1. How long have you been polyamorous or been practicing polyamory?
Well, if you mean âstrictâ polyamory, that is, being conscious that you are doing something that it is called âpolyamoryâ, I guess around 2006. If you mean by that ânon-monogamy with romantic feelings and with informed consent of everyone involvedâ, then I would say more than 20 years. That means that my ways of âbeing polyamorousâ has been very different and changed a lot over the time. Although in my adult life (+18) I always have been in non-monogamous scenes, and some were not into polyamory, I have always had emotional bonds from the beginning. Thatâs what led me to polyamory, that tendency to have that kind of attachment every time, something I (wrongly) assumed it was always present in every relationship everyone had.
2. What does your relationship dynamic look like?
Not very complex⊠It is clearly a hierarchical relationship in V, with a primary partner I have had a relationship with for more than twenty years and a secondary partner since 2011, more than four years ago. Itâs not a triad or polyfidelity relationship, as everyone can have as many relationships as they feel like it.
3. What aspect of polyamory do you excel at?
I would say solving problems in a relationship. I have learned over the time that it is very difficult for a relationship to break unless one of the members of the relationship doesnât care about it and doesnât want to reach an agreement. Otherwise, almost any disagreement can be solved when the people involved work on it. And to achieve that an agreement is possible very often, you âonlyâ need that trust has not been eroded as time goes by. Without trust, itâs impossible (or very difficult) to reach an agreement.
Regarding jealousy, being such a popular issue when talking about non monogamy, is not something I have to struggle with. I may get a little jealous from time to time, but nothing impossible to deal with, as the pain âfrom the same triggerâ has been going down over the years. Itâs been awhile that I use that kind of feelings as a way to know what are my fears and work on them, so I can grow as a person, be happier and learn more about myself.
4. What aspect of polyamory do you struggle with?
At this moment, time and energy. Although I am good at time management, last year and this one are being very tough, as I am at the moment studying a Master in Sexology and that leaves me very little time and extra energy to take care of my relationships as I would like to.
Apart from this particular situation, I struggle with the idea of non-hierarchical non-monogamy, as I find it impossible to be applied in my life when I have been for so much time in a/two relationship/s. And when it comes to new people coming in my life (imagine I started now a third relationship), I find it difficult again to consider all relationships equal. Equal in what sense? Time, intensity, emotional closenessâŠ? What I do consider is that each relationship is UNIQUE, as each relationship has an unique DNA, unique elements, dynamics, expectations, stimulus, triggers, desires, projectsâŠ
5. How do you address and/or overcome those struggles?
In my case, I know not having enough time it is just a temporary situation. With the rest of situations we have to deal with, we just take time to talk things through and donât try to make our relationship fit into a poly model that may exist previously to our own situation.
In my personal case I know I can overcome almost anything in a relationship as I am ALWAYS open to ask for help from people with experience in this kind of relationships or therapists.
6. In terms of risk-aware/safer sex, what do you and your partners do to protect one another?
We are very cautious about STDs. We all use condoms for any penetrative sex and are careful about other potentially risky practices with anyone we get involved with. Apart from that, we have STD tests done regularly, and thatâs why havenât had any serious issues in relationships this long.
7. What is the worst mistake youâve ever made in your polyamorous history and how did you rebound from that?
Quite a lot⊠whenever I look back I see many, many mistakes I didnât see as such at the moment and someone had to come and tell me that I wasnât being fair⊠It has been a slow process of self-awareness thanks to my partners, feminism, therapy, books, etc. The worst ones were not related to polyamory but to relationships in general, not knowing how to manage conflict well and causing in one occasion an awful amount of (unnecessary) pain. That took a lot of effort rebuilding trust and learning from scratch how to manage relationships. Before that moment I considered myself very prepared for open relationships⊠when I wasnât THAT prepared. I had gone through a lot of pain in the past (jealousy, for instance), had many partners, tried many things⊠but that didnât make me better in other aspects of myself as a partner in a relationship. I still lacked a good deal of self-awareness and accountability.
And talking about poly relationships, my worst mistakes probably were about not being honest about the nature of some relationships, not telling how much into NRE I was. Apart from those, I would say the change I am more happy about is when I began being fully accountable of my decisions. Before that, unconsciously, I used to think that I was doing everything because someone else was demanding that from me. Now I consider myself fully responsible for what I am doing. In all this change, therapy has played a huge role. That helped me a lot about non-verbal communication, negotiation, agreements and self-awareness. All this is what makes me difficult to understand how anyone may consider me a role model⊠Anyway, here I am, willing to give all the help I can offer to anyone who considers my point of view can be beneficial for themâŠ
8. What self-identities are important to you? How do you feel like being polyamorous intersects with or affects these identities?
Gender identities and orientation are the ones that interest me the most, as well as people who are differently abled. My own identity is quite complex, so that makes me easy to connect with many of those identities. And, well, when you donât follow the normativities we have to live in, you find yourself in a worse situation as more and more of those labels to name identities are applicable to you. And most of those labels are related to sex, it seems that our lives are unidimensional
(Bonus: Do you have any groups, projects, websites, blogs, etc. that you are involved with that you would like to promote?)
I have been blogging about non conventional sex since 2006; together with my primary partner created a group called golfxs con principios (ethical sluts) that gathered all the friends we had made in all the non-monogamous scenes together with other people who worked with me, or that had been friends of mine for many years.
In 2012, I came up with the idea of setting up a site to promote non conventional identities, practices and relationships (from a sex positive point of view) and offer texts, translations, tips, organize talks, events etc and offer services for those communities at Golfxsconprincipios.com. Paraphrasing a The Ethical Slutâs idea, the idea behind the project was putting together all the tools you may need to build around you the world you would like to live in. For the moment only our home site is available in English.
To sum up, nowadays I would call myself an activist, sex-positive translator and blogger, educator, event organizer, graphic/service designer for companies that have some kind of relationship with sex, and in 2016, I will be a sex therapist too.
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