Tristan Taormino writes in her legendary non-monogamy guide, Opening Up, “Some people have confused equality with symmetry.” She’s talking about open relationships, and how sometimes it can cause tension between partners if one of them goes on lots of dates and the other doesn’t. But this insight jumped out at me when I first read it, because it applies to so much in relationships, especially non-normative relationships.
Take, for example, Dominant/submissive dynamics, the likes of which are discussed in salacious detail on websites like OMGKinky and, um, this one. From the outside, those connections may look completely imbalanced. The Dominant tells the submissive what to do; the Dominant might have more freedoms and options available to them, while their sub might have more responsibilities and limitations; it might appear that the Dominant always gets their way. But on the inside of this relationship – provided it is healthy and ethical – both participants know that they each have an equal say in what happens between them. The lending and borrowing of power is powerful for them both because it was and is a voluntary decision, made from an even playing field.
Another area where the “symmetry =/= equality” concept works is in relationships between people whose mental health situations differ drastically – whether one partner struggles with mental illness and one doesn’t, or they each have a different diagnosis. Partners in these situations will simply have different needs from one another, and that’s fine. Sometimes I feel bad that my partner takes care of me more than I take care of them, but they don’t need the amount and types of care that I need, because they don’t have my issues. Not only that, but they’ve explicitly told me many times that they like taking care of me – so our “asymmetrical” relationship isn’t inequitable at all.
Even something as simple as differing temperaments or love languages can make a relationship asymmetrical-yet-equitable. Maybe one needs a lot of alone time and the other doesn’t; maybe one loves receiving oral sex in the morning but the other hates having their sleep interrupted; maybe one feels loved when their partner sends “good morning” and “good night” texts but the other doesn’t need the same in return. Whatever the case may be, as long as both partners are able to figure out an arrangement that works for them, they both need not get exactly the same treatment from each other. It’s fine if your needs and wants are different from your partners’.
What this all boils down to is internalizing the simple human truth that we’re all different people, with different preferences and needs and boundaries and desires. It doesn’t work to impose exactly the same everything on both people in a relationship; that’s not a flexible enough strategy for the vast complexity and randomness of human personalities. What’s ultimately important is that you’re both getting equal amounts of what you want. That’s a metric you can use to test your relationship’s equality – so that you can get back to your delightfully asymmetrical activities together, guilt-free.
This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.
You know how they say “sadness is the price we pay for love”? I’ve never felt that more strongly than in a long-distance relationship.
Saying goodbye to a local partner is NBD; you know you’ll be seeing them next Tuesday anyway, and that if an emotional emergency before then necessitated their presence, you could just swing by their place. But goodbyes with long-distance partners can be heavy: you’ll soon be once again unable to touch and kiss this person you love to touch and kiss, and you may not even know when that gap will be closed again. There’s no way around it: it sucks.
This melancholy interaction may be inevitable, but there are things you can do to avoid falling into a pit of despair every time. I say this as a woman who, nine months ago, broke down in tears on the floor while clutching my partner’s leg because I so desperately didn’t want them to leave: things need not always be this dramatic! Here are some habits I’ve picked up that have made these long-distance farewells easier to handle…
Stay in the moment. It’s very easy, the day that one of you’ll be headed back home, to spend all day long fretting and crying about how sad it is that you have to part ways. But that’s a trap, and it robs you of the thing you’ll miss most once they go: quality time with your beloved. Try to stay focused on your partner right up until you have to start dealing with travel logistics – it’ll be easier to let them go if you know you made every moment count.
Sort out your travel well in advance. Nothing kills the good vibes at the end of a long-distance date faster than freaking out about last-minute travel mishaps. Plan your route to the airport, bus station, etc. during a calm moment so you won’t have to do it during a sad, scary one. Check in for your flight on your phone so you don’t have to rush. Make sure you know where your passport is. The more of this stuff you get out of the way earlier, the longer you can enjoy your sweetheart’s company for.
Reminisce on the highlights of your date. My partner and I do this as part of a ritualized “debrief” at the end of each of our dates. We go back and forth listing our favorite things we did together on that visit, both sexual and non-sexual. It lets us process those experiences together while lifting our moods and getting us excited about things we want to do again sometime. This is one way we try to leave our dates on a happy note.
Plan your next date. This isn’t always possible, because travel is a fickle mistress (not to mention expensive), but if you can figure out when you might next see each other, it helps. Life might well throw a wrench into your plans, but at least it’ll give you something to look forward to in the meantime.
Exchange tokens of affection. Temporarily losing your physical connection with your partner is really hard; exchanging physical gifts of some kind can help mitigate that feeling of lack and loss. You could lend them a T-shirt that smells like you, or leave them a bruise on their ass as a badge of honor; they could give you a stuffed animal to cuddle, or write “Remember I love you” on your arm. There are a lot of ways to leave a little piece of yourself with someone so they feel like you’re still there even when you go.
Say goodbye alone and in a quiet place, if possible. I learned, after one particularly painful goodbye in a New York City subway station, that farewells in loud, public areas make me feel disconnected and unresolved. I need concentrated time with my partner right before our paths diverge. This could be as elaborate as an intimate last-hurrah date in the corner booth of a fancy restaurant, or as simple as sleuthing out a quiet alcove in the train station for one last heart-to-heart before “all aboard.” You’ll feel better if your last few minutes together feel just as connective and intimate as the high points of your date.
Reflect and process. You’ve already discussed your date with your beau; now it’s time to sit with all those feelings on your own. Journaling on my homebound plane ride is always my favorite way to do this – I’ll write about the best parts of the date, any questions or worries it left me with, and how it all felt. This process helps me transition back into my “real life.”
Be gentle with yourself. It is totally okay – normal, even – if you feel sad for a few hours or days after bidding your love adieu. Try not to beat yourself up if it takes you some time to “get back to normal” emotionally. I often find that this type of sadness comes with a bodily sluggishness that makes it harder for me to accomplish anything once it sinks in that we’re apart again, so I try not to schedule anything rigorous or anxiety-provoking within the first 12 hours of my arrival home, if not more. It’s an act of self-love to observe your own patterns in this way and set boundaries or make adjustments accordingly.
Stay in touch. Like a kink scene, a long-distance date shouldn’t end with you just disappearing – there’s gotta be aftercare! Try to be available to your partner for texting, emails, phone calls, or your other conversational medium(s) of choice – maybe even more available than usual. Both of you might still be feeling pretty mushy-hearted, and there might be more to talk about and process. Plus, of course, knowing you can still talk to someone easily can make it a lot easier to stomach their physical absence.
Notice what works and doesn’t work for you, and adjust. If you have some goodbyes that particularly suck, or some that are unusually easy, it’s worth discussing together: what factors contributed to this outcome, and how can we adapt our future approach with this new knowledge in mind? All the above tips are practices my partner and I have come to after many, many months of trying different strategies and talking about our feelings. It’s half-trial and error, half-scientific method. It can’t erase our pain entirely, but it offers us a toolbox for managing that pain.
How have you handled goodbyes in long-distance relationships? Got any tips (or warnings)?
I’m a psychology nerd. I minored in psych at university, and have seen various therapists over the course of my life to help pick apart my tangled psyche. After all this exploration, two of my favorite psychological frameworks are dialectical behavior therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy.
I’ve found these methodologies especially useful in dealing with difficult polyamory-related emotions lately, so I thought I’d write a bit about the two key strategies I use when those feelings rear their head.
DBT teaches us that when you’re feeling an emotion that’s irrational (i.e. it doesn’t fit the facts of the situation you’re in), you should do the opposite of whatever that emotion is telling you to do.
I find this helpful in polyamory because my most difficult poly feelings are, frankly, irrational. Fears that my partner will leave me for someone else, that him dating someone else means I’m unattractive, or that I’m being rejected – these all go against the higher-level decision I’ve made to be polyamorous, based on my ethics and ideas about relationships. These fears are holdovers from the monogamous culture I was raised in, and they neither make sense nor serve me now that I’m practicing polyamory. So it’s often helpful to do the opposite of what the irrational feelings are telling me to do.
Some examples:
When my partner is out on a date with someone else, a feeling of betrayal or rejection might come up, and it might make me want to push him away or say something mean to him. I could do the opposite action by writing him a love letter to show him later, mentally reviewing some of my most romantic memories with him, or texting to say “Have a good time!”
When my partner is infatuated with someone new, it might make me feel rejected and alone, especially if I’m not dating anyone else at the time. The emotion might tell me to self-isolate, stay home, and cry – so I can do the opposite action by making plans with friends, taking myself out to a restaurant, or watching a stand-up comedy special on Netflix.
When hanging out with a metamour, I might feel inferior or anxious, and it might make me want to avoid interacting with them. I can do the opposite action by striking up a conversation with them, being nice to them, and looking for their likeable qualities.
These “opposite actions” can often feel totally artificial, and it can seem counterproductive to do the opposite of what an emotion is telling you to do, without actually dealing with the emotion. But in my experience, a “fake it til you make it” approach can actually be really helpful with these types of feelings. If I find that being nice to my partner when I feel rejected creates an equally good or better result than not being nice, I’ll be likelier to want to be nice to him the next time that feeling comes up. It’s a way of teaching my brain the appropriate responses to these situations, and learning to trust that positive and proactive action is good for me.
CBT offers us the technique of making “thought records”: you write down a situation to which you had a strong reaction, identify the emotion(s) it triggered, determine the thoughts or beliefs you have that are related to that emotion, and then look for evidence for or against those emotionally-charged thoughts or beliefs.
You don’t have to actually write out a worksheet every time if you don’t want to; you can do an abridged version of this process mentally. When I have a strong, irrational feeling, I look for the thoughts and beliefs supporting that feeling, and look for evidence for or against those beliefs. There’s always more evidence against them, because they’re irrational.
Some examples:
If my partner is on a date with someone else and I get sad and scared that he’s going to leave me for that person, I can review text screenshots, love letters, etc. to remind myself that he’s committed to me for the long haul. (It’s often helpful to collect these positive reminders in one place, like a box on your desk or a folder on your phone, so you can look at them when you need them.)
If I’m worried that my partner’s new crush means he’s not attracted to me (or has perhaps never been attracted to me), I can review old messages that dispute this, look at my sex spreadsheet to see all the times we’ve fucked, and mentally revisit the look in his eyes when he sees me naked.
If I’m worried that my partner’s new relationship will prevent him from spending enough time with me, I can remind myself of other times he’s juggled multiple relationships before and how well he did it. I can also reach out to gather evidence against this belief directly from him (e.g. “Can you promise me we’ll still have at least 2 dates a week?”).
If you encounter evidence supporting your irrational belief (e.g. “A partner left me for someone else in my previous relationship”; “My partner has seemed less attracted to me lately”), I would strongly recommend bringing up that stuff with your partner(s) so they can offer some kind of refutation or explanation. It will put your mind at ease and is much better than obsessively ruminating on these thoughts by yourself.
Do you use CBT and/or DBT skills to support your relationship(s)? I’d love to hear about it!
The closest thing I have to a photo of me in a wedding dress.
I’m a romantic sap and I don’t care who knows it. I cry at Hallmark cards, I sob whenever I watch the episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married, and I certainly weep profusely at real-life weddings. What can I say?
I once briefly dated someone who edited wedding videos for a living, and he frequently lamented how boring certain songs get after a while. (You would not believe how many millennials want Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life” to feature prominently in their nuptials. Or maybe you would.) That said, wedding-related songs still get me all choked up pretty much whenever I listen to them, whether they’re about beautiful brides for marriage, or offbeat vows, or an oddly-romantic desire not to get married. Here are 10 of my faves…
The Magnetic Fields – It’s Only Time
Why would I stop loving you a hundred years from now?/ It’s only time/ What could stop this beating heart once it’s made a vow?/ It’s only time
This is my #1, play-this-at-my-wedding, first-dance-contender, most romantic song ever. I once sang it and played it on the ukulele in Malta while my cousin walked down the aisle; she hadn’t heard the song before I presented it as an option, but she quickly fell in love with it, as did basically the entire wedding party. Stephin Merritt is a brilliant songwriter, blessed with the ability to write lyrics that are quirky and quixotic sometimes, and utterly classic and simple at other times. This song is of the latter type – it feels, somehow, like it has always existed, since the birth of love.
Rosie Thomas – Wedding Day
I’m gonna stop at every bar/ And flirt with the cowboys in front of their girlfriends/ It’s gonna be so great/ It’s gonna be just like my wedding day
This isn’t actually about a wedding – it’s kind of about a rejection of romance and an embracing of self-love instead, with Rosie sweetly breathing lines like “I’ve had enough of love; it feels good to give up, so good to be good to myself.” But your relationship with yourself is so deeply rooted, so permanent and important, that it may as well be a marriage, am I right?
Tegan and Sara – BWU
All the girls I loved before/ Told me they signed up for more/ Save your first and last chance for me/ ‘Cause I don’t want a white wedding
I have a long-standing theory that Tegan Quin is anxiously attached (to use the parlance of the psychological concept known as attachment theory) while her sister, Sara, is avoidantly attached. You can see the difference easily if you know which T&S songs are written and sung by each sister: Tegan’s songs tend to be desperate “I want you to love me/Why don’t you love me?!” bops, while some of Sara’s greatest hits include lines like “I’m not unfaithful but I’ll stray,” “I swear I tried to leave you at least a hundred times a day,” and – yes – “I don’t want a white wedding.” I admire her level of self-knowledge; I just suuuper don’t want to date someone who approaches relationships the way she does (or the way she seems to in her songs)!
Alvvays – Archie, Marry Me
You’ve expressed explicitly/ Your contempt for matrimony/ You’ve student loans to pay/ And will not risk the alimony
This is a song about a girl trying to convince a boy to marry her. Even though she sounds feminine and sweet, there is something remarkably brash about it. “Hey, hey,” she sings in the chorus, “marry me, Archie.” I admire that level of straightforwardness, and of clarity of desire!
Punch Brothers – Don’t Get Married Without Me
Let’s not fool ourselves/ Taking a break is dragging out a break-up too long/ Help yourself to whatever you like with whomever you like/ But don’t get married without me
The feeling expressed in this song is one I’m sure a lot of us have felt, even if we’re not proud of it: the sense that, even when you’ve broken up with someone, you still have (or want to have) some sense of ownership over them. It’s a shitty monogamy-culture knee-jerk reaction, but what can ya do. I like that this song has a sense of humor about itself; clearly Chris Thile knows how ridiculous it would be to put conditions on the romantic life of someone you’re dumping, but it’s an impulse that comes up nonetheless.
Death Cab For Cutie – Cath…
You said your vows/ And you closed the door/ On so many men/ Who would have loved you more
Ben Gibbard, for some reason, is really good at writing songs about women with romantic regrets. (See also: “Lady Adelaide,” the solo-project track of his that makes me weep for a fictional character.) I find this song relatable even though I’ve never been married; being romantically entangled with “a well-intentioned man” while your “heart is dying fast” is a tough spot to be in, and yet I think a lot of us have experienced some version of that. You want to get out, but you’re worried about what’ll happen if you do.
The Japanese House – Worms
Sharing your house/ Sharing your life/ Sharing your home/ There’s so much pressure not to be alone
I feel this song in the marrow of my bones. It feels like a post-breakup anxiety spiral: “She’s my lullaby and I can’t sleep right,” Amber Bain warbles mournfully, before deep-diving into feelings of large-scale rejection and loneliness. She’s right that our culture is overinvested in pairing people up, and in making single people feel like shit.
Company – Getting Married Today
Listen, everybody/ Look, I don’t know what you’re waiting for/ A wedding? What’s a wedding?/ It’s a prehistoric ritual/ Where everybody promises fidelity forever/ Which is maybe the most horrifying word I’ve ever heard
Just about everything Stephen Sondheim writes is gold, but this is a fave of mine. It’s a nervous breakdown in song form: Amy, a neurotic bride-to-be, has a panic attack the morning of her wedding and enumerates all the reasons she can’t possibly go through with it. I like to think that if I ever get married, I’ll listen to this on the day of, just to bring those last-minute jitters to the surface and exorcize them so I can proceed.
West Side Story – One Hand, One Heart
Make of our hands one hand/ Make of our hearts one heart/ Make of our vows one last vow/ Only death will part us now
On the opposite end of the spectrum, here is a musical theatre song about a wedding gone right. Tony and Maria – based on Romeo and Juliet – sing this beautiful love duet to bind them together. It’s so over-the-top that I think it would actually be too cheesy to be a first-dance song… and yet, I love it.
John Mayer – Home Life
I can tell you this much/ I will marry just once/ And if it doesn’t work out/ Give her half of my stuff/ It’s fine with me/ We said eternity
The J-man has a bit of a reputation as a player, so it’s rare for him to grapple with questions of domesticity and long-term love in his songs, but he does in this one. Mayer has never gotten married as of yet, but has been romantically tied to the likes of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Katy Perry. Guess he didn’t click with any of them enough to have “said eternity” with ’em.
What are your favorite songs about weddings/marriage?
This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.
I’ve never had sex with an ex. This experience seems to be common, and being as sentimental and stubborn as I am, it seems like something I would do – but I never really have. Apart from one ill-advised encounter with an ex-FWB in a sweaty closet at a Pride party, I’ve never gone back to once again fuck someone I had previously decided I wasn’t going to fuck anymore.
Oh, I’ve certainly thought about it. Whenever someone dumps me, I walk around in a haze of regret for at least a few weeks, daydreaming about running into my ex in public while looking absolutely scintillating, and earning an invitation back to their place for comfortingly familiar sex that will inevitably lead us back into a comfortingly familiar relationship. But this never happens, and in the long run, I never really want it to.
Having sex with your ex is playing with fire. If you broke up, there was always a reason – and if you feel the desire to find ’em and fuck ’em again, it’s worth pondering: what was the reason you broke up, and is that reason still relevant?
It may not be. For example, I’ve broken up with people because I was in love with someone else and it was messing up my relationship, or because they were dating someone who decided they didn’t want to be polyamorous. Both of these are circumstantial roadblocks: they posed a problem at the time but may well have melted away in the intervening months or years. These are people with whom I might be tempted to rekindle things if I ever bumped into them on the subway or at a party, because – why not? If the attraction and compatibility are still there but the problems aren’t, what’s stopping us from giving it another go?
But that’s not why most breakups happen. Most breakups happen because you came up against some kind of fundamental incompatibility, or there was a big betrayal, or you just weren’t feelin’ it anymore. In those situations, it’d be tougher to justify a redo. Sure, your ex’s body and mind might still thrill you, or inspire a nostalgic frisson, but pursuing that half-extinguished spark is often more trouble than it’s worth.
Of my 30 lifetime sexual partners, 28 are people I’m no longer sleeping with. Of those 28, 10 are people I would happily fuck again if the opportunity presented itself – but that’s unlikely to happen. 5 are people I would consider fucking again, but we would have to have some heavy discussions and one or both of us would need to make some serious amends before I would feel comfortable jumping back into things with them. The remaining 13 are people I just don’t have any desire to be intimate with ever again – either because they hurt me too badly, or I’ve lost all attraction I once felt for them, or we just aren’t sexually compatible, or all of the above. I’d be curious to know what your ratio is, if you feel like sharing!
So, is sex with an ex a good idea? I think it’s a situation where you’d have to have a lot more pros than cons to justify even attempting it. Sex with someone who knows your body, who you feel comfortable around, and who you don’t have to explain yourself to is very tempting – but I think, in most cases, it’s not worth the complications and tricky feelings it could bring up. Whether I dumped them or they dumped me, I’d be verrrry hesitant to get back in bed with an ex. That’s not to say you should never do it, but be careful with your heart, okay?
This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.
I’m a psychology nerd. I minored in psych at university, and have seen various therapists over the course of my life to help pick apart my tangled psyche. After all this exploration, two of my favorite psychological frameworks are dialectical behavior therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy.
