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With My African
Informants...
The
spring before last, Don, my partner of four years, invited
Angela, a woman I didn't know very well, to become his secret
lover. He told her that it would be fine with me in that I
encourage him to have "special friends." I was royally
pissed when I found out. The bottom line message that I felt was
that I wasn't enough for him. I feared that I wasn't sexy,
attractive, passionate, and loving enough. When I only sensed
her presence as his lover, I attempted to amp up the passion. My
gut instinct was that if I could fuck him like there was no
tomorrow, that he'd refocus his attentions on me.
My intensification had no such effect. Instead she began to
sense my anxiety about her place in his life and soon admitted
to me that she'd been his lover for several months. Despite her
uneasiness about the situation, she couldn't break it off
because to her the connection they shared was extremely
meaningful and powerful. What followed were months of pain,
anger, passion, and exhaustion. While I liked Angela as a
person, part of me was angry enough to want to wring her neck
out. And while I never stopped loving Don, I was non-stop
furious with him for breaking what I believed was a monogamous
agreement.
Leanna and Don
Many of my friends advised me to leave Don. Honestly, I was
tempted. Despite his efforts to prove that he loved me as
always, Angela's presence made that extremely difficult. My body
couldn't understand how he could love me and spend the night
with her. I'd toss and fret all night and when morning came I'd
be exhausted. Meanwhile, Angela secretly hoped I'd leave Don so
the specialness that she felt about their connection could be
better realized.
I didn't leave Don because I had an agenda. Being an
anthropologist who had been studying polygamy for many years, I
sought a more personal understanding of multiple partner
relationships. And in that I had researched this stuff, I
honestly wasn't a virgin. The piece that I didn't know was that
of being the "first wife." I'd had dalliances with
married men, I'd been in "open relationships" where I
had an outside lover, and I'd attended swing parties. Up until
Angela's arrival in my life, I'd never thought that multiple
partnerings had anything to do with pain. While I'd studied the
biological underpinnings of jealousy, I really didn't know it
from the inside. I remember once being invited to give a lecture
about my research and was astounded that many of the women had
come to find out how to deal with their partner's infidelity. I
couldn't relate to their anger-- it was totally out of my realm
of personal knowledge.
I took what had arrived as an opportunity to better understand
infidelity, jealousy, and myself. Initially, I presumed that Don
and Angela would waltz off into the sunset together and that
eventually I'd find a new partner and life would be good again.
Meanwhile, Angela and I engaged in an angry battle for Don's
time and attention. She claimed that because he professed equal
love for her, she should have equal time with him. Despite that
he lived with me, she wanted him to spend every other night with
her. I was astounded. I presumed that being the primary (and
public) partner, he should spend most of his time with me and
that the only role open for her was that of a secondary lover.
I told her about what I considered to be the
"benefits" of being the secondary. You never had to do
laundry, deal with bills, housework, yard work, and that
whenever your lover arrived he was excited to see you. I made it
sound so good to myself that I secretly hoped to become such a
mistress. I began to crave dancing into a special lover's arms,
being smothered with kisses, wearing sexy lingerie under my blue
jeans, and having him seduce me within five minutes of my
arrival at his door. Meanwhile Angela stood fast to her desire
not be Don's mistress. When he came to visit her she wanted to
engage him in "normal" activities like watching
videos, doing crossword puzzles, and eating TV dinners.
My research in polyamory and swinging had shown that when the
women forge a connection, the tensions of sharing a man could be
relieved. With hopes of lessening the pain that kept me awake
whenever Don wasn't in my arms at night, I attempted to build a
closeness to Angela. Initially, the attempt was extremely
challenging. While Angela and I had certainly known of each
other before she got involved with Don, we were never drawn to
each other. There was no compelling reason for us to see more of
each other and so we didn't. Now suddenly, we "needed"
to connect and so we tried. While we did fine discussing our
mutual pain, complaining how Don didn't give either of us enough
focused attention and how difficult the "situation"
was, we felt little good will towards each other. I was the
woman keeping her from having full time access to the man she
loved, while she was the woman who had so painfully disrupted my
sweet and loving home life. If I witnessed a loving moment
between her and Don, I cringed and then felt intensely jealous.
I became convinced that he kissed her more passionately than he
kissed me and that he was much more turned on to her sexually. I
didn't want to see it and I didn't want to compete. I figured I
needed to get my own life. Despite my academic curiosity about
polygamy, my anger and jealousy were so intense I didn't feel I
could be a candidate.
To me Don and Angela's relationship was filled with hot,
passionate, incredibly intense "new relationship
energy." My older more settled relationship with Don was
filled with daily squabbles, deeper power struggles, and
underhanded (but really funny) jokes. In my mind, it couldn't
compete. Pretty soon I created a long list of things that I was
convinced Angela did better than me. In addition to being a
better lover (whatever that means), she was a better cook (she
faithfully follows every recipe detail, while I'd just do what I
feel like). She also kept her house cleaner (she has a
housekeeper tidy up every week), and ultimately was a better
companion for Don (having recently met him she could better find
most everything he has to say interesting).
This began to remind me of being about 12 years old and having
my Mom point out girls who were better than me at things like
tidiness, violin playing, and doing their homework on time. I
was encouraged to try to emulate their shining examples.
Instead, I became a rebel. Either I found realms (art and
writing) that couldn't as easily be measured or I wallowed in
displeasing my parents and being an uncooperative slob. Quickly
Angela became one of the "goody-goody-girls" that I
was not going to bother competing with. I was convinced she'd
win and that there was no reason to even try.
My rebellion began by proclaiming I was going to go to Africa
for at least a year and then by getting involved with Dash, a
man Don considered his total antithesis. I had a blast with
Dash. Immediately substances I had been reluctant to ingest, I
imbibed with glee. With Don I'd get sleepy at 10:30 or 11:00 at
night, while with Dash I'd stay up until 4:00 in the morning. I
did sexual things with Dash I believed Don had no appetite for.
In my mind Dash danced and Don didn't. And when I was with Dash
all I wanted to do was dance. Moreover, I made no effort to keep
my involvement with Dash a secret. I flaunted it everywhere. I
rubbed Don's face in it and caused our whole community of
friends to see it as well.
Meanwhile, Dash didn't have an easy time of it. While the
connection he and I shared was tender as well as lots of fun,
Don did his best to dismiss him. While I had attempted to reach
out to Angela, Don failed to respond to Dash's efforts to forge
a connection. Ultimately, the only person who might have gained
something from this act of rebellion was Angela. Don would get
so angry with me that he'd spend every night with her, while
shunning me as being polluted-by-the-enemy.
With Don's disregard for Dash so thick, I spun off further and
further into a lost and disconnected state. I couldn't please
anyone. If I dallied at Dash's, trying to bask in the feeling of
being footless and free, I'd arrive home to Don's stormy anger
over my irresponsibility. If doing something with Don caused me
to show up late for a date with Dash, I felt I wasn't really
available for the commitment and connection that Dash sought.
Being that the last thing Dash wanted was to be the cause of my
leaving Don, I was in a lose-lose situation. Dash wouldn't
accept me if I left Don for him and yet at the same time he
wanted to have a committed primary relationship with me. While I
proposed he could be my co-primary (in that Angela had become
Don's co-primary), Don's disdain for him tormented the
possibility.
Sometimes I fantasized about leaving Don on my own accord, but I
just couldn't get myself to budge. We were so joined at the hip
and through our hearts, I couldn't find my way out. Even when
Don called me the most vicious of names and told me to pack up
and leave, I couldn't. I didn't know Dash well enough to move in
with him, though he sweetly offered. At the same time, I had
little interest in finding my own place and "starting
over." Whatever was in store had so much drama, intrigue,
and energy, that I couldn't gather my things together and tell
everyone good-bye.
We barely weathered the winter holidays. Angela absented herself
for Thanksgiving and Christmas, requesting that she get these
with Don the following year. I was aghast. My fantasies about
polyamory were far from this reality. I thought by adding
another person to an already standing relationship, a family
would be expanded, not divided. In her mind the only way
Thanksgiving could be good would be if he were seated at her
family's table as her life partner. And I guess I would just
disappear in midair, realizing I'd already had four
Thanksgivings with him and now it was time to share!
Angela came by for an early Christmas Eve and showered us with
gifts. I felt uneasy that I had gotten her so little compared to
what she'd gotten me...and also that she'd spent more on her
gifts to Don that one Christmas than I'd spent cumulatively over
the four years we'd been together! I felt so cheap in her
presence. Clearly she was the "goody-goody" and I
wasn't. I was stingy, a careless cook, a sloppy housekeeper, and
moreover I found much of what Don had to say repetitive, if not
boring. I imagined she might hand me a check for $50,000 and if
I agreed to cash it, she could "have" him for the rest
of the holidays and the coming year as well...
Angela, however, feared I was uneasy because I didn't want her
in my home for the holidays. That was hardly my reality! By
then, I believed she was here to stay and that rather than
carving Don's time up into pieces that she could pack up and
take home with her, she ought to sit by the fire and join our
family. By late December Angela let it be known that since she
had absented herself for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, it was
only fair that Don spend New Years Eve with her. While in my
wildest polyamorous dreams I might have fantasized that we would
all pass into the New Year together, it didn't feel right to
her. With the tensions between us thickening by the hour, I
determined that the right thing for me to do was to get out of
town. Don balked that he felt so bad that I wouldn't be with him
at that special hour and the next day as well. I, too, felt
horrible, but with the competition so intense, I figured he
should sleep in the bed he'd made.
Truthfully, Don enjoyed having two separate lives. At Angela's
he'd step away from all the chaos of leaky roofs, over grown
trees, dead computers, broken down cars, destructive cats, and
piles of unsorted magazines and mail, and bask in white sheets
and pick from a zillion satellite TV channels. As far as he was
concerned, if we were to all live together, he'd have no place
to escape. And being that Angela's only relationship model was
heterosexual monogamy, she at least wanted access to the semblance
of that by having Don to herself as often as possible. The more
she grew attached to Don, the less she liked sharing him. And
the more attached I imagined he was to her, the less I cared for
either of them.
Angela's presence in our life scrambled all of the issues that
Don and I had struggled over. For years I had pleaded with him
to father a child with me and just in the last year he had
relented and we began to try. Every time my period arrived, I'd
feel deeply sad. For him it seemed like it was enough to just
try. Engaging him into discussions over my sadness, or seeking
outside help was way too much to ask of him. And now with
Angela's demands on his time (and his body), my wishes for a
child went to the farthest back burner. Angela even surmised
that it was likely that one reason he forged a connection with
her was his uneasiness over the agreement he had made with me.
Another area Don and I had struggled over was his need for more
focused attention than I could deliver. I'm someone who wallows
in the attention of large audiences and who enjoys parties where
I can engage in short intense chats with lots of people. Upon
meeting a new person, I can be inspired to many spend hours
talking, but generally my appetite for sustained intimacy isn't
as high as Don says his is. He'd complain I'd fall asleep in the
middle of conversations and believed that I had grown tired of
him and his stories. With Angela demanding equal time with him
and professing a deep love for just about everything about him,
suddenly he became a prize. Suddenly this man that I had so
taken for granted became intensely desirable. Suddenly every
moment together mattered.
Meanwhile, Don was getting exhausted by having to be
"on" so much of the time. He couldn't just be---he
constantly had to prove his love to me and then to Angela and
then again to me... While Angela and I felt like we had far too
much time alone, Don barely had a moment to just stare into
space or read a magazine. Upon reflection this was really odd
that two attractive 40-something women with lots to say and lots
to offer were spending so much time alone while a 50-something
man who was no more desirable than they, was in such high
demand. Soon all Don did when he arrived anywhere was to visit
ever so briefly and then collapse onto couches, floors and into
bed.
Mid-January arrived and as I had announced four months earlier,
I left for East Africa. I left because I needed a break from the
competition, the chaos, and the constant interpersonal dramas. I
figured that Don and Angela needed time alone to get to know
each other--to find out if what they felt they had was more than
projection and fantasy. I needed for them to get through some of
that new-relationship-compulsivity. I needed for Angela to feel
like she was on more equal footing with me. The only adjustment
I'd made to my plans was to stay away for two long months rather
than a full year. Beyond being 11 time zones away, Africa
afforded me just the adventure I needed.
The Africa I visited was filled with people who had an intimate
understanding of polygamy, either from being witness to their
parents' polygynous unions, partaking in one themselves, or
knowing many details about those of their siblings or friends. I
presented myself to them as a "first wife" who needed
help in understanding how to live with my new
"co-wife." For once I was in a place where my dilemma
was treated with consideration and respect rather than feeling
like a fool for tolerating my husband's dalliance. One first
wife advised me that it would take about two years to adjustand
that for her, too, it was very difficult to suddenly be expected
to share all that had been hers. Now sharing in the hinterland
village that I visited in East Africa was quite different from
sharing in urban America. There, tensions arose when a husband
unfairly divided food and other material resources between his
wives. To alleviate suspicions, husbands would divide new
acquisitions out in the open. Any deviation from an equitable
division would have to be explained (e.g. a wife who had
houseguests, more children, etc.).
Back at home, neither Angela or I was dependent on Don's
earnings or wealth. Both of us had been self-supporting all of
our adult lives and moreover gained much satisfaction from our
respective careers. The commodities that we struggled over were
Don's time, energy, and affection. In East Africa traditional
polygynous husbands visit their wives on a three-day-rotation. I
had no idea where this practice came from, but I know it would
have driven Angela and I crazy to only be able to see Don in
three-day spurts. Meanwhile Don was so focused on proving his
love to each of us that all that seemed emotionally feasible was
to do a nightly-rotation.
African co-wives had so many social obligations both to their
children and to their extended families, that a husband's
absence had little emotional impact. Back home, Angela and I
felt virtually abandoned if Don wasn't visiting. When I shared
how different the social and emotional parameters of polygyny
are for rural East Africans when compared to us professional
urban Americans, we endeavored to spend our weekends all
together. Sometimes it seemed like my nearly forgot !…¶*!…¶*^B..
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my eyes and ask if I was okay. When my voice would crack and
tears would start to well, he'd feel powerless.
In East Africa, the older, wealthier, and more powerful men are
expected to take on the responsibility of additional wives (and
their children). In fact a man is looked at askance when its
clear that he could marry a widowed sister-in-law and hadn't.
Moreover, many young women marry men 15 or more years their
senior because their abilities to provide are well established.
Meanwhile, back at home, Don often gets little more than grief
for being polygynous. Attempting to meet the social, emotional,
and sexual needs of two professional American women, while no
easy task, is not something that our society commends. While men
who donate to charities, adopt unwanted children, and otherwise
dispense their wealth and services to the unfortunate are
admired in America; men with multiple women are seen as greedy,
selfish, and deceptive. While some men may envy "the
task" of satisfying two (or more) women, the
emotional-time-energy reality is hardly any man's fantasy.
Dr. Leanna Research
5105 Williams Place
Los Angeles, CA 90032
home: 323.223.1507
LAWolfe@aol.com
http://www.lavc.edu/anthr2lw/index.html
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World Polyamory Association 
