Poly Diaries - a bit of poly math.

Poly Diaries - December 2019

Polyamory has its own peculiar blind spots. To understand these, it’s useful to think a bit like a mathematician. So I’m going to talk about the math of polyamory in this piece. Some simple addition and subtraction. Nothing too demanding. But if maths scares you, bear with me, it’s worth it in the end. 

When you love two people, you are in many ways ‘in between’ them. You are in the middle. You have one person on one side of you and another on the other side, so to speak. You maybe have more connections besides, but for the sake of ease, let’s assume it's two partners. One of the most wonderful feelings is knowing that you have these two people who you care about and who care about you - life feels so full, so rich…and I guess safe. Each of those persons adds to you and to each other, though they may not be at all aware of this, since they may not be directly in relationship with each other. 

In your mind, when you are between, the persons on either arm are not taking away from each other, the opposite in fact, they tease out each other's depths, even though they may not interact. It’s not zero sum - it isn’t that in giving love to one, you have to be taking it from the other - it's non-zero sum, to be a bit mathy. Yes, time and attention are zero sum, there is only a finite amount of it. But love, the feeling and the will to care, they are different. They are non-zero sum. We don’t say “I’ll love you only until next Tuesday”. You don’t put an end to it - so how can you measure it if there is not end point? 

So there is this non-zero sum quality when you experience love in any relationship - it’s open ended. And when you are in the middle, in a poly situation, you feel this open-endedness going off in two directions at the same time. It’s ‘additive’. There is no feeling of subtraction. But that can also create a blind spot, to what it's like to be the person on one of the arms.

When you are on the arm, you are also potentially in a blind spot, even a blind alley too, because the energy can only flow in one direction away from you, towards the person in the middle. And unless you have your own partners, where YOU are in the middle, you might not know or understand how it feels to be in the middle, to feel that ‘additive’ aspect that comes from loving two people. If you are on the arm, you are loving just one person usually, the one in the middle.  Yes, if you become a triad, or even if you get to know the third person, then a three-way connection can develop. Things get a bit more joined up. But until that happens, when you are on the arm, you are 'out on a limb', the limb meaning like a branch on a tree.

Being on the arm, life is far less additive and a lot more subtractive. For example, when the person in the middle gives love and attention to the person on the other arm, it can feel that it takes love and attention away from you. That is how it can feel, in a kind of ‘raw data’ kind of way. When the person in the middle switches their attention from one partner to another, they don’t feel any real sense of ‘absence’, unless attention is given to one partner for a long period. But the people on the arms almost always feel that sudden absence, it can feel like the person in the middle disappeared, they are absent. And that can feel like a subtraction. Not only that, but it makes you feel absent too, since you are relying to an extent on their attention in order to feel 'present'.

So why does the situation feel so different when you are on the arms, compared to the middle? Why does it feel like a subtraction? Clearly the one in the middle holds two people in their heart - they are connected to two, and so love flows easily one way and then the other, but the sense of connection remains, as long as at least one person is the focus of attention or connection - there is never ‘no connection’ if you are connected to at least one person on one of your arms. But when you are only connected to the one in the middle, when that person in the middle moves their attention to the to the other arm, you feel a disconnect. 

You might think that it’s jealousy to resent your loved one giving attention to another, but it’s not so simple. We all need to feel important. The other side of that is a real fear of being worthless, not valued. They are not exactly the same thing, but they are connected. You may feel perfectly valuable and just feel that your partner isn’t seeing or appreciating you enough in that moment. But there are deeper holes to fall into - that when we suddenly feel unimportant, we drop into that fear of being totally worthless. We are quite capable of feeling that. We may or may not falsely assume our partner should dig us out of that hole. But that’s not my focus here.  

Let’s start with the idea that needing to feel important is a perfectly valid need. When we finally reach Zen enlightenment, some time after 4 o'clock next Thursday perhaps, we can let go of that need, somewhat, but until then, it’s a big part of our sense of self-worth, and seeing that worth reflected through others is a big part of somehow confirming it to ourselves too. We should accept that it’s a valid need. 

The question then becomes how do we satisfy that need. When we see that loving attention suddenly diverted elsewhere, we almost immediately assume it subtracts from what we are getting. If that happens, we are almost certainly measuring something. As love cannot be measured (it really is a trust thing, oh, and a philosophical thing), what are we measuring and why? What is being subtracted from, if it cannot be the love aspect of the relationship? 

The answer seems quite simply ‘our sense of self-importance’. It’s not that we think our partner doesn’t love us, we might know that fundamentally to be true. But in those moments, we feel ‘less important’. So it’s a good idea to realise that ‘importance’ and ‘love’ are different things. And when we make ‘the need to feel important’ the foundation of our relationship, we are in a difficult and insecure position. Love should be the foundation, and we should be able to trust it (even though we might not have a clue what it is), but it’s hard to trust things you cannot measure. So we sort of switch to measuring via proxy, i.e. the feeling of being important becomes a proxy. Being important waxes and wanes, and we can measure it, but it also means that inevitably what goes up must come down. We will find ourselves subtracted from, our sense of love gets ‘subtracted from’, when the level of importance goes down, which it will. Usually in moments when you are not ready for it.

The problem of subtraction though is that it’s a bit contagious. If one of your partners starts to be unhappy with the attention you are giving to the other, that presents a potentially serious problem for the person in the middle - guilt, you failed to see your partner's vulnerability, a feeling that it’s not safe to love two people, or that the whole things is a difficult balancing act. It's easy to think that life would be a whole lot easier if that person that is complaining would just shut up. But underneath that is the fear that you cannot satisfy them - “this is a fucking bottomless pit - I’m never going to fill it.” And that hurts. And if the hurt builds, then it eventually starts to take away from the value that you are able to see in the other person. We get blinded by our own feelings of hurt. You may even start to doubt if they love you - why are they hurting you if they do?

Trying to constantly balance the needs of the two people on either arm can be energy sapping. It’s very tiring if it seems that the other persons’ confidence in the relationship and in you rests on you being able to maintain a constant high standard in delivering a good result for everybody. In the end, we want to relax, not worry about failing, be able to trust that we've done the work of showing the relationship is based on genuine love. That feels good. That feels like we are safe and loved. 

But this process of subtraction (difficult feelings can all be subtractive) can become a vicious circle that drains value out of a relationship if not handled. Clearly the relationship has to rest on a solid foundation.

When you are in the middle, just seeing this same picture from different perspectives might fill the gap so that when you are on the arm, you also know what it's like to be in the middle, and when you are in the middle, you know what it's like to be on the arm. But the deeper question remains as to how do we go about valuing ourselves or even assessing how we are valued by others. 

There is another solution, and perhaps it’s more profound and rewarding than simply having to tell yourself that of course you are important. I think the answer is to make the other people more present, in your mind. You feel the sudden disconnect, which the one in the middle is maybe not even feeling, so you have to re-connect with that person and indeed, with the person on the other arm too. Comparisons can be very problematic, you don't want to be measuring yourself against someone you don't even know.

So let the sense of their relationship fill your mind. Realise that if she is getting the attention now, you KNOW how good it feels, to get the attention from this person you love, who is in the middle. You know too that the person in the middle is having this ‘additive’ experience, and that in reality, your position on the other arm is what is helping to make this kind of poly love so special. He NEEDS YOU there to make that happen, whether he's giving you attention or not. You ARE important for that reason too.

Okay, happy days. But doubt might still want to spoil the party. Is this ‘making yourself’ absent open to abuse? Of course. There is always this question when you are being loving and selfless - are you being exploited? Let's agree that the answer to that doubt isn't to remove the question, by walking away from it. Rather, we measure the quality of a person’s love by what they give us, not what they give to other people too, for the most part. If they are shitty to other people, well, different story then. But the mere fact of them loving someone else needn't be subtractive. If it is, then we are possibly trying to monopolise a person’s love. Dodgy ground.

Rather, in this poly situation, we want to avoid a sudden diversion of attention from subtracting from our sense of our self-worth, in their eyes or ours. We don’t want it to rock the foundations of the relationship every time. We want to feel safe. We want our partners to feel safe loving the other person too.  And so allowing oneself to move towards the person in the middle and indeed the person on the other arm in our hearts and minds helps to avoid us becoming isolated (and lonely) on our own arm.

The being absent in order to be present reminds me a bit of kink, where a sub might want to be ‘filled’ entirely by the will and intention of the other person, and in some weird kind of alchemy, this becoming absent allows one to be present in a way that can feel quite blissful. This kind of bliss in poly is called compersion, and it’s a real thing, and I think it's quite similar in origin. It is being somehow 'outside' of oneself, and rather than being nowhere, we find ourselves rather in a happy state. For this reason, I'd prefer if it was called exopassion, since -persion sounds weird to my ear. Exo- means ‘from the outside’, and it’s a passion and love that you feel while being somehow ‘outside’, or hanging out on one of the arms.  

In the end, doubting our value is perhaps a failed attempt at try to answer the question - how important am I? We try to answer the question rather than pushing back on the question itself. That’s natural enough. In the end, we are still trying to be present, and that sudden feeling of absence can throw us off balance. But if we arrive into that moment with a mask on, one that is asking ‘how important am I’, then are we really present? You feel present when you feel loved. So the answer is of course, '‘I am loved’. I am important', now fuck off! Reminds me of object permanence. You can't see it, but you know it still exists.

I think it’s quite important in polyamory to be able to fill the gaps and blind spots created by the different positionings within the relationship. But in the end, goodwill, a willingness to understand, and kindness towards yourself and others are what truly fill the gaps - information on its own isn’t enough. Those positive intentions are additive by nature. Fear and jealousy are subtractive by nature. The truth dies in darkness, as they say. 

Well, that’s enough from the poly diaries. Till next time, my friends.