Hola Sexy People,
Whether you are in a monogamous relationship OR a polyamorous one, we all know that communication is soooo impawww-tant. 🙂 But it becomes even increasingly so in polyamorous relationships partly because there are more people involved trying to relate to each other in a happy, healthy way. And sometimes there is even less time to do so, because though love can be infinite, time is not. So the time we do get to spend with each other, we want to make the most of it, and have productive, supportive dialogues, with hopefully a minimum of misunderstandings (and definitely not of the Three’s Company variety!). Misunderstandings of course will happen, as will hurt feelings from time to time. But there is no reason we can’t all make an effort to TRY to communicate better, more effectively, and with some kindness. I mean… these are people that we care about and love, right??? Well let’s treat them with the respect that they deserve.
This article is on my list of resources, but I thought it would be great to highlight here as a blog post. There is a some GREAT stuff in here!
http://www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com/2008/04/07/effective-communication/
To illustrate some points that are brought up in the article using a real life example:
This past weekend, I was a third party to a discussion two of my intimates were having. One of them was bringing up a perceived slight or hurt to the other, and asked me to “help,” almost acting as a moderator of sorts. I reluctantly agreed (and was also partly curious to see what would happen). The first person brought up the perceived hurt to the other party. The other party explained their reasoning, and then apologized and corrected himself where appropriate. I thought we were done….
The “hurt” person continued to bring up the hurt over and over again. It was as if she didn’t hear a word the person she was speaking to was saying. This is not helpful and wastes everyone’s time! As the article suggests, if you are going to bring something up for discussion, then be ready to REALLY LISTEN to the answer. And then respond to THAT ANSWER, not the repeating item / story that is going through your head. We’re trying to move forward here in a positive direction, not stay stuck in place. This is where I stepped in as “the moderator” and pointed out that she had just received an apology as well as a different course of action that she might find suitable to remedy the situation. I’m not sure if I helped or not, but all we can do is try, do our best to improve, and then try again. We’ve all been there, but let’s practice together. Oh, don’t forget to try to LISTEN after you ask a question.
Happy Communicating! And Enjoy!
Wishing you love, peace and happiness,
Kitty
Very nicely put and great article! I recently became the secondary partner for a very lovely woman and, even though her primary and I actually go back a good 6 or so years from college, we found that there were going to be communication issues. Most of it was from times when it was one of us having to give info to the other two. It turned into phone tag and the old school Telephone Game. Small pieces were misinterpreted or misconstrued so led to more questions and more steps to get things across. In the end our matching personalities won out and we’re able to get things together. We know we’ll get communication worked out because we know the specific issues of it. If everyone involved can keep open minds and bring their feelings out then everything can be worked out with communication.
Thank you for the nice note! I’m glad your relationships are working out for you so well!
One difficulty I see a lot of in the “good communication is important!” arena is that people interpret “good communication” as meaning “voluminous communication” and/or “indiscriminate communication” (that whatever’s going on inside them should be made external). *Effective* communication isn’t actually either of those.
In the situation you describe, the first thing I’d look for isn’t that hurt-person isn’t listening, it’s that hurt-person received a non-apology apology. It’s very difficult to apologize for *what one did* and we mostly aren’t taught to do it, yet the difference between a halfassed “I’m sorry your feelings got hurt for no reason” pseudo-apology and one where you own precisely what you did is like night and day, and we can always tell the difference.
Thanks for your input. I agree with your thoughts on communication (good, versus voluminous, versus effective), and that a “half-assed apology” is just that.