“nice to meet you,” says the girl i’ve been making out with for the last several hours as we stand up to leave.
all of us laugh, because… well, it’s true. we’d exchanged all of a dozen words after our mutual friend introduced us, and then as the three of us cuddled in her bed, words quickly became meaningless.
in my experience, there’s something really unique and intense about trans women getting to know each other. this becomes particularly true when the trans women you’re dealing with are all polyamorous and lesbians. providing the full context for the anecdote i led with makes it sound unbelievably complicated:
i was visiting my girlfriend chloe at her college, and in preparing for my visit, started talking to someone that chloe was flirting with, named mira. mira and i became fairly close, flirting in the leadup to my visit and continuing to do so after i arrived on campus. mira convinced chloe and i to attend a concert that awen — someone mira was involved with — was putting on. i was impressed, saw awen after the concert and thought she looked cute, and mira decided to introduce us a few days later. then the three of us (awen, mira and i) ended up in her bed from midafternoon till the following morning.
reconnecting with my girlfriend the following morning, all i could say was “wow, that was awesome.” all four of us got together later that day (fun fact: a foursome on a twin bed is A Major Hassle Actually).
i’ve been polyamorous for a little less than a year, but until this visit, i’ve never been dating (or involved with in any sense) more than one person in the same place. i’ve had two or more partners the entire time, but there was only ever one in person, the rest scattered across hundreds of miles.
because of the distance, my relationships felt deeply separated, even though my partners were all perfectly aware of one another, and in many cases were good friends. i was polyamorous, and i maintained my relationships with love, but to external perception this was hardly relevant: i appeared like a monoamorous person.
before i left on my visit to chloe, i knew that that was about to change—but i had no idea what that was going to feel like.
over the course of my ten-day visit, i got an exhilarating, exhausting, wonderful crash course in what polyamory means (to me) in practice.
sitting on the flight home writing this essay, i’m obviously sad to be leaving the wonderful people I’m going to talk about throughout, but i’m also deeply satisfied with everything i’ve done and learned throughout the trip. it’s hard to feel sad when something went this unbelievably well.
in her excellent essay On Kissing and Fucking Your Friends, ella yurman makes the argument that the arbitrary distinction between Friends, with whom you do Friend things, and Lovers, with whom you do Lover things, is harmful to… well, everything about our close relationships with others, really.
before tearing it down, yurman acknowledges the value of this monoamorous social distinction: it is useful because it makes it easier not to think as hard about interactions. acting in the ways prescribed by monoamorous norms is one way to ensure commitment, and (when everyone has the same understanding about what the expectations are) it keeps everyone happy.
however, it’s not the only way to keep everyone happy: rather than relying on implicit norms (doing things in a certain kind of relationship because they are What You Do in that kind of relationship), commitments and boundaries can be explicitly negotiated.
such explicit negotiation often leads to happier results than blind adherence to norms. if you and a partner have different expectations about what a relationship is supposed to be, and you’re both just expecting the other one to know what the “right” way of doing a relationship is, that’s a road straight to trouble.
instead, if you communicate about what you, specifically, need, and your partner(s) are communicating about what they, specifically, can do, it’s easier to keep everyone happy. it’s more work—having relationships outside of the assumptions that structure and simplify them is inherently more difficult—but it’s worth it.
and once you’re making a point of explicit communication, the value of the Friend/Lover binary is gone—so at that point, why not just figure out a specific, unique way of doing your relationship with everyone who you’re close to, whether they’re friend, lover, both, or something more complicated?
also, doing this in a specifically polyamorous context frees everyone involved from the expectation that all of your (‘romance’-based) needs/wants will be satisfied by one person, which—while it’s the foundational assumption of monogamy—is an insane idea to me. someone can be perfect for you in every way that matters, and there can still be things that other people are better for!
to take a dumb example: i really like kissing people for a long time, like just making out for several minutes. my girlfriend chloe kind of hates it, because it’s a sensory experience she finds offputting. if we were monoamorous, I would simply not be able to do that thing, and… well, i would be fine; it’s not that important.
but because we’re not, awen and i get to lie in bed and kiss each other, and it’s wonderful, and chloe and mira get to… honestly, i don’t even know what they do while we’re doing that (probably something to do with magic: the gathering), the world kinda melts away when i’m kissing awen because she’s very, very good at kissing.
awen and mira are very dear friends to me (even after such a short time), and i’m glad i was able to put the theory of On Kissing and Fucking Your Friends into practice with them.
monoamorous people often ask me how many people i’m dating, which is missing the point so badly it’s almost funny.
it’s true that there are people who i say i’m dating, and people who i don’t say i’m dating, and (because of the value of being able to outwardly signify to others) that does have some meaning. but, the entire purpose of the project of polyamory in my life is to be able to have unique and meaningful relationships with people that incorporate the various aspects of intimacy i’m comfortable with. the line between “dating” and “not” isn’t very meaningful in understanding how intimately close to someone i am, actually.
my “best friend”, by which i mean the person i’m closest to who i’m not dating, is someone i’m significantly closer to than many people who i am dating. in fact, if there’s any regular event in my life that could be described as a date, it would probably be my near-weekly trips to the coffee shop with her!
it is true that we don’t have any kind of sexual relationship—but, like, i would date an ace person!
it’s true that dating implies commitment—but, like, i am deeply committed to some people who i’m not dating, and even among those i am, the level of commitment varies!
there’s just not a hard-and-fast rule that determines whether i’ll say i’m “dating” someone. it’s not a particularly meaningful designation in the polyamorous context in any case, because the polyamorous context involves a systematic deconstruction of the difference between dating and not. i use the label exclusively for its value in communicating to people outside of my relationships: to the people i’m actually involved with (in any sense at all), we know the nuances of our relationship, and so don’t need any sort of quick summary.
i spend a great deal of time listening to my monoamorous friends talk about relationships. often, in such conversations, there’s this framing of the words i love you as something special. a (romantic) relationship, these people will say, becomes serious when you tell someone you love them.
i have a visceral distaste for this idea. i hold so much love for so many people, in so many different contexts, but once you’re living life in a way such that “platonic” and “romantic” aren’t held so strictly apart (in other words, once you’re poly), this idea—of seriousness associated with love, whatever that means—makes it difficult to tell my friends that i love them (doubly so if my friendship with them features things that would normally be called “romantic”).
i am also reading Braiding Sweetgrass on the flight where i’m writing this. this book talks a great deal about gifts, and to me love is the driving force behind every gift. reciprocal sharing of deeply personal gifts—are these not things that truly, deeply symbolize love?
and if they are—is sex, or even “just” making out with someone (which can be just as meaningful, or more), a reciprocal gift?
how could it not be? how is any such act not a pure expression of love?
i think this might be what scares some people about polyamory, actually—because when we love someone, even a little, we become tied to them. life is simpler, perhaps, if you allow less strings to connect to your heart. but it’s also diminished.
we’re scared to be tied to many things; modern thought prizes floating as freely through the world as possible. but—in keeping with what i’ve read of Braiding Sweetgrass thus far—i’m inclined to believe otherwise. the ties that bind us also ground us, keeping us connected to what really matters: each other.
and yet. when i made out with awen for hours shortly after meeting her, it would’ve felt absurd to tell her i loved her, even if what i’d been doing was—clearly, necessarily, by definition an expression of love. because we’ve entangled love and deep commitment, even though — in that case — the love came before any commitment possibly could. it came before i even knew her!
the progression of a relationship is often seen as “getting to know someone leads to love”. Knowing -> Love.
what i was able to experience with awen was an inversion of that “normal” progression: “loving someone lets you get to know them”. Love -> Knowing. choosing to love someone you don’t yet know, for no other reason than that you can.
i loved awen: i engaged in near-constant gifts of mutual reciprocity (by which I mean sex and cuddling), and in doing so, i was able to connect deeply with her in a much shorter timeframe than “usual” for a relationship. love, and expressions of it, are a very powerful tool that way (and threesomes with a mutual friend are a pretty good way to express that love!)
i told awen i loved her a few hours before getting on this flight home, crying in her arms because of my impending departure. i didn’t need to say it. the love had been performed throughout the last week. the way i see love, it’s not a necessary statement in the slightest.
i suppose the value might be as an affirmation of intent, and recognition of context. what i might mean by i love you there might be something like i recognize that i have loved you and i intend to continue doing so. in the context of the “inverted” relationship progression, it further follows that through that love, i intend to continue to get to know her.
(and i said all this explicitly to her, since it’s still far better to over-say than under-say, and i don’t want to assume everyone feels the same way about love as i do. implications are better stated, in things like this.)
it requires a lot of trust to take the Love -> Knowing route, and sometimes it feels dangerous to do that. part of the reason i feel like my relationships with trans women often flourish so much faster than with other people is that i don’t often feel comfortable taking the Love -> Knowing path with others.
in awen’s case in particular, it was easier to have that trust because someone i trusted (mira) trusted her. trust is, to a significant extent, transitive that way.
in other cases, i’ve taken the Love -> Knowing path and been burned for it, developing attachment and care for people who aren’t good for me, and struggling to end it.
but i think it’s still worth it. sure, if i kept myself guarded i’d have never been hurt, but i also wouldn’t have had half of the wonderful experiences that i had on this trip.
i’m not saying do it all the time—but Love -> Knowing is an incredibly comfortable and freeing way of experiencing a relationship with someone new to you, and (i think) one that’s deeply wrapped up in the same ideas that, at a fundamental level, motivate polyamory.
if you’re disagreeing with parts of this essay, it might be because you believe in some kind of difference between romantic love and “platonic” or other forms of love. i don’t really think there is a difference outside of the cultural construction of monoamory. inside of that construction, there certainly is a difference — the associated emotions are likely very different — but once you choose to exit that framework, that way of engagement with the world, the underlying emotion is the same.
right now, we say there’s “platonic” and “romantic” love. As my friend reminded me repeatedly as i was editing this essay (she would not get off my case until i added this), the greeks had many different words for different kinds of love. in my mind, though, those all stem from the same feeling, the phenomenon of love, just interpreted differently based on context and culture.
it’s kind of like with excitement and anxiety. when i was, like, ten, my dad told me something that i think about constantly: the physiological manifestation of excitement and anxiety are precisely identical. it’s just your brain trying to hype you up for a Big Thing, pumping adrenaline and energy into your body that’s not quite ready to use it yet! the difference—whether that physical feeling in your body is excited or anxious—is entirely subjective.
in many cases, simply being aware of that and trying to reframe your thinking can turn an anxious time into an exciting one—a trick i’ve used constantly throughout my life. (highly recommend!)
this is also how i feel about the difference between platonic and romantic love: same driving impulse, taken through a different, in this case cultural, interpretation. once disengaged from that interpretation, or reinterpreted, it’s the same thing.
when a monoamorous person falls for their best friend, it’s the reinterpretation that makes it so immediate—since you’re not having to build up a new kind of emotion, you’re just reinterpreting the love that most people have for their close friends regardless of if they’re dating or not.
same emotion, different context.
i think it’s important to touch briefly, before closing this already-overlong essay, on the “difference” between friendship and love—not as emotions, but as ways of interacting with people.
part of the monoamoric culture is that these things are mutually exclusive; unsurprisingly, i disagree.
one of the best things about spending so much time with awen, mira and chloe this last week has been simply having a group of consistent close friends who care deeply about me.
i… have had very bad experiences with such things in the past. twice in my life, a very tight-knit group of me and two other people has ended with the two of them entering into a relationship and me being left in the cold. simply being involved with this polycule and loving them is reassuring, in that way, and makes it easier to be comfortable around these people who are my friends and “lovers”.
imagining friendship and love as fundamentally different worlds is a relic of heterosexual binary gender dynamics, in which men are friends with men and lovers with women, and women are friends with women and lovers with men. in almost any other circumstance, the categories of “friend” and “lover” (or at least potential friend and potential lover) have significant overlap, and yet, even in queer communities, the line is maintained: someone can only be one of these things.
it’s easy to see how this diminishes friendship, but… i think it diminishes love as well. friendship is casual, relaxed, and shared with a group. the ways we interact with our friends aren’t a strict subset of the ways we interact with lovers: there are things we do with friends and not lovers, and, at times, those things can make caring about someone even more intimate.
the night before i had to fly home from my trip, awen, chloe, mira and i stayed up incredibly late, getting ice cream, playing magic: the gathering, cuddling and talking. i can’t remember the last time everything felt so simple. i was with these people who i love dearly, who are my friends and each other’s friends, and everything was right in the world.
“anything would be fun if i were doing it with you all”, said awen at one point in the evening, and i agree. anything would be, and everything was, and i miss them so dearly already.
i don’t know what the future will hold for my relationships with these people. maintaining these connections digitally will be a very different experience than the extremely physical context in which they started.
but the love is there. Love -> Knowing. so long as the love is there, we’ll figure it out, and in discarding expectation and pre-defined “roles”, we’ll be able to figure out how to be exactly what one another need and want. not through magic, but through talking and caring and working to be there for each other.
i have been a fan of hip-hop artist Brother Ali pretty much since i was conscious of music. one of the first songs i ever liked on spotify was his, when my parents got sick of trying to make my brother and i share an account and gave us each our own.
in 2017, he released the wonderful album All The Beauty In This Whole Life. its ninth track, It Ain’t Easy, has resonated with me deeply since the first time i heard it.
It Ain’t Easy is about love, and what it is, and how we struggle and sometimes fail to express it right, and when i wrote that last paragraph, i thought of that song again, still echoing through my life:
“if what you need and what i have don’t match / that’s when we need the love thing to fill those gaps up”
chloe, and mira, and awen:
i love you all so much. and if you’re reading this now, then you know exactly what i mean by that. and i can’t wait to keep loving you and sharing pieces of our lives, because, well. what could be more fun than that, and more meaningful, and more freeing?
with love,
sunshine
(this post originally published April 13, 2024)
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