polyrolemodels:

1. How long have you been polyamorous or been practicing polyamory?

I’ve never actually been in a monogamous relationship! That said, I’ve been actively engaging in polyamory since 2008.

2. What does your relationship dynamic look like?

The analogy I wrote about back in 2012 to describe emotional entanglement without defaulting to the “only one primary partner” framework I kept seeing in poly discourse was that my relationships could be modeled using an electron shell diagram. Since I wrote that, my relationships have gotten more flexible and less easily categorizable. I have many treasured relationships, and they do not all include the same components (e.g. I have people I could see building a home with but whom I am not currently sexual/romantic). That said, there are 3 people right now whom I’m dating; a much wider set of humans that are part of my chosen family; and a network of play partners mostly concentrated in NYC.

• My wonderful live-in partner of 7 years and I are engaged, which means we’re in this for a long-haul and want to have a party, but the legal part is still to be figured out. I feel strongly about creating legal and emotional space for multiple deep relationships and the idea of legal privileges going to only one partner forever feels uncomfortable.
• There’s a badass cutie in NH with whom I’m hella smitten. Though we’d been casual friends for a while, after a night of flirtatious dancing in January, we expressed mutual interest in doing something about the fact that we both thought the other person was super babely and great at dancing. Now we’re two prickly woodland creatures in love!
• And then there’s the rockstar sweetie in NY whom I’ve known for almost a decade (we met on LIVEJOURNAL) and has been an awesome friend, play partner, and co-conspirator throughout the years. Whereas “play partners and friends” made sense for a long time, during this last year our relating had become more frequent and intimate even across the distance. It became hard to describe what we were doing without weird noises and vague hand gestures, so we did a check-in to discuss our feelings and what language felt good and authentic to us both.

3. What aspect of polyamory do you excel at?

Communication is one of my strong suits; I have been affectionately called a Process(ing) Queen before! I care a lot about my partners’ mental health as well as my own, so I endeavor to communicate in a transparent, compassionate, and timely manner about sweet things as well as tough topics. I also pay a LOT of attention to ensuring people feel wanted, loved, safe, and appreciated—especially in group situations where multiple partners are present.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also say organizing and scheduling, probably, ha! I’m a Ravenclaw with a badass color-coded calendar. A lesson I had to learn there was how to not OVERschedule, and as of January 2016, I drastically shifted my life to better prioritize human relationships, self/community-care, and pleasure rather than being a perpetual workaholic.

4. What aspect of polyamory do you struggle with?

I generally struggle with change when I feel I have no input or control over it (e.g. new metamours, esp. if they’re new to poly and I know little about them). Relatedly, even though good communication is one of my assets, being vulnerable doesn’t come super easily—especially about worries and feelings that don’t feel “logical” or like those of an idealized non-monogamist (which is such BS anyway). It’s a very conscious and difficult task that has gotten much easier with time, but I’ve definitely had moments where I’ve “backslid.” At my worst, I can be very cold, robotic, and impermeable—the driving beliefs in those moments being “everyone is The Worst and the world is a Terrible Place, and I don’t want to need anything from anyone ever because Needing is Weakness and I Cannot Bother / Depend on Others.” And while NONE of that is actually my value system, and that doesn’t align with my day-to-day view of the world, it is a nugget of misanthropy that resides in me, gets activated in particularly tough times, and I need to be mindful of.

Being honest about that in a public forum such as this is somewhat scary, but I feel gives me strength too. I think it’s important to show—especially if we are well-known or in positions of authority—that we’re not “perfect” and that we all have our own shit. It’s highly likely that some of my clients will come across this at some point, and I want them to know their therapist is a person too! My insight into non-monogamy and mental health doesn’t just come from a place of book-learning; it’s a lived experience. The idea of therapists as “blank, desexualized canvases” and the idea of well-known community members and professionals as “perfect and never wrongdoing” is toxic and harms us all.

5. How do you address and/or overcome those struggles?

The idea of partners having partners I don’t know about, especially if we all share space together and I don’t know they have a Thing, pushes a lot of trigger buttons for me. Thus, information is power, and so I try to humanize metamours as much as possible and communicate in an ongoing, honest, vulnerable way rather than have some abstract sense of who someone is. I don’t really do “don’t ask, don’t tell” (save for some very time-limited instances), so that helps in humanizing people too. I am open about feeling jealous when I do, and I dig into what’s actually feeling hard/like a lack in my life so we can address it together.

Additionally, I do a lot of processing by myself through writing; I have really solid partners and friends who I can bounce ideas off of or access as resources if something is freaking me out; and I actively challenge myself to address any internalized bullshit that may crop up and affect my relationships.

6. In terms of risk-aware/safer sex, what do you and your partners do to protect one another?

At its core, we have explicit, honest, and ongoing conversations about our sexual safety and status. As a sex educator and clinician, I’m huge on this for personal as well as professional reasons. I aim to have conversations about STIs and safety with partners of any length because I don’t want to assume we’re on the same page about what safety means and what STIs even are (some people don’t realize cold sores are herpes, for example). It’s very important to me to also discuss emergency contraception and abortion when in situations that involve the possibility of pregnancy! Any partner equipped with an ejaculating and biologically attached penis will know my stance on these issues, and it’s important to me that my live-in partner’s partners also discuss these issues with him.

I look at sexual activities on spectra of physical and emotional risks, and discuss/plan accordingly. With one-time/infrequent partners, I always use dental dams, condoms, and/or gloves as the body parts &/or toys require, with some leeway around gloves. In more formalized dating relationships, we use a mix of barrier methods and testing, with barrier-less oral sex as part of some, but not necessarily all, relationships. Depending on my partners’ landscape, their partner landscape, and the sex I’m having (if any), I modify my testing schedule; it’s not a “do it every 3 months” kind of thing unless that’s specifically necessary, y’know?

7. What is the worst mistake you’ve ever made in your polyamorous history and how did you rebound from that?

This wasn’t the objectively “worst” mistake I’ve made, but certainly one of two with heavy messiness and meaningful fallout for me and my relationships. Years ago, a committed partner (let’s call him B) developed a friends-with-benefits kind of deal with someone I didn’t know very well (let’s call her P). P’s boyfriend wasn’t super jazzed about non-monogamy (though P had been clear with him early on about not wanting monogamy), and I don’t think either identified as polyamorous. A few factors gave me pause with the situation, but I tried to keep an open mind. This was also the first time B was having sex with someone else since we’d gotten together, so it was a milestone for both of us.

There was one instance where P and B were going to hang out, and everyone was on the same page about what was on the table. P’s partner last-minute realized he felt OK with looser parameters, and so in the midst of B and P hanging out (and me watching movies at a friend’s house), B called to update me and discuss if/how that changed what I felt comfortable with him and P doing. In the rush and because I didn’t honor my gut discomfort at changing things last minute, I agreed to looser boundaries without fully realizing what I was agreeing to. I should note: no one coerced me into changing things; I wanted to be generous AND couldn’t find a logical reason to disagree with loosened boundaries so didn’t.

I’ll spare you the full story, but in short, the rest of the day was a perfect storm of poor timing, my own brain’s pressure to be the Perfect & Logical Polyamorous Person, trust issues, awkward social situations, and unclear communication. That night, after a fraught day and set of interactions, I was unpleasantly surprised to find hickeys on B’s hips and torso. That made me so violently sick to my stomach I eventually had to leave the room and couldn’t look at my partner for a while. Marks mean a lot of things to me, and they gave me such a vivid and unwanted picture of B and P together that I was super jarred. It also made me feel really self-conscious to have that reaction as a poly person; it was something I’d only heard monogamous people talk about and it was super bizarre to me because I’d criticized it so heavily before. Talk about eating humble pie! The next day we spent hours in fraught silence alternating with arguing, and I felt simultaneously dead inside and super upset.

Things eventually got sorted out with LOTS of communication and I learned a LOT from that experience:

• Save for unique and extenuating circumstances, loosening boundaries last minute is a bad idea in my life. Relatedly, when partners and I discuss boundaries, talking about their full set of ramifications clearly and explicitly is key.
• Even when I don’t have a “logical” reason to say no to something, I should honor my gut feelings. Not that they should go unquestioned and dictate my actions, but that it’s something to pay attention to rather than dismiss in an attempt to be a Perfect Cerebral Poly Robot with No Bad Feelings.
• It’s key to give myself compassion and keep timelines in mind when I don’t react the way “I’d hoped.” In this case, B and I were on different processing timelines: he’d gotten ample time, reassurance, and experience to process me being with other people, and this was my first time getting used to that with him. To expect myself to react perfectly and without worries or visceral reactions wasn’t realistic.
• It’s very important for my partners and I to touch base after they have a sexual encounter with someone BEFORE we are all in the same room together.

8. What self-identities are important to you? How do you feel like being polyamorous intersects with or affects these identities?

The majority of the visible names in polyamorous activism and non-monogamy education are White and cisgender, which doesn’t represent me and often glosses over many of the struggles I and many of my partners face. I’m a Latinx who is queer in both gender and orientation (my pronouns are “they/them” and I still align with womanhood in a lot of spaces, primarily for political reasons?) and that is HUGELY important to how I navigate my relationships, especially around what kind of politics and social justice awareness I need partners to have. It’s also a big reason I choose to live openly and educate on these topics; we need more genderweird folks, more people of color, represented. We’re here and we’ve BEEN here for a while. Being non-monogamous has also helped me live my politics more fully in that I don’t have to choose between A) building a home with my long-term White, cis, mostly straight boyfriend and B) building a family and love/sex-life that centers fellow queers, genderwobbly humans, and POC. I can have BOTH.

I also grew up in a middle class Jehova’s Witness household in Puerto Rico, so there’s been a lot of unpacking class-based privilege. I explicitly prioritize equity & fairness over equality, which especially comes into play around money, since the last few years I’ve been consistently in a higher economic bracket than my partners. That means we value various forms of contributions to the relationship (not just material/financial) and we don’t split every cost 50/50 (especially if it’s for things I’m spearheading and they otherwise wouldn’t go to/want). We’re also careful to keep communication open so that $$ doesn’t become an area of shame or pressure in either direction. I don’t want people to feel indebted to or dependent on me, or like their livelihood isn’t “as important.” My partners also have pretty strong views about class and money (usually in the realm of anti-capitalism and democratic socialism) so this is an important piece to discuss.

Finally, being at that common intersection of kinky and polyamorous allows me to have a lot of different dynamics with various folks. Delightful! Given where my chosen family is and my work here in Boston, a lot of that is explored outside of MA & reduces certain, aherm, complications.

Projects:

Heck yes! At the same time I maintain a vibrant therapy practice in Boston out of a really unique location, I do public speaking and consulting across the country. You can find out more about working together with me on my website. I’m also on the Executive Committee for the Women of Color Sexual Health Network, an amazing collective of badass women of color in the sexuality field dedicated to uplifting women of color, fighting White supremacy, and basically revolutionizing the world. Finally, I consult on special projects with The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, a place where I’ve been working in a variety of capacities since 2010.