The Semantics of Labels | My label-less definition of relationships
I struggle with semantics.
Meaning I take words - especially labels - at their black and white face value, and use them for what I think they define. And, often, I find that others have different words for the meaning I have assigned to the parent label. It’s often an interesting exercise in communication to hash out words and their definitions.
I say this because maybe it’s not just a “me” problem. That maybe we are all using words, especially emotional descriptors, by the definitions we have been taught - by our childhood caregivers, by society, by our own experiences - and perhaps those words mean different things to different people. And unless we ask, how can we ever truly understand each other?
I put emotions into that equation because perhaps that is where semantics matter the most. Especially in the words we use as labels to identify ourselves or others.
I am still wrestling with the poly label. A valued person in my life with more experience in poly shared the possibility of queer platonic relationships as a label, and that helped me think of things in a different way.
Because I’ve always had deep platonic friendships, mostly with women, but some with men. And when I got married, I tried to maintain those friendships, but some fell away because my life was firmly centered around the relationship with my husband.
And yet, stories are showing that men and women are reaching middle age and starved for real, local friends. They are finding that the expectation to have one person fill all of their buckets is unrealistic.
Community, in today’s digital age, feels full of fighting and further division. Neighbors pitted against neighbors on issues like mask mandates or municipal elections. Conversations can feel like personal attacks, and anxiety-provoking, even (especially) though they are issued and received from behind a screen or a phone.
Perhaps it’s because of that issue of not being in person, not being in real-time that allows it to evoke such strong feelings that may be inconsistent with what’s actually going on in that person’s actual environment.
Or perhaps, it’s also because so many of us don’t know what the “right” thing to do is anymore. So we search for those labels, those rules, common grounds of conversation and understanding.
Communities used to be centered around activities. Churches, schools, hobbies, sports. That was both good because it provided “structure”, and challenging because it ostracized the ones who didn’t fit in. There wasn’t a lot of choice. The internet broadened those circles, especially for the ones with the more eclectic passions, but also felt like it allowed for more judgement. More separation as a consequence of our global togetherness.
In today’s world, Facebook is cited as a reason for 1 in 5 divorces in the US. I understand that.
What is comparison but escaping from the reality that life is hard? And that the paradox of the instant gratification that we are promised by the barrage of marketing materials we encounter minute-by-minute is that it takes away overall feelings of long-term well-being.
Now, all of this language - emotional literacy and labels-wise - I learned when I start researching poly and ethical non-monogomy. I did not want to divorce my husband, but instead hoped to shift our relationship to another phase of life, mostly because we speak different love languages.
But because we speak different love languages, we hold different definitions of what “safety” is. And those definitions were mired - on both sides - in unconscious conditioning from our parents and how we grew up. Models we knew we did not want to consciously emulate, but we literally did not know how to NOT replicate them.
And, as I said before, friendships fell by the wayside. For isn’t that time that should be spent with family?
But in poly, time is the commodity. Love isn’t measured in the obligation of spending ALL the available time together, but in the quality of the communication with the time spent. I typed that sentence lightly, but in practice, it’s really hard to do.
And yet, I do see the value in that constant conscious communication. For what are queer platonic relationships other than “friendships”? And don’t those non-sexual bonds deserve that same kind of consious communication to stay fresh and mindful? The same kind of respect that we give to our “primary” relationship? Our sexual one in monogomy?
For I keep coming back to the reality that I am not capable of having sex with more than one person at a time. Monogomy if you will.
But I also can’t imagine a life without a lot of deep friendships. I’m so fortunate in the ones that have stayed with me from high school & college. And I am so, so grateful for the local pod friendships from the pandemic period. And, I have never met more people I resonated with since entering this kink world, but, those conversations are ongoing and I’m unsure of the future of some, but I can appreciate the lessons they may bring, even if they don’t work out.
For if monogamy means giving all of that up to spend time with only one person - even when hormones and NRE (new relationship energy/euphoria - another poly definition of something that happens to us all) - even when the powerful brain chemicals make me WANT to spend all of my time with one person, isn’t that the moment to root back to the things that make me happy alone? Writing, painting, kayaking, hiking. Isn’t that the moment to have coffee (hot chocolate) with a good friend?
Isn’t that the moment to stretch out and test the longevity of a primary sexual relationship? Because anything worth having needs to go beyond the instant gratification of sex. Beyond giving up oneself to merge with another. (Something I do all too readily, I will be the first to admit now that I am aware of it.)
To stand up as two individuals with the relationship as the middle space. All three entities - the people and the relationship - protected by boundaries and learning to trust. That is my preferred semantic view of monogamy.
Brene Brown broke down the anatomy of trust - the semantics of it - in a recent Oprah special. I heard her re-tell it on her podcast episode. She borrowed Charles Feltman’s definition:
“Trust is choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.”
And because definitions do not embody the whole of what a word can mean, especially around emotions, she broke it down further, creating the acronym BRAVING:
BOUNDARIES: Setting boundaries is making clear what’s okay and what’s not okay, and why.
RELIABILITY: You do what you say you’ll do. At work, this means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don’t overpromise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities.
ACCOUNTABILITY: You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends.
VAULT: You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential.
INTEGRITY: Choosing courage over comfort; choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy; and practicing your values, not just professing them.
NONJUDGMENT: I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgment.
GENEROSITY: Extending the most generous interpretation to the intentions, words, and actions of others
I highly recommend listening to her directly on this, but in this context it helped me pull together all of these thoughts on definitions & semantics of relationships and the labels that may live around them depending on what you were taught and what you choose to believe in. And understand that without self-trust, how could we ever truly trust anyone else. Without self-love, how could we love another?
So am I polyamorous?
pol·y·am·o·rous
/ˌpälēˈam(ə)rəs/
adjective
adjective: polyamorous
characterized by or involved in the practice of engaging in multiple romantic (and typically sexual) relationships, with the consent of all the people involved.
"intimacy and trust are essential to successful polyamorous relationships"
No, by that definition, and the fact that I can’t sleep with or be romantic with more than one person at a time.
But can I live in the current heteronormative monogamous definition as it feels like?
Also, no, proven over and over. I have deep intellectual connections with my friends that take time and dedication. They aren’t romantic or sexual, but they are important to me. They help me to see the world differently and appreciate the small moments with another human. And I can’t give that up again for the obligation of monogamy, for family.
In truth, I never gave it up, those friendships have always existed in my life, but it was mired in my own expectations of should and should not.
So my definition of relationships is label-less. Which, I am walking out with on tentative legs, because how do I communicate that to other people? How do I talk about jealousy when it pops up with someone who is “just” a friend? Jealousy of time? Of misunderstandings? How do I express when I need space because one of my boundaries was violated? Or when I mistakenly bumble over one of theirs?
My personal reframe to that initial shakiness is that because I don’t have a “label” for what I am, or who I am with any other person, it ALLOWS those conversations to happen. Without shoulds, without walls. Just to organically grow within the boundaries of me + the other person, plus accounting for the venn diagram of the relationships of other people - I or they - may be in communication with at the time.
A label-less future of love with a lot of honest conversations to navigate without a dictionary. Without definitions. But instead, a space to have honest discourse and to mess up and come back to the table to reassess time and time again.
Even (especially) if I am the only person at the table. For that is the most important relationship in my, in any life, the one we have with ourselves. Without labels, without judgment, and with trust - trust and believe that our own hearts will lead the way in this one short life we have.
