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>> REBECCA CRANE: I am going to talk to you all for a little while about a very interesting
kind of relationship. And then I'm going to get you all to talk to me about your very
interesting kinds of relationships.
So, like I said, my name is Rebecca. I got into my first non-monogamous relationship
when I was 15 years old. And, since then, I have had--been privileged to be involved
in a variety of different non-monogamous relationships and this means that I have also had a lot
of metamours.
And what I want to talk about today is why and how we, in poly communities, talk a lot
and focus a lot of attention on these relationships ["primary," "lovers," etc.] and we don't really
talk so much about these relationships [metamourships]. And I think that's interesting because this
[metamour] relationship history has had just as much influence on who I am, and how I do
relationships, and how I see the world, as this ["primary"] relationship history.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Wow…!
>> REBECCA: So!
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: You put a lot of work into that.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's beautiful.
>> REBECCA: So, "metamour" is a poly neologism. It's a word that poly people made up, 'cause
we like to do that. And like other words that poly people make up, there are lots of different
ways to define it and many people define it in different ways in different contexts. For
the purposes of this talk, when I say "metamours," what I mean is two or more people who are
involved in some kind of consensual non-monogamy and have a romantic or *** partner or partners
in common, and know about each other's existence. As for how we define "romantic" and "***,"
that is, like, a whole other conversation, conference, world.
The reason I want to talk about metamour relationships is because I actually think that metamour
relationships are what's unique about polyamory. People will define poly or say that what poly
is about is "having multiple partners," but a lot of people in the world have multiple
partners and most of them just call it "cheating." Only polyamorous people have metamours. (And
I'm gonna, like, take breaks to look at my notes sometimes. [unintelligible])
Um, so, it surprises me that since we have access to this pretty unique kind of relationship,
and since we are a community of people that likes to talk about how we are trying to open
up space for more loving relationships, and varieties of relationships, and trying to
resist what monogamous culture tells us about who and how we should love, that we talk so
little about one of the most complex, unique, interesting kinds of loving relationships
that you can get into.
So, um, when I told people that I was going to do this presentation--and I'm just gonna--
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Rebecca?
>> REBECCA: Yeah?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is there any chance that your slides might be available via email later
on or something like that?
>> REBECCA: Yeah, I will do my best to put them on the Internet.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I would love to not have to take lots of notes. And my guess is that
you've done a lot of work on your slides.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: If that's in Drive, Rebecca, you can make it available for free to anyone
in the world.
>> REBECCA: Okay, cool, I'll do that while trying to put some of my notes up there, too.
Um, 'cause I'm sure I will…. Um.
Okay, so, anyway. I told people I was coming here to do this workshop, and I told people
I wanted to give a talk on how to have more meaningful metamour relationships and a lot
of the responses I got were people saying, "I don't wanna love my metamours. I mean,
y'know, my metamour lives in France. We've never even talked." That's totally fine. Or,
y'know, "I have this other metamour who's just a manipulative creep, and they're trying
to steal my partner, and my dog!"
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: "Why do I have to have a more meaningful relationship with these people?"
And, my answer to that is: you don't. You do not have to do anything. More meaningful
metamour relationships are just, like, not a priority for some people. Or, for some people,
they're really threatening, or they don't feel safe for various reasons. And that's
legitimate. I'm not actually here to tell you what to do with your personal relationships.
What I want to talk about is what Common Poly Wisdom™ is telling us that we should do
with our metamour relationships. And then I want to point out some of the consequences
of that for our communities and for our relationships, and I want to talk about how we might do some
things differently, if we want to.
So, Common Poly Wisdom™. We all know that this is a thing, because you can take the
same relationship problem to any poly meeting around the country and you will get pretty
much the same advice.
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: Or, as a friend of mine says, if you ask ten poly people--five poly people
for definitions of polyamory, they'll give you ten different answers. But, if you ask
ten poly people for resources about polyamory, they'll send to the same four websites.
So what does Common Poly Wisdom say about our relationships with our metamours? Well,
to start out with, it says you should be on good terms with your metamours, and friends
with your metamours, because that will make your relationships with your partner, and
doing polyamory, easier. That, if you know your metamours, you're likely to feel less
jealous, because you'll know that they're real people. Um, it tells us that it's good
to have good communication with your metamours, because it makes things like scheduling easier.
And it also tells us that caring about your metamours can be a way to get closer to your
partners because those are people they care about, too. That, if you don't care about
your metamours, that you don't get along, you just don't have a lot in common, it's
still good to have each other's phone numbers just in case your common partner gets hit
by a bus or something. And it also tells us that if you have conflict or bad relationships
with your metamours, that can actually put your relationship with your partner in jeopardy,
especially if you are, say, a "secondary partner," to someone with veto power, or you're just
the second person who comes along.
So, what does all of this advice have in common? It's not actually advice about our relationships
with our metamours. It's actually advice about how to protect our relationships with our
partners. Very rarely in the poly rhetoric, do we talk about the metamour relationship
in and of itself, and how it's valuable as a relationship. Um, mostly when we talk about
metamours, we talk about using these relationships as tools to support our partnered relationships.
How can we use our metamourships or work on our metamourships in ways that will make our
partnered relationships feel more comfortable, safer, stronger, etcetera. Even the way that
we define "metamours" has this pattern.
So you'll notice at the beginning I said "metamours are people who have a partner in common."
But that's not what you'll hear if you go to one of these many poly meetings around
the country. You're more likely to go to that meeting and ask, "What is 'metamour' mean?"
And someone will say, "Oh, y'know, it's like, your partner's partner." So, notice that there
are two relationships in this definition, and neither one is the relationship between
metamours. [One is: Your partner. The other is: Partner's other partner.]
We talk about metamour relationships like they have a job to do: support partnered relationships.
And if they're not doing that job, y'know, they might as well not exist.
So. What does this boil down to? What is this the Common Poly Wisdom about metamour relationships?
The Common Poly Wisdom about metamour relationships is that partnered relationships are what matter,
and that metamour relationships are disposable. So that's weird. Especially for a bunch of
people who say that we are committed to trying to have relationships that break mainstream
ideas of what a meaningful relationship can be. What is going on here?
Polyamory is a way of doing relationships or, depending on who you talk to, it's a bunch
of different ways of doing relationships, or whatever. It's also a subculture.
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter and applause.]
>> REBECCA: As a subculture, it exists underneath the umbrella a larger culture. So, just because
you're standing under an umbrella, doesn't mean you're not gonna get wet. We are pretty
good at resisting dribbles of monogamy, because we're actively trying to do something else.
But there are a lot of other parts of mainstream culture that we, as a community, are soaked
with. And these things have a lot of influence on why we treat metamour relationships like
they're disposable.
So, I wanna just look at these, quickly, a little more closely.
So, *** privilege tells us that relationships that involve sex in them "count" more than
relationships that don't have sex. That relationships with sex are "real," that they're important,
that's what intimacy is about, etcetera. This is a problem for a lot of people. This is
a problem for asexual folks who might not have any relationships with sex in them, and
it's also a problem for anybody who wants to have a relationship that's meaningfully
intimate with someone they're not ***. Like, say, metamours.
Couple privilege tells us that what "a real relationship" looks like is two people bonded
together in a collective voting block. That that is the most important kind of relationship
that you can have.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: A collective…?
>> REBECCA: Voting block. Um, they support each other, they have each other's backs,
they make agreements together, and this is a problem for--that this kind of coupled relationship
is more important than relationships involving one person or more than two people. So this
is a problem for single people. This is a problem for people who might join a larger
group after that voting block has already been established and they can't really, like,
y'know, be a part of it. And it's also a problem for people who might want to vote together,
or have each other's backs, or support each other's needs, but who aren't in a romantic
or *** relationship. Like, say, metamours.
Heterosexism in poly communities is way more than I can get into in this talk. That is
also another session, another conference track. Um, but I will talk a little bit later about
some specific ways that heterosexism plays out in metamour relationships.
So, what's the impact of all this mainstream cultural rainwater dripping down onto our
relationships?
Well, the most common impact is that the health and wellbeing of a certain kind of relationship
between two people, especially if those two people are a man and a woman who are having
sex with each other, is automatically privileged as more important over the health and wellbeing
of any other relationship that those people might be in. And the most common way that
this plays out in our actual everyday relationships is that, when the going gets tough, someone
gets dumped.
So, it doesn't always happen quite that cut and dry, right? Sometimes it starts slow.
Y'know, you have metamours, they care about each other, but there's some conflict, and
they decide that, of course, that they wanna focus on their respective romantic relationship
more than on working it out with each other. And then, eventually, they stop supporting
each other, or helping each other's relationships out, or maybe they just never started. And
then, at some point, there's some kind of irreconcilable conflict, and then someone
gets dumped, and takes the dog.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Awww! Takes the dog?
>> REBECCA: There's a lot that's wrong with this picture. The biggest thing that's wrong
with this picture is that tends to hurt secondaries, it tends to hurt asexual folks, *** folks,
younger folks, anybody whose relationship doesn't have that cultural weight of "realness"
behind it. Those are the relationships that are most likely to get axed, in terms of the
romantic part. But the part of this picture that actually makes me, personally, the saddest
is the middle step, where the metamours hyperfocus on their romantic relationships and stop supporting
each other. Because I personally think that a good metamour relationship is, like, one
of THE COOLEST relationships you could ever have in your entire life and it makes me really
sad when that relationship gets messed up because there's conflict between lovers.
So, if we wanted to do something differently, what might we do? We might look at our notes!
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: Um, okay. Quick! Don't think of a polar bear! How many people thought of a
polar bear?
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: If I had said, "Quick, think of an elephant," you might not have thought of
the same elephant I did, but you probably wouldn't have thought of a polar bear. (Or
maybe you would've.)
Remember when I said that poly folks are good at resisting monogamous dribbles because we're
actively doing something else? We're not good at resisting monogamy because we're trying
NOT to be monogamous. In a ubiquitously monogamous culture, that's like trying not to think of
a polar bear. There are lots and lots of people who are trying not to be monogamous. Many
of these people will probably still end up married. It's the fact that we are actively
trying to do something else, and consciously thinking about it, and doing the work required
to maintain that, that helps us resist monogamy and thus prevents us from ending up on this
sort of, y'know, culturally approved slippery path of least resistance.
>> REBECCA: Likewise, we're not gonna be any good at resisting heterosexism, *** privilege,
and couple privilege in our communities if all we say about it, "Y'know, that still sucks,
let's just not do it." We have to actively do something else.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Like what?
>> REBECCA: Let's play the "what if?" game. What if two metamours supported each other
in breaking up with a common partner who wasn't treating either one of them well? What if
two friends decided to meet and date the same person because they wanted to be metamours
with each other? What if…
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: What is you got drunk with your metamour and talked about your common partner
while they were out of town?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: You have to be drunk for that?
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: It might be a different conversation depending on whether or not you were drunk
or not.
What if you took your metamour to Thanksgiving instead of your partner?
What if we sometimes--sometimes!--prioritized some of our metamour relationships as much,
if not more than, we prioritize our partnered relationships? What if we just did this, like,
once in a while? What if we even spend some time thinking about and talking about what
that might be like? Might that open up more space for creative thinking about different
kinds of meaningful relationships you can have?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Rebecca?
>> REBECCA: Yes?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: This might be interrupting your flow so ignore the question if you'd
like to: that blurs the line between partnership and metamourship, right?
>> REBECCA: [Gasps!] We can't have that!
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: And that can be mind-blowing, and I'm wondering if you can address that
as you go forward?
>> REBECCA: I'll see if I can--but, I mean, all right. This! This is sort of what I'm
getting at, but we'll get there soon. Because, this, specifically. Because of this thing
I'm sure that I'm talking about all of this--what if we related to our metamours in this very
different way--and there are maybe some people in the audience who are thinking, "God, that
sounds stressful!" And there might be other people who are thinking, "That sounds cool,
but how?"
So, the answer to this question is: I don't know. I'll be honest. A world in which metamourships
and partnerships could potentially be of equal value to each other or be the same kind of
relationship or those distinctions not existing at all, that's my ideal world. But in a pervasively
monogamous, heterosexist, couple-privileged, ***-privileged world, creating that kind
of space in real life is hard to do.
I personally know that I put--I put, probably, more TLC into my metamour relationships than
almost anybody I know. And I still don't do it that well. I still have metamours that
I treat as disposable, and metamour relationships that I treat as disposable. And this stuff
is hard. What I do have is a lot of experience obsessing over this problem.
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: And the reason that I have that is because I've had some really good, really
intimate, meaningful metamour relationships that have given me a lot of hope. And they
were, like you were saying, kind of in this gray area between metamourship, partnership,
what is this? We're not having sex, maybe? Maybe we're not having sex? What is sex?
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: And I've also had some metamour relationships that have totally broken my
heart. And the ones that have been the most meaningful to me have done both. So through
a lot of trial and error, and thinking about my experience, and talking to other people,
and talking to my metamours over drinks in a lesbian bar in El Paso, I have put together
some tips and tricks and tools for deepening metamour relationships that sometimes work
a little bit, some of the time. And my hope is not that you will take these tools home
and that they will magically fix your metamour relationships. Or that they will magically
fix the awkward metamour relationship between your partners. They won't. What these tools
might do in some cases is show you that a particular relationship isn't actually working
out at all, or that it's always going to be difficult and you're going to have to figure
out how to emotionally budget for that.
My biggest hope with this workshop is that it will just get people started thinking and
talking about metamour relationships in a more…deeper, more thoughtful, more articulated
way. That it'll start a conversation about their relationships themselves. And my hope
is that regardless of you feel about your relationships with your metamours, that if
you came to this workshop, it's because you at the very least have a desire to understand
those relationships better. And that is actually the first step towards making them [unintelligible].
So. The first tool that we need is a map. What makes a metamour relationship a metamour
relationship? What makes a metamour that you're on good terms with any different from, like,
a friend? What makes a metamour you don't get along with any different than just some
other random *** you don't get along with?
Metamour relationships have three parts. And this is part of why I like metamour relationships.
Like, I'm a nerd for triangles and Zelda.
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: So the first part is the individual relationship. This is the part of your relationship
that's independent of your common partner. You are friends and you have lunch once a
week. Or you're coworkers. Or you go to some of the same parties and you think each other
are kind of annoying. This is the part of your relationship that would still be the
case, even if your common partner was suddenly deleted from The Matrix.
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: There's not a whole lot I can actually tell you about this. This is just
people. I mean, any relationship self-help book will tell you if you want to be better
friends with somebody find stuff you have in common. If you don't want to see each other,
don't go to the same parties, etcetera.
The second part is the group relationship. This is the part of the relationship where
you and your metamour relate to your common partner simultaneously. Um, sidebar: when
I talk about a "group" in this situation, I'm just talking about one specific group
of three individual people. I know that a lot of us in this room are probably connected
to our intimate networks in much more complicated ways. For example, I have a metamour who I
have two partners in common with. I am in two different metamour relationships with
her. And I can tell this because, it's interesting, in this relationship things are pretty peaceful,
we like to all hang out, we cuddle and watch movies, she and I have long conversations
on the phone, we talk about our feelings, how cute this person is, etcetera, etcetera.
This [other] metamour relationship is a little awkward. For some reason, this person is kind
of like a touchy subject between us. And what was really interesting to me--this was really
valuable to me because what it made me realize was the awkwardness in those conversations
weren't because she's an awkward person or I'm an awkward person, or we're bad at being
metamours, it was something very specific to this unique relationship dynamic. And so
then we went to a lesbian bar in El Paso and we talked about what was up wit that. I'm
not gonna tell you.
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: Also, if you have a metamour and you start having sex with that person, that
does not "upgrade" your relationship from metamours to partners. You're still metamours.
Just, now, your partner and your metamour are also metamours. And you and your partner--you
get it.
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: End sidebar.
So this is the group relationship.
Um, this, y'know--you all spend a lot of time together and you play video games together.
Or you share a Google Calendar. Or you all went to your metamour's house for Thanksgiving
and it was awkward. Or your common partner wants the two of you to be better friends
and one of you thinks that's a great idea and the other one wants nothing to do with
it.
This is the part of the relationship that most of that poly community "wisdom" about
metamourships is about this. And it's not all bad advice, it's just incomplete. So,
this is kind of an awkward analogy, but think about it this way. There's the relationship
between two parents and their child, and that's different from the relationship that the parents
have with each other about their child.
This is the third part of the metamour relationship. This is the part of your relationship that
is about what happens a partner--that triangulates through them--but doesn't involve them. This
is the part of your relationship that's about what having a partner in common means to the
two of you. So, to use another analogy, you and have a coworker have an employer in common.
You're metamours to your job. This is a maymay concept, actually. This is not the part of
your relationship where you figure out how to share a desk at the office. This is the
part of the relationship where you go have beers together on Friday afternoon and talk
about your boss. Or you don't talk about your boss because it's Friday afternoon and why
do you want to talk about work? To put it crudely, this is the part of your relationship
where you talk about your partner behind their back, where you gush about them, or where
you fight about them, or where you awkwardly pretend like you don't have a partner in common
and it's just sort of coincidental that you're both over here for dinner and isn't that nice?
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: It's tricky. This is a tricky social dynamic to navigate, and we don't talk
about it very much. And this is actually the piece that I want to focus on today, because
it's the piece that we don't talk about very much.
So, my very favorite thing about metamour relationships exists in this triangle. And
I call it "the other *** kid at the party phenomenon." I'm sure you've had this situation.
You go to a party and there's only, like, one other visibly *** person there. Or you
go to a meeting and there's only one other woman in the whole room. Or you go somewhere
and you're, like, the only person under the age of 45. Or you're the only person over
the age of 45. And whatever the situation, you're in a space where you have something
about you that's important to you and you only share it with one other total stranger.
And then you have to go through this dance where you're like, "How do I want to interact
with this person? I kind of want to go talk to them, but if I go talk to them people will
be like, 'Why are the only two *** kids at the party just talking to each other?'
Like, maybe I don't want to talk to them. Maybe they don't want to talk to me. Is this
a problem? What…?" But the feeling that I have is all that sort of complex feeling
comes from me going: this person matters to me! I don't even know them, but there's some
quality that they have that makes them important to me in a way that makes me want to know
something about them.
So, this is often how I feel about metamours. But it's not just "this is the only other
person in the room that has this thing in common with me." The feeling is, "there's
this person in my life. I'm in love with them. That's a big deal to me. That's an important
thing about who I am. And there's only a few other people in the whole world who share
that experience with me." I want to know those people. I want to know what they're about.
I may not want to go to talk to them about, y'know, I may not want to go talk to this
person about being ***. Maybe I just want to go talk to them about movies or something?
Or, like, how bad the music at this party is. But I want to be able to do that in a
way where, like, maybe I can make a joke about this movie and they'll get it 'cause they're
***. Y'know? I'd love to be able to go talk to this person and make a joke about my partner
and they'll get it, 'cause, like, y'know, they have experience with the same shower
restraints.
>> AUDIENCE: [Laughter.]
>> REBECCA: So, like, um. I just got the sign that I have five minutes left, and that is
too bad because I had a whole other section to this talk where I wanted to talk about
what it is about metamour relationships that makes them structurally difficult, and how
that can be valuable, and how we can work to overcome it. And so the cliffnotes version
that I'll just give real quick is that one of the things that makes this really cool
relationship also really difficult is that we don't grow up with models of metamourship,
but we do grow up with cultural models of how we should feel about someone who's ***
our partner. Which is that we should HATE that person! Like, we should go on Jerry Springer
and we should fight with them! Y'know? This isn't just like, "that person irritates me."
This is like, if--you should wanna kill this person so much that if you actually kill them,
you'll get leniency in court for that 'cause they were *** your partner!
And that, that, and all of the particular patterns of how that manifests between women
about men, between men about men, between *** people and trans people, between women
who have male partners, and male metamours, and all of these different patterns all bleed
down into our relationships. That is a lot of cultural baggage to be resisting. And so
one of the biggest, most important tools that I think we can use to help deepen and support
our metamour relationships is just acknowledging that they're *** hard! And that, for people
for whom metamour relationships just feel like a piece of cake, that might be because,
y'know, they're not actually--your metamour relationships might be kind of shallow. These
are relationships. They involve conflict. Because they're relationships. That doesn't
make them broken. It makes them relationships.
That doesn't mean you have to, like, deal with it. Again, you might be in a place with
your life where having a relationship with someone that involves a lot of conflict isn't
something you can deal with. But that we have a really, really amazing opportunity here
to have intimacy with people who society tells us that we should hate. This is a great situation
where you have a lot of powerful external motivation and internal motivation to learn
how to work with this person, collaborate with them, argue productively with them, learn
about each other's differences, and maybe even love each other. And those are pretty
great transferable skills for doing that same kind of work with all the other people that
society tells us that we should hate.
Um, so, because I didn't get to get through the rest of my adorable slides, I do want
to go to the last one. And then maybe we can have a few minutes for questions. Um, but…I
guess you'll see them all. I wanted to end with this quote from Dean Spade because Dean
Spade talks about this in a way that I really love, and is way more succinct and articulate
about it than I am. But, he says, "I do not have a prescription for successful relationships,
and I don't think anyone should. The goal of most of my work is to remove coercive mechanisms
that force people to comply with heteronormative gender and family norms. What I want to see
if a world in which people do not have to be criminalized, or cast out of their family,
or cut off welfare, or sexually harassed at school, or subjected to involuntary mental
health care, or prevented from getting housed because they organize their gender, desire,
or family structure in a way that offends a norm. I hope we can build that vision by
practicing it in our own *** and activist communities and in our approaches to ourselves.
Let's be gentle with ourselves and each other and fierce as we fight oppression."
[APPLAUSE!]