How polyamory prepared me for COVID
For anyone who practices safer sex -- or at least is familiar with it -- there are some obvious parallels with COVID-19 lockdown rules.
FIRST, and most obviously, it’s the whole issue of using protection. And instead of just protecting a limited portion of your anatomy from touching a limited portion of another’s anatomy, we are are talking about protection for coming within six feet of each other. Or even coming into contact with something they touched. Can you get it from a doorknob? Do I want to take the risk?
NEXT, there’s the fact that we need to trust that the other person will disclose if they have something that you will catch, if they even know they have it at all. Many STIs including HIV are not obvious. If the infected person doesn’t get tested they may be unaware they have something to disclose. Part of safer sex is assuming that everyone is infected unless proven otherwise. That’s exactly what’s going on with COVID. We’ve got to assume everyone is spreading it around, unless they have a test, and even then we aren’t sure how much we can trust the tests yet. And let’s be clear, some people just fucking lie.
THIRDLY, there’s people who will just make the lamest excuses not to wear a mask/condom. “It’s too hard to breathe!” “I can’t feel anything!” “I know I’m not infectious. Don’t you trust me?” “Only this time, it won’t make a difference.” “I use it with everyone else, I promise, so I don’t have to with you.” “Masks don’t really work.” “Condoms don’t really do anything.” If you’ve heard the lame excuses from those who don’t wear masks (mostly men), you can guess that these snowflakes also complain they can’t get off with a condom. Sounds like a personal problem to me!
BUT FOR POLYAM FOLKS, there’s more.
I’ve been polyamorous and sexually promiscuous for four and a half years. And although I’ve slowed down a lot, almost to the point of living monogamously during COVID, at one time I had six sexual and romantic partners and a handful of fuck buddies. It required a mindset and a set of skills that apply as well to living during COVID.
CHOOSE YOUR DYNAMIC! There’s so many different ways to be non-monogamous. Some of which are of questionable ethics (don’t ask don’t tell, and cheating, to name two), but there’s also strict hierarchical polyamory, egalitarian, relationship anarchy, and a myriad others. Some of these have clear parallels to life in quarantine.
NO CONTACT - You ever know anyone who is so afraid of being hurt in a relationship whether physically or emotionally, that they retreat from any interaction with anyone and end up alone? It’s sad. Basically this is the tact that is recommended by many during lockdown. Stay home. Zero contact. Have everything delivered and wipe everything down thoroughly. It’s a hard way to live, but some people have chosen it. The only way to avoid a car accident is to never get in a car, and even then, one could crash into your living room, and you have no control over that.
MONOGAMY - Hey, you don’t live alone, so you’re going to have to interact with someone. That someone is going to share your commitment to being safe. You have each other, but no one else. And ALL of your emotional, physical, and perhaps social needs are focused on that one person. For those of us who live with a nesting partner, that’s what we were doing, at least during the first couple of months of lockdown. It can be trying, but we lean in to the commitment that we have with that other person and hope to ride it out.
POLYFIDELITY - In polyamory, this is not my dynamic, but I see real value to this during the pandemic. In polyfidelity - or some call it closed polyamory - three or more people commit to only have sex within that polycule. New entrants into the group are approved by everyone even if they are only having sex with one, and provide documentation that they’ve been recently tested. The upside: unprotected sex!. The downsides: limits on bodily autonomy and requires a high level of trust that no one is cheating on the side. Why would this work for COVID? Imagine you had one household or even two that your household would socialize with and those other households were committed to limiting their interaction to this group of households. It could be a single person who would otherwise be living alone. It could be relatives, neighbors, or even someone that you share a hobby with. Everyone would need to trust that the others were following the rules, but the upside would be dinner parties, game nights, and backyard barbecues. (And for you kinky fuckers, it could also be extended members of your polycule who can come over for playtime.)
RELATIONSHIP ANARCHY - Now this is a bit of a challenge. For those not familiar, RA says basically that everyone has complete bodily and emotional autonomy and is responsible for their own decisions. It creates all sorts of challenges, but requires participants to make concerted value assessments of every person and every situation. A lot of people who practice RA swear by safer sex practices because it allows themselves and others to make decisions. I’ve tended to a form of RA when I was extremely active. Condoms even with committed partners, but it allowed me to set aside a lot of trust issues. I was looking after my safety and the safety of my partners, and didn’t need to ask as many questions about what my partners were doing with others. In the Age of COVID, this is what many are doing. I frankly think it’s dangerous. If you go back to the first point all the way at the top of this screed, you’ll see the different between sex and covid is that covid is about proximity, not just sexual contact. If god forbid I came down with a STI, even when I was sexually promiscuous, I could tell you the name of every person I’d had sex with in the previous three months. And I could count on one finger (or less) how many I’d had unprotected sex with. But if you got covid, could you name everyone that you’d come within six feet of in just the last week? It would be easier if you were wearing a mask or limiting the circle of people you interact with, wouldn’t it? In any case, this sort of freewheeling libertarian do-what-you-want approach to COVID protection is something that might not be a good idea. But if it is, it requires value assessments of every person and every situation.
NOW ONTO COMMUNICATION -- If you’re polyamorous, you’ll know that maintaining relationships requires honest direct communication frequently. This is perhaps the biggest way that polyam prepared me for the pandemic. Its uncountable the number of times my partner and I have checked in on the comfort of the other person about where we wanted to go or who we wanted to visit during the last six months. Whether it’s going down to the office, picking up take out, or visiting an elderly friend, we discuss what our boundaries and limits are, just as we would when exploring new romantic or sexual relationships. We discussed what it meant when we invited my ex-wife and kids to join us on our “quaranteam.” When our roommate - who had been sheltering in place outside the country - asked to come back for a few weeks, we all discussed what our comfort levels where and shared what precautions we had been taking.
These are polyamory skill sets. Things I’ve practiced in my romantic life for half a decade and that I’m sure that some of you have for longer. It hasn’t made it easier, but it made the transition to lockdown life smoother.
Polyamorous folx usually understand that their bodily autonomy must be balanced with respect for others and understanding that there will be social consequences when you fail to communicate and honor others boundaries.
What do you think? Does this resonate with you? Are there any other ways that non-monogamous life translates to the COVID age?
