"Authenticity" and how to know if you're lying to yourself

[initiald-ejavu]

Hey guys, this post is kind of a continuation of the last one "How do you feel secure in your seuxal identity" but I want to zoom in more on the process. And it's also gonna be more philosophical

I realized from my last post that I still definitely have some purity culture built into me, as part of me considers a change in sexuality to be "selfish" or "evil" whereas other changes are not.

I always believed sexual idenities are fluid and that they may change over time, but then I start to wonder how you actually spot such a change. At what point does a passing thought become an important one, and part of our identity? At what point are you just lying to yourself?

I hear you guys tell people often "You're going to have to decide what sort of relationship/identity you want" and I always find that odd? Because at the same time we also "cannot choose what we're attracted to".

Just the two concepts already betray different approaches. "Lie to yourself" assumes there is a truth about you, and "decide what you want" assumes there isn't. Idk how to square them. Are all the decisions really equally valid?

If someone is attracted to men and also feels that this is the work of the devil, there is 2 directions they can go: They can either embrace the attraction and lose the "work of the devil" bit, or they can embrace the "work of the devil" bit and work to actively suppress the attraction. Are both of these options equally valid?

Because a part of me feels like it's not all choice. That there may be times where "decide what sort of identity you want" doesn't apply, and there is clearly a better option. But if you'll remember from my previous post, I hate essentialism, the idea that there is a "core" to you that is much better to stick to and you just have to find it and you'll be happy!!

I don't know what to do anymore to square these 2 concepts. How can "all choices are valid" be true while at the same time there being cases where one is "lying to themselves"?

And if I AM doing the latter, and there IS some core I'm hiding, how do I know? Cuz that idea terrifies me.

[char]

Hey again initiald-ejavu. Since we've been discussing things intensively for a while, how about lightening things up a bit? Maybe we can talk about your own experience. How do you describe your own identity as of now? How do you feel about your identity in relation to attraction, partnership, and so on? I remember you mentioning that you have a girlfriend--have you been talking to her about how you feel + what you think?

[initiald-ejavu]

I'm not sure that asking me about my experiences will lighten things up. I wouldn't be discussing things intensively if I didn't have intense experiences. But I will share anyways.

My own experience is: I am monogamous but I have some curiosity about ENM that makes me feel incredibly guilty. This is the current flavor anyways. I've had these same reactions with things like "what if you lose attraction to your girlfriend", or really any sexual topic/doubt that threatens the relationship. Every time I get something like that I have at least one of (usually all of) the following reactions:

1- You bastard monster how could you? You probably don't even really want it, you're just selfish and greedy and insatiable. You are doomed to hurt anyone you love cuz you can't even figure out what you want.

2- Does this mean you secretly can't live without it? That it's a "core part" of you waiting to be discovered? That you're doomed to destroy your relationship if your girlfriend doesn't want to do it with you? And I fall into this cycle of panic where it seems that the destruction of my relationship is imminent and uncontrollable and against my wishes. And then I calm down a bit and chill out.

Then the cycle repeats whenever I find someone else attractive or whenever I observe that my attraction to my gf is even slightly less than last time. Though thankfully, much less often than it used to a year ago. Now it's a monthly/twice a month thing. Still excruciating, but not as frequent at least.

My girlfriend is aware of everything I talk about here. I would consider it straight up unethical to keep thoughts like these secret as they affect her. She advises me to chill out and that curiosity and the ebb and flow of desire is fine. And when it comes to acting on any of these fantasies we'll cross that bridge if we get there and that we will both handle it with love and care, no matter the outcome. I hear this and it still doesn't remove the terror I have of changing against my will.

A big part of me just strongly hates this curiosity and wishes I could just be my idea of a "proper" boyfriend, IE, only attracted to his girlfriend, simple and straightforward. A part of me thinks that the reason I even consider ENM is to have "licence" to find others attractive without guilt. I just don't know what's happening with me and I spent about 6 hours panicking about it yesterday.

So yea... sorry for not exactly lightening up the mood. My experience is unfortunately just that of me being a scared mess atm.

[Heather]

Hey there. I think that maybe there was some miscommunication here that unintentionally made you feel bad. I had asked Char, when supervising our services the other day, to try and focus on your lived experiences more than your worries and fears because I thought that was the better way to go here. I just think that it's so easy to get all caught up in our own heads with things like this and torture ourselves unnecessarily. That's what Char meant by lightness, but I can see the way you took it, too.

I'm popping in myself this morning because I thought you might find it helpful to talk with someone who has been ENM for a lot of their life, but who has also had times when I haven't been, for a range of different reasons. I'm happy to answer questions about this for you in general or, if that feels more like what you're looking for, in a more personal way.

I don't think there is any such thing as a "proper" partner in terms of "proper" = "monogamous." Through all of history, people's sexual partnerships have run the gamut when it comes to exclusivity. There's never been one right or proper universal way, even though heteronormativity and patriarchy have made it often sound like that because some kinds of monogamy, and people having the idea that's only the right way, have served both those interests when it comes to power and control of people. I also want to add that almost no one is ever only attracted to one sexual partner. What's most common is for people -- all people, very much including people who choose to be monogamous or sexually exclusive -- to find a wide range of people attractive, but choose fewer than that whole range of people to actually be with, both because of things like logistics (including the limited number of hours in the day!), opportunity (not everyone we are attracted to will be attracted to us back or available), and because most folks don't have many partners at once. Even most ENM folks tend to have fewer partners at a time, or even in a lifetime, than many people imagine.

It sounds like your girlfriend is really okay with your thoughts and feelings about ENM, and even okay with potentially exploring ENM at some point, and like this rough stuff you're saying about yourself is coming mostly from yourself. I hear you saying you are scared of changing against your will, but the thing is that being with someone else is something you would have to actively choose, not something your body can do or will do without you, you know?

Can you fill me in on where you think all of this rough talk at yourself and this panic is coming from? Have you always been this hard on yourself and this...well, scared of yourself? If so, are these things that you've ever worked on with a therapist, by any chance? If not, are you open to looking in to that?

[initiald-ejavu]

I have always been super hard on myself. And basically always scared of myself around women especially, because I know too many horror stories of men in relationships being completely oblivious to the damage they're doing. And scared around people in general because I know what getting bullied or belittled feels like and I never want to be the cause of it. I am working on this in therapy, but idk if my therapist is not a good match or if I'm being impatient but regardless it seems like it will take a while.

I hear you saying you are scared of changing against your will, but the thing is that being with someone else is something you would have to actively choose, not something your body can do or will do without you, you know?

I have this fear that one day I'll wake up and think "Yea, I just HAVE to try ENM now, and if my partner's uncomfortable I'll have to pull the plug on the relationship". I... am terrified of that happening. I don't want to change. I don't want to come to a conclusion like that. I like what I have. I love this girl and will marry her most likely. She is the most amazing partner I can imagine. I do NOT want to lose it because of some cookie cutter "Oh noooo, they were repressing something they didn't realize and now the whole relationship is basically a tragic lieeee" story. I've read too many of those. People coming out later in life or realizing they want different things. I don't want that to happen here.

I'm popping in myself this morning because I thought you might find it helpful to talk with someone who has been ENM for a lot of their life, but who has also had times when I haven't been, for a range of different reasons.

See, for me some concerns are clocked as "normal relationship concerns" but others come up as: "Resolve this, or your commitment to your partner is a lie". "Resolve this, or you must not continue". Loss of attraction or curiosity about ENM are in the latter group. Things like "what if our personalities are too different" or "what if life circumstances get in the way" are in the former group. And I can't figure out the rule about what separates them.

My most recent therapy session I think encapsulates it best. My therapist asked "Well, what do you really want"? And I found that to be a stupid question considering 6 hours of panic the day before didn't resolve it. So he qualified with "Well, what do you want right now"? And the immediate answer was easy: I want to stop thinking about all this bullshit and just go back to living my life and hugging my girlfriend!!

In my head, this overthinking, harshness, and panic, all feel like an obligation. They're to make sure I'm not lying to myself, and her by extension (this is the important part). They are not for me, I wouldn't care about ANYTHING this much for myself. If I were single, this would NOT be some huge all encompassing conundrum. It would be an idle curiosity that I may or may not stop being lazy enough to actually explore. I frankly don't take my own suffering or consequences to me very seriously when making decisions, I have a "reckless" approach to life when the decision only affects me. It's when you bring in other people that can be hurt that I start to feel a moral obligation to think until I'm ragged and destroyed (again, I don't really value damage done to me that much). It feels like the least I could do to ensure I don't hurt anyone.

If I overthink, panic and get hurt, that sucks, but is not unethical. If I underthink, miss something, lead someone on, lie to them, that's unethical. So I panic and freak out about "what if I'm lying to myself" and what "authenticity" means because I don't want to lie.

I thought you might find it helpful to talk with someone who has been ENM for a lot of their life, but who has also had times when I haven't been, for a range of different reasons.

Have you ever been with someone you knew to be strictly monogamous? Who you guessed probably won't be willing to explore? In that instance, did it feel selfish to pursue that relationship? Is it wrong to enjoy what I have, if I know there is a chance I choose something else in the future? It feels selfish... It makes me feel evil for having these thoughts and enjoying the relationship anyways. Like I'm "stealing" her time for my own selfish wants, when I can't even guarantee her that I won't change.

[Heather]

Thanks for sharing all of this with me. I'm going to go down the line a bit with your post, and while I can't tackle all of it tonight, I'm going to do my best at getting started.

One thing I really, really want to say is about this:

I have always been super hard on myself. And basically always scared of myself around women especially, because I know too many horror stories of men in relationships being completely oblivious to the damage they're doing. And scared around people in general because I know what getting bullied or belittled feels like and I never want to be the cause of it.

If I have learned anything from now threeish decades of doing the kinds of work I do, and a lifetime of being around abuse, abusers and survivors, I know this: the kind of people you are talking about are not EVER concerned in the ways that you are. Just like actual impostors don't have impostor syndrome (only people who aren't impostors do), people who harm people are not usually concerned with doing harm AT ALL. People who bully or belittle people aren't either. In fact, those folks are usually most busy thinking up ways to justify those behaviours.

I say that not because I'm asking you not to be careful with people and yourself, because, of course, we should all do that with each other. But I think that you need to do whatever you can to understand that from this alone, it could not be more clear that you CAN trust yourself (it's not surprising to me that it's clear your girlfriend trusts you), and that all this hardness is being aimed at someone it simply should not be.

Speaking of your girlfriend, it doesn't sound to me like you are in the kind of relationship where your nightmare scenario of ditching her when she doesn't want to do poly is at all realistic. What I'm observing so far from what I know about you, her, and this relationship, is that y'all talk things through and have a lot of patience with each other. It's also worth mentioning that that kind of scenario is what most typically happens when a) someone is in something that isn't great or is kind of dying on the vine, or that they don't want to be in, period, and b) when that same person has also met someone else, an actual person, not an idea of a person or a possible person. I feel like this, as with so much of what seems to be going on, is not grounded in reality or coming from a realistic place, but is instead more like intrusive thoughts. I honestly haven't yet evengotten the sense that ENM/poly is actually, for real for real, something you are even all that interested in right now. It feels like why it's stuck in your head is more likely grounded in a mental health issue than in you wanting a thing you are worried about or don't have right now. That conversation with your therapist made that pretty clear to me.

I wonder if you might also consider that you're not giving your girlfriend enough credit or agency here. I think it's wonderful how caring you are and how much you care about doing right by her and not hurting her. But I think you also may be forgetting that it isn't just you involved in protecting her: she's someone involved in protecting herself, too, and from what I know about her, she sounds awfully smart and capable to me. If you're seeing yourself as her protector, even from yourself, I think that may be inadvertently robbing her of some agency while also keeping you terrified of something I still don't think is something you need to be scared of the way you are.

Have you ever been with someone you knew to be strictly monogamous? Who you guessed probably won't be willing to explore? In that instance, did it feel selfish to pursue that relationship? Is it wrong to enjoy what I have, if I know there is a chance I choose something else in the future? It feels selfish... It makes me feel evil for having these thoughts and enjoying the relationship anyways. Like I'm "stealing" her time for my own selfish wants, when I can't even guarantee her that I won't change.

I have been with some partners like that (and it's worth noting that I have been in some relationships where I asked for it to be exclusive, or exclusive for a period of time, for a range of reasons, like because I suspected the other person wouldn't be good at managing more than one relationship, or because I or someone else was going through something that made multiple partners feel like too much, or more rarely, because something about our relationship or the phase it was in was such that I wanted to be exclusive myself).

Generally, I have always told people that I am not a monogamous* person, in a multitude of ways. Heck, the mere fact that my work every day means being deeply invested and involved with other people makes my job its own whole partnership in and of itself. I have had partners who couldn't even be okay with being with me and my being with my job, and there isn't even sex involved there.

When I have been involved with people who are/have been/want to be monogamous or sexually or romantically exclusive, it's usually gone one of two ways, especially when I make that clear. Either I've let them know that in a new relationship, so long as I'm not with other partners already, I don't mind a handful of months, sometimes even more, of exclusivity, but that after that, I will likely want to talk about opening things up with them. I generally don't move forward with people who say they'd never see themselves being comfortable with that, especially after a few times much earlier on in my life of trying. (Tbh, the real issue I had with folks like that wasn't not being able to have sex with other people, it's that I often found them to be jealous or suspicious people overall, which is just not something I can live with in a partner, especially as someone with very close friends and community and, again, jobs like this one, which I've always had.) Or, they decline from the get-go or suggest we have a casual relationship instead of a more serious one.

So, I'm not really matching with any feelings of selfishness. But. It isn't selfish to want the relationships we want -- relationships are by their very definition about more than just us! And we are all so different, and there is no one right or ideal or best relationship model, only what feels best for each of us and us with others. I also am not seeing you in a spot where you are with someone who is saying they are someone who expects to only want to be monogamous. I am hearing your girlfriend say that she is not troubled by this, and that, if you want to talk about actually doing this in the future, she's open to talking about it. This might be another place where the sound of your own internal conflict is drowning out what your partner is actually saying and how your partner is actually feeling. <3

* I am someone who sees and has experienced monogamy and exclusivity differently. I feel like monogamy is more often an "I don't -- ever -- want you to be with anyone else" while exclusivity is more like each person feeling an "I only want to be with you in this way for now." So, when you ask about monogamous people, it may be that sometimes you and I are talking about the same thing, while other times, we may not be.