A lot of folks who read this blog know that I've been on-again, off-again working on a book on polyamory.

The project is back on again. A few weeks ago, when i was in the Wildlands of Canadia visiting my sweetie Eve, the two of us sat down to brainstorm ideas for the book and to try to pick out themes. I've written an outline and a sample chapter already, but Eve pointed out that it might be valuable to go back and revisit the idea by working out the topics we'd like to see included without referencing the original outline, to see if there's anything important that got overlooked on the first go 'round.

So we got some markers and closed ourselves up in a room with a whiteboard for a while, and...

I keep hearing that polyamory is complicated. i have no idea what people mean by that. :)

I've been chewing on this post for more than two years now.

Part of the problem is that it's a daunting subject; one could easily write a book on the subject of couple privilege and how it plays out in relationships. Another is that a lot of otherwise well-meaning folks tend to get freaky-deaky about the P word; it's perceived as an accusation or an attempt at guilt-tripping, because we all like to think of ourselves as basically fair and decent people, and the notion that we benefit from advantages that we haven't earned is an uncomfortable one.

Part 0: Privilege: What is it?

Put simply, when you talk about people or societies, a 'privilege' is any advantage that one person or group has over another that hasn't been specifically earned.

It's a simple idea that's complicated and fraught with land mines in practice. Part of the reason for that is that privilege is invisible to those who have it. If you are in a privileged position, it doesn't seem like you have advantages over other people; it just seems like the Way Things Are. People don't consciously assert privilege. People don't get up in the morning and think "Wow, as a heterosexual white guy, I think I'll go out and oppress some women and minorities today!" Privilege is insidious because it is structural; privileged people get advantages without having to consciously think about them.

( Click for an introduction to privilege; if you're familiar with the concept, you can probably skip this.Collapse )
So that's privilege.

And I want to talk about the role it plays in polyamorous relationships.

Part 1: Couple Privilege in Society

We live in a society that expects certain things of us.

One of the things that our society expects is that we will find someone else, fall in love, get married, and start a family.

The default social expectation is heterosexual monogamy. People who are born clearly male or clearly female and generally like getting it on with other people who are clearly of the opposite sex are granted certain privileges by our society. By default, their lives are easier in many ways than people who aren't born clearly of one sex or the other, or who aren't born in a body that fits their self-conception, or who are born with a taste for the romantic company of folks of the same sex.

What kinds of advantages? Other people will, by default, tend to react better to straight (or bisexual but straight-partnered) cisgendered folks better than they do to gay, trans, or intersexed folks, all other things being equal. Certain legal advantages are conferred upon straight folks, though that's (finally!) changing. Religious institutions overwhelmingly favor monogamous straight folks--not always and everywhere, but by and large. It's easier for you to adopt children. You get certain tax benefits.

So polyamorous folks already have a disadvantage. We don't fall neatly into the expectation of monogamy.

That expectation can seep into us even when we know that monogamy isn't a good fit for us. I think this is most often true of people who come to poly after having been in a monogamous relationship for a while--the couple looking to expand on their relationship with polyamory.

When a couple first tries to venture into polyamory, they'll often get a lot of eyerolls and heavy sighs from experienced poly people. It can be a bit disconcerting; you've thought about it carefully, after all, and you really want to try this non-monogamy thing...why is everyone giving you such a hard time?

The answer is that no matter how carefully you've thought about it, you will likely carry some ideas and expectations that privilege your existing relationship, often in the guise of "protecting" it...and a lot of us poly folks have been hurt by well-intentioned people unconsciously exercising privilege to the detriment of others, without even intending to.

Thinking about privilege is a bit like listening to music. If you have an untrained ear, it can be really difficult to, say, pull out the bass line from the music. But if you hear the bass line by itself, now suddenly you'll recognize it in the music.

Which is what this essay is all about--letting you hear that bass line by itself, so you can still pick it out when you're actually building your relationships.

Part 2: The Unicorn

When an existing couple first starts exploring the notion of polyamory, it can be very tempting to try to keep hold of as many elements of monogamy as possible.

After all, we live in a world that tells us that commitment means the same thing as exclusivity. We live in a world that says if your mate wants to have sex with someone else, it means you aren't good enough--better watch out, or you will lose your mate! We live in a world that says sex and relationship go hand in hand.

So to step outside that world can get pretty intimidating. What happens if our lover wants sex with someone else--does it mean that he or she will just start running around willy-nilly, having sex with everyone? That doesn't seem like a good way to have a relationship, right?

And what about jealousy? How can we keep from feeling jealous if our lover has sex with someone else?

The solution to all these problems that seems obvious and occurs to a lot of folks right out of the gate is to find a bisexual woman to have sex with both members of the couple in a fidelitous triad. After all, if you're both having sex with the same person, then nobody will be jealous, right? If you are fidelitous and nobody has sex with anyone else, you won't have to worry about your partner having sex willy-nilly with the whole world, right? And of course it's a woman--bisexuality in women is hot, but bisexuality in men is kinda yucky, right?

There's a reason such a woman is called a "unicorn," and the 1,872,453014 couples searching for her are called "unicorn hunters." The idea of looking for a unicorn feels perfectly reasonable--but it's rooted in a lot of ideas that aren't necessarily true and often it's based on a set of expectations that privilege the existing relationship, even if it doesn't seem that way.

Couples looking for a unicorn aren't evil. They're not mean or malicious or bad people. Yet they often end up doing a lot of harm to anyone who crosses their paths. A friend of mine refers to being a third partner to a couple as "being a couple's chew toy," and by far the majority of poly folks I know who have done it once will never do it again.

But why? What's wrong with it?

For starters, you probably sat down and talked very carefully with your partner about it, and both of you probably agreed that it would meet your needs, right?

So what's wrong with that?

Well, let's step aside for a moment from the fact that whenever you're talking about non-monogamy, anything that you do which starts with "We both ..." automatically places one relationship above the others, and think about things from a prospective third's point of view.

It didn't give any thought to HER needs. She wasn't part of the conversation--and how could she be? You haven't even met her yet. When you decide in advance what the rules of a relationship are, without even being in that relationship yet, well...people tend to feel a bit disenfranchised by that.

And most folks in the poly community are poly because they reject the idea of restrictive relationships; they reject the notion that being in one relationship means giving up on being in any others. So the poly community is really not the best place to look for someone if you plan to tell her "As long as you're involved with us, you won't be allowed to be with anyone else."

But most importantly, you haven't thought about how what you're asking for puts your relationship with each other ahead of your relationships with her. Which means that when you do find that "her" you'd love to welcome into your relationship, she quite likely won't be very keen on joining. (A lot of folks looking for a partner will say "This is what we want, don't judge us!" and then in the next breath "...but man, it sure is hard, we've been searching and searching and we just can't find anyone.")

Privilege is an insidious thing; it's very difficult to think about how you're giving your own existing relationships a heaping cup of unearned advantages when you're not even aware of what those advantages are.

So let me talk for a bit about what some of those advantages are.

Part 3: The Not-So-Complete List of Couple-Based Privileges

Let's play a thought experiment. Let's say you're in an existing relationship. You've been in it for a while--years, even. You might live together. You might be married. Maybe you have a dog named Spot or a kid named Freddie or a goldfish named Wanda or something.

Anyway, point is, you're together and you're happy, but you think it might be cool to have more. So you decide you might want to give polyamory a try.

Now imagine that you've found a third. She's beautiful and smart and dynamite in bed, she fancies both of you, she even likes your fish.

And let's say your existing partner says to you, "I'm still feeling a bit uncertain about all this. I know we both wanted to try this, but it still makes me feel awkward when I see you have sex with our third. Can you do me a favor and stop having sex with her for a while until I feel better?"

Now let's suppose your third says to you, "You know, this is all feeling new to me, and I still feel a bit uncertain about all this. It makes me feel kind of awkward to see you have sex with your wife. Can you do me a favor and stop having sex with her until I feel better?"

There, did you feel that? A disturbance in the Force. For most people, the response to each of these requests probably wouldn't be the same. That's one example of couple privilege.

Now let's say you're invited to a company picnic. You can bring a partner with you. What do you do? Do you bring your husband, or your third?

Tch. There it is again, that disturbance in the Force.

What do you say to your family? Do you bring your third to Thanksgiving dinner? You've been accustomed, all these years, to having the nearly-invisible social benefits that come from a typical het monogamous relationship. Now, all of a sudden, you have to start thinking about the fact that you're not. What do you say? Do you stay closeted? Do you tell any of your monogamous friends? Your boss? The person at the sandwich shop across the road?

Uh-oh. Now it's starting to get complicated. What will your mom think? Maybe it's better not to say anything...stay in the closet.

But if you do that, what are you telling your third? You're telling her that she's good enough to fuck but not good enough to be seen in public with. You're telling her that you love her--but not as much as you love the social privileges of seeming to be monogamous.

Ouch.

What if she doesn't like that very much?

There are a lot of privileges that go along with being monogamous. Some of them are "external" privileges--social privileges you get without even necessarily asking for them. Some of them are "internal" privileges--privileges that make your relationship feel safer and more secure by placing it on a different plane from any "third" or "outside" relationships.

External privileges:

- You can check into a hotel as a couple and expect to share a room with one bed. Many hotels have policies forbidding them from renting a room with one bed to three or more adults.
- Ability to easily find greeting cards in any store that will describe your relationship or express what you want to express.
- Assumptions about couplehood in work and social environments: you will often be permitted, or even expected, to bring one partner to company social functions, to weddings, to parties, and so on.
- You can easily expect to find an apartment that will rent to both of you; many apartments won't rent a one-bedroom apartment to more than two adults, and may impose other restrictions on the number of adults staying there.
- If you have children, you may be at risk from child protective services for being involved in non-monogamous relationships.
- Being involved in non-monogamous relationships may bring social judgment or assumptions about promiscuity.
- Being non-monogamous may count against you in custody disputes or other issues involving the courts.
- Being non-monogamous may create problems during background checks, security clearances, and so on.
- In the military, adultery is a crime under the UCMJ.
- You can get married to one partner but not to two. Marriage brings a whole slew of privileges of its own: tax advantages, legal protections for joint property, survivorship benefits, Social Security benefits, insurance benefits, and on, and on.
- Most religions endorse heterosexual monogamy above all other sexual and romantic relationships
- Fostering or adoption of children is easier in a monogamous relationship
- Medical visitation and medical power of attorney often extend to only one (often legally-married) partner.
- Many cultural ideas privilege heterosexual monogamy, including: deviency in romantic relationships is linked to pedophilia; if a non-traditional relationship fails, it's because of the non-traditional part; polyamorous people are always on the prowl and are therefore a threat to monogamous relationships; if you're polyamorous it means your current partner isn't "good enough" or you don't "really" love him or her; polyamory is a polite term for "playing the field."
- A "third" partner may not be able to do things like pick a kid up from school.
- Family events or vacations are easier when you have one partner than when you have two.
- The ability to say "I've been with my monogamous partner for 18 years" without being seen as a 'credit to monogamy' or "I broke up with my monogamous partner after 3 months" without being seen as a 'detriment to monogamy.'

Internal privileges:

- Assumptions that the couple comes first in priority (more on this later).
- "Veto" arrangements that allow either member of a couple to unilaterally demand that the other member end an "outside" relationship.
- Many people expect certain financial privileges, such as joint ownership of property or the expectation that a "third" will not share a mortgage.
- Assumptions that if the couple wants children, they will have them within the couple but not with an "outside" partner.
- Closeted polyamory, which disenfrachises the relationships with the third person.
- The assumption that as long as the original couple remains together, everything's OK.
- The idea that if the couple "tries" polyamory and decides they don't like it, it's acceptable to simply cut off the third person and go back to monogamy; this idea inherently treats outside people as though they are expendable.
- The history shared by the couple, which carries with it its own language, shared experiences, and "in" jokes and which is often both intimidating to and impenetrable by the third person.
- Assumptions that if a new person decides to share living space with the couple, the new person will move in with the couple rather than vice versa.
- Territoriality, which may be expressed in a number of different ways: "you may never have sex with anyone else in our bed," "you may never call anyone else by my favorite pet name,""you may never take anyone else to our favorite restaurant," and so on.
- The couple usually expects to set the terms under which any third person may join the relationship, which inherently disempowers the third person.
- Sometimes, couples may decide that a third person isn't really part of the family if she isn't having sex with both of the members of the couple.
- The couple has a built-in support system if the "outside" relationship fails, which may not be true if the original couple's relationship fails.
- Assumptions about what will happen in the event of an unplanned pregnancy inside the couple vs. what will happen if an unplanned pregnancy happens with an "outside" party.
- The idea that an established couple that runs into problems may be able to just put outside relationships on the back burner to focus on the problem, vs. the idea that if a person has a problem with an "outside" relationship, he or she will not be able to put the established relationship on the back burner to focus on it.
- The idea that a couple may be able to cancel a date with an "outside" lover if one of them feels the need, but "outside" partners are usually not given the power to cancel a date or event within the couple.
- The couple may want to keep any "outside" partners away from day-to-day activities like chores.
- Assumptions that one member of the couple's time is dedicated to the other member unless explicitly negotiated otherwise.
- Differences between what happens if a member of the existing couple has a debilitating injury or illness vs. what happens if an "outside" partner does.

Of course, not every relationship benefits from every one of these privileges, and not every couple privileges their relationship in these exact ways. These are examples of ways in which privilege can favor established couples.

Part 4: But What About Protecting the Couple?

By this point, you've probably already started thinking "Hey, Franklin, wait a minute! Some of the things on your list, like having a shared history, are inevitable. I didn't set out to turn that into some kind of privilege! And if I already have kids, or a mortgage, or other obligations, of course those obligations come first! What's the big deal? There's nothing wrong with that!"

And you're right. There's not.

You have pre-existing commitments and relationships and you want to take care of them. That's reasonable. It doesn't have to turn into an exercise of privilege.

Imagine that you've just made a new friend. You probably would not see the need to make a production of telling your new friend "You know, I already have existing friends, and I've known them longer than you, so I prioritize those friendships over yours." You probably wouldn't find a need to tell him "Just so you know, my kids' needs come before yours;" in fact, it'd probably seem a little weird if your new friend didn't get that. And unless you're in sixth grade, you would almost certainly be looked at oddly if you told your new friend "I already have a best friend, and there can be only one best friend, so I want to make sure you know that I can be friends with you but we will never be best friends."

Yet often, this is exactly what couples who are new to poly will tell a new partner--occasionally in the same breath as talking about how they want an "equal" triad.

So how can you tell the difference between protecting something you've invested in and asserting couple privilege?

This is a sticky wicket. Privilege, by its nature, tends to creep into everything we do; it's the framework of How Things Are, the ideas and experiences we take for granted on an almost unconscious level. I've pondered some ponderings about separating privilege from a simple acknowledgement of the fact that we have invested more in some relationships than others, and here are some of the differences I've observed:

Privilege		Protecting an investment
- I want to have more than you give your other partners.		- I need this much from you.
- Nobody else can ever be financially entwined with us.		- Protecting my existing financial assets is important.
- I want to vet your other partners; you may date only partners I approve of.		- Because you are important to me, meeting your partners (if possible) and getting along with them (if possible) is important to me.
- Your resources (time, financial, and so on) belong to me unless we explicitly negotiate otherwise.		- Your resources are yours to do with as you please so long as you take care of the obligations we have incurred together.
- I will always be able to veto your other partners.		- I can always express any opinions, problems, or discomforts I may have with you. I trust that you will find a way to honor your commitment to me.
- We will sit down and create a set of rules together with any new partner is expected to abide by.		- We will sit down with any potential new partner so that we can all put our needs and ideas on the table.
- One relationship has to be the most important one. Since I was here first, that means me.		- Relationships vary in importance and investment over time. What matters is that my needs are being met, not that I am getting more than anyone else.
- In any conflict that arises between me and another partner, I win.		- Conflicts may arise. I may not always get what I want. What matters is that my partner listens to me and hears my concerns, not that I am always right or I always win.
- My needs always come first.		- I may not get my way all the time, but that's okay. It's okay for others to express their needs, too.

A lot of these come down to the sorts of things you might expect if you had two kids. You wouldn't reasonably say that one kid was "primary" and all the others were "secondary," or that one kid's needs always came before any others'. We all can instinctively recognize that if we have a second child, we still want to protect and invest in the first child, and we can do that without privileging the first child over the second.

So why is it so hard to recognize this when it comes to relationships?

Part of it is the way that society privileges couples, and the expectations we're given (and can internalize without even being aware of it)--letting your partner have sex with someone else is dangerous, if you let someone else in you'll lose what you have, that sort of thing.

And part of it is that, as human beings, we get so wrapped up in our own experiences, especially our own fears, that it can become very difficult to look past that and see someone else's experiences.

Part 5: Seeing Past Ourselves

There's an awesome essay on the Weekly Sift called The Distress of the Privileged. It talks about the backlash we often see when we try to discuss privilege. When a person in a position of privilege begins to see that privilege, it can be very human to want to lash out, to say that it's not really a problem. Those of us in positions of privilege benefit from that privilege, after all; we're so used to our privilege, so accustomed to thinking of it as just the Way Things Are, that the idea of giving ground on any of it can feel like someone is taking away what's rightfully ours.

And it's a thousand times worse when we invoke privilege out of fear. When we feel a fear of loss--which, it must be said, is quite normal for someone coming into polyamory for the first time--it is almost impossible for us to be compassionate toward others. Especially toward the people we see as being responsible for that fear.

So the privilege goes from being unconscious to being something we feel entitled to. (True story: I know a guy, who will remain nameless, who is quite hostile to the idea of feminism. He especially resents what he sees as the feminist idea that men are dangerous--that women should take care around strange men because strange men represent a threat of rape. He also feels very uncomfortable walking through black neighborhoods. He sees no parallel there, and no irony.)

When we are in privileged positions, it's not usually because we asked to be. It's just how things are. And when we start to lose that privilege or people start telling us we're acting unfairly, well...

Privilege benefits couples in ways that go beyond merely calming fear of loss. They also help to keep the original couple in control. Many exercises of privilege keep the locus of control within the couple to the exclusion of the newcomer to the relationship--overtly, as in the case of "the couple sets the terms and the third person signs on the dotted line," or covertly, as in the case of assumptions about holidays or resources.

Any time a couple starts to negotiate the process of opening a relationship, there are some tools which I think are quite valuable in preventing the unconscious assertion of privilege. Some of them include:

- Asking "Is the goal of this agreement to help choose compatible partners, or to protect the 'real' relationship from a perceived threat?" Perceived threats to a relationship are often the door through which the assertion of privilege walks in.
- Asking "At what point do things that are important to me start becoming expectations I impose on others?"
- Asking "If I were a single person who'd just met another single person for a monogamous relationship, would this seem reasonable to me?"
- Asking "Am I disempowering any third person who joins us?" The more decisions you make about what a relationship must look like and what role a newcomer must play, the less you are empowering that third person, the more you are asserting couple privilege...and the more likely it is that any third person you DO meet will look at you and say "no thanks."

Ideally, relationship structures are flexible and are designed to promote the growth and the needs of everyone involved. But often, especially for newcomers to polyamory, there can be a fear that unpleasant feelings (whether they be jealousy or feelings of threat or whatever) mean implosion of the existing relationship; in that way, use of privilege to defend against jealousy or other unpleasant feelings becomes a way to avoid personal responsibility for growth. We need not fear unpleasant feelings; they are a part of life.

The exercise of privilege may also become a way to avoid facing that members of a couple might have different goals or needs in the relationship. Privileging a relationship by saying things like "the couple always comes first" or "the couple has veto" can become, in this sense, tools for the couple to avoid facing differences in ideas or needs; if such differences come up, the third person is ejected from the relationship and voila! Harmony is restored.

It is my experience and observation that the more a couple clings to couple privilege, the more disempowered and unhealthy new relationships are...and the more easy it is for the couple to blame their dysfunction on the third person. "You are not respecting our relationship," "you knew the rules when you signed on," and "you're a secondary, so you have to take what you're given" can all be ways to say "our dysfunction is not going to be addressed, so just shut up and deal with it." That dysfunction may mean anything from insecurity to actual out-and-out emotional abuse, and the refrain of "you're a secondary so that's what you signed up for" dodges it all.

And, unfortunately, relationships that start out from a position of rules, restrictions, and couple privilege can easily become relationships where the greatest dysfunction wins. This is something I've seen many times; whether it's "I'm the most insecure person so I demand the greatest level of control over any new relationships" or "I feel most threatened so I will exert the greatest privilege," once it has become acceptable to assert privilege in a relationship, the assertion of privilege often ends up driven the most by the most dysfunctional dynamic.

Again, I'm not saying any of this is malicious or evil. The invisibility of privilege, coupled with the fact that a fearful person often finds it difficult to act with compassion and empathy, can combine to make even well-meaning people act in ways that are harmful.

Part 6: Privilege and the Single Person

So far I've talked about privilege as something that couples exert against newcomers to a relationship.

But one of the things about privilege that's sneaky is that it so thoroughly permeates our social expectations that even single people can end up thinking in ways that emphasize couple privilege. The fact that someone is single doesn't meean that person is immune to internalizing privilege! This takes a lot of forms:

- My relationship with these people isn't working out. I need to find a primary of my own if I want to be happy. (The subtext here is that sharing a partner will never be as good as a pair-bonded relationship; it's a compromise you make until you find a real partner of your own.)
- I am not getting my needs met, but that's because I'm a secondary. As a secondary, I shouldn't expect to have them met.
- Of course my partners won't acknowledge their relationship with me; I'm only a secondary!

Privilege even seeps into our language. When couples talk about "our third" and say that polyamory is successful if it works for "both" of them, that's a reflection of privilege. When couples say they want a relationship with a third to "bring them closer together" or to help kick things up in the bedroom, that's an example of utilitarian language that, again, reflects privilege.

We don't go into traditional monogamous relationships thinking "Oh, boy, I am going to set a bunch of rules and my new partner will be happy to sign on in order to get all the wonderful benefits of my love!" Often, though we do go into poly relationships with exactly that mindset. To a couple, it can feel natural and reasonable that they set the terms, and to a single poly person, it can feel just as reasonable and just as natural that getting involved with someone who's already partnered means having to accept all the terms as they come. Again, the point stands that if you wouldn't start a monogamous relationship this way, it may not be reasonable to start a poly relationship this way.

Part 7: Putting It All Together

If you've made it this far (and I congratulate you if you have; this is quite a lot of writing!), there's a take-home point I hope will stick with you:

Relationships, if they are to be healthy and functional, are not about what a third party can give to, or give up to be with, an established couple.

The moment a couple begins to think in terms of "What wonderful things can we give to a third and what will we ask her to do to reap the awesome benefits of being with us" instead of "What can we build that nourishes all of us and gives all of us room to grow in whatever unusual and delightful directions we grow in?" an expectation of privilege has crept into the relationship on little cat's feet.

A relationship need not be about erecting walls and fences to protect one's self from some marauding outsider.

Many, many of the conscious and unconscious projections of privilege are prevented simply by trusting your partner. When you say "My partner loves me, my partner wants to be with me, and as long as I ask for what I need, my partner will choose to make decisions that cherish and nurture me," the fears that drive the projection of privilege fade.

Looking from the outside, it often seems to me that many people in polyamorous (and monogamous!) relationships don't trust their partners--not really. So they look to create rules and structures to meet their needs, because they don't really believe that if their partner can do whatever he or she wants, their partner will freely choose to meet those needs.

When you trust your partners, things change. You no longer feel the need to assert privilege by saying "My partner can only have sex with someone else as long as I am there," because you know that no matter how amazing that sex is, your partner still loves you and wants to be with you. So instead, you can say "When we find a third, we can all talk together to decide what our sexual boundaries are." And so on.

Having tried both approaches, I can say from experience that letting go of privileges and entitlement and instead building relationships with people who I trust and believe will, if given free rein to make any choice whatsoever, will still choose to nurture me is the most wonderful, secure feeling in the world.

With grateful acknowledgement to seinneann_ceoil, zaiah, Eve, and many others for contributing thoughts and ideas to this essay.

Most of the spam I get these days is in Spanish. Sometimes, it's in English. Occasionally, it's in Russian. Very occasionally, it's in Arabic. And every so often, it looks like it's in Russian that was translated into English via Google Translate.

Take, for example, this spam, which I reproduce below for your viewing pleasure unedited save for the reply email:

Subject: You I really liked

Hello Solitary heart!!!

I am a girl with beautiful name Julia, me 27 years. Dream to find the person for serious and long relations! I have interested your profile, since I seem that you search for such relations! Now I shall tell little about itself. I very cheerful and communicative, attractive girl. My growing forms 170 cm, my weight forms 57 kilograms. Much love to read the books, listen the classical music, walk on autumn wood and communicate with interesting people. If I have interested you, that anxiously waits your letter and photographies on my e-mail : m---------c@yandex.ru With heat showers! Julia.

Best wishes,
Juliya

I am grateful for Juliya's concern for the well-being of my romantic life, since truly do I search for such relations, it must be said.

I'm not quite sure, though, what "with heat showers" means. Google Translate renders this back into Russian as "С тепло души," though of course I haven't the foggiest notion what that might mean either.

I imagine it to be part of a lengthy blessing of travel in ancient Russian folklore, a ritual to prepare the hero for a journey of particularly perilous peril: "With this ox blood and this stone ax I bless thee, my son. Now go, and bring honor upon our clan, with heat showers."

About three months ago, I got an email telling me that my FedEx package couldn't be delivered. The body of the email told me that the UPS courier tried to deliver it, and that it would be sent back if I didn't click on the attached link.

Naturally, as I wasn't expecting a FedEx pacakge, and given that FedEx presumably knows it isn't UPS, I knew immediately that clicking the link was a Very Bad Idea...at least on an unsecured Windows box. Sure enough, clicking it downloaded a Windows executable, which VirusTotal identified as W32/Kuluoz, a backdoor command-and-control software that also attempts to download other malware.

I reported the site hosting the malware and forgot about it.

Then, things started to change.

---

I've been getting more and more copies of this email lately; I'm now averaging several a week. The silly error and grammar mistakes have been fixed, and the emails now look quite polished. Here's an example I received a couple of days ago:



The "Print Receipt" link leads to http://www.123goplus.com/components/.wye6fb.php?receipt=831_1493393532

CAUTION *** CAUTION *** CAUTION

The links in this blog post ARE LIVE as of the time of writing this. If you attempt to visit them with a vulnerable Windows computer, they WILL try to download malware to your computer. DO NOT visit these links if you don't know what you're doing!

The site 123goplus.com belongs to a company that produces business cards and similar printed pieces in Montreal, Canada.

$ whois 123goplus.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain Name: 123GOPLUS.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, LLC
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS1.MTLEXPRESS.CA
Name Server: NS2.MTLEXPRESS.CA
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 06-jan-2013
Creation Date: 06-may-2006
Expiration Date: 06-may-2014

>>> Last update of whois database: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:32:30 UTC <<<

Registrant:
Pierino Pezzi
8630 Perra #3
Montreal, Quebec H1E5M8
Canada

Administrative Contact:
Pezzi, Pierino creationexpress@yahoo.com
8630 Perra #3
Montreal, Quebec H1E5M8
Canada
+1.5142741616

Technical Contact:
Pezzi, Pierino creationexpress@yahoo.com
8630 Perra #3
Montreal, Quebec H1E5M8
Canada
+1.5142741616

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.MTLEXPRESS.CA
NS2.MTLEXPRESS.CA

The site 123goplus.com is running an outdated, insecure copy of the popular Joomla content management software, which has been hacked to have the malware downloader on it. (Joomla is a common target for this kind of attack. If you run Joomla on your Web site, and you don't keep on top of security patches religiously, it's a certainty that you will be hacked--it's not "if," it's "when.")

Here's where things get cool.

Visiting this URL from a Mac browser or a Linux browser returns a 404 Not Found page, presumably to fool folks like me into thinking that the problem has been fixed.

Visiting the URL http://www.123goplus.com/components/.wye6fb.php without the "?receipt=831_1493393532" at the end also returns a 404 error; presumably, that code identifies a target that the email has been sent to. The 404 error looks like this:



But hang on! Let's go to http://www.123goplus.com/fghfghghf and see what a REAL 404 error looks like on this server:



See the difference? The 404 error that you get when you go to the malware dropper is phony. The malware dropper is there, and it does live at that address.

If you visit the malware dropper with your browser user-agent set to, say, Internet Explorer 6 (God help you), you won't see an error message. Instead, it will download a .zip file called "PostalReceipt.zip".

I have downloaded several copies of this file from several different compromised hosts over the past couple of months, all of them from nearly identical FedEx emails.

The payload sites vary. Many different sites have been hacked and used to download this malware: 123goplus.com, yourinternationalteam.com, youknowlee.com, theqcontinuum.com, canyonlakeboatstorage.com.

In every case, the site is running an outdated, insecure copy of WordPress or Joomla. The hackers hack the site (which is trivial to do), place a PHP script that downloads the malware, then send out a bunch of these phony emails about a non-existent FedEx package, hoping to trick people into clicking the link.

Most of these sites remain infected, weeks or months after being reported to the ISPs, because either the ISPs don't care or the ISPs aren't paying attention to the fact that the malware scripts return phony 404 pages. (GoDaddy and OVH, I'm especially looking at you here.)

The people behind this attack are adapting the malware rapidly. I downloaded three samples of the PostalReceipt.zip file, one on January 25 aqnd two on January 30, and they differ from one another. VirusTotal identifies the earliest one as W32/Kuluoz, the second as W32/Kuluoz.B, and the third as W32/Kuluoz.3.

---

There are some interesting things about this attack.

The group--and I bet it is a group--of criminals responsible for this attack are taking care to cover their tracks and to keep abuse teams from removing the malware from infected sites. Each spam email contains a code at the end of the malicious URL, and the URL returns a phony error message if it doesn't see a valid code.

The virus downloader script is smart enough to examine the browser user-agent to see what kind of computer and what Web browser the victim is using. If it sees a browser or a computer that it can't exploit, it returns a fake error message.

Only if it sees a vulnerable browser does it attempt to download the malwarewhich then surrenders the computer to the control of the hackers.

The malware droppers are installed, probably automatically, on sites running insecure WordPress or Joomla software. The phony 404 error messages slow down the Web hosting companies' response, so the malware droppers stay active for long periods of time.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If you run a Web site that uses a content managemet or blogging or ecommerce package, you *** ABSOLUTELY *** MUST *** check periodically for software updaes and install them immediately. (When a software update comes out, the organized crime gangs that do this kind of attack will analyze it and figure out what security holes it patches. Within days, they will start taking over any Web site that hasn't installed the update.)

The fact that malicious scripts will cloak themselves behind fake error messages means that you can never trust that a problem has been fixed just because you see a 404 error if you try to look at a suspicious URL.

I have successfully journeyed north of the Wall into the wildlands of Canada in search of adventure and fortune, having triumphed over some suspicious and generally resentful Canadian customs officers.

I'm not quite sure why it is, but on three trips to Canada I've been detained for additional screening twice. The first time, they asked me for a list of every place I've lived for the past twenty years and did background checks on me in all of them. At the time, I chalked it up to my own foolish decision to wear bunny ears through customs, but now I'm not so sure.

This time, they pulled me aside to ask me questions about how much money I was bringing into the country, who I worked for, how long I'd worked there, and who I was seeing. Then they did a Web search ("Hm. You do adult Web sites?" "Well, some of my clients do!") and grilled me further about the folks I know here ("How did you meet? When did you meet? When was the last time you saw these people?") They carefully wrote down my answers,and then called my sweetie Eve (who had apparently just stepped from the shower, lucky for me) and asked her the same questions.

Finally, after a delay that was just long enough to make me the most hated person on the bus, they cleared me, but only reluctantly, and I was on my way.

Polar bear saddle in hand, I went off in search of a McDonald's hamburger, which I was unable to procure because a fraud flag had been raised on my debit card on account of some bloke who apparently was trying to use it to buy a hamburger in Canada...a problem it eventually took three phone calls and twelve hours to resolve.

That problem fixes, with polar bear saddle and computer in hand, I went off with my sweetie Eve to work, where I soon found that my Yahoo IM account was locked on account of some bloke with a Canadian IP address trying to access it, my LiveJournal was flagged on account of some bloke with a Canadian IP address trying to access it, my AOL...but you get the idea.

I've had to spend much of the day dealing with the fallout of some bloke with a Canadian IP address stomping all over my digital life--that is, when I haven't been fighting off Kurgan raiders, doing battle with polar bears, treating my feet for frostbite, building igloos, or looking out over the desolate, frozen expanse of steppe beneath the floating cloud-city of Vancouver.

Anyway, I'm in Vancouver, and apparently some of the local poly crowd is hosting a get-together at The Pint, a pub located deep in the bowels of the Kurgan district. It starts at 7:30 PM on Wednesday, March 13, and anyone who happens to be local and not preparing for battle with the raiders of the North is welcome. The address is 455 Abbott Street, and I'd totally embed a Google map if I could figure out how to do it.

This entry is a guest blog by my sweetie Eve on the subject of hierarchy in poly relationships. It's a topic that's common in poly circles, but 'hierarchy' is rarely defined. Eve proposes a definition for the term:

A post by the blogger SexGeek last month on polynormativity created quite a stir in my poly circles, with some of the discussion focusing on the ethics of hierarchical poly relationships. I find that these discussions often get derailed by a lack of clarity about what we actually mean when we talk about a poly hierarchy. So I want to propose a definition. It’s based on how I most commonly observe hierarchies playing out in poly relationships. I shared this on a Facebook poly list, and it initiated a lot of discussion—some of it controversial, all of it thought-provoking. While I'm still pondering, and I appreciate and respect the concerns and input that have been offered there, I still pretty much hold my initial position. So I offer this as what resonates most and rings true for me, while I also consider the input of others.

I worked pretty hard to get this down to something short, succinct, and more-or-less in plain language. So here is my best definition so far of a poly hierarchy:

A poly hierarchy exists when at least one person holds more power over a partner's other relationships than is held by the people within those relationships.

One classic hallmark of such power is the veto. But it doesn’t always have to include a veto, and it can manifest in many smaller ways, such as restrictions on how much time a person can spend with their partners, qualifications of potential partners, where a person can go with a partner or how much money they can spend, whether someone can spend the night with their partners, or whether and how they can have sex—the possibilities are pretty endless.

In this definition, I have tried to remove any assumptions of intent, purpose or duration. I see a hierarchy as a means to an end, not an end in itself: so, while some have argued that my definition is about power and control, I don’t see it that way. I think people choose to exercise power over other relationships as a way to get what they want out of their own relationships. For example, some people see poly hierarchies as a way to ensure existing commitments are met, preserve existing relationships, or provide a feeling of safety and security. Other people choose different means to achieve the same ends.

Here’s why I use the word in this specific way:

A hierarchy (when it refers to people and not, say, computer programs or classification of organisms) is, by definition, about unequal distribution of power. It refers to rank: first, second, third, etc. (hence the terms "primary" and "secondary"). We speak of hierarchies, for example, in companies and in the military. Generally speaking, though, in interpersonal relationships (outside organizational structures), we only use the word when speaking of poly relationships. We don't use them, for example, when speaking about a couple with children, or relationships among siblings, or commitments within an extended-family network, even when such networks may include a complex web of priorities and interdependencies. So with the phrase "poly hierarchy," I am referring to a specific structure concerning three or more adults in a romantic network. A poly hierarchy does not concern the distribution of power among other players in a person's life, which could range from employers to landlords to parents or children. It refers to the distribution of power among romantically connected adults.

A poly hierarchy is not a set of boundaries. A boundary is a statement about what you need and what you will accept. In a negotiation between grown-ups, an adult states their boundaries and trusts their partner to honour them--and does not, generally, stay in a relationship where their clearly defined boundaries are consistently crossed. A hierarchy, on the other hand, dictates another person's behaviour with regard to the other person or the other person's other partners. Examples:

Not hierarchy: To protect my sexual health, I choose not to have unprotected intercourse with anyone who has unbarriered sex with anyone else. If you choose to have unbarriered sex with someone other than me, I may use condoms with you, or even refrain from having intercourse with you at all. However, because I know you value the ability to have unbarriered sex with me, I trust you to check in with me about my comfort level before you choose to have unbarriered sex with someone else.

Hierarchy: I don't want to have to use condoms with you or stop having sex with you, so you can’t have unprotected intercourse with anyone but me unless I agree to it.


The second example (from real life) is hierarchical because the speaker is making decisions for their partner's relationships in which the other partners have a lesser say.

A poly hierarchy is also not the same as providing information to your partner about what your needs are in the relationship. In a negotiation between adults, each person expresses their needs in the relationship and trusts the other to decide if they can meet them and how they can do so. For example, if I need more of a partner's time, it is for me to say I need more of their time, and for them to say whether they can give it to me, and what other activities they will take that time from. It is not for me to decide, for example, that they must take a lower-paying job or cancel their poker night or stop visiting their mom or whatever it is I think they should give up, including time with other partners. They must be free to decide whether they can give me what I'm asking for, and how they will do that. Example:

Not hierarchy: I'm being asked to work longer hours and I can no longer take the kids to daycare every day. I need you to help me figure out a solution to make sure they get dressed and off to daycare in the morning. I trust that you and your partners will be open to adjusting your own schedules to help me accommodate these new circumstances.

Hierarchy: I'm being asked to work longer hours and I can no longer take the kids to daycare every day. You can't spend the night with your partners anymore, because you have to start taking the kids to daycare.

In the first example, the speaker is making statements about their needs and approaching their partner as an equal to work with them to solve a problem. They are leaving their partner's own choices in their partner's hands not making any statements about the behaviour of third parties (e.g. their partner's other partners). The second example is based on a real-life case, but is not exact.

A poly hierarchy is not about honouring pre-existing commitments, or being judicious about what kinds of new commitments you can enter while making sure you have the resources to honour all your commitments, old and new. There are all kinds of commitments that influence how much time and energy someone has to devote to relationships. My mortgage, my business, my personal health, and my cat all represent commitments that require a substantial amount of time and energy that is then not available for relationships, yet we don’t say my partners are in a hierarchy with these commitments. That’s because my staff, my clients, my cat and my yoga teacher don’t expect to dictate the terms on which I can engage with my partners, just to ensure I have time for them (though my cat may express an opinion sometimes). Likewise, the fact that a partner expects me to keep commitments to them doesn’t mean they’re in a hierarchy with my other partners; it becomes a hierarchy when they begin telling me how I should conduct my relationships with my other partners—and I allow them to—in order for that partner to feel secure that I will meet their needs.

A poly hierarchy is not about prioritization. Again, we all have competing priorities in our lives, whether we’re mono, poly, or have no intimate relationships at all. Dividing my time on a day-to-day basis, for example, I usually prioritize my clients over my partners, because my clients pay my mortgage and (most of) my partners don’t, and without a roof over my head I’m not in much of a position to conduct relationships at all. I have to make my sick cat a priority because she can’t take care of herself; my partners, on the other hand, will not literally die if I leave them to their own devices for a few days. But again, my clients expect and trust me to meet my obligations to them in the way I see fit: as long as the outcome is what we agreed to, it doesn’t matter when or how I work or what else I choose not to do to make that time. These aren’t hierarchies, and similar prioritization among partners’ needs is also not a hierarchy. This is just being a responsible, accountable grown-up.

A poly hierarchy is also not about accepting the fact that relationships will take different forms and allowing them to do so. When I explore new connections, I remain open to the directions they can grow in and the level of intensity and connection they can reach. Some connections may be better suited for interconnected, life-partner-type relationships, while others may be better suited for less interdependent relationships with fewer expectations. What makes a poly hierarchy is when the form a relationship can take is prescribed at the outset (“I can only have secondary partners”), more specifically, when it is prescribed at the outset (or, for that matter, at any point during the relationship) by another partner who is not in the relationship (“You can only have secondary partners. I want to be your only primary”). If relationships are allowed to unfold naturally, it’s not a poly hierarchy when, with the consent and participation of those in them, they end up in different shapes.

The difference concerns personal agency: who makes decisions for whom. The key elements of a poly hierarchy are:

• Authority: The ability to make rules or place limits on what can happen in relationships that are not yours (i.e. your partner’s other relationships).
  
• Asymmetry: Your partner’s other partners may not place the same restrictions on your relationship that you can place on theirs.
  

If it doesn't have these elements, it's not a hierarchy. It's something else.

Additionally, the following are not defining elements of a poly hierarchy (they can exist within a poly hierarchy, of course, but they don't define it as such--having these things doesn't mean you are in a hierarchy):

• Expressing your needs in a relationship regarding your partner's behaviour toward you.
  
• Making agreements with your partner concerning your own behaviour in relation to them or commitments you share (such as children) and trusting your partner to keep such agreements with you.
  
• Letting your partner make their own decisions regarding how they will honour your needs and meet your shared commitments while building the kind of life they want for themselves.
  
• Setting personal limits on the kinds of relationships you will build or stay in, such as refusing to stay with a partner who consistently breaks agreements.
  
• Allowing relationships to develop and grow in different directions and take the form that best works for the people in them, even when some of those relationships are more or less closely connected than others.
  

These are also the kinds of things people who practise genuinely hierarchical poly say they are doing, when they engage in conversations about whether and why it is helpful or necessary to have control over their other partner’s romantic relationships. This is why I think it’s actually quite necessary to establish a clear definition of poly hierarchy, because this slippery shifting of definitions frequently derails any attempt at discussing whether hierarchical poly (as I am defining it here) is a good idea.

Posing the question, “why does one partner need authority over their partner’s other relationships in order to ensure that partner meets their commitments?” is not the same as asking “why do you need to have different kinds of relationships or give them different levels of time or energy?” And yet people who practise hierarchical poly will argue that not having a hierarchy (as defined here) means making a new partner equal to a co-parent or spouse. It doesn’t: it means making a new partner equal to her own partner within her own relationship (thanks joreth for that eloquent turn of phrase). And we need to be able to discuss the costs and benefits hierarchical power dynamics within poly relationships without consistently being drawn off by this straw man.

Finally, after many months of coding, the new version of my sex game Onyx is ready! This new version is a significant overhaul, and contains tons and tons of new features and new game-play mechanics. It also contains lots of new actions (coming up with lists of hundreds of sexy things that people can do to each other is harder than it sound!).

To celebrate, I'm offering a special discount on registration if you want to play the full version. Of course, the free version is still free, and Onyx 3.5 is a free upgrade for registered users.

Check it out!

I am on TV right now. Or, at least, I think I am. I don't know, because Comcast is the most miserable tech company I've ever had to deal with.

Err, actually the second most miserable, but only by a nose.

Some time ago, i got contacted by producers from the Oprah Winfrey network. They were shooting a segment of "Our America" about polyamory. I pointed them to some friends of mine, who they liked so much they set up a camera crew in their house for weeks. They also filmed a smigeon of zaiah and I, and... Anyway, I was curious to see how it all turned out.

The show was set to air today, something I didn't realize 'til this afternoon. So zaiah went down to the Comcast Worker's Dormitory, Public Relations Orifice, and Meat Processing Plant to pick up a cable box. We plugged it in. Went through a lengthy process on Comcast's miserable Net-site to "activate" the box, whatever that means. Web site said "OK, now activating your cable box, please wait 45 minutes."

Which is a little weird; in 45 minutes, Russian organized crime can infect 250,000 American PCs with malware, so taking 45 minutes to program a cable box seems inefficient. But whatever.

Then the Web site said "Success! Your cable box has been activated."

It lied.

Connect the box to the TV, nothing. Okay, bad cable maybe? Go outside the house, in the rain, diddle with the cable connection. Nothing. Replace the cable. Nothing. Run a known-good cable through the window into the house. Still nada.

Take the cable connector out of the wall. Looks good. Replace the cable that came with the cable box, the one that goes from the wall to the box. Still nada.

Call tech support. "No problem, we'll reset your cable box. Should take ten minutes."

10 minutes later, I'm 10 minutes older but no closer to working cable.

Move the cable box around the house in a bizarre game of whack-a-cable-outlet. Nothing works anywhere. (Seriously, who uses cable any more, anyway?)

OWN is not available streaming over the Internet; presumably, Oprah, who is, like, the richest woman in he world or something, isn't getting enough fees to allow Net streaming.

Okay, back on the phone with tech support. "We can't see your cable box."

Uh...

Okay, fine. Move it to a different cable outlet. "We still can't see it. You're on a TV show, you say? About polyamory? What's that?"

The inevitable "what is polyamory?" conversation over, we start playing this whack-a-cable-outlet game again. No matter where we go, the tech says "I sill can't ping your cable box."

Go back online to Comcast's miserable activation page on Comcast's miserable Web site. "You have 1 cable device (1 not activated)."

Apparently, it will tell you "activation successful" even if the device in question is disconnected, turned off, shot repeatedly with a 12-gauge, and buried in a lead-lined box outside of Roswell, New Mexico beneath a crumpled up ball of aluminum foil and two empty cans of baked beans. When the Web site says "activation successful," that doesn't mean that the activation was successful, you see...it simply means that enough time has passed that the Comcast Central Babbage Engine should have been able to align the gears and pulleys to the right configuration to activate the box.

zaiah is still on the phone with the tech this whole time, while our dinner slowly turns to charcoal and then catches fire on the stove. The tech is being really patient (and curious), but nothing works.

Finally, I yank the cable out of the cable modem, which we know works on account of I was able to communicate through the web-net on the Internet-tubes to the Babbage engine that runs Comcast's Net-site, and plug it straight into the cable box.

"Oh," chirps the tech, "your cable box is defective. Please bring it to your nearest Comcast cable Box Redemption Center and place it on the redemption line."

Which might have explained why when zaiah picked it up from the Comcast Worker's Dormitory, Public Relations Orifice, and Meat Processing Plant the person-unit behind the counter mentioned casually as if in passing that she'd plug the box in and make sure the blinkenlights came on because "we've had a bunch of bad boxes lately."

So after four plus hours of work, we were unable to see the show. We had several friends over who were also on the program, because, like, who the fuck has cable nowadays anyway?

If you could even begin to feel one one-hundredth of the depth of my frustration and rage at Comcast right now, your monitor would catch fire.

My sweetie Eve pointed me to this video, which was presented in a TED talk about moral reasoning in animals. It shows two monkeys who have each been trained to perform a simple task (handing a researcher a rock) in exchange for a reward (a bit of food).

In the experiment, the researcher could give the monkey a bit of cucumber or a grape as a reward. Monkeys given cucumber rewards were quite happy...unless they saw another monkey being given a grape for the same task. When that happens...well, see below.



Eve showed me this video while we were talking about polyamorous relationships. And she pointed out that the things these monkeys are feeling translate directly into the things that can trip us up as human beings when we're involved in non-monogamous relationships of all sorts.

---

OF GRAPES AND CUCUMBERS

The notion that relationships have "cucumbers" (things that help feed the relationship, but aren't necessarily fun or thrilling) and "grapes" (exciting things that are fun to do) seems straightforward.

The problem, naturally, is that what constitutes a "cucumber" and what constitutes a "grape" can be highly subjective, and can change depending on where you happen to be in the relationship configuration.

For instance, to me some of the most delicious grapes of life are also some of life's most mundane things: the day-in, day-out living with a partner, doing all the tasks and chores that add up to shared intimacy and a shared life together. I've had relationships where I live with my partner and we spend our time doing dishes, watching Netflix, and snuggling on lazy Saturday mornings, and relationships where I see a partner perhaps once a year for a wild frenzy of hot kinky group sex in a French castle.

Don't get me wrong, the hot kinky sex in a French castle is a grape, no doubt about it. But for me, relationships where I spend time just quietly sharing a life with a partner are incredibly rewarding, and it's far easier to build intimacy with that kind of shared life than with one week a year spent together. No matter how much fun that week happens to be. With a partner I see seldom, the time spent with that partner can look like an intense whirlwind of nonstop fun, because we have to pack all our relationship time into a very small space. It doesn't account for the long periods of time spent apart, when the relationship is barely fed at all, with grapes or cucumbers. (I am a person whose love language is touch; it is harder to meet that need long distance.)

To a person who has that day-in, day-out living together, the weekend trips to a faraway land can look like grapes, and the doing of dishes and moving of furniture looks like a dull and unappetizing cucumber. On the other hand, to the partner who only gets my time in small dribs and drabs, the shared experiences of a life spent together looks like a plump, sweet, delicious grape. And so each person sees nothing but cucumbers in front of them, while the other person has an entire plateful of grapes.

GRAPES AND HIERARCHY

When you look at your own plate and see nothing but cucumbers, while it seems like someone else gets entirely 100% grape,it's reasonable to feel like the monkey in the video up there. And when we feel like that, often our first impulse is to want all the grapes for ourselves.

It gets worse if we feel that we're entitled to all the grapes, or that someone else might steal our stash of grapes.

Since I've been thinking about polyamory in terms of grapes and cucumbers, it has occurred to me that often, the rules and hierarchies imposed in prescriptive relationships, particularly prescriptive primary/secondary relationships, seem calculated to make sure that all the grapes belong to one partner and other partners are metered out nothing but cucumbers.

This can sometimes even go so far as "grape hoarding"--fencing off particularly tasty grapes to make sure nobody else comes near them. (Examples of grape hoarding might be forbidding a partner to go to a certain restaurant with another partner, say, or forbidding a partner to spend any holiday or vacation time with another partner.) Even sharing a grape with someone else can make us feel like that poor monkey on the left, if we feel that grape belongs to us by right. When our monkey emotions get monkey going, someone's likely to get things flung at them.

The impulse to want to keep our grapes and make sure nobody else takes them isn't just a human thing, or even a primate thing. Dogs do the same thing; a dog trained to do a trick to get a reward who sees the other dog get that reward for nothing may stop doing the trick.

SEPARATING THE GRAPES FROM THE CHAFF

What are the grapes in a relationship? I've been thinking about that ever since my sweetie showed me this video.

Kinky group sex in a Medieval castle is definitely a grape, don't get me wrong. Intense experiences that form lifelong memories are very tasty indeed.

But focusing on those kinds of grapes, I think, makes me lose sight of the grapes I get every day--the grapes that it's easy to disregard because I have so many of them. I've resolved to be more conscientious about valuing the grapes that I have, the ones I might otherwise take for granted.

If I were to make a list of the grapes I'm blessed with, it would include kinky sex in castles and trips to exotic places, no doubt. But it would also include:

• Being able to wake up nearly every morning with my partner.
  
• Having my partner close enough to touch, almost all the time.
  
• Curling up on a rainy afternoon with my partner, snuggling beneath warm covers.
  
• Building a private language from a shared history of experience.
  
• Having someone next to me while I deal with all the various ways I have to hold back entropy.
  
• Being able to plan with someone
  
• Working on projects with a partner.
  
• Creating with a partner.
  
• Having a partner who sees me, who really get me and understands me.
  

So I do very much like the trips to see my distant sweeties, but I wish they were closer. I enjoy vacation time spent with far-flung lovers, but I would not trade those experiences for living with a partner. At the end of the day, if I had to choose, I would give up the vacations for having the people I love close to me all the time.

And that might be the real test of what's a grape and what's a cucumber: Would you choose to trade places with the person you see getting all the grapes? If the vacation experiences seem like such tasty grapes,would you trade a life spent together for a distant, vacation relationship?

How about you, O readers? What are your grapes and what are your cucumbers?

Safe for work; has sound.