First of all, thanks to all for your patience. Our doggo’s trip to the eye specialist went well (aside from her hating the car for 3.5 hours each way). We’re hoping an injection into the mass near her eye should clear it up. I appreciate everyone who reached out!
This week’s post finds me in the middle of week two (of three) of my slave’s river expedition along the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We’ve been able to have only minimal contact via texts sent to and from a satellite phone she borrowed from work, so it’s not the safest medium for intimate communication. As an outdoor industry professional, it’s not the first time she’s been away for several weeks on an expedition or hitch to some inaccessible place. So I often take these pauses as moments to reflect and, when necessary, to do a little bit of internal work.
I have always said that kink relationships burn brighter and faster than vanilla relationships. That is neither an ominous warning nor is it a depressing assessment. On the contrary, it is something to be celebrated, and something from which we can learn. The intensity of kink relationships, I believe, derives from the fact that, by their natures, we are feeding desires through them. We are engaging in fantasies and bringing them to life while simultaneously navigating the realities of our vanilla lives. And the better we engage and maintain our kink lives – that is to say, when we actually DO have ethical kinky relationships that require transparency, communication, and acceptance of who we are in any given moment, we are clearly going to experience life with a greater intensity. And such communication takes much more energy.
Please, let’s not mistake “intensity” here for unsustainability. While our kink-based (particularly authority-based) relationships may feel effortless when they are going well, that doesn’t mean they aren’t work.. It takes a lot on the front-end to create the safe spaces necessary for authenticity, for flow, and for love. Kink isn’t the only place we see this: our polyamorous relationships also require a great deal of work to maintain. And they can be so intense. The navigation of “new relationship energy” notwithstanding, the simple task of maintaining quality time with multiple partners – or even just being able to navigate the gravitational pull of a comet partner – requires a lot of emotional resources to fuel. Decision fatigue is a real thing; and for those of us with multiple partners, the usual decision fatigue is multiplied by the number of active partners (and metamours) you have. Sometimes navigating your shared calendar can take all your spoons for the day.
I want to be very careful here and avoid making it sound like I think that just because things “burn brighter and faster” that it means that said relationships are doomed to be short-term. This simply isn’t true, but it does mean that a faster burn requires a faster replenishment of fuel, which, of course, means a greater supply of said fuel.
And just what is that fuel? How do we replenish our reserves? We often think that kink itself will replenish it: but that’s potentially as dangerous as thinking that adding another relationship to your polycule or adding another “vee” partner will sustain and jump-start the relationship(s) you’re already in. It’s akin to having a child to “save” a relationship. It clearly doesn’t work that way; and we’ve all know that “collector” of relationships who leaves a trail of discarded partners behind … most of whom don’t realize they’ve been discarded until it’s too late.
Physical time apart from our partners can really give us the perspectives and space we need to evaluate, cultivate, and maintain our relationships. It doesn’t take too much discernment to figure out that in doing so, the only thing we really have efficacy over is our own actions. It gives us the time to look at our behavior, and identifying the things that need some work and what we can actively change or even “fix,” rather than brooding upon what the other person (or persons) may or may not have done. Conversely, these spaces also give us the opportunity to evaluate if your own needs are being met; and sometimes that can actually be the hardest question to answer. Are we trying to maintain or repair by retconning the past, or are we being honest with and about ourselves and what we actually want?
Again, this is neither a bad thing nor something to fear. In successful kink and polyam relationships, we become quite skilled at self-evaluation, and, if we’re lucky, good at integrating what we find. I have always been inspired by the diversity of kink and polyam relationship styles – particularly with polaymory because we simply don’t have representation outside of very specific safe spaces. When it comes to kink representations in the media, we have plenty of terrible representations of authority-based relationships (the Marquis de Sade, Venus in Furs, The Story of O, The Secretary1, Fifty Shades of Grey), but, as kinksters, we’re generally good at picking out the bits that work for us and setting consent-based boundaries with them. With polyamory, there really isn’t much representation at all, which is perhaps a good thing.
I always turn to the 2013 film Her as probably the most tender, yet so frustratingly exaggerated, depiction of polyamory. As Samantha (a sentient OS voiced by Scarlett Johansson) says to Theodore (portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix) regarding her being in love with 641 people simultaneously:
“But the heart’s not like a box that gets filled up; it expands in size the more you love. I'm different from you. This doesn't make me love you any less. It actually makes me love you more.”
Despite the one-sided nature of this, and the fact that Samantha has engaged in loving relationships with 640 other people without Theodore’s consent, the core message behind her explanation of loving more than one person is poignant and, at least to my own sensibilities, accurate.
Other films, like Professor Marston and the Wonder Women get certain things right, but also get mired in Hollywood sensationalism (despite the fact that Marston is based on the true story of William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman).
The most recent film that I think was actually more accurate – but in a very subtle way – was Amsterdam. The unspoken polycule of “friends” Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), and Harold Woodman (John David Washington) was touching in their desire to navigate the complex emotions of their relationships.
So as kinky or polyamorous people, we have to look to our immediate communities for support, but we are pretty much on our own as to how whatever we glean does or doesn’t work for our own relationship dynamics and styles.
When we make mistakes or stumble in kink or polyamory, we must be accountable and learn from those mistakes, but we also cannot be burdened by their weight. If there is a need to “repair” or make things right (or even just adjust or tweak our dynamic) we can’t become attached to the way things used to be, but instead need to think about repair as more of a process of putting something back in working order. The Japanese art of kintsugi (golden joinery) has become a popular metaphor, where broken pottery is put back together again with gold filling in the cracks – often making something more beautiful. However, we must also realize that while the new vessel may be made with the old pieces, it is still something new or different.
This is also where eastern philosophical systems get things right, I think. When I used to teach eastern philosophy, I would always start with Hinduism, because its presentation of what I called “tripartite logic” was an excellent way to shift students’ thinking. In the west, logic is based on a binary, “either or” kind of system: true or false; existence or nonexistence; yes or no; is or isn’t; on or off; ones and zeros. But in eastern philosophical systems (more specifically Hinduism and the Buddhism which grew out of it), logic is a triad: birth, death, preservation; or, existence, becoming, and decaying/passing away.2 The entire system is contingent upon the fact that all happen simultaneously. We live (existence) in a constant state of regeneration (creation) and decay (destruction). Cells die and are replaced by new ones. We “are” because creation and destruction are happening simultaneously as we maintain our bodies.
Even when an object is physically “destroyed,” it becomes something else, or many different pieces, each now an existence as a new thing. These new pieces were born in the moment of the original object’s destruction. There is creation in the moment of destruction. Our bodies are perpetually regenerating and growing old at the same time. Yet, we, as individuals exist (remain or are preserved) as those individuals through a constant process of creation and destruction.
We cannot grow or regenerate ourselves, our relationships, or our kinks without some kind of change. Change is basically something being not what it was before, and something different (even slightly) coming into being. As we engage in and implement new behaviors, we are creating something new (even if it’s in the sense of kintsugi). Even slight adjustments can create a “new” dynamic. It may look the same as it was before from a distance, but a deeper inspection shows something different, something – potentially – slightly larger or differently shaped. Whatever “gold” we use to fill in the cracks takes up just a little more space than if the cracks hadn’t been there. Even the cracks themselves, which usually portend a crumbling or destruction, come into being: they are acts of creation in and of themselves.
Think of a chick breaking from an egg, or a chrysalis or cocoon breaking open. While not necessarily a zero sum game, the progress we make as we move along our paths perpetually remake us, perpetually allowing that which we were to pass away. Our sustained presence is an ongoing and never ending process of creation and destruction.
We need to destigmatize the “destruction” or “passing away” part, while simultaneously taking “creation” down a peg or two in the process. Creation can be just as stressful and hard as destruction; and destruction can be just as glorious and joyful as creation can be.
We exist as a product of both.
Personally, while The Secretary is problematic at points, I think if we look at it more like an M/s allegory than a model, it becomes something different.
In Hinduism, this is represented by the gods Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer).
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