft von größerer Zufriedenheit und Eingebundenheit in ihren Beziehungen als Erwachsene mit anderen Bindungsstilen. Sicher gebundene Erwachsene fühlen sich situativ sowohl mit enger Intimität als auch mit Unabhängigkeit wohl.

Ok. Was soll ich da noch sagen? Ich denke, daß eine solche Person sich in jeder Beziehungsform, egal ob mono, oligo oder poly zuhause fühlen würde – und dabei wahrscheinlich obendrein eine gute und wertgeschätzte Figur abgäbe. Auch ihre Beziehungen könnten natürlich scheitern – aber wenn, dann nicht wegen der Art der Bindung.

►Ein unsicherer ablehnend-vermeidender Bindungsstil zeigt sich bei Personen, die eine eher positive Sicht auf sich selbst, jedoch eine negative Sicht auf andere haben. Daher neigen die dazu, den folgenden Aussagen zuzustimmen:
„Ich fühle mich wohl ohne enge emotionale Beziehungen.“
„Es ist mir wichtig, mich unabhängig und selbständig zu fühlen.“
„Ich ziehe es vor, nicht von anderen abhängig zu sein oder dass andere sich auf mich verlassen müssen.“
Erwachsene mit diesem Bindungsstil wünschen sich meist ein hohes Maß an Unabhängigkeit. Sie betrachten sich selbst als autark und können sich eher nicht als Teil einer tagtäglichen, engen Nah-Beziehung vorstellen. Manche sehen enge Beziehungen sogar als relativ unwichtig an. Menschen mit diesem Bindungsstil versuchen teilweise, ihre Gefühle zu unterdrücken und zu verbergen, und sie neigen dazu, mit empfundener Ablehnung umzugehen, indem sie sich von den Quellen der Ablehnung (z. B. ihren Bindungspersonen oder Beziehungen) distanzieren. Trotzdem zeigen sie dennoch starke physiologische Reaktionen auf emotionsgeladene Situationen und Inhalte, die sie dann jedoch oft mittels Konzentration auf ein anderes Thema abzulenken und zu kanalisieren bemüht sind.

In der Welt der ethischen Mehrfachbeziehungen fällt mir bei diesem Abschnitt vor allem die sg. „Solo-Polyamory“ ein: Menschen, die mehrere Einzelbeziehungen zu verschiedenen Personen pflegen, die untereinader aber wiederum in keinem Verbund stehen. „Solo-Polys“ leben häufig allein und verbinden sich mit ihren Partner*innen gezielt, z.B. an Wochenenden, auf Events bzw. bei bestimmten Aktivitäten oder an besonderen Orten.
Fragen, die sich dementsprechend auftun, wären z.B., warum wir uns selbst in solch einem Modell von unseren Liebsten distanzieren, bzw. diese aufgrund des gewählten Beziehungsmodells auf Abstand halten möchten. Auch die grundsätzliche Frage liegt nahe, ob wir uns mit dieser Form von „Poly-Amory“ eine Auswahl an Partner*innen gestatten, so daß wir „für jedes Plaisirchen ein passendes Tierchen“ erhalten – und bei ansteigender Spannung innerhalb einer Beziehung uns die Möglichkeit geschaffen haben, rasch das Betätigungsfeld zu wechseln, wozu wir alle Beziehungen auch mit einem Höchstmaß an unvernetzter Parallelität betreiben. Mehr noch: Gäbe es Hinweise darauf, daß wir uns auf Erkundung nach neuen Partnerschaften begeben, wenn wir andernorts gerade die Intensität nich mehr gut aushalten können? Und wie fühlen sich diesbezüglich eventuell die anhängigen Partner*innenmenschen? Fühlen sie sich durch uns ausreichend gesehen und wertgeschätzt – oder geraten sie in die Gefahr, stets doch nur eine jeweilige Teilzeit-Investition von uns zu erhalten?

►Ein unsicher ängstlich-ambivalenter Bindungsstil zeigt sich bei Personen, die ein negatives Bild von sich selbst und ein eher positives Bild von anderen haben. Daher neigen sie dazu, den folgenden Aussagen zuzustimmen:
„Ich möchte mit anderen emotional absolut innig sein, aber ich stelle oft fest, dass andere zögerlich sind, mir so nahe zu kommen, wie ich es mir wünsche.“
„Ich fühle mich unwohl, wenn ich keine engen Beziehungen habe, aber ich mache mir manchmal Sorgen, dass andere mich nicht so sehr schätzen, wie ich sie schätze.“
Erwachsene mit diesem Bindungsstil suchen ein hohes Maß an Intimität (ja, hier ist auch schnelle bzw. intensive Sexualität innbegriffen), Bestätigung und Entgegenkommen von ihren Bezugspersonen. Sie schätzen Intimität manchmal so sehr, dass sie evtl. sogar übermäßig von einer Bezugsperson abhängig werden können. Im Vergleich zu sicher gebundenen Erwachsenen neigen solche Menschen zu einer weniger positiven Selbsteinschätzung. Sie können ein Gefühl der Ängstlichkeit entwickeln, das nur nachlässt, wenn sie mit einer Bezugsperson in Kontakt sind. Sie zweifeln oft an ihrem Wert als Individuum und geben sich selbst die Schuld für einen empfundenen Mangel an Aufmerksamkeit ihrer Partner*innen. In ihren Beziehungen können sie z.T. ein hohes Maß an Emotionalität, Besorgtheit oder Überkompensation zeigen.

Diesen Bindungsstil kenne ich selbst am besten, weil er leider meine eigene Grundlage ist. Innerhalb ethischer Mehrfachbeziehungen wie der Oligo- und Polyamory ist er nicht unbedingt selten, weil es im Zweifel gerade die Möglichkeit ist, überhaupt eine Mehrzahl von intimen Bezugspersonen aufgrund erhöhten Nähebedarfs für sich zu gewinnen, die Mehrfachbeziehungsmodelle für Menschen dieser Veranlagung interessant macht.
Problematisch bei diesem Bindungsstil ist von Anfang an die Bestrebung nach einem größtmöglichen Vertrautheits- und Verschmelzungsfaktor, so daß beim Kenenlernen häufig die „Aufprallenergie“ sehr hoch ist – und Kompatibilität z.B. über früh initiierte Sexualität herbeizuführen versucht wird. Die „Beinarbeit“ eines gründlichen Kennenlernprozesses mit wechselseitigen Vor- und Abneigungen kann so in den Hintergrund geraten, was bei fortdauernder Beziehung zu Problemen führen kann. Auf diese Weise ist aber auch die NRE („New-Relationship-Energy“ [Neue-Beziehungs-Energie]) sehr hoch, was für Bestandspartner*innen verstörend wirken kann, wenn für eine neue Person z.T. alles stehen und liegen gelassen wird.
Der hohe Nähe- und Klebefaktor führt innerhalb von Mehrfachbeziehungen zusätzlich zu einem gelegentlichen Verwischen von individuellen Grenzen, so daß es sachlich wie emotional irgendwann schwierig sein kann, herauszufinden, welche Anteile an einem Geschehen wem zuzuordnen sind, was ungünstige Wirkung auf die Gesamtbeziehungsdynamik nimmt. Unsicher-ambivalente Personen tragen speziell darin oft wenig hilfreich bei, indem sie in ihrem inneren Zwiespalt gelegentlich zusätzlich in eine Art „Micromanagement“ verfallen, bei dem sie versuchen für ihre Partner*innen eine angestrengte Misch-Performance aus „Warte, ich hole Dir die Sterne vom Himmel“ und übergriffiger Gängelung („Neinnein, das müssen wir SO machen….“ ) aufzubieten.

►Desorganisierte Bindungsmuster zeigen sich bei Menschen, die eine instabile und wechselhafte Sicht auf sich selbst und andere haben, welche jedoch vorwiegend in beiden Fällen negativ ist. Verluste oder Traumata (z. B. Missbrauch) in der Kindheit und Jugend können zu einer Zustimmung zu folgenden Aussagen führen:
„Es ist mir etwas unangenehm, anderen nahe zu kommen.“
„Ich wünsche mir emotional enge Beziehungen, aber es fällt mir schwer, anderen völlig zu vertrauen oder mich auf sie zu verlassen.“
„Ich mache mir manchmal Sorgen, dass ich verletzt werde, wenn ich mich zu sehr auf andere Menschen einlasse.“
Personen mit einem ängstlich-besorgten Bindungsstil zeichnen sich durch ein starkes Verlangen nach Nähe und Intimität in ihren Beziehungen aus, erleben jedoch häufig zugleich ein hohes Maß an Angst und Unsicherheit in Bezug auf die Zugänglichkeit und das Entgegenkommen ihrer Bezugspersonen. Sie neigen daher dazu, sich bei zunehmender emotionaler Nähe unwohl zu fühlen. Diese Gefühle sind mit manchmal unbewussten, negativen Ansichten sowohl über sich selbst als auch hinsichtlich ihrer Bindungspersonen verbunden. Dadurch halten sie sich häufig für unwürdig, von ihren Bezugspersonen Aufmerksamkeit zu erhalten, und haben zugleich oft kein Vertrauen in die Absichten ihrer Partner*innen. Ähnlich wie beim ablehnend-vermeidenden Bindungsstil suchen desorganisiert gebundene Erwachsene so weniger Nähe zu ihren Bindungspersonen und unterdrücken und/oder verleugnen häufig ihre Gefühle. Aus diesem Grund fällt es ihnen viel schwerer, Zuneigung auszudrücken. Personen mit diesem Bindungsstil neigen zu einem negativen Selbstbild und einer schwankenden oder gespaltenen Sichtweise auf andere, was zu zwischenmenschlichen Störungen beitragen kann.

Ein desorganisierter Bindungsstil stellt für jede Form von echter, vertrauter Partnerschaft die größten Herausforderungen dar, doch auch von diesem Bindungstyp habe ich leider einige Züge bei mir selbst wiedergefunden.
Problematisch speziell für Mehrfachbeziehungsführung ist meist, daß die betroffene Person sich über mehrere Partnerschaften ein Mini-Universum verschiedener Menschen erstellen kann, zwischen denen sie bei Bedarf emotional „switchen“ (hin- und herschalten) kann. Für die betroffene Umgebung kann dieses Verhalten allerdings im Zweifel seltsam unbeständig und z.T. sogar unberechenbar – oder zumindest unzuverlässig – wirken.
Der „Netzwerkcharakter“ polyamorer Verbindungen kann allerdings auf diese Weise eine desorganisiert gebundene Person oftmals eine Weile lang gewissermaßen „auffangen“ – da durch die Beziehungsvielfalt die innere Zerrissenheit und Widersprüchlichkeit der betroffenen Person nicht so schnell zu Tage tritt, wie es vielleicht in einer reinen Zweierbeziehung geschehen würde. Gleichzeitig kann genau dieses „Zumuten“ und „Aushalten“ desorganisierter Merkmale in einer Mehrfachbeziehung jedoch wiederum gerade durch die Vielfalt an betroffenen Mitwirkenden großes Leid verursachen, bevor die auslösende Person bereit ist, sich ihren verschütteten Traumata zu stellen. Die Gefahr der „Desorganisation“ besteht indes darin, daß die Auswirkungen – durch allseitige, teilweise widersprüchliche Kompromisse – bis dahin die Gesamtbeziehung für alle Beteiligte schon schleichend zerrüttet haben können.

Puh. Mein Fazit dieses wichtigen – und nun beinahe zu lang geratenen – Eintrags:
Zusätzliche Studien erwiesen leider, dass Personen mit unsicherem oder desorganisiertem Bindungsstil auch anfälliger für psychische Probleme wie Depressionen und Angststörungen sind, sie häufiger ein beeinträchtigtes Selbstwert-Gefühl haben, und dass es für sie darum schwieriger ist, im Erwachsenenalter gesunde Bindungen zu entwickeln.
Beobachtungen ergaben weiter, daß sich ungünstige Bindungsstrategien und Traumata in Beziehungsdingen überdurchschnittlich häufig anziehen – ausgerechnet unsicher-vermeidend und unsicher-ambivalent finden sich z.B. überraschend (und trotz doch scheinbar so unterschiedlicher Bedürfnislagen!) regelmäßig gemeinsam in einem „Beziehungs-Boot“ wieder…

Mehrfachbeziehungen „würfeln“ obendrein meist gleich noch „mehr als zwei“ Menschen zusammen, wodurch im Zweifel äußerst ungünstige Kompensationsstrategien aufeinander treffen können, insbesondere wenn der Grad an Unbewußtheit für die eigenen Bindungserfahrungen (noch) eher hoch ist.
Und um es noch einmal zu sagen: Ethische Mehrfachbeziehungen müssen in ihrer Entstehung schon allein aus Selbsterhaltungsgründen sehr selbstehrlich der Frage ins Auge sehen, ob nicht eben sogar der Wunsch nach „Mehrfachbeziehung“ eigentlich einer ermangelten Bedürftigkeit entspringt, die doch leider drei der vier Bindungstypen verdeckt in sich tragen.
Denn Verlustangst, Bindungsangst und Kontrollverhalten bringen Unruhe, Leid und Drama in jede Beziehung. Und das ist etwas, was wir als Viel-Liebende unseren Lieblingsmenschen doch gerade sicher nicht zuteil werden lassen wollen.

Mit dem heutigen, beim Scrollen sicher nicht nur bedingt durch die Länge manchmal schmerzhaft zu lesenden Eintrag, möchte ich allerdings ähnlich der oben erwähnten Autorin Jessica Fern dringend dafür sensibilisieren, auch diese unfroheren Aspekte des eigenen Beziehungs- und Bindungsverhaltens zu reflektieren. Ich lade dazu ein, dies auch im Verbund mit unseren Partner*innen zu tun, die durch ihre „Sicht von außen“ vielleicht wichtige Impulse für uns selbst beisteuern können – auch wenn diese Form von Offenbarung sicher nicht immer einfach für alle Beteiligte sein wird.
Aber gerade diese Bewußtmachung ist es, die uns alle schließlich befähigen kann, einen eventuell negativen Bindungsstil nach und nach tatsächlich zu verändern.

In diesem Sinne – und in bester, sicher gebundener Weise: Laßt es Liebe sein, echtes Vertrauen und sich wirklich sicher Fühlen – und: weil ihr alle aus tiefstem Herzen miteinander zusammen sein wollt!

*Ich schreibe hier Bezugspersonen-Kind-Bindung, weil sich für das Bindungsverhalten erwiesen hat, daß es in der sensiblen Phase der ersten Lebensjahre maßgeblich ist, wie diese Haupt-Bezugspersonen Zuwendung zeigen – ganz egal, ob es sich dabei um Mutter, Vater, Familienangehörige, Pflegeeltern etc. handelt.

¹ Jessica Fern „Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Non-monogamy“, Thornapple Press (2020)
Deutsche Version: „Polysecure: Bindung, Trauma und konsensuelle Nicht-Monogamie”; divana Verlag 2023

² Typenbeschreibungen erstellt mit Hinweisen aus der Masterarbeit von Nadine Madlen Blaßnig „Bindung im Erwachsenenalter: Eine Studie zum Zusammenhang von Alkoholkonsum, Mentalisierungsfähigkeit, Selbstwert und Bindung“, 2018 Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt; Zitate aus Kißgen, J. (2009). „Diagnostik der Bindungsqualität in der frühen Kindheit – die Fremden Situation“; in Julius, H. et al. (Hrsg.), „Bindung im Kindesalter. Diagnostik und Intervention“, Göttingen: Hogrefe

³ Beschreibung aus „Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair“ von Daniel P. Brown und David S. Elliott, WW Norton & Co (2016)

Danke an engin akyurt auf Unsplash für das Foto!

Last but not least: Im Netz gibt es zahlreiche Tests zur Ermittlung des eigenen Bindungstyps. Nicht alle arbeiten nach Bowlby und Ainsworth – aber für eine Grundeinschätzung kann man dort starten. Für in jedem Fall zielführender halte ich es, sich direkt mit den Typenbeschreibungen (auf Wikipedia z.B. oder hier) auseinanderzusetzen und hinsichtlich der entsprechenden Merkmalen für sich selbst zu reflektieren.

Because it’s close to our hearts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash for the photo!

Freedom of choice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Detektiv Devine: “Passion!“

Beverly Clark: “No!“

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Eli Pluma on Unsplash for the photo!

Beyond thinking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What we lack above all these days is trust.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Enrique on Pixabay for the photo!

Being in between

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Magne on Unsplash for the photo!

“But now it’s my turn!“

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Alana Jordan on Pixabay for the photo!

Long live the Queen!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Megan Watson on Unsplash for the photo!

By the fire of the ancestors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

maybe in the middle of the night
it dawns on you

maybe you will unexpectedly hear
a new message

maybe you suddenly sense
that peace on earth is possible

maybe you painfully experience
that you have to leave things behind

maybe you feel
that something will change

maybe you will be asked
to get up and leave

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Benjamin Nelan on Pixabay for the photo!

Faster, higher, stronger?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to andreas N on Pixabay for the photo!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Mary Taylor on Pexels for the photo!