Polyamory, page 15
If you struggle with the idea of consensual nonmonogamy or polyamory, that’s understandable. It doesn’t mean anything bad about you, and you’re certainly not alone. If you’re reading this book, I assume you are curious to find out if you want to work with this population, or perhaps if you want to stretch in your understanding of what your own relationships could become. That’s all you need right now. If you can continue to cultivate that spirit of curiosity, you are already well on your way to figuring it out. The act of careful consideration and respect for diversity is the key. Any choice you make with due consideration of your bias and deep respect for others will be an honorable path.
While in this chapter I have focused on ways unexplored differences can challenge our ability to connect authentically, I think it is also important to consider ways our similarities can do the same. My working assumption is that every relationship is a cross-cultural relationship. In fact, while having personal in-group experience can be a real asset to understanding another person’s culture, I think it can also be a bit of a liability. I always feel cautious when working with a client who appears to be much like me, because I think I am at high risk of making assumptions about them based on my own experience. When I do that, I know I am not making enough of an effort to see things through their eyes. When I’m working with clients who have relatively little in common with me, on the other hand, I find it easier to get curious about their experiences and perspectives, because it is obvious to me that I have no other way to understand them deeply. This is also true with friendships and partnerships; it is easy to say “if I can do it, you can too,” when it might be more honest, and respectful, to ask the other person what they think sounds easy or difficult about it, or other questions that acknowledge more than one answer, choice, or challenge.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A THERAPIST FOR POLYAMOROUS CLIENTS?
Here’s your “must-have” list:
The ability to separate your choices and values from your client’s and tailor therapy to address their goals for the relationship(s) they want to create
A basic level of cultural competence about polyamory and other forms of consensual nonmonogamy
A therapeutic approach to some common presenting problems
A working understanding of available resources
This book can provide you with the last three, but the first requires that you to make a decision about how you want to approach any differences in values between you and your clients. It will be important to develop strategies for recognizing when your own biases and assumptions may be starting to intrude on either your equanimity or their therapy. This is always a challenge, but it becomes particularly pressing when you’re working with anyone whose relationships are not culturally condoned, as is the case with polyamorous people.
ASSESSING BIAS
We all have bias. Our culture, upbringing, family, lifetime of experiences, and other influences shape who we are, what we value, and what we believe. That, in turn, shapes our actions. The goal isn’t to free ourselves from bias, but rather to make sure we’re aware of what our bias is and where it comes from. That way, we have the option to correct for it—whereas if our bias remains unexamined, it’s likely to sneak in and cause trouble without our realizing it.
To avoid that, we have to intentionally examine our bias. We have to consider what we believe, what assumptions we make about people and relationships, and what our own values are. In my opinion, this should be regular practice for therapists, and all humans in relationships with other humans, regardless of who they work with or relate to. Each individual is unique, a universe unto themselves, and therefore every relationship calls on us to continually reassess our perspectives. But taking a close look at your own bias can be quite uncomfortable, and I have nothing but respect for you as you undertake this important process of self-reflection.
To give you a sense of how to start analyzing your own bias, I’m going to share some of my own experiences. I want you to get a sense of what my bias is and where it comes from. I’m hoping that you can come along with me and really open yourself to considering the nature and sources of your own bias, whatever it may be. To that end, I’ve included a worksheet to guide you in a reflection on your own experiences and influences at the end of this chapter.
MY STORY
My mother and stepfather were married in 1968. They had a consensually nonmonogamous relationship. (Did you know that consensually nonmonogamous relationships even existed in 1968?) He traveled the world for his work, and their agreement was that he could have relationships when he traveled. Although I don’t have many details, I believe that they had a don’t ask, don’t tell arrangement. I was about nine or 10 when my mom told me about this agreement. I recall that it was really no big deal to her. Her attitude was, “As long as it’s not in my state, it’s not an issue.”
This was a foundational family influence for me. At a young age, I learned that my mother and stepfather had created a relationship agreement that was unique and individual, based on the needs of the people involved. That’s what I was raised to believe in, not nonmonogamy per se, but individually crafted relationships.
My brother is another huge influence in my life. He and his wife were together for 18 years before she passed away. My brother has always considered himself to be a polyamorous person, and their relationship was polyamorous from the beginning. During the almost two decades they were together, he had another partner, and sometimes more than one. My sister-in-law was monogamous and did not have any other partners. (I call this kind of relationship structure mono-polyam; it’s discussed in more depth in chapter 15). They also had a primary/secondary relationship structure, which means their relationship was primary and any other relationship came second. They had an ongoing conversation about what was feasible for them. To me, it seems clear that their relationship evolved through a process of differentiation. If it hadn’t been a well-differentiated conversation and their relationship agreements a living document that flexed and changed throughout time, it seems very likely that something would have gone amiss and the relationship would never have lasted for 18 years.
Incidentally, many people, including many people who study polyamory, believe that mono-polyam is not a workable relationship structure. But I witnessed my brother’s relationship with his wife, and it was a beautiful, long-lasting relationship. It worked, and that’s what matters to me. I’ve seen many other mono-polyam relationships since that time, and I have no reason to think it isn’t a potentially workable relationship style.
Another major influence on how I view polyamory is that I have been in a same-sex relationship for more than two decades, and I identify as lesbian. There’s a huge overlap between the LGBTQIA+ community and the polyamorous and consensually open community. Because of that, I know many polyamorous people just from interacting with my own community. That means that I see a lot of the polyam people that never come in to couples therapy because their relationships are working already. Additionally, my partner and I crafted our relationship agreements and discussed balance of roles and responsibilities according to our gifts, strengths, and challenges. This is because in our household of two women, there is no rule book for who fixes the dryer, shovels the snow, cooks, cleans, or performs any other tasks of daily life that might otherwise be aligned with or proscribed by gender roles. I have always considered this aspect of my life to be a tremendous gift; far from being held back by gender stereotypes, we have had to transcend them.
Can you see how these influences combine to give me the perspective that polyamory can work? I’ve seen it work with my mother and stepfather. I’ve seen it work with my brother and his wife. I’ve seen it work, time and time again, with people in my community. On top of that, I believe in crafting unique relationship agreements because my parents modeled it, and my partner and I did it. These are the experiences that prepared me to work with polyamorous clients, because these experiences provided me a front-row seat in real-life demonstrations of beautiful, strong, loving, lasting unique relationships, some of which had nonmonogamous agreements in place.
In graduate school, I had an interesting experience that threw my own perception and understanding of relationships into stark relief. I was taking a class on couples therapy with a brilliant professor. One day, I asked him, “What are your thoughts about working with polyamory?”
He replied, “I’ve worked with a few, and what I’ve noticed is that the mother of at least one of the partners always seems to have a personality disorder.”
I can certainly say, from my therapy room and my community, that’s far from a universal truth. Yet, my professor was working from a small sample and a sample that only included people who needed relationship therapy. That’s inherently going to offer a skewed perspective. It’s important to remember that, as relationship therapists, we work almost exclusively with people whose relationships aren’t doing so well. If you don’t encounter polyamorous people in happy relationships in your everyday life and the only image of polyamory you have comes from the people you see in therapy, you might draw the conclusion that polyamory leads to, or arises from, dysfunction and conflict. One of the things I love about my own cultural influences is that I get to see the polyamorous relationships that work. That means that when a couple comes to me looking to move toward a nonmonogamous relationship, I already have plenty of examples for how that can work really beautifully. Most importantly, having access to well-functioning mono-polyam and don’t ask, don’t tell relationships, which are generally thought of as being not ideal, shows me just how wrong the conventional wisdom can be about nonmonogamy. Questioning the limitations people tend to place on what kind of relationship structures are workable comes to me naturally.
That said, these experiences and influences have their own inherent limitations. When I work with a monogamous person who identifies strongly as monogamous and isn’t interested in exploring polyamory, I can easily feel an internal pull toward convincing them of the possibility that polyamory might work. I have to remind myself that me going to bat for the underdog (polyamory as a marginalized population) is not relevant to this individual’s therapy goals. I have to consider carefully what will be therapeutic for them and what I can do to help them meet their goals. That can take a fair amount of careful consideration, since polyamory’s marginalized status means that people rarely have accurate information and therefore psychoeducation is often necessary. I have gathered a number of interventions that keep me out of the middle, which I share in this book. I love these interventions because whenever I feel my personal bias might be coming into the room, I like to have strategies to make sure the clients are making their own decisions and having their own conversations, with one another and also with aspects of themselves. (For example, I make ample use of initiator/inquirer and resolving a dilemma using two-chair work.)
Additionally, I am quite aware of my own bias when I work with long-term same-sex white female couples, especially those in my age range. It is easy for me to identify with their cohort, challenges, culture, and situation; I’m in danger of projecting my own values and beliefs on them. I can easily make assumptions about them that are untrue and obscure their individuality. Ideally, I want to connect with and come to understand the real person in front of me rather than an aspect of myself, projected on them. It takes a deliberate effort to not take shortcuts based on what would probably end up to be false assumptions.
WHAT ARE YOUR INFLUENCES?
When I talk to therapists about working with polyamorous clients, I often hear about internal conflicts and blocks. Here are a few things I hear a lot:
“I’ve just seen things go wrong so often and so badly with nonmonogamy, and I feel uncomfortable letting my clients put themselves in a situation that could turn disastrous.”
“Some of the things this client is telling their partner sound manipulative or narcissistic; I’m not sure I can tell the difference between a healthy situation and an unhealthy one, so we should veer away from a discussion of polyamory to avoid an entire category of pitfalls that can be damaging.”
“I’ve tried nonmonogamy at one point in my life, and it turned out terribly.”
“I don’t understand how nonmonogamy can be compatible with a secure attachment style.”
We all have ideas about what goes into a good relationship. These ideas are shaped by any number of factors: our own personal experience, our perceptions of the people around us, our religious belief systems, our consumption of the media, and so on.
If you haven’t had a lot of experience talking and thinking about polyamory, it might make you uncomfortable at times. It may even bring up some internal conflict that you haven’t been aware of before. You might have some ideas about when it can and cannot work or how. Sorting through that discomfort can be a really interesting project, if you’re open to it. Think of this as an invitation to learn more about yourself and an opportunity to stretch and challenge yourself.
GUIDED REFLECTION: MY RELATIONSHIP IDEAS
I’d like to invite you to take a little time to consider your personal history. How have your experiences shaped your perspective on relationships? Beliefs and biases are close cousins; a belief is a thought we think a lot; it becomes a bias when we can’t see past it sufficiently to engage with the reality of a situation or understand a different viewpoint. By examining your beliefs, you can stay aware of your internal processes and identify where your beliefs stop and a client’s beliefs and choices begin. When you lose track of your own beliefs and the line between you and your life versus your client and their life, you are in the territory of acting from bias.
To guide you in reflecting on this subject, I’ve created a worksheet with a series of questions intended to lead you through a process of self-assessment, starting with looking at what beliefs and values you hold about relationships, fidelity, commitment, and so on, based on past experiences. The goal is to identify your influences, notice which beliefs may be lingering vestiges of a mindset you no longer consciously hold, and explore what you hope for in a long-term relationship or relationships.
“My Relationship Ideas: Reflection Worksheet” is the first in the Relationship Concepts worksheet set (see appendix A), a series that invites people to consider the assumptions that shape, and potentially limit, the possibilities for what a relationship can look like (the other two worksheets in appendix A are discussed in chapter 7, “What Makes a Good Relationship?”). These worksheets are simply tools, intended to be used as jumping-off places for deeper reflection and, ultimately, guides for how to go about changing a belief system, habit, or ineffective behavior you would prefer to leave behind. The change process involves multiple steps and makes an exciting and challenging course of therapy or a very interesting self-help project.
The first step involves identifying goals that you have the power to achieve (see the “Getting Clear on Your Goals” worksheet). The second step is to clearly see where you are and get your sights set on where you want to go in terms of thoughts, feelings, and actions that are related to your goal (see the “Creating Personal Change” worksheet). The third step is an action plan for implementing your change process (see the “Creating Change Action Plan” worksheet). The worksheets for these three steps are part of the Creating Change worksheet set in appendix E.
You can read through the worksheets and reflect on any thoughts and memories the questions evoke for you. If you want to go more in-depth, however, I recommend writing down some thoughts about each of the questions or discussing them with a partner, friend, coach, or therapist. You can do a full-on journal project or just jot down a few notes to remind yourself of what came to mind.
If you have clients who are considering opening their relationship or might benefit from some deep self-reflection about what kind of relationships they want to create, feel free to use any of these work-sheets with them. In that case, first you might want to do a deep dive and go through the worksheets yourself so you can understand what it will be like for your client to engage in this process (see appendix A, “My Relationship Ideas: Reflection Worksheet”). Modify or adapt the worksheets as needed.
STANDING AT THE CROSSROADS
I wonder how you’re feeling now, at the end of this chapter. If you did the exercise, you will have just finished a pretty deep reflection on your history with relationships. Maybe you picked up on a pattern you hadn’t noticed before. Maybe you remembered an interesting experience you had forgotten. Maybe it sparked some curiosity about what experiences have shaped your loved ones’ beliefs about relationships. There’s always more ground to cover and deeper work to do.
When you meet someone who challenges your beliefs about relationships in some way, that will serve as another opportunity to reflect on your perspective and challenge your assumptions. Try to get curious and understand why they think what they do. I believe that it’s when we are confronted with different perspectives that we learn the most about our own beliefs, and especially our values and our capacity for connecting with others. Engaging deeply with another person’s viewpoint forces us to reflect on our own; as a result, we may shift our ideas, allow for new exceptions, or even deepen our commitment to what we believe by thinking through it more fully.
CHANGING A BELIEF SYSTEM
Changing a belief system is one of the most liberating things a person can do. Remember that a belief system isn’t a global truth or mystical entity; it is a thought you have repeated so many times it becomes automatic and assumed (by you); however, you are in control of your thoughts. If you uncover a belief system you hold (an often-repeated thought) that you would prefer not to hold anymore, you can change it. And in so doing, you will also change something about your emotional experience because thoughts and emotions are closely connected. In fact, one way to identify a belief you might want to change is to notice if it makes you feel good, or bad. If you hold a belief that makes you feel bad about yourself or disconnected from people you love, it makes a lot of sense to change that belief into one that makes you feel good about yourself and more connected, loved, and loving.
