the polyamory one
Welcome to "wtf is ashley ray tweeting about now?" a newsletter where I try to explain and defend the nonsense that made up my twitter feed over the last week
A few weeks ago I was interviewed for this Mashable piece on being poly during quarantine. Since it came out, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about solo polyamory, ethical non-monogamy and blah blah blah, so I thought I’d use this edition of my newsletter to lay it all out as a bi-poly gender nonconforming femme.
I’ve been ethically non-monogamous since I was 17. But, the above post (written when I was 27) is the first time I really tried to articulate my idea of polyamory. Mostly, I hate talking about polyamory. It’s boring. It’s really not that interesting. It mostly makes other people get into their feelings based on their own experiences with either monogamy or polyamory. I do not think polyamory is better than monogamy. I think relationships where people shape their own boundaries and rules are the best for everyone. I do enjoy talking about polyamory when it makes monogamous people irrationally mad though, that’s funny. So, today, I will try to be serious about the thing I can rarely take seriously: polyamory.
I didn’t grow up in a traditional household, my mom and stepdad made a 90-mile long distance relationship work. My mom was happy with her life, her home and her space and the people she let into it. Her friends, her family, boyfriends, my stepdad - all of these people brought a different kind of love into her life that made time alone feel anything but lonely. She raised me to be the same way. I also read a lot of Simone de Beauvoir in high school and being pretentious is a gateway drug to polyamory. I never felt like I was lacking some piece that only one other person in the world could fill. I felt like my life was a patchwork and I could fit all kinds of relationships and types of love into it to live my best life.
I use the term “solo poly” because it’s the best description of my version of polyamory. My ethical non-monogamy is fluid, it’s shaped by the boundaries and rules of each individual relationship I’m in. I have personal rules and guidelines that I bring to each relationship, but I don’t enter relationships with the notion of saying “okay, you’re my secondary and that means this” or things like the usual “okay, you can sleep with women, but not men” request that’s popular among cis men.
Nope, my relationships ebb and flow with the needs of the people I’m dating. If they need romance and emotional support, I can be that. If they need me to be a friend, I can be that too. I still think “solo poly” is a little misleading, though. I used to go with “relationship anarchist,” but that makes me sound like an asshole.
When I was younger, I tried to explain this to the people I dated and had crushes on, but most didn’t understand. We’d inevitably break up when they wanted something more rigid, more monogamous, more aligned with what a girlfriend “should” be. Eventually, I met a guy who seemed to get it. He saw my vision for what relationships could look like. We could be long distance at times, living in totally different countries and he was okay with that. When he asked me to marry him, I lived in Massachusetts and he lived in Illinois. I was moving to Germany the next year.
It didn’t matter, our polyamory was about finding the shifting ways we could keep each other’s love and support in our lives despite distance. There were times when that love looked more like friendship than anything romantic. There were times when it looked more like we were soulmates. Oh, also he needed health insurance and that’s a cool perk of traditional marriage. Mostly, we were happy because we didn’t feel like either one of us had to sacrifice new opportunities or growth to love each other.
Anyway, so shifty is my polyamory, that I even have periods of monogamy with partners. When I got engaged, we decided to end our polyamorous period and use the time of our engagement to really figure out our relationship and only our relationship. We always knew longterm we’d open the relationship up again, but we both saw the value of monogamy for that period.
I’ve done this with a lot of new partners who might not be totally comfortable with polyamory, but think they could be if they got to know me in a monogamous relationship first. I’ve done it when a relationship starts long distance and it makes sense to be poly but we decide to be monogamous when we’re in the same city. Hopefully, that also answers the most annoying question I repeatedly get: “If you’re poly, how could anyone cheat on you?” Well, because poly people still have rules and trust and that can be broken, dipshit.
I bring all of that up to say: I have no “How to Be Poly” rules or guidelines for you. The truth of being poly is that it’s a living nightmare where you are constantly having emotional, in depth conversations that require a lot of honesty and self-reflection. Very little about polyamory for me is about sex (especially now, during the ‘tine), it’s about love, romance, friendship, actual relationships. You can also be poly without all that, but you’re probably gonna have a really bad time. I have my fair share of horror stories, but in the end, they’ve only strengthened my desire to be better at polyamory, rather than making me run back to the embrace of monogamy. I also think monogamy is a pretty bad time too if you’re not using these same tools.
So, that’s how I define my “polyamory.” At the bottom of this thing, I’m gonna answer some questions I got because I am tired of explaining how I date people to the internet.
What else have I been tweeting about?
Another week where I watched all the TV:
Insecure
I’m still reviewing this season for The A.V. Club! They made Molly an idiot in the last episode, but Yvonne Orji is so good at acting, we all totally bought it.Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Interactive Episode
The new interactive episode is out on Netflix and it’s fun! I don’t know that it NEEDED the interactive element, because a lot of it is just telling you what to choose so you get to the end of the movie, but I liked it. Also, there was no weird race stuff!Trial by Media
Oh man, y’all know I love a good documentary series and this one is SO good. It covers some lesser known cases, but gave me a new perspective on stuff I already knew about. America is a failed experiment and has been for a long time! Our legal system is a mess! Court TV should not exist!! I should’ve gone to law school!!Dead to Me
This show is dead to me now because the second season was awful. I didn’t think I’d finish, but somehow I was on episode 10 and I’m still not sure what to make of the show. It definitely has great moments and you can get through it for Linda and Christina alone, but…the plot is lacking.Betty
Hulu was slow to put this up, but it premiered on HBO 2 weeks ago. Betty is about skateboardin’ cool girls in NYC. It’s very good so far, I loved the first two episodes and can’t wait to see more.Single Parents
The finale was this week and it was so good. Single Parents is the thing you need to replace Happy Endings in your life. This show is hilarious and gets no respect because it got wedged into ABC’s family sitcom block, but it’s way weirder than Modern Family or The Goldbergs. It also has an openly bisexual polyamorous character!! And they take him seriously, he’s not just a punchline! He’s just a normal hot guy in a three-way relationship!Billions
Everyone keeps telling me to try this show, so I’m trying. I’m still on the pilot.
Please just get personal with us
This is the part of the newsletter where I’ll answer your relationship advice questions and talk about random shit in my life.
Here are my answers to the questions I most frequently get about polyamory:
What’s the most annoying thing about poly?
Hm, I’d imagine more traditional/hierarchal polyamory people would say shared google calendars, but I don’t really deal with that in solo polyamory. I guess that’s the annoying thing: people make a lot of assumptions about how polyamory works when there are truly no poly relationships that are identical. Just like monogamy, you can make it work however you wanna make it work.
Actually, assumptions are the most annoying thing about polyamory, I guess. Especially as an out black woman. People will make a lot of negative assumptions about why I, a black woman, am poly: you don’t love yourself, you don’t believe in love, you don’t want love, you don’t think you deserve love (it’s the opposite, I think I deserve all the love I want!), you’re a sidechick, you just like the drama of being with a man who has a woman. If I’m seen in public with a guy people know has a girlfriend, I’m seen as the whore and charlatan, even if everyone in the relationship is cool with our arrangement. Poly men don’t deal with that, from what I’ve seen.
People tend to feel some type of way about a sexually liberated woman and being a poly woman means you’re admitting you’re a woman who sleeps with multiple people. That makes people uncomfortable. People don’t get uncomfortable when they think of guys having multiple partners. But, people have a hypersexualized view of me because of it, even if many of my partners will tell you dating me comes with some periods of celibacy. Hell, I only slept with one of my favorite poly exes like 3 times. For a lot of people, polyamory is just about sex, so that assumption gets projected a lot.
Everyone will have their own theories about why you’re poly and for me, they’re usually pretty easy to laugh off, but you have to accept that other people will most certainly internalize those thoughts about you. Being poly won’t do anything great for your reputation, is what I’m saying, I guess. Also, it doesn’t help that polyamory requires a lot of people to be honest to work. It doesn’t matter how open and ethical I am if the person I’m seeing isn’t telling their other partners what’s up. You’ll deal with a lot of misplaced anger.
What resources do you suggest?
Everyone is gonna tell you to read The Ethical Slut. Read it. It’s fine. I have some issues with it, but I do think it’s an important read in terms of helping you figure out what YOU personally want from ethical non-monogamy. After that, I suggest Opening Up by Tristan Taormino. I like this book because it’s all about how you can use polyamory and monogamy in different ways to shape the relationship you want. Maybe your polyamory is mostly monogamous, but you guys agree to threesomes every 4th Sunday of the month. That’s still ethical non-monogamy, baby, you’re living the lifestyle!
I used to recommend Facebook groups, but most of them have died off. I was in a few for poly black people and it was great to get advice from people who understood my point of view on relationships when most internet relationship advice groups were full of monog people who thought I was poly because I didn’t love myself or some bullshit. If you like internet communities, plenty of them are out there.
What are YOUR rules and boundaries??
Oh wow, are you trying to date me? I mean, okay. These are like, the basics. Obviously there can be more or less depending on the circumstances.
Never date someone who shit talks their primary or other partners.
Red flag, not okay. Also, it means they’re probably gonna be talking shit about you to all their partners!If you want to know everything, I’ll tell you everything, but you gotta tell me everything too. If you don’t want to know everything, you don’t have to tell me either.
This is a tricky thing to parse out in poly relationships. Sometimes, my partners wanna know about my other partners. Sometimes, they don’t. Personally, I don’t have a preference, but only ask that we be on the same page about it. You wouldn’t believe how many partners think they deserve access to my entire sexual life and a list of everyone I’ve ever dated, but don’t think they have to share shit about what they’re doing in return.Our relationship is ours.
If you’re dating someone who has a primary who expects to know all the details of their partner’s relationships, it can feel intrusive! We’re supposed to have our own relationship where we build trust and get to know each other. Poly relationships are still filled with moments like sharing your personal traumas and tragedies. Just because I share something with you, doesn’t mean you can share it with your other partners. Yeah, you actually have to tell people that. I once had a guy’s wife offer me therapy because he told her about some childhood stuff that was meant to stay between us.I don’t arrange the threesomes.
This is just a personal preference I’ve developed over time. I am tired. I have put my time in. I will tell you what I’m comfortable with and what I’m into and you can make it happen or not. Honestly, people usually just ask me anyway. I am the unicorn and I do not go on the hunt.Use your words.
I am not a mind reader. Also, I am a SAGITTERRORIST and we are very bad at subtlety. I know I’m a Scorpio rising so it SEEMS like I’ll understand your thoughts and your body language, but I won’t. I will not pick up on the hidden passive aggressive meanings in your texts. I will not notice your sly comment that’s supposed to tell me you’re unhappy with something. You will have to use your words and articulate the issue. I don’t have time to ask my friends to analyze texts from multiple partners. That’s not fair to them or me.If your primary partner says go, I go!
People say being poly is selfish, but there is no “I get what I want all the time” thing here. In fact, a lot of my polyamory is giving up people and relationships I value because I have respect for someone’s primary commitment. There is no boyfriend stealing here. I have never taken someone’s man and I’ve kindly said “no thanks” when the opportunity presented itself. That’s not part of my relationship ethics. It’s common for people to leave monogamous relationships that don’t serve them. Sometimes, I have to leave poly relationships that don’t serve the other people involved, even if they do serve me pretty well.I’ve also tried the whole “my primary partner isn’t happy about us dating but we can all work it out together” thing and it’s almost always bad. The last guy who tried to get me to work something like that out is now in therapy 4 times a week. He has an individual session, a session with his wife, a session with his secondary partner and a session with all three of them together. I don’t have time for all that. Also, sorry, but if a lady tells her partner or me that she doesn’t want them to see me anymore or if I pick up on that vibe, I’m gonna respect it. That’s feminism.
No cheating.
I’ve never cheated on anyone. By that I mean, I’ve never acted outside of the boundaries and agreements I’ve had with my partners. I have been cheated on though and if you break the rules we agreed on, I’m gone. If we decide to be monogamous for 3 months and you fuck someone else, that’s cheating, even if we were gonna eventually be open again. Cheating is just breaking rules for poly people.
Oh, so you think you’re perfect and have it all figured out and you’re some Poly Superhero who can tell us what to do?
Oh, god no. Oh man, I make so many relationship mistakes all the time. I have so many regrets when it comes to how I handled things before I knew better. At the very least, I hope people can learn from the shit I’ve gone through dealing with poly people on Okcupid and Tinder for years. Save yourselves, is mostly what I’m saying with all this. Or, maybe I just helped you see polyamory in a new way. That’s fine too.
Is it harder being queer and poly?
I don’t know, I’ve never been straight and poly. Everything comes with challenges. But also, the queer community has a lot more people who are non-monogamous, so it’s easier in some ways. I honestly can’t imagine being poly and only dating straight cis men, dating straight cis men is hard enough as it is.
Did you really have 8 boyfriends at once?
Yes.