Ornoth

So I'd like to take a few minutes and tell you about one of the most transformational events in my life, and how it has played out in a recent episode from my life.

My first series of anecdotes comes from my senior year in high school, and my first real relationship. Steeped in the intensity of the conflicting emotions of adolescence, I found myself to be an intensely jealous person. I wasn't just jealous of people, but anything that received the attention or affection of my girlfriend, Ailsa.

For example, one of the popular songs when we were dating was Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger", which came out with "Rocky III". Ailsa loved it so much that whenever it came on the radio, she'd stop whatever she was doing (even if it was necking with me!), turn the volume up, and sing along at full volume. It didn't take long for me to absolutely despise that song, with a blind hatred that burned fierce and blinding.

Another of the things that she loved were irises. My mother had coincidentally planted three or four such flowers along the side of our driveway, and one day when Ailsa and I weren't doing so well I got so irritated by their reminding me of her that I pulled up all the flowers, bulbs and all, and smashed them into oblivion with a sledgehammer right in the middle of our driveway.

These certainly aren't the only such stories, but they serve to underscore how irrational, how overpowering, and how instinctive my jealousy was at that age.

Now, fast-forward twelve years, when Ailsa and I began dating a second time, and lived together for a short time. Both of us had been through marriage and divorce, and we'd begun exploring various sexual fringe groups: she'd spent some time in the lesbian community, and we were beginning to explore both BDSM and polyamory together.

As we attended various "play parties", she commanded attention from some people, and I commanded it from others. Each of us met new people and were accepted into new groups that we wouldn't have been able to enjoy if we'd operated separately. It became very apparent that we both benefitted socially when we allowed one other to make contact with other people.

Now, under these circumstances, you'd think that jealousy would be an immense problem. After all, we're talking about your primary partner being pretty explicitly affectionate with someone else, right in front of your face! However, we both realized that we'd each get our own share of attention, and that we were committed to one another in a way that was much stronger than the more casual exchanges we had with folks outside our relationship.

This really hit home for me when Ailsa developed a serious (but at the time unspoken) infatuation for another woman she knew. Knowing that I'd gotten the lion's share of attention from people outside our relationship, I knew it was only fair that I give her the green light to see where their relationship might take them. I also knew that my relationship with Ailsa wasn't threatened, so I let it go ahead. It really was a completely new frontier for me, being able to completely support my partner's interest in another person.

And once I got that far, I found myself in a position where I didn't just passively authorize their relationship, but actively put the two of them into situations that had romantic potential. Since I'd already decided that it would be okay with me that Ailsa take on another lover, that extension only made sense. And besides, it was fun!

The most powerful part of the situation, which cemented it permanently into my behavior, was the feedback I got. Because she knew it was okay with me, Ailsa was free to share the heady excitement of her new relationship with me, which was an absolutely wonderful way for me to experience positive reinforcement for the freedom and support I'd given her. Seeing the woman I loved, flush with the thrill of a new romance, was incredbily moving, and I found myself in the almost unbelievable position of supporting her relationship and not feeling even a hint of the jealousy that I otherwise would have expected.

It has been only recently that the made-up term "compersion" has appearred in polyamorous circles to describe this very unique feeling I experienced: the abundant joy of seeing someone you love falling in love. Most people (certainly virtually all monogamists) in such a situation will respond from a place of fear, selfishness, denial, resistance, and possessiveness. Taking polyamory to heart enabled me to respond in a completely different way: from a place of love, trust, support, and sharing. And what a wonderful energy I got in return! This kind of basic transformation of your relationships is why I consider polyamory a far, far more integral part of who I am than mere "passtimes" such as BDSM and bisexuality and so forth.

What this episode did was firmly establish the perspective from which I treat the people I care about. Love is not about possession or control, which is what 95 percent of people practice (even though they do not admit it); love is about making another person's happiness just as important as your own, and really acting that way.

Now let's fast-forward another seven years. After four years of dating perhaps the most wonderful woman I've ever met, I'd pretty much decided that Inna was the love of a lifetime, something I had been absolutely unable to envision after the failure of my marriage. And yet, at the same time, Inna (a monogamist) was becoming more and more convinced that I was not the person she wanted to grow old with, and that we needed to stop seeing one another in order to give her enough room to see other people. She and I had a number of long discussions about how and why she thought this outcome would make her happier in the long run. For me, coming from my world-view, that was the most important factor: her happiness.

Many of my friends wondered how I could surrender my own hopes and desires for the relationship, and support Inna's desire that we separate. I'm sure that some of them surely think that my lack of a dramatic, possessive, selfish tantrum proves that I don't really love Inna, but in fact they've got it exactly backwards. The only reason why I can give up my dreams of a life together is because I love her so much, and because her happiness is so very important to me.

Between my divorce and my relationships with Ailsa, I've developed a very simple but unique philosophy, which has been tested and, in my opinion, proven correct in my relationship with Inna. If you love someone and they want something, you have a simple choice: you can either support their desire and help them pursue what they believe will make them happy, or you can establish yourself as an obstacle between your partner and their happiness. You might even be able to get away with standing between your partner and her happiness for a period of time. But every time you do that, you will prove that her happiness is not important to you, and in the long run she will tire of your selfishness and leave you. In short, the typical monogamist tactics of jealousy and selfishness and possessiveness are self-defeating long-term strategies.

So for me, the answer is clear: always remember that "love" means valuing someone else's happiness, and always do your best to help the people you love achieve the things that will make them happy. That's how you act from a place of love, not from a place of fear.