Poly is hard

You must be at least this strong to ride this ride

It's a fabulously sunny (if unreasonably cold) winter day, and I'm snuggled up on the couch writing this on my laptop. Rabbit's reading downstairs, and the kids are happily playing Harry Potter on the computer. And Silver? Well, Silver's spending the weekend in Portland with Tom, having a great time at Body Bound. I wish I could say that I'm totally OK with that, but the uncomfortable truth is that I'm actually not.

I consider myself poly, and I thoroughly believe in most of the usual poly dogma. Until recently, I would have smugly said that I was uncommonly good at practicing poly. In principle, there are plenty of reasons why I shouldn't have a problem with the situation:

• There's enough love to go around. Any love that Silver gives to Tom doesn't come out of my account-- it's brand-new shiny love, made just for him. When I see her tomorrow, Silver won't love me any less than she did yesterday.
• Tom isn't taking Silver's time away from me. Although time management is often one of the hardest issues in poly relationships, the three of us have been fortunate enough to largely avoid those issues. In this particular case, my weekends are family time-- they're for playing Dungeons and Dragons with the kids, playing WoW with Rabbit, and pottering happily about the house. Silver wouldn't be spending time with me this weekend whether or not she was with Tom. Tom taking her to Body Bound has exactly zero tangible impact on my life.
• Having fun with other people is good. It's an unequivocally good thing that even though I can't take her to Body Bound, Silver gets to go there and have fun with Tom. They get to have a marvelous time, and I get a bunch of cool stories and handouts, plus perhaps a new toy or two to play with. Everyone wins.
• Basic fairness. I have two girlfriends, and I spend time alone with each of them. Obviously, Silver gets to have two boyfriends, and to spend time alone with Tom as well as with me.

Given all of that, my heart ought to be filled with pure unadulterated compersion when I think of Silver and Tom at Body Bound. And, sometimes it works. Right now, I'm looking at a photo that I recently took of Silver and Tom gazing happily into each other's eyes, and looking at it makes me happy. I think of them together, and I smile. And yet...

And yet, it's still hard. The fact remains that my girlfriend's spending the weekend out of town with her other boyfriend, and deep down, there's a part of me that doesn't like that. Too much of what I've been feeling this weekend has very distinctly not been compersion. Some of it's envy. Some of it's a mostly but not quite totally unfounded fear of somehow losing Silver to Tom. And, let's be honest-- a lot of it is pure bullshit. But bullshit or not, it's real, and it's hard to cope with.

So, what to do? Given that I believe in poly, and given that it's important that Silver date other people, what's the right way to manage the bullshit? In the short run, I've found that certain coping strategies help a lot:

• First and foremost, do the right thing. When Silver goes off to Portland with Tom, I kiss her goodbye, and wish them both a good trip, and take care of her cats while she's gone. Sometimes it feels good, and sometimes it doesn't, but I (try to) act like the person I want to be, not the person I feel like at the moment.
• I accept that poly is hard, and that I will sometimes feel angst about it. Simply knowing that the bullshit is a normal, expected part of the ride makes it less scary, and easier to manage.
• Thinking and writing about it helps. Although I confess to being flattered (as well as surprised) that people other than me read this blog, the real reason I write is because it helps me to organize and process my thoughts. As it happens, just writing about this weekend has made me feel better about it.

In the long run, the only good solution I know of is to change who I am: to turn myself into someone to whom poly comes easily and naturally. With that in mind, let's take a brief detour and talk about dessert.

For health reasons, I decided about five years ago to completely stop eating dessert. At first, it was really hard. I'd be with people who were eating dessert, and I'd really want to join them. The only thing that kept me from digging in was pure self discipline. That's where I now stand with poly. I understand why it's good that Silver and Tom are having fun together in Portland, and in principle, I'm all in favor of it. Sometimes I feel good about it and sometimes I don't, but I make myself act as I think I ought to, not as I sometimes want to.

Over time, with enough practice and effort, skipping dessert got easier. I now allow myself one small taste of any dessert. Sometimes when I'm out with Silver, she'll have a dessert, and I'll take a taste. If it's good, I may think to myself "Wow! That's amazing! I wanna try that the next time I make a mousse." But I can honestly say that I feel no desire whatsoever to eat any more than a taste. It's not that I don't still love how desserts taste-- I've simply changed myself into someone who loves (and cooks) dessert, but who doesn't actually want to eat them. That's my goal with poly: to become not merely a person who can kiss Silver goodbye when she rides off into the sunset with Tom, but a person who can do that with a light and joyous heart.

Even now, in spite of everything, the arithmetic is easy. Poly brings me far more joy than pain. I don't for one second regret the road that I've chosen. But it's still really hard.