Early Morning Thoughts...
Friday May 15, 2009 8:41 am
So last night I was working. No surprise really, I do work and given that I work an irratic 12 hour shift sometimes I am going to get personal calls at work. However this personal phone call was an AIS related one. Picture the image, I am sitting in a busy ER at the nursing station surrounded by 15 or so bustling nurses, doctors, techs, etc.. with patients in the immediate hearing range, trying to talk to the kinky person on the other end of the phone with a modicum of discretion.
Can you see it? "Yes, of course we will have a bunch of suspension beams available. No, we still can't do any piercing. Sure! You can do that on the majority of the furniture in the playspace at the new hotel. Hmmm, that you can do in the designated space, but you have to have a PSM spotter. Well, if he likes to be set on fire, go ahead!" et al.. the last line garnered a couple of interesting looks. However, I am mostly out at work, and all they ask is that I keep "that" business to myself.
Still, occasionally I am asked by people at work, "How does this work?" I innocently bat my eyes, and say, "How does what work?" Mainly the questions don't center around Kink, as people mostly are either interested or definitely not! Primarily the questions center around Poly. How it works, how people emotionally handle it, can you be poly and still cheat and all that. It was quite interesting to be involved in a full nursing station discussion on Poly a couple weeks ago.
One of the other nurses brought up the subject of "Big Love," and how she couldn't handle the concept of being part of that type of arrangement. Another chimed in with, "I don't know, I wouldn't mind my husband going off to find another so he can get his needs met - and visiting me once in a while." The interesting part was that they were mainly caught up in the logistical and sexual parts of it. I stepped in and pointed out that in poly, there wasn't really any "set" model, and each relationship was different, based on the people involved.
Each relationship model was agreed upon, however solidly or loosely, by the participants - and frequently it was nebulous and changing as the people grew to know and trust one another. Of course, this got me some more looks. I smiled, and commented that the primary piece to maintaining and sustaining healthy poly relationships is open and honest communication. To be able to speak the "Unspeakable" with your partner(s) and have it be accepted.
We then spoke a little about what is "unspeakable" - I explained that to me, the "unspeakable" are things that we are all afraid to share with our partners, for fear of their reaction. Introspective thoughts about our needs, wants and desires, thoughts that might conflict, or create rifts, that we only think about in the quiet moments when we are not distracting ourselves with other things. Sharing these unspeakable things becomes easier the more we do it, and builds an increased level of trust in the relationship. It allows us to develop a sense of "object or relationship permanence" - the faith in our relationship that we can speak things into the space and have our partner acknowledge it.
I think in that moment some of us realized that regardless of the parameters of the relationship, whether polyamorous or monogamous, speaking and communicating with open hearted honesty was paramount. It is the key to longevity within any interpersonal connection. It was cool. Looking around to the 8 or so other people in the conversation, the half of us who "got it" nodded and then went about our business - leaving the others, who changed the topic to another "hot spot," to continue.
Just my morning musings,
Twistedly,
Barak