Category: Allgemein

If you are at the centre of things… – …you might get in anybody’s way
[Hinges and wings – Part 1]

I could perhaps even rhyme a little pointedly:
“No matter how small the polycule, one must be the centre as a rule…”.
Polycule?
Centre?
And what or who is “anybody” then?

The word “polycule” first appeared in polyamorous usage in 2007, when someone noticed that many multiple relationship structures – especially when drawn to illustrate these network-like connections, for example – shared a certain resemblance to molecules. The metaphor is exceedingly apt in that both molecules and polyamorous relationships with multiple participants can produce small, large, long-chained, compact, or even rather cyclic compounds.
In this sense, some of these connections also have no real “centre” (…who or what would be the “centre” of, say, four people…?) – and yet… I’ll get to that in a moment.

The wonderful and fascinating thing about Poly– and likewise Oligoamory is that there actually doesn’t exist a “master blueprint” for a relationship configuration. Each participating person would be – to stay with the picture – quasi an atom with any number of free slots for potential further connections.
All right, in Entry 12 I already described for my Oligoamory in a somewhat limiting way why I personally believe that this wouldn’t be an “infinite” or “arbitrary” number of free positions.

Polycules can thus emerge in different ways. The simplest (and in my life experience most frequent) way is, if there exists somewhere a person, who one day feels love for two other persons at the same time – and already a first mini-polycule with “central atom” and V-shaped connection to two other “atoms” is created. Those two “other atoms” do not necessarily have to enter into a relationship with each other, so that a kind of “triangle” would be created. But for successful Polyamory it would be favourable in the medium term if there were nevertheless some kind of “interaction” between these two “V-atoms”, which I usually like to describe as “general goodwill” or “acceptance”.
Sometimes, however, group constellations are formed surprisingly by the fact that several people suddenly like each other at the same time – so threesomes, foursomes or even larger core groups can develop in which virtually all participants have some form of bond with everyone – but this is more and more improbable with increasing size of a group.
Not at all improbable, however, is the possibility that at some point people who are already part of their own multiple partnership will become involved with another person who in turn is part of a different multiple partnership. Should the fascination for the other participants in the already existing groups of origin now leap over to each other through this connection, it could be that the polycules will connect more closely via further interpersonal connections – the path to some first “cyclic” structures would have been initiated…

As pretty and confusing (that’s why it’s really better to draw something like this in detail on the paper napkin of an overly curious cousin…) all this is and can be – I just wanted to point this out today as an introduction.
Because to simplify, one now might argue that in the world of multiple relationships there are actually only two states for an “atom” – either a person is currently part of several relationships and thus somewhere “in the middle” – or s*he currently has only one relationship with just one other person and is thus, so to speak, “at a side”.
This is equally recognized among poly- and oligoamorically involved people – in the Anglo-American languages there are already distinct terms for these positions: People who are currently connected to only one person who him*herself has several relationships are called “wing”; those who are currently connected to several other people are called “hinge” or “pivot”[because their position resembles a furniture- or a door-hinge that allows at least two other parts to move around it].
To make it more complicated, “hinge partners” can of course also be “wing partners” at the same time, if their partners are in turn in relationships with other persons; relationships in which they themselves accordingly would only be a “wing”…

And with this additional complication, we would finally arrive at my topic for today.
For even if we were to draw up our multiple relationships – as extensive or as small as they may be – a clear assignment of who would be “wing” or “pivot” would only exist on paper.
Besides, one might reproach me immediately, why this should be an “oligoamorous” topic at all, since I would write here incessantly about intimate connections with literally “few” participants – surely there wouldn’t be so many “sides” or “centres” anyway?

Real life, however, is manifold…
From the outside – especially from people who do not live polyamorous – the “central position” seems to be perceived predominantly as a manifested dream: In the middle, appreciated, desired and pampered from several sides, the centre of attention and already thereby enjoying numerous benefits…
In contrast, the majority of polyamorous guidebooks often dedicate at least one whole chapter to this notable “centre position” – usually with many recommendations and hints on how to manage the challenges encountered there reasonably well.

Indeed, multiple relationships often reflect the clash of many different needs. Where will this tension be greatest in the event of conflict? Probably at the centre… And immediately it is the ” pivot ” – around which everything seemed to revolve benevolently just a moment ago – at which the greatest centrifugal forces now occur, because various desires and/or requirements pull in different directions.
In my opinion, however, this very common example already shows that in a multi-person configuration the “centre” which has been classified in such detail above is not specified at all. Because the impression, as far as the needs of others involved in the relationship are concerned, of “feeling the weight of the world (only) on your own shoulders”, may catch you in any position – at the side or at the centre.
Just when, for example, exactly this phenomenon of the “negative centre” arises – virtually as if you yourself were the lowest point of some event in the relationship, on which now the full load is coming down from all sides – it is favourable to pause and ask yourself whether you are actually really “the centre” in this capacity.
For one does not need to be poly- or oligoamorous in order to “feel the weight of the world on one’s shoulders”. Because in many cases this impression already arises when we declare ourselves responsible for things that are not ours at all when viewed from a different angle.
Or in a relationship: which are not ours alone.
Especially in ethical multiple relationships, I see here a certain danger of “over-fulfillment” by which one does a disservice to oneself and to others. I’ve written about commitment and accountability in numerous entries here, so it could quickly seem as if the overall weal and woe of a relationship is hanging like a millstone around the neck of each and every person involved. And that in this sense the “weak link” (or atom…) of a multiple relationship in the case of failure would have to answer for the collapse of the whole with the own insufficiency, of having not tried hard enough.
But this is not how Oligoamory is meant. A mutual relationship and a mutual well-being need a mutual responsibility. And this has always to be supported by all involved – no matter if currently “centre” or “wing”.

How vague the assignment of a “defined centre” of a relationship is, is very often also shown by the popular example of the so often practised “triangular communication”. It doesn’t take just three people (it can easily be more) – and in the vernacular it is simply referred to as “talking about…”. The lure of such a failed conversation culture has become even greater since the age of social networks and messenger services.
Of course, it is probably most human to talk “about each other” even within a relationship. And since hopefully our relationship partners are also our closest confidants, to whom we literally want to “entrust” ourselves with all our daily needs, it is also understandable if we see them as our “allies” and to a certain extent also as our counsellors. Through indirect triangular communication, however, we very quickly play off one of our allies against another within close relationship networks – and that can’t work out well.
The Polyamory-bLog “Mehrfachzucker” ¹ (Original source only in German) adds:
»Taking the conflict to another person will most likely, on top of everything else, damage the relationship between the third person and the person who is actually the issue. The actual conflict is not solved, but outsourced and often even intensified. In addition, the partners of our partners also have a right to their own privacy. So agree beforehand what is allowed to be passed on and what is not.
Triangular communication is treacherous and leads to numerous problems. Shifting responsibilities, creating new conflicts and violated trust are just a few examples. Triangular communication happens quickly and insidiously at the same time.«
The latter means: How quickly is something typed emotionally into the mobile phone and shared with a third party out of a situation, which is still being discussed controversially at the table. In this way, we turn our other favourite people into “captives”, with whom our only concern is to get them as quickly as possible into our “own camp” as supporters…

A similarly unpleasant side-centre-side variant of triangular communication is, by the way, also the playing off of one’s own partners or partners of partners against each other: “XYZ has caused me to act in such and such a way…”. In this way, people like to avoid responsibility for their own decisions by shifting the causality to someone else in the wider relationship. One “wasn’t no longer able” to act in any other way, so to speak. Unfortunately, I have already caught myself arguing in such an unbearable way, especially in order to justify to myself the imprudence of some actions. For our favourite people such a shift of responsibility must be even more insufferable to endure.

To one of the most delicate phenomena in my eyes, the authors Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert have dedicated the following text in their basic book “More Than Two” ² – it describes what happens when “wings” and “hinges” begin unyieldingly to offset against own claims:
»”That’s not fair!” Below a certain age, we hear people say this all the time. Past that age our vision gets longer, an d we learn that fairness operates best on a global, not a local scale. If you did the dishes last night and it’s your sister’s turn tonight, but she isn’t doing the dishes because she just got back from dental surgery, it may seem unfair to you from a purely selfish perspective… but really, would you want to trade places with her? And if you were the one who’d just been through the root canal, wouldn’t you appreciate a pass on the dishes tonight? Sometimes compassion dictates that a rigid schedule should change.
By the time we’re adults, we’ve pretty much figured this out. That, or we’ve just given in to exhaustion and stopped worrying so much about what’s “fair” on such a granular level. Yet in relationships, especially in polyamorous relationships, the little whisperings of our five-year-old selves poke through and say, “That’s not fair!” when things don’t get the way we expect. Even when we don’t talk about our expectations. Even when we know our expectations are silly. When you’re balancing more than one partner, you will surely hear this sentiment. The words may change, but the meaning is predictably constant: “That’s not fair!”
In dealing with human beings, issues of “fairness” sometimes need to go right out of the window. People change and needs change, but often our notions about what is “fair” remain static, so deeply buried that we’re not even aware of them [“Inner Highways” in Jealousy-Entry 36]. The fairness that is important in relationships isn’t the tit-for-tat. In fact, sometimes a tit-for-tat approach to fairness creates a situation that’s decidedly unfair […]: Symmetry is not he same thing as fairness.
The kind of fairness that really counts is the kind that begins with compassion. Fairness means saying things like “I realize that my insecurity belongs to me, so I will not use it as a blunt instrument on you, nor expect you to plot your life around it. I may, however, ask you to talk to me while I’m dealing with it”.
This isn’t the kind of fairness our inner five-year-old understands; he’s far more likely to be worried about someone else getting something that he doesn’t have, or getting something for a lower “price” than he paid for it [Envy-Entry 59]. At the end of the day, though, our mental five-year-old isn’t likely to make our lives better, no matter how much of a fuss he puts up.«

Since our (multiple) relations are therefore just no static structures (see Scott Peck in Entry 8 and in Entry 79), we will recognize ourselves on all “positions” there regularly (also with a small number of participants!): In the middle as “hinge” or “pivot” – or at the side as “wing”. Our human ambivalence furthermore will push us into the middle from time to time of our own accord – and also move us again back to a wing position.
More or less at the same time, we will therefore also often be “pulling” and “pulled”, ” pushing” and ” pushed” in parallel. Just as we are at all times both “enjoyers” and “contributors”, “supported” and “supporters”, “lovers” and “beloved”.
What is important – and in this I agree with F.Veaux and E. Rickert above – that we are therefore continuously prepared at all positions to give our compassion an important, perhaps even the most important voice.
If we succeed in this, we get in each other’s way much less, rather our relationships then become – to say it with the Persian Sufi mystic Rumi – “gardens beyond right and wrong”.
That is where we will meet.

¹ Mehrfachzuckerblog: Dreieckskommunikation – Sich über Ecken im Kreis drehen (only German language available, sorry!)

² Franklin Veaux und Eve Rickert „More Than Two – A practical guide to ethical polyamory“, Thorntree-Press 2014

Thanks to Tikva Wolf (author of the popular Kimchi Cuddles Polyamory comics) and the most personal permission to use the polycule-artwork on my bLog (all rights © by the cartoonist!)
and thanks to Terry Vlisidis on Unsplash for the molecule-photo.

…though the blessing comes from higher.

If Oligoamory were a tree, it would have different “roots”.
The main root is definitely Polyamory, of which my “Oligo-Amory” is effectively an offshoot.
Polyamory, as a manifestation of Non-monogamy, offers a concept in which non-exclusive loving relationships with more than just one other person are feasible in a committed way.

Thus, “Non-monogamy” is virtually also one of the roots of Oligoamory, if only because it allows the freedom of thought to indulge in a quest for more than one intimate relationship in life.
Polyamory, on its part, which distinguishes itself in the large group of non-monogamous relationships with the addition of the phrase “ethical multiple relationships,” wants to work toward ensuring that such multiple relationships are established responsibly, consensually, and transparently – that is, with the greatest possible (equal) entitlement – and, above all, with the knowledge and consent of all involved.
So all the values that apply in this respect to Polyamory are in any case also applicable to Oligoamory.

Another important “root” of Oligoamory is the community-building process as described primarily by the U.S. psychiatrist and author Scott Peck¹ – and which has become fundamental to many forms of communal living, such as ecovillages, housing projects, and shared-living communities. At the core of community building lies a very inclusive and integrative way of thinking, which significantly aims at a “common wholeness” with a “we-feeling” at its centre. Describing it as a “process” is here the intended reminder that there will never be a “final” or “finished” state in this form of togetherness, but rather that it is an approach that will be continually revisited by those involved to be further adapted and configured according to current developments.

However, the oligoamory would not be the “Oligo”-Amory (with the prefix “oligo-“, which comes from the ancient Greek word ὀλίγος olígos “few”), if it would not suggest a way of living and loving, which would rather aim at a manageable number of participants. And in this quality there are roots in Oligoamory, which, among other things, arise from requirements connected to the phenomenon of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), as it has been defined by the U.S. psychologist Elaine Aron.
Since I, as the author of this bLog, consider myself as being affected by SPS, I have realized for myself that a high level of care with regard to the quality (before quantity!) of my social relationships is extremely beneficial to the nature and relevance of these relationships, especially in terms of coherence, predictability and intimacy.

Since I am therefore personally very strongly confronted via SPS with the manifold shades, facets and nuances of the surrounding world and my entire existence – which for their part rarely submit to pure classification of “either…or” – I was, apart from Polyamory, also fascinated by the approach of “Relationship Anarchy“, which has thus also become a root of Oligoamory.
This philosophy of relationships, first proposed by the Swedish journalist Andie Nordgren, rejects artificial or socially exclusive categories for describing interpersonal relationships.
Whether another human person is my best friend, my beloved, my companion, my acquaintance, my favourite person, my partner or whatever – according to the approach of Relationship Anarchy, this is solely a matter of agreement between the parties involved in the respective relationship. Likewise, it is merely a matter of agreement between those involved “what” – so to speak “which content” – constitutes the actual substance of this individual relationship. Be it platonic friendship, the dedication to a connecting hobby or some other commitment, spiritual kinship, sharing a common daily routine, a weekend relationship, sexuality, all of these together, or whatever mixture of completely other characteristics – all of this represents a range of possibilities that is difficult to grasp with a concrete term, but would rather have to be described by the participants themselves if they were asked what kind of nature their relationship to each other would be.
Thus, it is also part of relationship anarchy (keyword “loving free of domination”) that due to the open negotiability, which exclusively concerns the participants of the relationship, no external rules or boundaries may be applied, which e.g. would predetermine what might be possible and/or socially acceptable “only” between friends, “solely” between lovers, or “exclusively” between intimate mates.
Exactly this categorylessness and freedom of agreement are also part of Oligoamory, which in this aspect connects well with the nonconformist and queer heritage of Polyamory (see Entry 50).

When I describe my Oligoamory, two other essential roots usually come to my mind:
On the one hand, this is romanticism. I have already outlined in Entry 34 that I consider the so-called (and as a topos of fictional narration almost archetypal) “self-sacrifice” to be a core motif of Romanticism. However, what sometimes comes across so dramatically in myths, novels and narratives, has in my view a very tangible, everyday manifestation in Oligoamory: The willingness to go the famous “extra yard” beyond one’s own “sphere of ambition” for the other parties involved in a relationship. Surely, at this point we also recognize in it Scott Peck’s community-building process, wherein without such altruistic thinking, a “mutual we” would never be achievable.
At the same time, to my opinion, there also lies a share of what the humanistic psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow called “self-actualization”. I sometimes somewhat humorously call this aspect “comfort-zone-stretching”.
Especially in our closest interpersonal relationships – those of a familial nature, but also those of a “self-chosen” nature – we are most regularly confronted with what the Canadian psychologist (and father of social-cognitive learning theory) Albert Bandura called “self-efficacy expectation“. And by that I mean all those situations where we are confronted with circumstances, motivations, feelings and actions where we involuntarily ask ourselves “Can I do this?” – and where we have to face what ensues. The natural reflex of our weaker self would usually be to turn our backs on such challenges, to turn a “No, (maybe) I can’t do that…” into a “No, I don’t want to do that!” and in this way to stay safely within our comfort zone. But with that we would have taken away the chance for further ” self-actualization” ourselves.
However, every time our closest fellow human beings, friends, loved ones, companions, acquaintances, favourite people and partners were worth it to us to leave our comfort zone under the conviction “I can do that (after all)!”, we ourselves have become a bit more self-effective – and thus at the same time a little bit more “an even better version of ourselves”.
So when the romantic narrative says that there is a hero*ine treading the “path of the greatest possible courage”, that is above all what is meant by it: for the sake of others, we grow in ourselves. It almost can’ t get any more romantic than that in Oligoamory…

On the other hand, it remains for me to list “idealism“, and idealism – okay, that was to be expected – certainly also goes hand in hand with romanticism. Even the German Wikipedia says that “in everyday language idealism denotes, for example, an altruistic, selfless attitude”. But the same Wikipedia also suggests that idealism “emphasizes that reality is radically determined by cognition and thought” (and who would I be to disagree as a relationship philosopher…!).
When I speak of idealism with regard to oligoamory, I mean here mainly the aspect unsurpassably expressed by the Czech playwright, essayist, human rights activist, and politician Václav Havel in his words »Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something has meaning, no matter how it turns out.« [first quoted in Entry 61]
For if the psychiatrist Scott Peck is right (and in all likelihood he is) that our human relationships are never finished entities but open, organically evolving processes to be revisited throughout the duration of their existence, then by their very nature they defy any performance evaluation of “good” or “bad”. And should we as participants try to submit to such a dictate of performance criteria in our relationship design, then we would hardly get anywhere in our good Maslowian self-realization and self-efficacy.
Idealism, however, poses (as Wikipedia states) the question of possible meaning and cognition. And Václav Havel assures us that this is also very well possible within processes, even if they do not have an “end” in a classical sense of performance. Rather, with Albert Bandura, he encourages us to continually align our motivations, feelings, and actions with our values and beliefs in such a way that they serve us as a kind of guiding star to draw us out of our comfort zone: “I can do this!”.
Bandura’s social cognitive learning theory thus promises us – especially with regard to those of us who aspire multiple relationships – that our self-esteem will grow the more social roles we trust ourselves to assume. Yes, even more: since “self-esteem” means “being valuable ourselves”, we regularly “feel valuable” through those social roles in our relationships.

So today I have once again outlined the main roots of Oligoamory. And in the run-up to this article, I thought about them and realized that for me, yet another component is still missing.
Since now, I would be able to imagine the perfect oligoamorous relationship: It would be polyamorous at its core, in a continuous community-building process, it would feature quality- and self-care in the sense of SPS, it would be category-free and both romantic-altruistic as well as self-actualizing-idealistic.
If all this were given, I too would say that this would definitely describe a good (multiple) relationship – and yet…

As I sit here today, I wish you to have one more ingredient to those described above, which I would like to call today simply and unspecifically “spirituality“.
“Spirituality”, says the German Wikipedia, “is the search for, the turning toward, the immediate contemplation or subjective experience of a transcendent reality that cannot be sensually grasped or rationally explained and which is beyond the material world.”. Wikipedia further names as components of spirituality “questions of meaning and values”, “experiences of the wholeness of the world” as well as “connectedness with one’s own existence”.
And I think without these last three impulses we still could have a quite perfect relationship by oligoamorous standards – but our hearts might remain a bit clammy in it.

Perhaps in my case this is because I do not consider purely reason-based ethics to be sufficient as a sole basis for me.
Perhaps it is because I state for myself that at present I still exist in a world in which science has by no means found a conclusive answer to all questions, but in which even the cleverest minds confirm with awe in their eyes that every context that has just been satisfactorily answered instantly carries a merry bunch of further and deeper questions in its wake…
Probably, however, I feel the same way as Friedrich Schiller did regarding his “Lied von der Glocke” (Song of the Bell²), of which one line provided me with my title for this Entry. And in this respect, it will probably come as no surprise that the most essential components of Oligoamory stem from, of all people, a neopagan author (Entry 49) and a Christian community coach (Entry 8, among others):
Every day, we fearlessly tread the “path of the greatest possible courage” once again, undauntedly stretching the measure of our self-efficacy; we regularly exceed the limits of our own comfort for the people who are important to us; we don’t ask, when it matters and someone is crying at our front door at night, whether somebody is a loved one, a friend or “just” a neighbour; sensitively, and regardless of this, we try to improve the quality of our relationships; we prove ourselves to be part of a community and we sincerely strive for genuine loving relationships and in this we do not want to be limited to just one person…

But the “blessing”, the “meaning” – and indeed “no matter how it turns out” – in all these things will be something that is “greater than us”, something that “exceeds us”.
And this is where multiple relationships, in fact, successful human relationships as a whole, become something truly wonderful for me.
For that which is “greater than us”, that which “exceeds us” is called in spirituality precisely “transcendent“ (from Latin transcendere “to overcome/exceed”). It is that which I have described from the first hour of Oligoamory as the element that produces “more than the sum of the parts” – which is the result of the interaction of all those involved, and which produces the added value from which (hopefully) everyone benefits.
But in order for this meaning, this added value to emerge, we call up something in each of us that makes each of us unique, precisely that inalienable self-worth that makes each of us “us” and without which the unique composition of ingredients in a relationship would not work. And exactly this something which is contained in things and living beings, which results from their individual and objective existence, is called “immanent“ (from Latin immanere, ‘to remain in’, ‘to adhere to’) in spirituality.

How does it say again in Schiller’s “Song of the Bell”: »…That the work may praise the Master, Though the blessing comes from higher.«? As far as I am concerned, the great poet and thinker could also have written »…from within«. Because we consequently need both, immanence for transcendence and transcendence in immanence; both emerge from each other – and neither of the two phenomena can exist without the other (at least in Oligoamory).
This is as close as we can get to what many religions call divinity in our yearning, striving and acting – for ourselves and in our relationships.
That kind of divinity that already dwells in all of us and is only waiting to be allowed to emerge more and more, layer by layer.
And that certainly has meaning in any case.
No matter how it turns out.

¹ Primarily set down in: Scott Peck “A Different Drum”, 1984

² Links to possible translations:
http://friedrichschiller.weebly.com/song-of-the-bell.html
https://www.bartleby.com/177/46.html

Thanks to Ashwini Chaudhary on Unsplash for the photo!

Timeout

There is more for you
than what never showed up.
More than what never came to be.
More than what couldn’t transpire
or find a way to work out,
and it looks like healing
and has the shape of possibility.
Let down by family or parents,
past dreams and expectations.
Put off by relationships,
romances, careers and ideations.
There’s another path to explore
and alternate routes to travel.
There’s a tribe meant to welcome,
with encouragements to fuel you.
There are hearts that want to hold you,
and kindnesses that long to see you through.
There are other ways to meet with love,
as kinships waiting in the wings.
There are fresh fields to run in
and warm pools to swim
Hold on bright child,
there is more than
what never appeared.

These lines were written by the Canadian poet Susan Frybort¹ and I was very touched by them.
Because in all those years in which I have already dealt with ethical multiple relationships, it often seemed to me, too, that “what never showed up” regularly made up the far greater part compared to what came to be, could transpire – or what even worked out in the long run.
Most people who feel a predisposition, an attitude, a feeling or a striving towards non-monogamous arrangements probably recognize this as well. The question of “HOW?” seems – no matter where you are on your “Expedition Multiple Partnerships” – to always remain bigger than the actual “That!”.
Often this already starts at a very early stage, since many of us who are committed to a lifestyle of ethical non-monogamy often do not currently have any such relationship(s) in our lives.
Considering Germany for example, different numbers are quoted, regarding how many people would be open for such a way of life; low estimates speak e.g. of about 10,000 truly avowed polyamorous people, elsewhere the rate of 0.2% of the total population is mentioned, who would consider a lifestyle involving multiple relationships (which means that with 84 million inhabitants we end up somewhere slightly above 160,000 people nationwide…*). Statistically frustrating on its own. Sometimes almost discouraging…

Then there are the people who have supposedly “made it” and who have truly ventured into the challenge of “multiple relationships.” People who have taken their hearts in their hands and feel love for more than one person. Love that they also want to infuse – and manifest – with green life in their daily reality.
The first romantically enamoured glitter has hardly settled, the first taste of having actually realized the almost improbable… – when all of a sudden obstacles and difficulties burst up everywhere and on top of that appear to be legion…
Can I show myself in public with more than one partner? And why is that uncomfortable for me, despite my attachment? How can I reasonably and plausibly express in front of my children or parents that I desire, love and legitimately would like to have more than one favourite person in my life from now on? Will those around me perceive and treat me differently now – the neighbors, the buddies in the soccer club, my friends? And now that I maintain different relationships…– how do I manage to express my needs therein in a good way – and at the same time respect those of others? How do I manage not to be crushed between all the requirements, those that my normal environment already places on me, the additional needs of several partners – AND my own demands concerning myself? How is it possible to give all participants their appropriate rights in a multi-person network – and can this be achieved at all on an ad hoc basis between people who, in terms of time availability, geographical proximity and their own resources (and their own commitments and life plans), add to the equation quite different prerequisites?
And what is all that inside me: Is it my good intuition that guides me in my decisions, my speech and my actions – or are those old traumas of my past that want to lead me astray? What suddenly conjures up these fears in me, where do sensations of envy, neglect, jealousy, abandonment, misunderstanding, being excluded and – despite all the abundance and busyness – occasional emptiness and burn-out come from?

Those who choose ethical non-monogamy – that is, multiple partnerships with mutual consent, approval, informed consensus, eye level, and a high degree of sincerity – will almost always carry such questions within them. Their answers, however, do not appear automatically – regardless of whether we already have several partners yet, or not. And it is likewise all too human that we – much like the unwilling prophet Jonah² in the whale – at first will try to run from them for a while, or at least to take cover initially: We are simply not as sincere as we would like to be; we try to exert control over the other people involved with misguided benevolence; we are terribly needy and thus allow ourselves to be driven to exposing actions, thereby steam-rolling over our own good reason and over that of others…
Regardless of whether we are already in a relationship or not – such a state feels mighty unpleasant, and simply “somehow not right”.
Instead of heaven on earth, we experience frustration. Frustration, which – as I already described in my Depression-Entry 22 is “an experience of (actual or perceived) disadvantage or refusal that is perceived as an emotional response to an unfulfilled or unfulfillable expectation (disappointment), e.g. due to the failure of a personal plan or to the complete or partial lack of satisfaction of primary and secondary needs.“ And the definition continues: “On the one hand, frustration can lead to a constructive change in behaviour, but often triggers regressive, aggressive or depressive patterns of behaviour.“
So instead of the much-praised “constructive behavioural change”, we are usually far more likely to withdraw from others and/or right into ourselves (regression), to react irritably, annoyed, or angrily to others or to ourselves (aggression) – or even to become paralysed by dejection, hopelessness, exhaustion, or burnout (depression).

This is how it finally appears to us, as Susan Frybort describes it in her poem above: Nothing comes about as we had hoped, it simply cannot be realized – and there is probably no way for such a thing to work anyway.
Maybe it’s not meant to be. Most likely, we probably are not ready yet or badly prepared.

Once, when I myself was stuck in such a “gray space”, someone on a social network surprisingly wrote me the following about it, which helped me a bit to look at my frustration regarding multiple relationships – especially the ones that I have with myself in this regard – a bit more peacefully:

»In your journey there will be „in between times“ of transition. You may feel lost, confused, angry, unseen or empty. Don’t confuse these times of transition as a forever state of being, or of being broken. You are breaking away from what was, creating space to welcome what will be.«

I think that is a very good way of looking at things (and it reminds me additionally in its choice of words of Scott Peck‘s “Phase of Void” in his “Work of Depression”, which I also mention in Entry 22). Because for the relationships we want to have with other people, we first of all can only offer ourselves as we are here and now. That is where we currently are in our very own progress.

And – concerning that – what obstacles we have already overcome! Among the above-mentioned 84 million inhabitants of the Federal Republic of Germany, even many married couples still have inhibitions about kissing in public, many bystanders have inhibitions about witnessing such an expression of attachment (and all these people are by no means all of retirement age…). In many countries of the world a free and independent choice of a partner/lover/mate is still highly unusual – and in some regions the establishment of moral principles is still so rigid that neither male nor female are able to summon up enough courage to explore their own sexuality – and consequently have no idea at all about the sexuality and the emotional life of other genders…
And we? Are standing 10.000 or 0.2% strong on the shoulders of courageous people in our sphere of culture and the freedom offered there, so that we can concern ourselves with thoughts of multiple relationships, Oligo- and Polyamory. What an incredible privilege – and what a great personal achievement: After all, how far we have come for ourselves in our lives, that we were allowed to do this, to discover this aspect of ourselves and that we have discovered it!

And at the same time, of course, there will be critical voices outside and therefore also inside of us, for whom this is nevertheless still rather“insufficient”. That which “hasn’t shown up”, what “never came to be”, perhaps therefore “will never appear”, thus still too often fancies us as predominant.
If only we were more free… We should be more sincere. We should be more authentic. We should have already become much more ourselves. Then we would have been en route already, long since truly “actualized”. If so, we would have already established a fully comprehensive multiple relationship paradise for ourselves years ago. We would have finally…

The Canadian author and movie-maker Jeff Brown writes about this in his book “Soulshaping”³:

»I find any judgments about where individuals should be at by a certain stage of their life without merit. Its like trying to turn this magnificent and complicated journey of self-creation into something simplistic. In real terms, only soul knows the path its here to walk, what its had to overcome, what achievements to measure its progress by. People judge as though they have it all figured out, but their judgments often just smokescreen their own confusion. Are we late bloomers, or on-time growers? This is a private decision. The important thing is that we keep on walking towards a place that feels like home.«

Accordingly, the fact that we are “already” “here” at all is for each one of us a completely outstanding development. Despite very different starting points, we all have approached this extraordinary universe of multiple relationships. A universe by which we confront ourselves time and again with the most fundamental questions about who we are. With questions about how we relate – both to ourselves and at the same time to those who also have, had – or should obtain – a special place in our hearts and in our very existence.
To me, that looks like healing.
And it has the shape of possibility.

Hold on bright child,
there is more than
what never appeared…

¹ “Look to the Clearing: Poems to Encourage”, Enrealment Press 2021

² The Bible, Book of Jonah, esp. chapter 2:1-11.

³ North Atlantic Books; Original Edition 2009

* Solid numbers on how many people in the population are statistically polyamorous – or even live that way – remain scarce:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1363460718779781 (Survey covering the USA 2018)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8023325/ (Survey covering the USA 2021)

Thanks to Frauke Riether on Pixabay for the photo!

Love. Separate. Repeat.

Ingo has to hurry. He certainly has a lot of catching up to do, having recently been released from prison where he served five years for copyright piracy. That’s why he’s now plunging right into life. Because also in matters of relationships and love, of course, things haven’t been going anywhere in the past. Today, the next best pub is therefore immediately good enough for Ingo. Feverishly, he lets his searching gaze wander over those people present. The pressure to make up for the time lost is intense, Ingo is accordingly nervous, he already can feel sweat on his tense face – hectically he strikes a match for a quick cigarette, which is supposed to loosen his initial inhibitions at least a little. A few seconds later, in barely three hasty breaths, he has already inhaled his fag, because at last his restless glance has fallen upon a single unescorted lady at the bar, whom he immediately approaches with determined steps. Without delay, he initiates eye contact and addresses the surprised woman straightforwardly: “Hello, I’m Ingo…”; and at the same time, his stare literally absorbs all the features of her face in fractions of a second: Quickly he scans her hair, her well-proportioned face, the bright eyes, the shapely lips, her shining teeth. And in the same fractions of a second Ingo also has made up his mind, adding to his greeting: “…I love you, I want to have a child with you!” Therefore he puts on his most engaging flirting face, so that his amazed counterpart, speechless but amused, is visibly entertained by this brilliant pick-up line. But the matter is very serious to Ingo. He knows he has broken the initial ice, now it is high time to let things become committed: “Well, now that we’re going to have children together…, I wanted to ask you…, will you marry me?” he continues, looking faithfully into the now increasingly perplexed face of his chosen lady. The latter must visibly struggle to even find her voice for a somewhat appropriate answer – a tension that Ingo, in his haste and compulsion to achieve, can no longer endure. His whole body tingles and vibrates. Almost thrown off his game by this, he virtually snatches the glass of beer that the bartender is about to serve out of that man’s hand and downs it in a few gulps. In doing so, a terrible thought seizes him: Things are not going as he had expected! And without delay, he also informs his still-surprised beloved of this discomfort: “Well, you know, I think we really should have a talk about our relationship…” By now his entire body has been seized by rising nervousness and his bladder relentlessly calls; uttering “I’ll be right back!” Ingo flees in a flash to the men’s room, even before his potential sweetheart is able to object with a single further remark. Emptying the troubled bladder, barely hitting the flush, closing the fly, it’s almost one continuous action nonstop. For Ingo is already back at the bar next to his intended fiancée, but his thoughts have started to darken. “Look, this can’t go on, I mean, lately we just haven’t had anything to say to each other…” he confronts her about her quietness in the past few moments. And finally, she manages to break the silence: Now, wait a minute…!” she tries to object, irritated. But with that she now hits the completely wrong side of Ingo: “No, it’s too late, don’t try to stop me!” he blurts out with bitterness, “There’s just too much that’s broken between us!” A terrible reality, of which he himself also becomes completely aware right in those seconds. And thus he consequently finishes: “It’s over, bye!” – and he ends this whole unsuccessful relationship initiation, which again has yielded him no success. It’s only a few instants, but then he can already be heard again – somewhere in the background, obviously already relentlessly on his way to a new target: “Hi, I’m Ingo, I love you…!”

You can find the corresponding video clip HERE (Link to YouTube) [Only German version available]

This informational short film lasting just 44 seconds including credits (!!!) was once produced by Zukunft Kino Marketing GmbH [Future Cinema Marketing GmbH] at the beginning of the current millennium in order to warn in a funny as well as reflective way about the consequences of criminal actions.

However, I believe that for this kind of depicted neediness (and the resulting mania) no crime or even a long prison sentence is required, but that we can all find ourselves unexpectedly and rather mundanely at some point in Ingo’s shoes; and that most of us (hand on heart) have probably already experienced ourselves – or concerning another person close to us – how we have slithered through an “Ingo-relationship”. “Relationships,” in other words, that like a kind of fast-forward lasted in this way perhaps only a few weeks or months.

But especially “we”, who identify with a philosophy of ethical multiple relationships, are, in my view, more challenged than the followers of a normal-mononormative¹ relationship initiation when dealing with this phenomenon.

Why? Because we are more confronted with that risk?
I don’t believe that, because in a mononormative¹ world ( in spite of the noble assertions to the contrary) there is no safeguard against such seriality, too. And that’s why the clip also works in the cinema: Ingo, that’s the eternal seeker; one who always slips into one romantic entanglement after the next, only to find himself – after he thinks he has just unravelled the last thread – once again standing in front of a pile of shreds. Self-generated shreds, caused by careless activity due to impulsiveness and an enormous high pace as a result.

I fear, however, that “for us multiple relationship supporters” both the imponderability of collateral damage is much higher, and even more so the danger of profoundly messing up the values that underlie our relationship philosophy in such a way. Which, in both cases, will ensure an equally profound hangover to our disadvantage – from which we ourselves will suffer the most.
Apart from that, we of the “multiple-relationship people” still have to work against a perception gap in society as a whole, which still assumes that we, who for example occasionally adorn ourselves with the term “multiple love” (Poly-Amory), that Ingo probably represents the prime example of such multiplicity in love: Constantly on the move from blossom to blossom, always needy, never constant, never “satisfied with only one partner”, permanently “on the go” and thus not patient enough to offer depth and scope to a true relationship…

So what is it about “Doing the Ingo”?

Since I have just recently committed an “Ingo” myself, I would like to draw on my own experience with it – and at the same time I would like to acknowledge that the creators of the above-mentioned cinema spot were quite precise in their knowledge of human nature as well as in their talent for observation, which enabled them to capture quite a few all-too-human aspects in the short amount of time they did cover.

For example, when I meet a person, I know for myself relatively quickly whether it is “love” as far as I am concerned. For many other people, however, this is quite astonishing, especially how “quickly” I can claim an asset like “love” for myself while still largely unaware of the other person.
On this bLog, however, I have already described (Entry 67) that I consider “love” for myself as a kind of energy; an energy, in a way, that flows from me to the other person. For this purpose, so that this energy will flow from me, it requires a – as I usually say – “sublimely metaphysical component”, which in my opinion roughly corresponds to the “spark of infatuation” and is composed on my behalf of an olfactory-haptic-energetic overall sensory impression plus a “feeling of familiarity” regarding my counterpart (by the way, I interpret most of this mainly as an indication of my [heightened] sensitivity).
Even if it is somewhat exaggeratedly satirized in the short clip: This approach also seems to be inherent to Ingo. He has met an interesting person, very quickly his senses have gathered an overall impression – and something inside him says “Yes”. And since he perceives this inner “Yes”, he can consequently also express “I love you” on his behalf, since this indicates to him that he can now enter into a “process of initiating a relationship”.
At this point I have much sympathy for Ingo, since I too would never be able to get involved in such a process with any person in whom I would not a) be strongly interested and for this b) feel extremely high sympathy, affection, fondness, goodwill – call it what you will, I call it love.

In the same sentence, however, when he nimbly attaches the question of procreation to his confession of love, Ingo strays onto an unfavourable path. And it is right there already, where – in my opinion – the greatest part of the drama that follows lies hidden: Ingo obviously already has his own, quite determined plans.
This is fatal in several ways. Because with that, he immediately knocked over a whole shelf full of solid multiple relationship values. Transparency (his counterpart did not know anything about his plans until now), consensuality and mutual agreement (Ingo has obviously already made completely autonomous decisions for all parties involved), eye level and equality (Ingo has apparently already established himself as the authority who is allowed to make these announcements) as well as responsibility (which, especially for such profound and long-term decisions in a relationship, should in any case be a multilateral responsibility for the entire relationship). On top of that – and to quote my Entry 19 – Ingo has already completely left the area of the only important moment at the beginning of any getting-to-know-each-other, which is the “Here & Now”. By which he has unaware just lost his openness and flexibility for what could happen right from the moment of his self-revealing confession of love.
In an unfortunate move, Ingo, in order to present himself as a potentially good partner and companionship person (and certainly to emphasize it), gambles away several other (multiple) relationship qualities that he probably possesses: He tries to show his readiness for a long-term commitment at an early stage and thus his willingness to engage intensively in the relationship – thus also claiming the important value of loyalty.

Only…., at the relevant point in time, there is no relationship in a proper sense yet! Ingo confuses his inwardly felt positive declaration of intent already with the entirety which still has to be built in the future. An “entirety”, to which he then could contribute, but which as is known only becomes an entirety through the sum of its parts (with shares therefore, which will not only be his alone).

Ingo’s counterpart thus also does not get a chance to experience the moment with Ingo unrestrictedly in the “Here & Now” – and to explore from there how the further (joint?) journey could possibly proceed. Ok, in favour of Ingo are his wit, his rather forthright sincerity, and certainly his ambitions for a sustainable long-term relationship. But there is also an “obscured” part of him, in which he is in a way patronizing and inflexible. And in this part, his own needs are almost the only decisive ones. In front of himself Ingo can probably justify this very easily with his already wasted life time; “good reasons” therefore probably for him – which, in turn, are not known to the other side and therefore make his behaviour seem all the more difficult to predict ( on our “good personal reasons”, which do not always have to be so “good” for the others, see in detail Entry 11).
A need that has not been met for a very long time can furthermore easily even develop trauma energy, out of which a person can be perceived all the more as somehow driven and additionally quite inflexible, since long accumulated trauma energies have created real “highways” in the network of pathways of our inner nervous system, from which an “exit” can only be found by great effort, consciousness and more often only with outside assistance.²

Ingo’s counterpart reacts to this ambivalence with corresponding puzzlement. And Ingo senses this instinctively: The “thing is not going as expected”.
But now that Ingo has ventured far ahead with his “declaration of love”, his “inner controller” reacts to this ambivalence with uncertainty and fear – whereby this entity has all too easy a game due to Ingo’s highly nervous tension.
A stirring rational part even tries to gain the upper hand once again for a brief moment, when the sentence “…talk about our relationship…” somewhat irritably bursts out of him. Yes, he even tries, because he can hardly bear his own tension any more, to get some kind of additional “time out” (the toilet break).
But unfortunately, he has long since passed the right moment to hold his horses (e.g. to give the other person enough time or to listen himself). Since in this way he receives no further (helpful or appeasing) information for himself, he remains trapped in the racing whirlpool of thoughts of his own inner workings, which from now on only drags him further down.

Back at the bar, all his limits are altogether transgressed: From his point of view, Ingo did not experience any accommodating gestures from his counterpart; on the contrary, he was able to read uncertainty and indecisiveness there. Since he himself claims admission and loyalty as important values, he registers “nothing” of the kind on the other side. His initially felt confidence to meet a companion who is sympathetically familiar to him and therefore somehow similar, crumbles at the same pace as his inner critic whispers to him that with this potential partner all other longed-for goals such as a relationship or children will certainly not be achievable (otherwise there would have been certainly a storm of approval by now…).
Indeed, it’s “too late”. By his muddled demeanour, Ingo has conjured up exactly the fears about himself that have been throbbing in a hidden place inside him all along, and made them “come true”: His fear of being left on the shelf, of not being seen as a whole person, of being rejected on sight.
Ingo leaves in frustration, and if he does not succeed in revealing his own hidden motives, he will probably soon be driven by them to make another foolhardy attempt.

In his book “Hearticulations” (Enrealment Press 2020), the Canadian author and moviemaker Jeff Brown wrote:

»Love can happen in a split second. Bondedness can’t. That’s the thing we learn the hard way. That love is not the end of the story. It’s just the first chapter.
The next chapters demand that we acknowledge our wounding, clear our emotional debris, strengthen our capacity for attachment, learn how to authentically relate, mature in the deep within.
Chapter after chapter of refining our ability to meet love with a true heart. This is the work of a lifetime. Our opus of opening.
How terrifying.
How delightful.«

¹ mononormative (Adjective): Of or pertaining to the practices and institutions that privilege or value monosexual and monogamous relationships as fundamental and “natural” within society. [Source: Wiktionary.org]

² How trauma energies can cause us to be biased and inhibited I describe, for example, in my Jealousy-Entry 36.

Thanks to Alex Voulgaris on Unsplash for the photo!

And thanks to prilstrudel at YouTube for submitting the short film.

Disarmament

»Emotional armor is not easy to shed, nor should it be.
It has formed for a reason: as a requirement for certain responsibilities, as a conditioned response to real circumstances, as a defense against unbearable feelings.
It has served an essential purpose. It has saved lifes.
Yet it can be softened over time. It can melt into tenderness at its core. It can reveal the light at its source.
But never rush it, never push up against it, never demand it to drop its guard before its time.
Because it knows something you don’t:
In a still frightening world armor is no less valid than vulnerability.
Let it shed at its own unique pace.«

These thoughts were shared by the Canadian author and film-maker Jeff Brown in his book “Spiritual Graffiti” (Enrealment Press) in 2015.

I believe that there is a great deal of truth in these words – and I also believe that almost all people who are in some kind of ethical multiple relationship right now can somehow recognize themselves in them.

I write this today in my continued conviction and recognition of the fact that probably no relationship type truly confronts people with their inner-soul potentials as intensely as multiple relationships are capable of doing.

At this point, I must first insert a kind of – how do they say nowadays? – “disclaimer”: I certainly consider dyadic¹ models – and especially the best-known model of mono-amory², the ” one-on-one relationship” – to be basically suitable and very well able to guarantee this in the same way. However, as I have already tried to illustrate in Entry 9 by means of the “car metaphor”, I am quite sure, based on my life experience, that this standard model – due to the often also very standard acknowledgement (or rather: non-acknowledgement) of the pending general terms and conditions applicable to the respective “occupants” – usually tends to avoid an all too intensive consideration of the particular sensitivities of the reciprocal inner states [by which, as it is well known, the explosive power often becomes particularly volatile in the event of a crisis…].

This “safety margin” (which is rather a kind of “ignorance buffer”), does not exist in multiple relationships from the first moment of being established.
Because there are no patterns, no blueprints, on the basis of which the potential participants could simply make a copy of something that already exists or has been experienced. Every step into the relationship – yes, even just the creation of a multiple relationship – is rather challenging and always new.

Somehow a strange thing. A multiple relationship develops (or expands)… This is, after all, for the time beeing, a moment of great joy – which is often equally greeted and cheered by people belonging to a positively minded environment with appropriate congratulations and enthusiasm.
Accordingly, the participants themselves (hopefully) experience this great joy as well. But besides the obstacle course that any non-normative occurrence has to overcome in an otherwise still largely normative world (“Polyamory? Is that something like cheating with permission…?” /“Did you even think about the children…?”), the real challenge for the participants themselves will sooner rather than later be the encounter with their own “emotional armour”.

This is a matter that is seldom brought out in the open. Since on the one hand, those involved in multiple relationships are regularly already under great pressure to justify and to prove themselves (“I knew it from he beginning: Polyamory CAN’T work…!”). Furthermore, the more practical issues frequently dominate and need to be dealt with first and foremost (“On Tuesdays? On Tuesday this week I have yoga until 5 p.m. and then I have to pick up the kids – we’ll have to postpone our joint meeting unless…”). And last but not least, the topic mentioned at the top of this article is extraordinarily personal.

Multiple relationships are based on core values such as openness, transparency and honesty. And to reconcile more than one person and their schedules and needs – and goddess forbid if there are probably more than two! – flexibility is needed as well as “ambiguity tolerance” (explained in Entry 62).
But the word “armor” alone suggests that our openness and flexibility may not be as forthcoming as we would admit to ourselves (or even to others) over a cup of coffee. Even our tolerance is limited by the firm seat of our armor – after all, it was once formed in order to endure the excessive demands of external influences arbitrarily imposed on us by others – but not in order to gain an understanding of them, since that would not have helped or protected us at that time.

But now finally “off into a real multiple relationship”. When this time comes, for many of us a long-cherished wish may come true – and for some, even the admission of this subliminally long-standing wish may be midwife as well as witness to this event. And some of us ” are struck ” simply out of the blue and a new world emerges in us, which may not have been born until these new people arrived, because it was only through this meeting that this world was born…³
Whatever the case. On this bLog – as being highlighted by my Oligoamory – I formulate multiple relationships as a synthesis of intimate loving relationships and community building. To this end, I hereby promote the model of self-chosen “kin” (family of choice) as companions with whom we wish to share our lives (esp. Entry 5, Entry 34, Entry 55). In essence, therefore I am concerned with nothing less than establishing jointly our self-created “home”, wherein each person can also be “at home” within him*herself.

However, in his book “Hearticulations” (Enrealment Press 2020), Jeff Brown adds:

»You can’t run away from home. Because you bring it with you everywhere you go.
There can definitely be value in escaping to another geography – but you will still have to go back down the path and reclaim your childhood. Because it s still alive in you, still dictating your relational patterns, still controling your choices.
It must be owned. It must be confronted. It must be healed.
And until it is, it’s still the place you live.«

My childhood? The place where I still live? How could that be true?

In the US science fiction television series “Deep Space 9“ from 1993, there is a highly interesting sequence in the debut episode:
In his first adventure, one of the protagonists of the series encounters a species of alien beings who live eternally and therefore do not know the factor “time” as an ever-progressing phenomenon – for them, everything that is, exists in a perpetual state of oneness. For an understanding with the otherworldly beings this is unfavourable at first. Because from their point of view, the aliens perceive the protagonist as erratic, self-centred and unpredictable, since they do not understand that his actions are due to his linear existence “in time”. Nevertheless, the protagonist finally succeeds in establishing communication: He explains to the alien beings that we humans are subjected to exactly this linear existence by our biology of being born and death – which in particular also affects our acting, thinking and planning. To illustrate this, he chooses the analogy of a game, which is subject to fixed rules, but where the exact course of events cannot be predetermined. As a contrast to the alien beings, who seem somewhat rigid and rather passive in their “eternalness”, the protagonist explains the curiosity and flexibility of the humans precisely by their linear nature: Because the “course of the game” is not fixed, surprise, curiosity and agility towards what might come are thus typical characteristics of our species.
The extraterrestrials are able to understand this explanation quite well, although the concept is, of course, very much in contrast to their own kind of existence. Then they suddenly discover something astonishing in the psyche of our protagonist – and immediately they confront him with that scene, which they promptly put before his eyes: He himself, in a burning spacecraft that is falling apart, unable to pull his dying wife out from under a contorted steel girder. Our protagonist is horrified and says that this is a terrible incident of his past and that he wants to get away from it immediately. The aliens, on the other hand, are puzzled and ask him why he would still exist there so much on an emotional level. At this moment, the protagonist realizes that, at least in our minds, there are places that are “non-linear”, frozen time, trauma-places of vulnerability and exposure from which we have not yet been able to break free.

It is precisely these “places of vulnerability and exposure” that Jeff Brown is referring to when he says that we “still” live there. Unredeemed soul places that continue to influence our present intentions and relationship dynamics with their forces of disregard, loneliness, powerlessness, helplessness, humiliation and even violence. Are still able to take influence – because in some way they have not yet terminated inside of us.
Unfortunately, however, also places that because of the choices we have made (or not made – but, strictly speaking, these are choices, too) we still consider to be “our home”.
Third-party-induced disregard, loneliness, powerlessness, helplessness, humiliation and violence of the past therefore still “live” inside us today – and thus, strictly speaking, they are already waiting for those people whom we will foreseeably invite into our lives, into “our world”.

Which will be the point at which multiple relationships can become a severe distortion of the “more than the sum of its parts” I otherwise so eagerly propagate on this bLog – far more dramatic than any mere couple relationship of just two people.
Especially when we enter into multiple relationships out of an unconscious desire not to be alone “at home” any longer with those other unpleasant “room-mates” of our past. Already in Entry 58 I caution against using other people for personal gaps in one’s need-fulfilment in order to increase the degree of one’s own well-being by means of such a stunt.
In fact, this way, it will be much more likely to confirm the old Polyamory axiom: “Want more drama? Add more people!”.

In order to clean up our own house we need – as I wrote in numerous Entries – awareness, the willingness to look closely and above all a lot of courage. At best, other people may be able to support us in this, but the work itself remains entirely and nonetheless ours alone.

Today, as I myself am on the verge of a new beginning in terms of multiple relationships (again), I probably can’t present you, my dear readers, with a redeeming punch line.
However, I wanted to share with you in this article the wisdom in the words of Jeff Brown, as his opening remark holds for me an important key in this matter: Specifically, the acknowledgement of the existence of our armor and the recognition of the respective nature and origin of that armor.
Because we did not put on the aforementioned armor (and we know this very well in our hearts) out of arrogance, vanity or self-aggrandizement. So, therefore, our loved ones have also not done this accordingly with theirs.
Consequently, in our (multiple) relationships we will always encounter each other in a certain degree of still existing “armament”, because a part of our world, of “our home” – in the words of Master Brown – is still sufficiently “frightening” to us. In fact, the beginning of a multiple relationship itself may even include or add quite a bit of “fright” on top of that – depending on the nature of our own unredeemed moments of inner vulnerability and exposure.
Hence, pressure, rushed action or expectations are the worst approaches here in any case.

But what gives us hope for disarmament?
I think this is our love. Or, if you prefer, one size smaller at the beginning of a relationship: our infatuation.
Because somewhere there, at this beginning, there must have been that moment when our counterpart – even if only for a small moment – showed him*herself vulnerable, lowered shield and armor, so that we were able to perceive the “light at its source”.
And it was exactly this light that attracted us, fascinated us; the light in which we could already recognize the affection and connection of our souls for a brief moment.

If the writer Henry David Thoreau is right that “love must be both a light and a flame”, then it will be that same flame that shall melt the core of our armor into gentleness.
Let us therefore allow ourselves and each other time for redemption.
At our own unique pace.

¹ dyadic = referring to a system of two units (which also consists exclusively of those two units).

² On this bLog I use mono-amory/monoamory as a deliberately opposite phrase to the term “Polyamory“. Since “Polyamory” is composed of ancient Greek πολύ poly “many” and Latin amor “love” and therefore denotes “many loves” or “loving many”, “monoamory” (composed of ancient Greek μόνος monos “one/single” and Latin amor “love”) stands for the love towards only one other person. For example, one manifestation of mono-amory is marriage = monogamy.

³ And thanks again to Anaïs Nin (diaries 1929–1931) for this wonderful quote!

Thanks to 4317940 on pixabay.com for the photo!

Trains always arrive at your station. The question is which one to take?*

A few weeks ago, after three years almost to the day, it happened: Oligotropos has officially rejoined the world of multiple relationships in person!
That it took two Corona years and a Russian invasion to get there…– well, let’s put these facts under “irony of fate”. Likewise, that the first shared date promptly had to be postponed because of the unexpectedly approaching hurricanes “Ylenia” and “Zeynep”…
Stormy times, on the other hand, are a good keyword for today’s Entry, because we only needed two dates before we had our first minor relationship(formation) crisis – tempest in paradise.
What had happened?
Well, since my bLog is about Oligoamory, which I consider to be a subtype of Polyamory – and if you like, also about Polyfidelity¹, since by using the prefix “oligo-“ I am promoting the participation of rather few relationship participants – I could first of all invoke good old Scott Peck, who, as far as community-building processes were concerned, always stated that a first phase of harmony in relationships would inevitably be followed in the next step by a so-called “chaos phase” in which the egos of the participants would merrily clash with each other (first quote on this bLog Entry 8).

This realisation in advance I would like to encourage all multiple relationships that are perhaps in some kind of clinch right now: Don’t panic – maybe you have just entered (once again) a “chaos phase”.
Did I say “once again” ? Yes, I have, also in agreement with the brilliant Scott Peck, who stated that in every existing relationship or community structure, the chaos phase must be periodically revisited after a span of harmony – and therefore would also occur (whether one wants to or not). Scott Peck added, however, that subsequent “chaos phases” would usually (but by no means always…) turn out to be less violent than the first ego collisions, especially those of the early stages and the shaky founding period.
As a particular comfort, I would like to mention that Scott Peck also implied that, in comparison, a conflict-free relationship was probably the less favourable indicator concerning the degree of familiarity with each other, since regular chaos phases were unambiguous characteristics of a deepening community-building process; relationships which, on the other hand, appeared outwardly harmonious all the time were most likely structures in which the expression of individual diversity of the participants was suppressed in some way.

What actually had happened here with me, with us, in this specific case?
I, Oligotropos, had shared a private matter about the favourite person already by my side with the newly joining favourite person. Either way, this was not exactly a fine move at all and therefore certainly not the wisest manoeuvre, as I had not even asked the favourite person at my side about the current nature and extent of this matter.
Therefore, strictly speaking, I was already operating at this point in the realm of my own assumptions, which, as we know from “Nonviolent Communication (NVC, Entry 20)”, is highly unfavourable because by doing so we render the person concerned powerless – and usually this alone opens up a path into conflict.
“If you know that so well, Oligotropos, why did you do it anyway?”
Very good question. I think that when I look back at the turmoil in my unfolding relationship several days ago, the main motivation on all sides turned out to be “fear” in terms of “insecurity”.
I, for example, was unsure about my existing favourite person and his/her possible reactions. And so I tried, in a way manipulatively, two things: On the one hand to get the new favourite person on my side (a behaviour, by the way, that can be observed regularly in many families and established groups of friends – which is called “taking prisoners” by trying to secure supposed supporters for one’s own position among the existing bunch of people at an early stage, e.g. à la “Tony, you also said the other day that Mira is always a bit sloppy in the kitchen; surely you agree…”) – on the other hand, and more importantly for me, I hoped that the information would prevent my new favourite person from behaving in a way towards my existing favourite person so that I would be put in a stressful situation afterwards. To sum it up, pure narcissistic self-protection of the brand “I don’t want to feel pain / Don’t hurt me”.
At this point it is even more striking how deeply I was already caught in a world of my own resentimental assumptions: I attempted an interception for a possible – but also perhaps not possible – behaviour with regard to a circumstance that had not yet manifested itself and which might have never occurred at all. So my mind was already trying to play a card out of a triggered fear that maybe a circumstance would arise “exactly as I had experienced before”. Which is the core essence of a “resentment” concerning which I last explained in Entry 70 (but also significantly in Entry 36) that our mind is always unfortunately only able to provide us with a very inaccurate copy of a painful experience from our past as a blueprint for possible expected circumstances, especially when there is any room for ambivalence.
And on top of that, this works all the worse the less established evidence of trust we can muster as a counterbalance for comparison – which is why something like this will regularly hit us hardest at the beginning of new relationships.

At the same time, by performing this foolhardy piece of clumsy two-way diplomacy, I hoped that I had taken sufficient precautions for potential incidents between my two favourite people, which is unfortunately a common dilemma of “people in the middle ” (therefore sometimes called “hinge partners” ) on in-between positions in multiple relationships – because they can quickly fall prey to the belief that they have the most decisive obligation regarding harmony in the overall relationship (only to, as we have seen above, cause disempowerment once again, which usually does a disservice to all sides).
Hence, Scott Peck’s first sentence in his chapter “Chaos” is indeed appropriate: “Chaos always arises from well-intentioned but misplaced attempts to remedy or change the others.” I had tried both – and even aimed at a future that would possibly not happen at all….

Through my blurry move, I now passed my original fears (“I don’t want to feel pain / Don’t hurt me.” ) on to my new favourite person. Accordingly, the latter intuitively and correctly did not appreciate the already somewhat patronising protective aspect in my actions, but immediately perceived in them the intrusive as well as disempowering limitation of one’s own freedom of action. And since I had also included a detail about my other favourite person in my clumsy communication, my new arrival’s distress and drama alarm about the state of agreement in my existing relationship was also triggered. Which, again, was not such a big surprise, since the new joining person, couldn’t yet fall back on a sufficiently established basis of trust from shared experiences, either, as far as I or I or my other favourite person was concerned.
What happened, however, was that the “anxiety train” I had set in motion was now in turn re-dressed inside my new favourite person with his/her own resentments ( in other words: roughly matching previous experiences): Since this person saw herself as someone who would have less relational experience than me, she took my initiative as an attempt to assign her – as a “junior partner” so to speak – an already predefined, narrowly delimited place with only minimal agency within the unfolding relationship structure. As our relationship was just beginning, this fear intensified that there was potentially no room at all for individual relationship development in dyadic terms (= as a relationship of two only between her and me) and that she felt exposed to the decisions of my already existing relationship – including an unilateral termination of the relationship (= effects of hierarchical polyamory, unicorn status and couple privilege² in their worst manifestations, so to speak).

In times of fast messenger services, something like this can take on a remarkable dynamic, e.g. when, as happened in our case, both my existing partner and of course I were then confronted with this concern by text message and a request for resolution (among us as a couple!).
This message came out of the blue and struck my long-term companion (not a very good starting position for a potential conflict…) and even I had to sort out between sad surprise (How could my good intentions have been SO misunderstood?) and surging anger (And how could anyone perceive me, Oligotropos, in SUCH a way in the first place?) while everything was actually blowing up in my face.
Of course, the favourite person at my side was also upset at how s/he was so unexpectedly branded as part of a hegemonic privileged couple – and it didn’t exactly help that the person concerned could thereby conclude razor-sharp that there had to exist somewhere in the gradually unravelling chain of events an element of information of which he had hitherto been the only one probably not to know…
And with that, the “anxiety train” reached the next station, where another resentment refurbishing took place: For my existing partner, the information gap – according to a failed previous relationship – was exactly a sign of being locked out and not taken seriously, which in turn caused her warning light to signal that probably an information bubble had already formed between “the new lady and me”, from which she herself in turn was cut off, and even more: that my new potential companion was probably not really interested in her as a person anyway…

Which meant that through my hasty panic diplomacy I had conjured up exactly that scenario that I had originally wanted to prevent; classic drama including bad feelings and negative vibes on all sides.

Quite a fitting image concerning that regard seems to me the song “Sieben” ³ by the pagan folk group “Faun”, which describes a kind of conjuration between two people who – apparently close – consider to enter into a relationship with each other. At first, things are offered, promises are made. In the course of the song, however, the quality of the incantation gradually changes from a pledge rather to a kind of banishment. At the end it even says: “In your world I would be wrong – and you would lay my ring around my neck […]; Seven steps are seven too much – paths lead on without a goal”.
This almost archetypal song seems exceedingly wise to me.
Sometimes there are only seven steps between us – but even these “seven steps” are already too far for our resentments and our fears – which want to claim that the present situation cannot be trusted.

So what can we do – especially when we are in the early stages of a relationship – and we are tempted for a (sometimes lengthy) moment to believe the voices that want to suggest to us that there is no basis of trust towards the other at all?
What helped me – and what helped us in the end?

The most important thing for me – apart from a quick reflection on how this “railway” could come about at all – was to consciously get off my own anxiety train. But at the same time to recognise that the train of fear is nevertheless there: “Hey, yeah, Oligotropos, you are afraid, you are insecure, you are currently quickly scared that you could still lose this new tender relationship.”
This admission has helped me enormously – also because it has supported me in finding out how and where I had deviated from my straight path of feeling, thinking and acting, preferring to chase after the crazy tricks of a frenzied “what-if” scenario. That anxiety train in me is still there, the relationship simply hasn’t been in my life long enough for anything else.
But as the Buddhist sifu Shi Heng Yi once said “Real freedom means not having to give in to every thought within me.” And that is an important message for my anxiety train: He’s allowed to be there – but I no longer have to let him race out of my station with a belly full of blazing coals. This enables me to show my other favourite people much better what is inside me – and that there is also this fear. But when I do this in such a comprehensible way – and stay with myself – I am perceived and received with compassion and empathy.

What also helped me enormously was to follow the famous Indian proverb and “put myself in the others’ moccasin for once”. This enabled me to enter their “stations” as far as I was able and to recognise how, with my own insecurity, I had above all passed on precisely this insecurity (and not my rather haphazardly interwoven communication), which could then only too easily manifest itself further in the respective fears of the others. And I could realise that in the capacity of the basic trust that had not yet been established, we were literally “all in the same boat” – in a way that none of us had any supposed advantage or disadvantage because of this. And above all, it made me realise that, regardless of this, there was no reason at all to distrust any of the others.

All the more, through the confrontation that inevitably followed, I once again learned even more to assume responsibility for myself and accountability for my actions. In Entry 11, I blog about the good reasons that underlie our respective personal and situational actions. And it’s all understandable for ourselves; we should know ourselves – and our motives (yes, also and especially the not so linear ones…) – best of all.
But if we have caused confusion and even pain among the other parties involved, then we do not have to go through all these with the other participants in detail, and if only because we would like to be understood therein quite properly. After all, perhaps we are only trying to establish for ourselves in some kind of argument that we could not really have acted any other way. But it is much more important that we ourselves realise that, despite all our own well-known good reasons, we were not at all forced to act in exactly the outlined way. And sometimes it was simply a not so wise decision to let our own train leave the station, out into the wide world, loaded with old fear, situational insecurity and premature distrust. That such a cargo out there would produce anything beneficial was rather unlikely after all.
But such a train, which will soon grow into a veritable convoy with many carriages, has only one track – and in the end it only leads collectively down into the abyss.
So if “freedom means not having to give in to every thought within me”, then it is better to leave the station building in good spirits and – instead of the one unforgiving track – to see the many other paths that exist outside of it, and to be attentive afresh at every crossroads to discover whether something is really going to happen as we would expect.

* Quote by Mehmet Murat İldan, Turkish author and P.E.N. Member

¹ Polyfidelity is a form of polyamorous non-monogamy in which all members are considered equal partners and agree to extend sexual or romantic activity only to other members of the group. Polyfidelic relationships are ‘closed’ in the sense that those involved can agree not to have sexual or romantic intimacy with anyone who is not part of the relationship. For example, new members may be accepted into the group with the unanimous consent of the existing members, or the group may not be interested in further expansion at all.

² Couple privilege: When an existing couple first explores the idea of polyamory, it can be very tempting to try to retain as many elements of monogamy as possible. The solution, which seems obvious and immediately comes to mind for many, is to find a bisexual woman who has sex with both members of the couple in a faithful threesome relationship. If both have sex with the same person, no one will be jealous, right? If you are faithful and no one is having sex with anyone else, you don’t have to worry about your partner having sex with the whole world, do you? And of course it’s a woman – bisexuality in women is hot, but bisexuality in men is kind of gross, right?
Such legendary bi-women are called “unicorns” and the 1,872,453014 couples looking for them are called “unicorn hunters”. The idea of looking for a unicorn seems perfectly reasonable – but it’s based on a lot of expectations that privilege the existing relationship, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Why? Because almost no thought was ever given to the needs of the ‘unicorn’. She was not part of the conversation – and how could she be? After all, most of the time you haven’t even met her. Deciding in advance what the rules of a relationship are is disempowering. Most importantly, there was usually no thought given to the fact that by demanding this, the original couple relationship becomes hierarchic superior to the relationship with the “unicorn”. The couple determines how much space the “unicorn” is allowed to occupy in the overall relationship.
Privilege is an insidious thing; it is very difficult to think about giving your own existing relationships a bunch of unearned advantages when you are not even aware of what those advantages are. (Text after Franklin Veaux “So What Is Couple Privilege, Anyway?“)

³ Faun: “Sieben” from their album “Totem”, 2007; link to lyrics

Thanks again to Scott Peck and his great book “A Different Drum: Community Making and Peace” (Simon & Schuster, 1987) ISBN 978-0-684-84858-7
and thanks to Thanh Công Tử on Unsplash for the photo!

Indivisible – or: Amidst it all

There’s that old joke about the Zen master at the snack bar who, when asked how many sandwiches he’d like and what their toppings should be, replies, “One with all!”

Which is a beautiful and very oligoamorous answer, as I would like to confirm in this Entry due to recent events – and thereby dedicate my article at the same time to the Buddhist monk, writer and non-violent communicator Thích Nhất Hạnh, who passed away on January 22nd this year.

Because also in January of this year I was once again entangled in one of my explain-brain conversations about Oligo- and Polyamory, which – alas!– was met with only limited appreciation by my counterpart. My interlocutor had listened to my approach to ethical multiple relationships for a while, but finally spoke: “Personally, in a lonely hour, I could perhaps imagine having two men for myself at once, dancing to my tune. But to share even with one (or even more) other women would be unthinkable for me.”

As I do not usually act as a missionary in such matters and grant every human being the right to his*her own opinion in these matters, some time later I smilingly dealt again with this statement on my own – which after all contains some grave indicators of how we still often enough think about our own value, the significance of other people, the specific purpose of relationships and our standing in the world at large. And frighteningly, for the most part, this is still rather violent, as the communication expert Marshall Rosenberg would probably have analysed.
So at this point I could be prompted to remark that it would belong to the very core of ethical multiple relationships never to regard other people as a resource which one needed to seize in order to have them completely “for oneself”. Or that you should never assign the task of “Siri” or “Alexa” to your loved ones in order to have them “dance to your tune”.
In the same way I could also say amusedly that already since the 5th century before Christ in ancient Greece considerations developed that there certainly had to be things in the universe which are “atomic”, which means indivisible. Among which I would count healthy human personalities on the whole. And here on this bLog I have already mentioned that we humans indeed should share several things with each other (e.g. according to Gerald Hüther in Entry 4: our food, our habitat, our attention, our strength, our knowledge, our ability, our experience). Our very “self” on the other hand, there I have always taken a very clear position within my Oligoamory: That should always be as “whole” as possible – and each of our loved ones should be able to depend on experiencing ourselves as “complete”, 100% present and fully invested.

In the upper statement of my former dialogue partner, therefore, also the fear can be heard which so often accompanies thoughts about multiple person constellations in matters of love: to vanish as a valued individual in such a relationship-mingle, to get lost out of beloved eyes, to fall victim to interchangeability and arbitrariness. And with it also the apprehension to become a kind of “resource” oneself, which may contribute to all-round well-being and sunshine if required – but is thrown back alone and into darkness in case of own woe.

And this fear is not absurd or far-fetched. In Entry26, I quote the Swiss relationship researcher and coach Daniel Hess as well as the anthropologist Jean Liedloff, who call this contemporary phenomenon our everyday “reality of separation”. Because in our “normal lives” we all still very predominantly experience that matters are supposed to exist distinctly separated from each other. Yes, “have to” exist like this in order to avoid an elusive, somehow irregular vagueness. This applies to concepts, to property, hierarchies, and thus also relationships. “This” or “that,” “mine” or “yours” – the importance of these categories determines our existence in Western industrial nations from childhood on.
Clever minds like Daniel Hess or Jean Liedloff, however, would like to remind us that these categories are thoroughly artificial, man-made divisions – and that they do not contribute to our well-being in the long run. On the contrary, this artificially constructed “reality of separation” keeps us from our authenticity, from fearlessness, from genuinely assuming responsibility for our lives, indeed, from our full dignity as human beings.
“Division” and “separation” are thus the crutches by which we drag ourselves through our daily lives – eventually through a self-created maze of grey cul-de-sacs.

“Wholeness” would therefore be the much healthier goal – that is, becoming whole et least – or “being” whole at last. The point is to achieve a state of greatest possible contentedness, which I also wish to bring about with my oligoamorous relationships.
Yet we are often afraid of it because we are quick to believe that the price of wholeness might be this very dreaded “getting lost.”
In this respect, the Lebanese-US philosopher and poet Khalil Gibran once wrote the following text¹:

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

Stirring words, to which I would like to say, applied to ethical multiple relationships: It is not a matter of drowning in a tangled thicket of relationships, but rather – once we have decided to do so – to wear our relationship philosophy inside out, to access it for ourselves and to inhabit it like a second skin, to embrace it every day with our whole being.

So we are supposed – in a way – to “be” our relationships? How would such a thing be even remotely possible?
To accomplish this, we have to think our way out of our self-constructed reality of separation – and in my view, no one has expressed this better so far than the Buddhist wisdom teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh mentioned at the beginning of this article.

For the corresponding mindset, he coined the term “inter-being”, which I would rather translate as “being in the midst of” or “being in the midst of” instead of “being in between”.
The term is an approximation of the Vietnamese words tiep hien. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in his book “Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism” (Parallax Press, 1987) that tiep means “to be in contact with” and “to proceed”. Hien means “to realize” and “to do it here and now”.
Indeed, a fundamental Buddhist teaching called Pratityasamutpada, or “dependent arising,” states that all phenomena are interdependent.
The essence of this view is that nothing has an independent existence ( in agreement with which I already contradict Osho in Entry 8). Whatever exists comes into being because of factors and conditions created by other phenomena.
Thích Nhất Hạnh devoted his whole life to Mahayana Buddhism, in particular to a school of thought that is called “Madhyamika“ – in a sense the “middle way” – and which is mainly concerned with the nature of existence.
The Madhyamika states that nothing has an intrinsic, permanent self-nature. Instead, all phenomena – including beings (and, of course all people) – are temporary confluences of conditions that take identity as individual things from their relationship to other things.

Complicated? In Entry 57, I choose a baby rattle as a symbol for this synergy – Barbara O’Brien, an expert on Zen Buddhism, chooses a plain wooden table to illustrate this:
»It is an assembly of parts. If we take it apart piece by piece, at what point does it stop being a table? If you think about it, this is a completely subjective perception. For example, one person might assume that there is no longer a table as soon as it can no longer be used as a table; another person, on the other hand, might look at the pile of wooden parts and still recognize the table in it: “That’s just a disassembled table…”
The point is that the mere arrangement of the parts doesn’t actually have an independent table-nature; it’s a table because we think it is one. “Table” is in our minds. A species other than us might recognize in the collection of parts food or a hiding place or merely something to mark territory.« ²

In his book, “The Miracle of Mindfulness” (Beacon Press, 1975), Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote that “people intentionally cut reality into different compartments and are therefore unable to recognize the interdependence of all phenomena. In other words, because we think of ‘reality’ as a lot of discrete objects, we don’t consider how they actually interconnect.
But when we perceive interbeing, we see that not only is everything interconnected; we see that all is one and one is all. We are ourselves, but at the same time we are all each other.”

Thích Nhất Hạnh’s wisdom – or rather his clever Buddhist interpretation of these over 800-year-old ideas – is thus in excellent company, by the way:
Not only in that of my favourite early modern philosopher Anthony Ashley Cooper in Entry 64, who for his part stated during the 17th century in an almost ecological manner that “a single being as a ‘private system’ is always likewise integrated into ‘more comprehensive systems’, whereby the systems support one another and thus stand to each other and likewise to the totality in a relationship of all-round beneficial interaction.”
But also in that of Mahatma Gandhi‘s famous reverse conclusion: “You and I are one: I cannot hurt you without hurting myself” (first quoted here in Entry 54).
However, equally in quite modern contexts such as that of Holism (Entry 57), which states that “natural systems or even non-natural, e.g. social systems and their properties are to be considered as a whole and not merely as a composition of their parts, and therefore could not be fully understood from the interaction of all their individual parts, and that the determination of the individual parts depends on their functional role in the whole” (definition Wikipedia Germany).
Or likewise – to arrive completely in our cutting-edge present time – in accordance with the “theory of complex-adaptive systems“, which are indispensable for computer and AI research. Which exactly are considered complex because they consist of several interrelated elements and that they are adaptive by showing a particular capacity to adjust to their environment – thereby demonstrating the ability to learn from experience.
A cybernetics scientist would probably also include emergence (the possibility of the formation of new properties or structures of a system as a result of the interaction of its elements) and self-organization in this context, which brings us unexpectedly back…
…to the dance floor of multiple relationships, on which, in turn, social scientists attest the greatest sustainability to precisely THOSE communities and relationships that prove to be heterogeneous (= diverse), adaptive, willing to learn, cooperative and mutually supportive.

“Wholeness” or becoming whole are thus absolutely no detached esoteric or merely spiritual concepts. Becoming whole means the greatest possible integration ( involvement) in the sense of the community researcher Scott Peck, who already wrote in 1984:
“Integration does not mean equalizing; it does not result in an overcooked stew. Rather, it can be compared to a salad dish whose individual ingredients retain their identity, only to be highlighted when combined.” ³

So our favourite people, our loved ones and we, we never exist separately, we intentionally form a common whole; their needs are also our needs, from their well-being ours emerges. Or to say it again similar to David Mitchell in his “Cloud Atlas“ : “By every kindness we create our common future with each other.” One with all – and in the midst of it.

¹ Khalil Gibran: “Sand and Foam, Selected Poems”, 1926

² Thanks to Barbara O’Brien; expert on Zen Buddhism and her “Rethinking Religion”-Project, by which she contributed much to my understanding of a complex philosophy.

³ Scott Peck: The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1987) ISBN 978-0-684-84858-7

Thanks to Alex Alvarez on Unsplash for the picture!

Simple is not easy – or: All beginnings are difficult

I had opened the year 2021 with the call to take care in one’s own interest to perceive carefully whenever possible what really IS at the moment – by which I meant that we should not let ourselves prejudge the reality by an immediately executed unconscious step through our very own glasses of fears and resentments.
This reminder has lost none of its meaning with the beginning of this year.

In 2021 (yes, this is the traditional review of the previous year 🙂 ), I started with a three-part series on the topic of what kind of tools would be necessary to lead our close personal relationships as “meaningful” in an oligoamorous sense (Parts 1 | 2 | 3 ): Self-awareness, to consider the other participants (empathy) and tolerance in the face of impulses and perceptions that were not always immediately clearly attributable revealed themselves to be helpful, as did the awareness that in the end we were all – inevitably linked to one another anyway – in the proverbial “same boat”.
Therefore, however, oligoamorous “meaningful relationships” also require a high level of personal quality management, as well as the courage to allow these relationships a scope for development and evolvement, even beyond the traditional limits of common conceptions (“just pals“; “mere friends“, “lovers“…).
Because the resulting liberties and possibilities for experience are thus based on responsibility, commitment and self-dedication, a quasi-organic (relationship-)structure can be created in this way, in which all parts (i.e. the participants!) have an essential personal interest in the success through their interrelatedness and love for each other – and precisely for this reason will contribute within an all-round sustainable framework [sustainability criteria: view last paragraph of Entry 3].
With the following discrimination-Entry 65 I showed last year in this regard, nevertheless, that such a nonconformist, indeed to a certain extent queer philosophy in relationship matters can still regularly encounter rejection and even disparagement caused by fear and incomprehension in the “normal world”.
Also, in order to counter one of the most frequently voiced stereotypes of mono- and hetero-normativity, that multiple relationship constellations would lack the crucial component of “fidelity”, I dedicated an entire Entry to the topic of loyalty, faithfulness and attachment.
And because nonetheless many people still are still concerned about the supposed “openness” of such relationships – certainly implying the participants in them might not be completely sound… – I explained in Entry 67 that openness in Oligoamory consists above all in a systemic freedom of thought – and not at all in the arbitrariness or impulsiveness that some people project into it out of their own suppressed wishful thinking.
Exactly such bashful projections, however, reveal how strongly most of us are (still) wounded in our individual intrinsic value – be it through our upbringing, socialization or tradition. And that is why we all too often react precisely out of these injuries when we are confronted with something new or unusual (Entry 68).
Unfortunately, our best-practiced (self-)protective behaviour in such a case is still often the tendency to crave more control; a control that we are only too easily willing to extend on everyone else around us because “we know what’s good for them” (Entry 69).
Mostly, this protective reflex is triggered when old “life issues” are exposed (Entry 70) – overshooting negative energies that want to poison our loving relationships in the here & now because of suffered shortcomings long ago.
Therefore, I have dedicated Entry 71 once again to Polyamory itself, that form of ethical non-monogamy, which currently, due to the inflationary use of the mere term, gets exactly all the gloating about “system-inherent dysfunctionality”, which, unfortunately, is usually brought in only by those people who try to engage in it thoughtlessly and as they see fit…
However, any “good relationship” thrives on dedication, devotion and a uniqueness that reflects the appreciation of all those involved in it (Entry 72).

And so off we go into 2022 !

Once again (?) we have arrived at a time when many of us long for a “simpler life“ in the face of an often confusing outside world. And legions of coaches seem to be ready to support us in this, covering everything from material minimalism to the development of our higher selves.
Therefore, “alternatives” to our current way of life are called for – and these “alternatives” concern the objects and the living space that surrounds us, our spiritual potential – and just as much: our relationships.
Some of us are really serious about these changes and the transition towards a “simpler life”: So maybe life is rearranged thoroughly, the household is reduced to 100 (or 50? or 30?) items, one moves into a tiny house, if possible solitary (but not lonely!), weekend workshops are attended conducted by energy healers, and… – yes, now our approach to relationships must follow where the rest wants to lead: that, too, should be as simple as possible and also adequately alternative at the same time.

The “simplest” form of relationship in the above consequence would probably be to stay alone. But as a human being we are social beings – and therefore we also have some social needs that have to be fulfilled from time to time, that deserve to be fulfilled – “One cannot kiss alone” – that’s what Max Raabe sang already…¹
So “Polyamory” then, that is, as the advertising knows, three things at once: love, variety and chocolate, uh, nope…, and personal well-being (which as an effect, at least, is roughly equivalent to chocolate…).

If this appears to be too woodcut-like and simplistic to you (and you think: “Ok, I’m polyamorous but I don’t live in a tiny house and my garage is so full of stuff that I can’t even put my car in it anymore…” ), I would like to ask you to consider a phenomenon that I call “lifestyle crossover”. This might represent a lifestyle crossover like for example “Ren-fair- visitor / biker / metalhead / leather-culture” – but it might also be a lifestyle crossover like “Oshofan / peace movement / vegan / permaculture”.
By the way – fun fact – : Nearly all of the “subcultures” just listed also have an increased factor of people in “open relationship models” compared to the statistical “normal population”…
Why is that?
Basically, there is something good hidden here: People who have already “alternatively”, “non-conformably” or even border-crossingly looked over the edge of normativity (the average customary-common) in one area of their lives tend to extend this to other areas of their lives as well. Very often, it’s not so much the urge for “alternativeity” that’s behind it, but simply human curiosity and the desire to explore: For example, I meet someone at the medieval fair whose garb I’m enthralled by – two weeks later, I’m sitting there on the floor of my utility room, surrounded by leather cutouts, designing bold belt pouches and a pair of really hot chaps…. In doing so, I suddenly feel a rush of self-efficacy and think that I am getting more and more in touch with what is really important to me, what I care for and what makes me unique.
What is additionally ingenious is that with these topics, which are suddenly so close to our hearts, we free ourselves almost spontaneously from old beliefs, such as: “Mother always said that riding a motorcycle is for the suicidal…” or “Vegans are freaks…” or “Only destitute people sew their own clothes” or “Allotments and gardening are just for pensioners…”.
Suddenly, we open up spaces and opportunities to ourselves that we might even have walked past formerly with a sniffle – simply because our environment may have once set an example for us in this way.

So what does this have to do with our desire for a “simpler life”?
I believe a lot because we always perceive our lives as “easy” whenever we act out of conviction and self-determination.
If, for example, I no longer consume the medieval fair as an event, but possibly participate properly, then I feel connected out of an inner motivation; perhaps the historical epoch is important to me, the imparting of knowledge – or maybe there is something about it that reminds me that now and then it is good to do many ordinary things again entirely by hand.
Or there is a committed politician who does not let himself be picked up secretly by limousine from the club at night, but openly admits his BDSM inclination during the election campaign – precisely because he wants to highlight the urgent inclusion and entitlement of queer life in his city by personal example.²

Those who have read this far should now understand what I meant by the title of this Entry. Because these determined people really don’t try to make it “easy” for themselves – neither while laboriously practising Viking-Age tablet weaving, nor in facing the consequences that a courageous public outing can have for one’s career.
But if we could ask the acting individuals, then again they would probably tell us that what they are doing or have done “simply” and naturally flows from them. And it is “simple” because it is something that is deeply connected to themselves as a concern – accordingly it “comes easily” to them because they act authentically and without pretence in the process.

In order to be able to live “simply” in this way, one essential component is needed, which is often not at all easy to achieve: awareness.
Consciousness requires a willful and present decision FOR something – which we humans normally like to cheat our way around with somewhat lukewarm approximations.

And our attitude in Ethical Multiple Relationships like Poly- or Oligoamory I consider as quite appropriate examples.
Because, for this, it is not enough to merely decide against monogamy. It is not enough for the assertion of participation to reject another tradition as outdated. The danger with such kind of thinking is that we spend most of our energy on what we do NOT want – and, hand on heart, we humans are usually quite experienced and skilled at that. Rejection – sometimes called “destructive criticism” in educational language – is precisely not “constructive” by nature: It merely expresses that the old, the traditional should be gone, should not be. But what is it that we want for ourselves? What should a mode of relationship that suits us actually look like?

Whoever has nevertheless successfully avoided this process of realization will immediately stumble into the next dilemma in Poly- or Oligoamory – and that is why spectacular accidents occur just as often. Since, multiple relationships seem to us occasionally as promising, because there – in contrast to bad, bad monogamy! – we do not have to decide against one (possibly already existing) love when another love comes along.
But this is almost always just the lukewarm manoeuvring mentioned above again, because it allows us to hold on to our comfort zone without too much mental effort. Because this is where our “weaker self”, which I quoted in Entries 44 and 72, cleverly manipulates us: The “familiar” appears to us all too easily as “the right thing to do”, which allows us to leave many thought patterns and structures in place – but unfortunately this means that we are still much more strongly attached to a majority-led normativity than we would like to admit – and are thus forced to emulate its ideas and concepts far more unreflectively than we suspect. So, actually, we have not changed anything at all, but, strictly speaking, we have merely chosen a non-decision, by which we are almost forced to continue repeating old mistakes and negligences.

But Polyamory, Oligoamory means that we choose our loved ones by a pro-active choice. And that we choose them tomorrow and the next day and time and again. That in this kind of multiple relationship all involved choose each other time and again.
In order to be able to do this consciously, “comfort-zone stretching” will be required in any case, simply because we have to deal with variables such as acceptance and imposition, appreciation and significance, freedom and boundaries (and much more) on a regular basis.
This will probably never be “easy” – and that’s good, because awareness requires the presence of our whole being – sometimes even controversy.
At the same time, it may well be the hallmark of a “simple” – i.e. straightforward and truthful – life to devote oneself to these challenges with loving commitment and attention on all sides of a relationship, precisely because a conscious decision has been made and this part of life is now being embraced with conviction, wholeheartedly and willingly.

And this is also what I would like to bring about with my Oligoamory, especially in times like now, when inner restlessness and New Year’s momentum may drive us to tidying-up actions, where the confirming clatter of the dustbin lid easily drowns out what is actually important: In what is to come “instead”, to set the course with the heart, to follow no fashion, no trend and no supposed “easiness / lightness”; promoted “easiness / lightness”, which today too often conceptually whitewashes superficiality, low sustainability, non-commitment or excursiveness.

Simple is therefore not always light and easy – as well as difficulties do not necessarily imply hardship, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships – or as the Swiss aphorist and politician Ernst Reinhard once put it when asked for a recipe for more peaceful coexistence:
“Serenity accepts life as serious – but not as hard”.

¹ Max Raabe (und Annette Humpe): “One cannot kiss alone“, Decca Records 2011

² As happened, for example, in the 2021 municipal election campaign for the position as Lord Mayor of Göttingen.

Thanks to comfreak on pixabay for the photo!

Fresh out of the pan…*

Our journey through 2021 is coming to an end, so I would like to dedicate my last entry this year to two oligoamorous impulses that I have gained through both my mono-amorous and poly-amorous relationship experiences.

Already in Entry 29 I say what I would almost like to write on every page of my bLog instead of my long Entries, if this could be enough as an essence: “Maintain good relationships!”.

And I am convinced that, strictly speaking, this simple imperative is decisive for every form of trusting, heartfelt personal interaction – no matter how many people are sitting together in the respective relationship-boat in the end.

Most of my readers, like me, probably hail from the “old world of Mono-amory” – and that’s probably where they, too, picked up their first relationship skills.
Thus, at this point, I therefore would like to take up the cudgels for this customary convention.
Because as far as the level of intensity is concerned, there is probably no more pervasive arrangement than that of two people in a 1:1 situation.
Yes, all right – I have heard your thoughts: “…but for better or worse…” – and I also agree with that. But today, perhaps, let us also look upon “better”.

After all, the “romantic dyadic relationship” (= between only two people) is still such a marketable glamour-model because it does not advertise an agreement (which it is in essence!), but an ideal (which it is as well !).
But when it comes to ideals – which I also appreciate very much in my Oligoamory – that’s one of those things… We love the heroic and radiant moments that such a narrative promises – but we are good at ignoring (or at least downplaying…) the necessities that come with it and even more the inevitability of routine that sets in medium term.

However, when agreement and ideal meet, then a relationship between two people can, in a sense, represent the epitome of the “emotional contract“ I so often cite on my bLog: A shared savouring of the totality of the voluntary yielded obligations, self-commitments and care which have been reciprocally contributed.
This – let it melt on your tongue! – is already a lot, tremendously much, and a promise of mutual happiness, well-being and security (including predictability) for those involved.
Potentiated with the romantic motive of the “voluntarily performed self-sacrifice for the sake of the community (here: the relationship – for more details see Entry 34)”, the enormous radiance of such a promise is, so to speak, unsurpassable.

Romantic cover-up, wishful dream glued together with pink cotton candy, reality-defying soap(opera)-bubble?
I want to tell you that I have experienced (and experience every day!) all that I have written in the above paragraph exactly like this in my dyadic relationships.

The investment and commitment of my partners in and towards me was and is gigantic at all times. And completely non-self-evident.
The degree of cooperation, consideration, dedication, devotion, affection, attentiveness, inclusion, yes, involvement (Entry 53), which I have received especially in my long-term relationships, definitely exceeds any scope of common everyday business – and certainly any acclaimed performance level of every otherwise earthly transaction experience.

“Huh, Oligotropos is now comparing his loved ones to mere service providers…?”
Yes, correct, I am doing that to some degree in this way – precisely to show that there must be some sublime metaphysical component involved here that is not present in any other form of interpersonal agreement – which is love.
“Love” which tangibly proves to me in every little everyday gesture of accommodation by my favourite person: I am seen, I am obviously significant concerning the self-image of my counterpart, I thereby experience appreciation for my own self due to my inalienable intrinsic value [which is recognized and appreciated by the other person, oh bliss!], therefore I can dedicate myself here with trust and may further build upon it.

What I have just formulated is indeed SO much need¹ coverage to a human mind that some dangers can arise from this abundance itself.
One is the now well-documented phenomenon known as the “law of diminishing marginal returns,” which the behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman analysed extensively back in 2000² . We all know the phenomenon better as a variation of the “force of habit”, when we no longer consider something positive as special because we experience it on a regular basis. Surveys proved, that even an increase of positivity quickly soon led to a diminishing effect of recurring habituation – and, as we all know, this is not only an economic dilemma, but a real emotional challenge for any close relationship.
Indeed, on the proverbial ” ill days” of our relationships, this makes it too easy to accept the “totality of voluntary yielded obligations, self-commitments and care which have been reciprocally contributed” in our relationship either as an implicitness, an end in itself, or just as profane barter (quid pro quo). And even an (one-sided) effort at positive improvement will all too quickly lead to renewed habituation to whatever is offered.
It is exactly this dilemma that makes many couple therapists rich, since particularly in this critical situation, a mere two-person relationship is often too constricted for its participants to step back far enough on their own to be able to independently recover the inner richness of their companionship. Here, in fact, polyamorous multiple partnerships often have an advantage, because precisely the dynamics of a multi-person constellation with its – simply due to the diversity of those involved – differently pronounced view of the “common core” will not so easily take the “overall well-being” for granted, as can happen with just two people who, already wedged nose-to-nose, abruptly suspect their invested self-interest is on sale.

And this very same “dark side” regarding the “property preservation of the comfort zone” also leads to all the extreme upsurges of e.g. jealousy or envy, if the attempt of opening up a two-person relationship is dared.
All advice literature is full of admonitions about opening up monogamous relationships only when internal conditions are completely stabilized and there is a high degree of mutual agreement – but never to let in the famous “breath of fresh air” when some discontent is already lurking at the edges of the board.
Because: The internal “emotional contract” of a relationship between just two people is almost always a somewhat delicate matter, in that this is usually a subtly balanced and entwined interrelatedness of not always consciously contributed and “enjoyed” elements.
Being a former monoamorist myself, I don’t find that all too objectionable, by the way. Yes, true, unconsciousness is certainly never a helpful quality – and Mono-amory would also benefit from more consciously and fully transparently established relationships. However, since Mono-amory is anyway tailored to only two possible participants, the “all-or-nothing” nature of its conception at this point allows for a possible degree of, um…, lightheartedness, entrusting any unconsciously submitted risk potentials to the resilience of the emerging relationship (which was admittedly awkward – but at the same time also tremendously attractive to the mono-model for centuries…). The result is in any case that well-known dyadic tandem, where two worlds are merged in such a way with each other, that course, speed and stability will inevitably go to the weal as well as to the woe of both riders, whereby on the one hand the intensity of the spent internal synchronization – but on the other hand also the mutual dependency – can become very high.
If now such an arrangement is opened up to new participants, it will inevitably lead to an experience of displacement and asymmetry.
The higher the unconscious parts of compensatory nature (e.g. because of suffered deficiencies during childhood or socialization) are, the higher these displacements are experienced as painful shearing forces regarding one’s own need coverage. In fact, from my point of view, envy (Entry 59) and jealousy (Entry 36) always bring up the perturbing question concerning one’s own “inalienable intrinsic value” (see above).
So if an upcoming (multiple) relationship constellation is experienced primarily as a drain on resources and not as a “community of gain” with a re-established emotional centre of “a totality of voluntary yielded obligations, self-commitments and care which are reciprocally contributed” – then the initially perhaps only “felt” shear forces will soon gain the upper hand in a very real way and cause suffering to all involved up to the point relationship-breakup.

So, as I wrote in the last entry, Poly-amory (and of course Oligoamory) need all of the above at any rate : an agreement by (self)commitment, common ideals AND love – and the latter by all and for all involved, if the whole thing is to sustain a future perspective.

Which, in fact, already brings me to my experiences via Polyamory.
When I think about these in more detail, I believe I am struck most impressively by how much I have learned that one should never try to model relationships after one another according to a certain personal “feel-good” pattern.
For some this may sound like a truism – or others might think that this lesson can be experienced very well in serial monogamy either.
In a sense, I agree with that – at the same time, it’s exactly the actual multi-person constellation again that is the best insurance against routinised self-sabotage.
“Every relationship is unique”, sure, another truism, ha, – how should it be possible to make them alike…?
And yet this danger exists when “we” are exactly one of the reference points of our close relationships on each occasion – and strive every time to incorporate our own “need recognition” into them as well. This is because our “need recognition” drags along on a kind of virtual tow-line our above-mentioned “comfort zone”, where convenience and pleasant habit can instigate us to try whether we couldn’t set up another similarly constituted familiarity-refuge for ourselves… Even our brains, about which we know since Entry 25 that they would like to experience nothing better than as much as possible comparable coherence (consistency / sense of connection), can become almost overzealous accomplices to our weaker self here.
Well, but there would still be the respective loved ones in their diversity, which, as far as “cooperation, consideration, dedication, devotion, affection, attentiveness, inclusion, and involvement” are concerned, would be – individual by individual – entirely differently positioned.
By which, however, we would make things a little bit too easy for ourselves, especially if we were to shift the responsibility entirely to the hemisphere of our loved ones, to lure us out of our harmony-seeking comfort-zone uniformity. Because at the same time they would regularly experience the (right!) impression to work against some invisible pushback on our side – while we are actually striving in the enterprise to add them for their part as a pretty keystone into our very own comfort closet.
No, multiple relationships never allow such neat manipulations for very long, until they are soon brought up to the table.
Which to me is one of the most wonderful features of ethical non-monogamy.
Because no matter how I want to twist and turn it, the insularity and being-encapsulated-in-each-other of a two-person configuration is no longer possible here. So in a way, I’m definitely more exposed – does that inevitably mean I have to live with some loss of safety and familiarity in Poly-/Oligoamory?

I don’t think so. Because if love is involved, it means that I am seen, I am obviously of importance for the self-image of my counterpart, I thereby experience appreciation for my own self due to my inalienable intrinsic value [which is recognized and appreciated by several other people, oh bliss!], therefore I can dedicate myself here with trust and may further build upon it.
Ethical and sustainable, as well as love-based multiple relationships unfold their grandest potential at this point:
I am important to several people and therefore I am seen by them – but it is highly unlikely that they all refer to the same aspect of mine.
Several people express that I have meaning for their self-image and that I am a part of their lives – but very different lives and biographies, of which I may now be a valuable, contributing element.
My “inalienable intrinsic value” is valued at the highest by several people – and that means the greatest of all in the matter: That my intrinsic value must be extremely versatile and multifaceted, perhaps even greater than I am capable of perceiving myself at the moment.
In this way, the gift of ethical multiple partnerships comes to me once again in a very festive way: to be more than the sum of the parts.
The danger of succumbing to a lullaby comfort zone, which I therefore might at some point consider as the appropriate standard that I am entitled to every day, is thus also significantly reduced. In the book of my life, every day new pages can be surprisingly revealed by my loved ones, pages that I would perhaps rather not have touched myself. Thus, sometimes it will cost me courage to see myself as the main character on these pages…
But as the legendary Chinese philosopher Laozi knew already in the sixth century B.C.: “Great love makes a person brave.”
And so I myself very likely will also feel the desire to explore this versatile and multifaceted person, which I obviously am in the eyes of my loved ones, and to appreciate and unfold it more and more thoroughly on my part.
Which is probably what the French writer Marcel Proust already felt in equal measure when he noted in his epic novel “In Search of Lost Time“ :

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy. They are kind gardeners who make our souls bloom.”

*Refers to a line in the 1970 song “Sweet Gingerbread Man“ with music by Michel Legrand and lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman. Prominent performers were Sammy Davis Jr., Sarah Vaughan and the Muppets 😉

¹ When I speak of need on this bLog (my regular readers know), I always refer to its use as a personality trait according to humanistic psychology, e.g. as defined by A. Maslow, C. Alderfer and M. Rosenberg.

² Kahnemann, D., Experienced utility and objective happiness: A moment-based approach. In: Kahnemann, D. and Tversky, A. – „Choices, Values and Frames“, New York 2000

Thanks to Oriol Portell on Unsplash for the ginger crowd!

Concerning Polyamory

In this Entry I would like to talk once again about Polyamory – which is, after all, in a way the godmother of my “Oligo”-amory”.
Why does Polyamory exist and why do we want to be polyamorous?

When I read through the flurry in the media on- and offline, as well while browsing through all the different discussion forums on the subject from Instagram via Facebook (or here) to BmorePoly, it seems to me that the term Polyamory primarily continues to serve the purpose of describing any promiscuous ring-around-the-rosy with more than two participants. And to draw, on the one hand, almost all its fascination from this – but also, on the other hand, all the resulting interpersonal drama.

That makes me sad. And angry. Because Polyamory is actually so much more. Even this little “actually” is not an appeasingly restrictive phrase, but very deliberately chosen by me, because the word “actually” means “as a matter of fact, really, in truth” – in other words: “belonging to the essence of its genuineness” (says Etymonline…).

So what is it that is “genuine” to Polyamory, that belongs to its innermost essence?
These seem to me to be three aspects in particular, all of which are usually thrown out like the proverbial baby with the bathwater – and which are almost immediately forgotten as soon as people plunge themselves into a multi-person romp under the fig leaf of “Polyamory”.

As a bLogger who is dedicated to the topic of committed-sustainable, and above all ethical multiple relationships, it is my concern to once again underline those three essential cores of Polyamory that I have identified, since , in my view, by their presence or absence, the whole construct will inevitably stand or fall.

As far as I am concerned, the three ingredients that are absolutely inseparable and interact together in a polyamorous relationship are: idealism, pragmatism and love. Or – for those who consider this too educational or too abstract – unselfishness, suitability for everyday life and appreciative attachment.
The immanence of these three core components of polyamory are not, in my opinion, a “steep thesis” – in fact, I say that no person can seriously use the label “Polyamory” for themselves who tries to establish any multiple relationship arrangement outside their context.

Why am I so seemingly strict in this regard and how do I come to my presumption of such supposed interpretive sovereignty?
Precisely by reminding myself once again toward what goals polyamory once primarily aimed at, what impulses motivated the people who conceived and implemented it in the first place, what vision of the world and of our life in this world shaped its original “DNA“, so to speak.

In my Entry 49 on the “History of Oligoamory” I honour the circle of people around the visionaries, authors, and neo-pagans Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart and Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, the former of whom initially coined the word “polyamorous“.
At its time this act was not done on a whim or out of fancifulness, but astonishingly, first and foremost out of clamant pragmatism.
“Necessity”, they say, “is the mother of invention” – and it is very often the case that certain questions – even of an ideological nature – usually only really impose themselves to be solved when there is an acute need for action. This was also the case with the people around the Zell-Ravenhearts, who – after intensive periods of deeply trusting, highly self-honest and self-revealing psychological as well as spiritual group work – were eventually confronted with the fact that loving relationships had begun to form within the group between participants who were not necessarily already devoted to each other in a social(ly sanctioned) connection – or who were rather either even in a relationship with other people inside the community OR in fact with completely different people outside the group.
To “cope” with such circumstances, even in the 1990s the well-established options of serial monogamy, secrecy/betrayal or “open relationship” would have been available – but the Zell-Ravenhearts chose of all things (the new-found) Polyamory…

I would therefore like to dwell for a moment precisely on the pragmatism that actually set the ball rolling in the first place: practicality, feasibility and suitability for everyday life are never small nuts to crack. No outcome of coalition-talks or any climate debate would be purposeful without this kind of being dragged out into the “hard light of reality” – indeed, even more so: wouldn’t be viable in the long run. In other words, feasibility in the form of viability for everyday life as well as a resilient long-term perspective were among the most important parameters of “Polyamory” from the very beginning.
Which, in my interpretation, never aimed at the facilitation of short-term playmate interactions, mere weekend affairs or workshop liaisons, but rather toward the desire as well as the self-commitment to be able (and allowed!) to establish the gift of multiple love into fully-fledged, entitled and functional relationships in the midst of the lives of those involved [see also Entry 45 on the “Wonderful Ordinariness of Being”]. “Fully-fledged”, “entitled” and “functional” thus immediately mean, of course, openness (yes, also publicness) and honesty, as well as eye level and participation of all involved. And it means commitment and liability to contribute to the overall functioning – meaning to the sustainability – of the relationship as a whole, with the full programme of agreements, the establishment of mutual understanding and also the occasional self-sacrifice.
By which “pragmatism” seems to be the “stale bread share” of Polyamory…. But without the reality check based on the “stale bread share”, there also won’t be a “cake share” of a truly mutual relationship that is regarded by all parties as a trusting, secure and predictable venture in which all can experience themselves as valued contributors on account of their inherent value.

About “idealism” in Polyamory, I have probably written the most on this bLog – being an idealist myself. An idealism that I have translated above as “unselfishness”….
So if you want to call yourself “polyamorous”, what kind of “mindset” would I wish you to have?
The aforementioned Zell-Ravenhearts had filled themselves to the brim, so to speak, with idealistic content by the time “polyamory” was formulated as a way of life by them.
These people were concerned with nothing less than a new world – a new approach and a renewed way of interacting with everything that is contained in the cosmos.
As pragmatists – which they were at the same time as capable philosophers – they applied such idealism as a priority and virtually from the beginning to themselves: Concepts such as “non-violence”, “awareness-raising”, “integration”, “engagement”, “taking responsibility” and “commitment” should not remain mere theoretical ideas gathering dust in some cloud cuckoo land. By using the approach of Maslow‘s “self-actualisation” mentioned in Entry 49, these courageous people strove to become “a little bit more the best version of themselves” every day. Dishonesty, intransparency, egoism, ruthlessness, unawareness and declaring oneself as not responsible were no longer options that they wanted to take with them into that new world of equal dignity, empowerment and acceptance.
So when suddenly the fact of extended loving relationships created out of trust and togetherness became a reality, the only option was to anchor their feasibility and livability within the same high ethical ambition that was meant to be the guiding principle for thinking, speaking and acting in all other aspects.
Since the Zell-Ravenhearts, through their own group work approach, had thereby pursued both individual (i.e. focused on the self) and collective (i.e. focused on the group, the common) goals, another component merged almost unnoticed into Polyamory: The multiplication of resources and all-round welfare, which I regularly refer to on this bLog as the emergence of “more than the sum of the parts”.
In my own experience, it is precisely this supra-individual overall benefit that is one of the most meaningful effects of successful Polyamory, which is why I also synonymise idealism with ” unselfishness” in the introduction: If we succeed in no longer taking ourselves as individuals quite so seriously by following an ideal as a guiding star, then we embark – regardless of whether we will ever achieve it completely or not – on the famous “path of the greatest possible courage”, on which we can grow beyond ourselves. In particular, because in doing so we bow at the same time to the realisation that nothing in the universe truly exists “separately” from one another and that we therefore, as consciousness-possessing human beings – and even more so as lovers – have a special responsibility for everything around us.

Which brings me to the third core component, which has even made it into the word “Polyamory”: Love.
Eve Rickert and Franklin Veaux (the authors of what is still to me the greatest Polyamory guidebook “More Than Two” ¹ – who have meanwhile unfortunately fallen out with each other, precisely because they did not adhere to the most important rule they themselves had formulated for Polyamory “Don’t be an asshole!”…) called love in their book “the great clarifier of values” [see also Entry 64 on “Meaningful relationships”].
And, oh yes, it is, because without it all that which I have so beautifully compiled above about pragmatism and idealism would only be pretty – but ultimately lifeless – piecemeal.
By love, however, I don’t mean “making love” which is always too easily read into it – this stuffy, Anglicised euphemism for sexual activity from the late 1940s ² [I mean, really!!! Who seriously says “Come on, let’s make love…” anymore???]. That is why I do not primarily refer it to eroticism, lust, desire and passion (although I consider the presence of these aspects in love matters to be a possibly profitable contribution…).
No, above I equate “love” rather with “appreciative attachment”. This “super-concentrate” of such a complex topic as “love” has accompanied me since I first received the very plausible indicators for it from the psychologists Cohen, Underwood and Gottlieb in Entry 14, that we are a) being understood, validated and cared for because b) we matter to the self-concption of our loving partners, thereby c) being able to have resilient confidence in our acceptance while d) perceiving esteem for our own core-selves because of our inalienable intrinsic worth.
Appreciative attachment, ok, I can certainly experience that during the course of a hot night of passion too. For our lives, for our daily present – and thus for the far greater part of our (seemingly) mundane hours – it is, in my view, even more significant if we are able to recognise this appreciative attachment in the supposedly “small things” and to realize it’s meant for us: Who fetches me the nasal spray from the pharmacy in November without being asked, who lovingly and relentlessly sees the children off to school, who stays with me – even when I’m in a bad mood and not very entertaining, for whom do I wash the favourite shirt one load faster, who drives to work every day and earns money for our community, who visits my querulous mother with me, whose dog have I deflead – even though I never wanted a dog, who calls me “super sweetheart”, who do I pick up at 2 a.m. in some godforsaken place, who tells me about the feelings of abandonment as a teenager when the beloved grandpa died?
Love is thus for me the great bond that ultimately connects and holds together any overall package of pragmatism and idealism. Entry by Entry (most recently Entry 69), I keep bringing up the “Emotional Contract” behind every (loving) relationship, which is about the “implied acknowledgement and agreement – as a result of a mutually established emotional close-knit relationship – regarding the totality of voluntary yielded obligations, self-commitments and care which have been reciprocally contributed and are potentially enjoyable by all parties involved”. At first glance, this sounds very sober, very much like the “stale bread share” I mentioned when I spoke about pragmatism. But it also contains all the promises of shared togetherness, familiarity and intimacy. However, it is precisely because of “love” as the bond and wrapping of such an arrangement that it becomes obvious that we are not invested in it because we are obliged to for better or worse, but because we WANT it again and again from the bottom of our hearts and with the deepest conviction.

Those who are not yet convinced may apply a “negative checklist” – and define one of the mentioned components out of a supposedly polyamorous situation:
A relationship that is sustained by love and also idealistically unselfish – but without a pragmatic component? Will be a spatio-temporal flame that never gets a real “seat in the life” of the participants. May last for quite a while through that certain exclusive sparkle, but never lose that tarnished veil of deniability and non-commitment.
So rather pragmatic, practical, full of love, but without ideals? Even such self-denial can be maintained for a while…. However, such a connection will most likely run out of love one day. Either because all those involved have finally become as similar to each other as the proverbial dog owners are to their dogs – or because, due to a lack of impulses for further development, a paralysing boredom has at some point taken hold of all the occupants who are still clinging on. Or it blows up very quickly – on the day when most of the participants realise that all are actually striving by inward urge for completely different things.
And a union – both pragmatic and idealistic – but without love? Our grandparents probably called it a “laundry-and- potato-agreement”. Or a “relationship of reason”. In any case, our hearts will remain cold in it, standing longingly in the rain with collars turned up on a draughty bridge. Which is a guarantee of premature ageing and withering – unless you were possibly a narcissist benefiting from such an arrangement, drawing your energy from exploiting others in such a system without contributing a shred of true affection yourself….

All three negative tests, unfortunately, I have encountered far more frequently on the “polyamorous” continent than the fascinating, mutually beneficial way of life the concept was once composed to be: A blueprint to ensure consensual, fully transparent, consistently sincere, committed-reliable multi-person loving relationships designed for everyday suitability, whose inner space is given the potential for self-development both for the individuals involved and for the collectivity or the relationship as a whole through resource networking and all-round participation.

And therefore I, Oligotropos, reject the use of the term “polyamorous” as a (self-)designation for all those persons and states of desire, which thereby above all want to describe that with more than one further person some predominantly erotic context is shared. Especially because I believe that in this way the potential as well as the origin and application backgrounds of the thus presented relationship philosophy are ignored, disregarded or, at worst, deliberately obscured.³

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

² By the way, the term “make love” has been around for quite some time, it just meant something different for most of its existence. When, for example, in Jane Austen‘s novel “Pride and Prejudice” the phrase “he made love to all of us” was used in the original text in 1813, it did not imply a mass orgy, but simply amicable behaviour in a social setting.

³ Why I, as the author of this bLog, relocated my ambitions from Poly- to Oligoamory I explain among other things in detail in Entry 2.

Thanks to congerdesign on pixabay.com for the photo!