Comparing
One of the things that make any kind of non-monogamy hard is comparing – comparing yourself to other people in your non-monogamous constellation as well as comparing your partners. Comparing makes it much harder to make non-monogamy an experience of richness instead of an experience full of doubts and deprivation. But why is it so hard to stop comparing?
Because the ideological system of monogamy teaches us to evaluate and compare partners by making us believe that ‘the right one’ exists, that one of our main tasks in life is finding them and that ‘the right one’ is supposed to fulfill an enormous set of expectations. And if there is supposed to be a ‘right one’, then of course there are also a lot of potential ‘wrong ones’. This automatically sets up a framework of comparing, and it also sets up the logic that if one person doesn’t check all the boxes then they must be the wrong one. If your job is to find and have the one best possible partner for you, then the only way to make sure of that is comparing them against everybody else – while you yourself are also constantly in danger of not holding up to comparison with others.
Monogamous ideology leaves no room for a framework and mindset where we can value the differences between people and different relationships as something that adds richness to our life. Instead, it teaches us that differences between people pose problems that we need to solve by comparing, choosing and discarding.
And there are ways of thinking about relationships in non-monogamous discourses which are informed by monogamous ideology and establish a framework of comparing as well: the idea that you have relationships with multiple people because one person is not enough to fulfill all your needs. This notion is prevalent in non-monogamous communities because it seems like such a convincing argument against the unattainable monogamous ideal of a long-term romantic partner who meets all your needs of romance, intimacy, sex, companionship, shared life, shared parenting, etc. But the idea that people’s purpose in your life – be it your monogamous life partner or your assortment of various non-monogamous partners – is to meet your needs makes people functional. And any functional view of people invites comparing because it sets up a framework of evaluating how well they provide for what you need.
Incommensurability
My polycule’s antidote to comparing in non-monogamy is incommensurability: the belief in the fundamental non-comparability of people, relationships and meanings. Relationships are fundamentally incomparable because we are all unique people, and what we mean to each other and what the things mean that we do with each other are unique and incomparable.
To me, thinking about the relationships in our polyamorous constellation in terms of incommensurability has been crucial. It changes the whole framework away from the idea that people and relationships are functional, that we have relationships to fulfill our needs, and if one partner isn’t enough to do that, we get ourselves additional partners (if we are practicing non-monogamy; if not, we get a divorce). Instead, this is a framework of richness, where we have relationships for their own sake, because in their uniqueness they add richness to our life. It’s a framework within which the monogamous imperative to compare loses its power.
Also, in a framework of incommensurability nothing one person does with someone else can ever take anything away from me because doing that with me wouldn’t actually be the same thing: its meaning would be different. So I’m not losing anything or having anything taken away from me when my partner is with his other partner. What they have is unique and incommensurable to what he and I have.
A good example for me is sex: In the monogamous ideology and its framework of comparing, the idea that sexual connections with different people can mean very different things doesn’t exist. It’s always about sexual compatibility and if someone is ‘better in bed’ and fulfills one’s sexual needs better than someone else. Being demisexual, I used to think about sex this way as it was the only way I saw society think about sex, but it never fit me and led to a lot of pain for myself and my partner. And when my partner started his relationship with his other partner, I first ‘naturally’ assumed that he wanted to have a sexual relationship with her because he had been feeling unfulfilled in our relationship due to my demisexuality. When they both started to share with me what their physical intimacy meant to them, I realized that it does not make sense at all to think like this, because it is a view that completely disregards that we are all unique as people and that the meaning of what we do with each other is constructed by who we are together, based on our specific histories and bodies and preferences and wants and needs and feelings and meanings.
Incommensurability can help us to liberate ourselves from the idea that there is an abstract, seemingly universal meaning and function to physical intimacy that poses a constant invitation to compare who does it ‘better’. Incommensurability offers us a view on intimacy that lets us cherish the specificity and uniqueness of each intimate connection for its own sake.
Discourse Syndrome
In the beginning of our polyamorous constellation one of the things that surprised me was how deeply I felt affected by hegemonic ideas and narratives about love relationships that I consciously reject and don’t believe in; how very real and obvious and inevitable certain notions and fears seemed to me even though I knew exactly where they come from, that they are bullshit and that they have nothing to do with the reality of the three of us. I hadn’t expected those hegemonic notions that I have been well able to deconstruct to have such power over my body and emotions. (Which tells you something about the power of discourse... even our emotions are formed by it.)
We began to use the term ‘Discourse Syndrome’ for that state when hegemonic discourses about love, relationships and sex settle in your body and take over your thoughts, feelings and fears as if you have an illness that makes you feel shitty. Because when we always only hear one story, even if we personally disbelieve it and reject it, it still has power over us, it invades our being. But these thoughts and feelings it instills aren’t a reflection of reality, and they don’t say anything about you or your partner or your partner’s partner.
Calling it ‘Discourse Syndrome’ and treating it like an illness, like something that is messing with my body for a while and is making me feel uncomfortable but is in no way a reflection of reality, has helped me a lot. It allowed me to create a ‘medicine cabinet’ for myself that can help alleviate the symptoms, and the most potent medicines in it are connected to the idea of incommensurability: reminding myself of the incommensurability of our relationships, asking for ‘Share Don’t Tell’ and celebrating the richness each unique relationship adds to my life.
‘Share Don’t Tell’
‘Share Don’t Tell’ is what we call the relationship practice we’ve been using to bring the incommensurability into focus and make it tangible. Since incommensurability is ultimately about what someone or something means, this is about eliciting meaning in all its specificity.
There is a significant difference between telling and sharing: Telling is connected to disclosure and is therefore vulnerable to discourses that facilitate entitlement to certain information. It is one-sided – you bestow information on someone. Sharing is personal and relational. Sharing creates connection. Sharing is a gift. Sharing comes from a place of generosity and love and wanting to connect. Sharing puts a focus on selecting the things that you really want to share with this specific person. Therefore, sharing is about meaning, about what something means to you. So ‘Share Don’t Tell’ means that instead of telling me what you did (“how has it been?” or “what did you do?”), you share: “What did it mean to you?”
Asking for the sharing of meaning, in as much specificity as possible, is powerful. I have discovered that it makes a huge difference to me whether, for instance, my partner tells me something about his visits with his other partner or whether he shares something. In the past, when I asked about their time together in a way that elicited telling and he told me what they did but I didn’t know what it meant, that was often painful. Because whenever a specific meaning is lacking, monogamous discourses eagerly step in to provide the meaning – a meaning that, inevitably, comes from hegemonic monogamous ideology as this is what we have been trained to look at for the meaning of love, sex and relationships all our lives. It’s a meaning that is inevitably painful because that’s how monogamous ideology works when it comes to anything that doesn’t conform to its world view.
Sharing, on the other hand, is an act of connection between us. It’s a gift, and I’ve always experienced it as such when I ask both my partner and his other partner whether they would like to share something. I don’t think I remember a single occasion where the sharing of what their being together meant to them didn’t make me feel happy for both of them.
Asking for a sharing of meaning is a good way to connect to incommensurability because learning and seeing what our partner’s other relationships and the things they do with other partners mean to them shows us directly how each relationship is unique. It shows us how each meaning is unique, and hence incommensurable.
To me, the sense that my partner’s partner and I, as well as each relationship, are incommensurable has really become obvious and self-evident by now. I’ve become very much immune to the Discourse’s suggestions to compare and wonder who of us is better at fulfilling our partner’s needs – it very rarely occurs to me anymore to think like this. I just know that it doesn’t make sense, that we as his partners and our relationships with him are not comparable and not commensurable. I know that what each of us has with him is special and unique and that nothing each of us has ‘detracts’ from what the other has. If anything, it increases the love and joy and connection we have in our lives.
About the author:
Knight (she/her) is a German-based cultural studies scholar, writer, educator and coach. She has subscribed to non-possessive notions of love all her life and has included the deconstruction of normative ideas about love, romance and sex in her teaching at university. Since autumn 2020 she lives in a polyamorous relationship constellation with her long-time partner Sun and his new partner Heart. Together, they write about their polyamorous relationships and their thoughts on non-monogamy, love and connection on their Instagram account @ourpolycosm.
