Cunning Minx

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1. How long have you been practicing polyamory?

10 years and one day hoping to get it right. ;-)

2. What does your relationship dynamic look like?

I am in a committed relationship of four years with LustyGuy, who has been married to L for over 30 years. L officiated a beautiful beach commitment ceremony for us in Costa Rica in 2013 (we podcast our vows as well). LustyGuy has one other occasional partner. He and L share a home that I am helping to redecorate and renovate; we are discussing possibly living together in the next few years. LustyGuy and I enjoy BDSM as an occasional activity, but we don’t engage in power exchange most of the time–we’re more likely to go swimming or work on a project together. And L is the best metamour I’ve ever had; she is an incredibly secure and compassionate human being who is always there for both of us.​

3. What aspect of polyamory do you excel at?

I am big fan of “owning your own shit.” We all have emotional baggage, and I believe it’s our job as self-aware humans to be recognize it and communicate it to our partners. And when you love someone wholly, you need to embrace his or her emotional baggage as well, so I really appreciate partners who can also own their own shit. Having the level of emotional intelligence to be able to identify, diagnose and discuss a strong emotion while you are experiencing that emotion is an incredibly rare and valuable skill in relationships. And the great news is that once you get the hang of owning your own shit, you don’t lose it–I use it with family and at the office, and it’s made me a better human being.

4. What aspect of polyamory do you struggle with?

I have always struggled with empathizing with people who aren’t like me. When I realize that someone has completely different values from me, I can understand it logically, but it’s hard for me to really understand where the person is coming from, and it’s really challenging for me to be in a relationship a person I don’t fully understand. 

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

It’s a constant process of paying attention and putting on my curious hat and my listening ears. I find that if I can listen patiently for long enough, the person will explain herself to me, and I’ll find something relatable in her story. This is challenging when partners or metamours are long-distance, because it’s difficult to find the time to have these frequent, casual conversations–which is one of the reasons why I avoid long-distance relationships these days! If I try to have a conversation like this over Skype, I always end up feeling like a journalist interviewing a guest rather than just chatting with a metamour! And that’s no fun for either of us.

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

LustyGuy and L have been married for decades, so they are fluid-bonded. I’m fairly conservative in terms of protection due to my automimmune disorder making me exceptionally vulnerable to infection, so for the first few years I insisted on barriers for everything, including condoms, dental dams and gloves for oral. After three years, with no changes in STI conditions, with a fairly closed vee and with the others having been pretty comfortable without oral barriers all along, we lifted the barriers for oral. 

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

Oh, too many to count! And (shameless plug) I put the top eight in my book, Eight Things I Wish I’d Known About Polyamory (Before I Tried It and Frakked It Up). Apart from that, there was one disastrous dating experience a few years ago in which I wasn’t really in a great place to date to begin with, and I didn’t realize that the couple was new to polyamory. At the first little bump, they freaked out and left me hanging, and I took it personally, which is to say, very badly. The good news is that I learned quite a bit from that painful experience: to date only when I am the happiest and healthiest version of myself and to avoid dating anyone who is new to polyamory. I know that last bit sounds harsh, but I’ve discovered that for me, dating newbies typically results in a higher drama level than I am comfortable with, since they are figuring everything out for the first time. 

(Bonus: Do you have any groups, projects, websites, blogs, etc. that you would like to promote?)

However, the good news is that from experiences like that one, I’ve developed a foolproof method for dealing with relationship drama and have had a BLAST teaching it with LustyGuy at conferences all over the country for the last two years! We even created a cost-effective online version of our Kicking Poly Drama on Its Ass course for individuals to take at home!

And we have over 400 free episodes of Poly Weekly that the monogamous, poly-curious and experienced polys alike can listen to for free–just search for “polyamory” on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or the podcatcher of your choice. Or go to www.polyweekly.com and search for your favorite topics using the search box.