Polyamory Week 2022 - Relationships Skills = Universal Life Skills
You can find all posts for Polyamory Week 2022 collected here.
Polyamory isn't the only thing in my life. It might seem like it from reading my articles, but I've got a lot more going on.
Like having a job, for instance. While I'm a full-time writer today, back in the distant, fairytale days of the Before Times, I worked as a Project Manager. And so, at the same time I was doing the work required by polyamory, I was also training to be better at my job.
And you know what? I realised that many of the skills I was learning for my job were exactly the same as those I was learning for my relationships.
But surely, I hear you cry, your job and your relationship are very different things? How can a romantic relationship use the same skills as a 9 to 5 office job?
Well, let's start with an easy one. I worked as a Project Manager. And what is a relationship, if not a long-term project?
We like to put relationships on this huge, glowing pedestal. Love is the greatest thing in the world, we tell ourselves. Surely it must be sacrosanct, and above all other things. Our love for our partners cannot possibly exist in the same space as the dull, everyday things required to do something as mundane as surviving.
And, above all, relationships are something that simply happen once you find the right person.
Which, as I'm sure you all know, is complete bullshit.
A relationship isn't something that just happens. It's a project. It requires knowing what you want to achieve, constant and open communication, risk analysis, and ongoing check-ins to ensure all of this is happening.
When I began my first truly polyamorous relationship, I took all of these points on board. I had spent time working out what I wanted and invited my new partner to do the same. I had thought about all the risks, how we might get hurt or problems we might face along the way. And we learned to honestly communicate at every opportunity without worrying about how we sounded.
Because I hadn't done any of those things at the start of my marriage. Back then, I simply stumbled forward, expecting everything to be like it was "supposed" to be. This meant issues and problems weren't addressed until they happened, and our communication style was passive and had a large component of assuming we knew what we each wanted.
Things worked for a long time, but only because society had provided us with the basic template for a relationship. But as any project manager can tell you, you can't start a new project using the plan for a previous one. In the case of a relationship, the moment you deviate the slightest bit from the norm, or you and your partner aren't on exactly the same page, you're going to be in trouble with no way of knowing how to handle it.
Of course, this is just my story. I can't assume it to be universal. I have life skills some of you do not, and you will have others that I lack.
I look at things this way because my background is in project management. Not everyone in the world shares the love of lists and spreadsheets required to get anywhere in that field. But what I do know is your life and employment history will have furnished you with skills that can be applied to other areas of your life.
But in most cases, the problem isn't our not having the life skills to apply to your relationships, but people thinking doing so is a sign of weakness.
A recent survey showed 47% of Americans saw couples therapy as a sign of weakness. Something only needed by those in failing relationships. And it's not hard to see this reflected in the media. A character being against the idea of therapy is often used as shorthand to show their personality flaws, but we rarely see people embracing it as something to be celebrated. Or, even more importantly, working on a relationship before it is in trouble.
Because we're under that idea of relationships being on that big, glowing pedestal. Conditioned by the fallacy that the sign of a "good" relationship is that it does not need any work.
When all we're doing is refusing to use the skills we already have.
I never expected polyamory to lead me to realise how much of my ability and knowledge I was holding back from my relationships.
I used to be one of those people convinced that finding "true love" meant a relationship would just work. And while I know why I thought this, I just don't understand how I was ever so naïve to not see this for the fallacy that it is.
But beginning my journey into polyamory forced me to think about relationships differently. I had already found "The One", and therefore I couldn't rely on that magic again. So, logically, any new relationships would need hard work to maintain.
And then, over time, I realised that the skills I was using in my new relationship were badly needed in my previous one. I saw past the idea that relationships lived on that glowing pedestal and brought them down to the same level as everything else.
And I realised doing this didn't make them any less special.
