Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy With Multiple Partners (8 page)

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ing? She’s considering it, but the sex is too good, and she’s not confident of finding someone else to love.

Asperger syndrome has been relatively recently recognized as a neu-robiological disorder somewhat related to autism but characterized by deficiencies in social skills, difficulties with transitions, and difficulties reading body language and other nonverbal cues. Often there is also acute sensitivity to sounds, sights, tastes, and smells and exceptional skill or talent in a specific area. These people are known both for their eccentricity and for their creativity. Einstein, for example, has often been mentioned as a likely Asperger’s candidate. Because of the legendary inability of people with Asperger’s to navigate social situations and function well in intimate relationships, I wouldn’t have expected to find them gravitating toward polyamory, which, as we have seen, thrives on emotional intelligence and excellent communication skills. Nevertheless, serendipity has brought this connection to my attention. Within the space of one day, I discovered that three different people who I’d been interviewing for this book either had been diagnosed with Asperger’s or had a poly lover with Asperger’s. Considering that Asperger’s is thought to be rather rare, I found that significant. When I started reflecting on people I had known, including some of my own partners, I began to notice a common pattern. I began to suspect that a significant minority of people choosing polyamory have Asperger’s traits if not the full-blown syndrome.

I asked one of my interviewees who identified himself as having Asperger’s how he would account for polyamory and Asperger’s being such unlikely bedfellows. His opinion, based on his own life experience, was that Asperger’s leads to a technical and strategic way of consciously thinking that is applied to relationships as well as other areas of life. Okay, I thought, so polyamory is more strategic? Perhaps it could be, but only for those of very high intelligence.

Tanya, who suspected that her partner Jerry had Asperger’s, directed me to Dr. Amy Marsh, a sex therapist specializing in working with Asperger syndrome (or Aspies as they are affectionately nicknamed). She told me that she had studied Aspies and sexuality for her doctoral research and found that a number were involved in polyamorous relationships. Why?

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She guessed that “Aspies gravitate toward intimate situations where there are rules, mutual agreements, parameters, defined roles, and ways to manage their own limited capacities for emotional engagement but still enjoy intimacy (mostly on their terms). . . . My sense is that Aspies will be among those who approach these things in a more formal way than others.” She mentioned polyamory as one of several other intimate structures that have this kind of appeal.

This explanation seems to be in line with the strategic thinking concept, but I have another hypothesis. Because Aspies are fairly clueless about social norms and prone to misread or overlook negative reactions to social deviations, they are less likely to be bound by mononormative relationship expectations and more willing to experiment with out of the box arrangements. They don’t automatically reject polyamory as socially incorrect as some might do. Instead, they take an unbiased, objective look and decide it may meet their needs. And then they’re not bothered by social ostracism because they either don’t notice or are used to it because of their other odd behaviors. Additionally, polyamory may make intimate relationships more manageable for them if their partners can meet their own needs for empathy and emotional closeness, which the Aspie may find bewildering elsewhere.

Marsh’s description of her love affair with Michael Rossman, best known for his role in the Free Speech movement in the 1960s, illustrates the ways in which polyamory can enable Aspies to succeed at intimacy.5

Michael Rossman wrote eloquently about his lifelong quest for Oneness, a quest that included numerous spiritual traditions, psychedelics, and sexual encounters, and it was his writing that initially attracted Marsh, who relates that their meeting took place not so long before his death in 2009. “It was kind of like waltzing with a Cyrano de Bergerac, but without the sword,”

she says. She writes in the third person about one of their encounters:

“The woman lets herself into the flat, climbing stairs that are partially obstructed by papers, rocks, plants, and other natural history specimens.

She looks nice. She’s dressed in anticipation of meeting her lover, but her clothes don’t seem to matter much to him. She can hear the click of his keyboard as she reaches the top of the stairs. A huge piece of printing equipment partially blocks the way to his room, along with stacks of magazines, books, and slippery plastic bags on the floor. She puts her purse on the unmade bed, which is also stacked with books, magazines, newspapers, and mail. Rubber bands lurk in the bedding. The man in the room is lit by
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the computer monitor, still typing on his keyboard. His long gray ponytail hangs down his back. He does not turn around; he does not acknowledge her entrance to the room. She will have to wait, as always, for him to make the transition from one activity to another.

“Eventually the man turns to the woman with a greeting, spends a few more minutes at the keyboard, then gets up from his chair and beckons her into the kitchen with a crisp command. She follows. She expects tea first and then some conversation as he sorts a month’s worth of vitamins and supplements into various compartmentalized lidded boxes. Or perhaps tonight he’ll be scraping grease from his stovetop with a razor or delicately removing the last bits of dried flesh from a rat skeleton (many small skeletons and natural history specimens gather dust in his flat). Manual activity seems to accompany his shift into sociable interaction. Their conversation is lively, interesting, but for all its warmth is never sentimental and seldom addresses emotions. It is not a ‘lover-like’ exchange. Unlike other lovers, these two never indulge in mutual reminiscences designed to renew emotional closeness after a separation. Almost everything that has happened between them, good or bad, is never mentioned between them again. To the woman, this feels strange.”

Switching back to the first person, Marsh continues, “I had some struggles with the way things were going. I really yearned for a dollop of fuzzy affection now and then. . . . Eventually we got to the point where we could detect each other’s deliberate subtle body movements. Without giving a sign through any corresponding physical movement, I would send the energy streaming as a gentle rain; the brush of leaves; something heavy, light, swirling around the shoulders or going straight to the heart. These were sometimes mere micromovements of intention. The man before me would gasp, shudder, widen his eyes, and so I knew I’d hit my mark.

“It was pleasurable in the extreme. It was lovely, entrancing. Gleeful and fascinating. It encompassed merging and separation. It was profoundly sexual. I wouldn’t say it was orgasmic, though, because it never peaked like that. . . . From the beginning, I had struggled with the very strange, frustrating, and unsatisfactory features of this relationship—features which were seemingly so much at odds with the closeness we’d achieved in the subtle realm. It took a few months before the ‘what if it’s Asperger syndrome’ lightbulb lit up, and once it did, Michael was both amused by my great efforts to understand him and understandably resistant to attempts to label him. As time went on, however, I believe he came to understand
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certain aspects of his life and relationships as a story that included neuro-logical difference (over and above a glancing embrace of ADD [attention deficit disorder]). He as much as said it, near the end.”

Marsh recalls that Michael Rossman’s wife, unaware that Michael was an Aspie, took his relational deficits personally, as the “neurotypical” partner is likely to do. He took very literally their vows at their commitment ceremony, which included openness and sexual freedom. She went along with it, hoping he’d change. And he, because he’d been perfectly honest from the beginning, in front of all their friends, couldn’t understand her hurt and jealousy. “That’s another thing about Aspies,” Marsh says,

“it’s kind of written in stone for them, and it can be a lot of work to get a renegotiation going!” That’s why she thinks a lot of work has to be done up front via agreements and parameters to succeed in any kind of Aspie relationship. “Be very careful what you include,” she warns, “because it’s not easily undone.”6

Sex and love addiction can traumatize an addict’s partners, and to the extent that partners fit the codependency profile, polyamory can effectively skirt the need to face an addiction and the painful feelings it covers.

However, polyamory can also be utilized as a healthy means of coping with psychological difficulties, preexisting trauma, differences in sexual desire, and the garden-variety erotic boredom so common in long-term monogamous marriages.

Esther Perel, a Manhattan couples therapist, wisely advises that “the presence of the third is a fact of life; how we deal with it is up to us. We can approach it with fear, avoidance, and moral outrage; or we can bring to it a robust curiosity and a sense of intrigue. . . . Acknowledging the third has to do with validating the erotic separateness of your partner. It follows that our partner’s sexuality does not belong to us. It isn’t just for and about us, and we should not assume that it rightfully falls within our jurisdiction.

It doesn’t. . . . Accommodating the third opens up an erotic expanse where eros needn’t worry about wilting. In that expanse, we can be deeply moved by our partner’s otherness, and soon thereafter deeply aroused.”7

Perel suggests that “we view monogamy not as a given but as a choice. As such it becomes a negotiated decision. More to the point, if we’re planning
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to spend fifty years with one soul—and we want a happy jubilee—it may be wise to review our contract at various junctures. Just how accommodating each couple may be to the third varies. But at least a nod is more apt to sustain desire with our one and only over the long haul—perhaps even to create a new ‘art of loving’ for the twenty-first century couple.”8

Robert Masters is a Canadian therapist who formerly headed an intentional community called Xanthyros, which utilized many radical measures to help people awaken to their divinity, including nonmonogamy. From what I’ve heard from friends who spent time there, polyamory was a very effective means of penetrating the personality, similar to its use in earlier spiritual groups. Since this community disbanded some years ago, Masters has changed his views. He now believes that “if we were to put monogamy up against polyamory, with regard to depth, awakening potential, and capacity for real intimacy, which would come out on top? Monogamy, by a landslide, so long as we’re talking about mature monogamy, as opposed to conventional (or growth-stunting and passion-dulling) monogamy, referred to from now on as immature monogamy. Immature monogamy is, especially in men, frequently infected with promiscuous desire and fantasy, however much that might be repressed or camouflaged with upstanding virtues. Airbrush this, infuse it with talk of integrity and unconditional love and jealousy-transcending ethics, consider bringing in another partner or two, and you’re closer than near to polyamorous or multiple-partnering territory.”9

Masters came to his appreciation for monogamy relatively late in life after fully immersing himself in multiple partner relating. While he does not emphasize stability as a criterion for preferring monogamy, I get the feeling that this is part of its current appeal for him. Instead, Masters uses the language of attachment and critiques multipartner relating as a way to avoid attachment. In my experience, it doesn’t. True, plenty of people use multipartner relating as a strategy to avoid attachment (some even recommend this), but in my experience, attachment is a powerful force that can override any mental argument or situational defense. Many people hope to find greater stability, depth, and personal growth in their intimate relating by choosing polyamory, while others seek the same qualities in monogamy.

The bottom line is that, whether we like it or not, all relationships are dynamic by nature, and any effort to avoid this reality is doomed to failure.

While there are no data to support the common assumption that polyamory impairs attachment or is risky to the longevity of a pair bond—and,
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in fact, Perel and others acknowledge that it may be just the opposite—I suspect that whether polyamory or monogamy does more to stabilize a relationship depends on the individuals involved and their life experience.

When two or more people are well matched, opening their relationship usually makes it stronger. When they’re not, opening up can be destabilizing. Neither monogamy nor polyamory has a corner on immaturity, and people can gravitate toward both from a position of maturity or its opposite. In a recent conversation, Robert agreed with me that this is so but felt that few evolved people would want to engage with more than one regardless of the quality of the relationships.

The following excerpt from a dialogue with a couple working on their issues about sexual exclusivity with spiritual teacher Byron Katie (who prefers monogamy for herself) illustrates how being open to what is, rather than trying to impose a concept of what one believes, may be the best way to settle this question.10

Ellen
: I am frustrated with Charlie because he’s in love with another woman.

He’s been having affairs for fifteen years. I can only be with him if I accept that he has an affair running. I want Charlie to realize what he’s doing and stop thinking that it’s normal to be in a very close relationship and still have an affair.