500 years ago, La Celestina was a radical play that claimed the right to marry for love with whoever you wanted at a time when most marriages had other purposes. In the same way that in the court of Louis XIV, only the men closest to and most trusted by the king were allowed to wear heels, and 100 years ago the color pink was defined as a masculine color. Begin Alejandro Thompson, educational psychologist and relational anarchist, Today's interviewee.
We evolve (or regress), our way of relating changes, what is supposedly considered the norm is continuously modified, we discover new relationship models and formats. All this leads us to talk about monogamy, open relationships, polyamory and relational anarchy Does our DNA really tell us how we have to relate? How are relationships experienced from relational anarchy? Are we born or do we become monogamous?
What is Relational Anarchy?
Relational anarchy builds on theories of political and social anarchy to deny hierarchy within relationships. They give up all kinds of expectations and pretend not to differentiate relationships into categories; There are no relationships of friendship or love, they all have the same importance. This does not mean ignoring commitment, as Thompson explains a posteriori, but balancing all relationships without comparing or classifying them, and assuming that neither component wants to hurt the other, therefore, there is no reason for mistrust.
Interview about non-normative relationships
Do you consider that monogamy is natural or intrinsic to our nature?
If we were really traditionalists and went back to the beginning of the species, there would be many anthropologists who point out that there is nothing intrinsic to the human being that indicates that we are a monogamous species. I would direct your attention to books like Sex At Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, two anthropologists who argue precisely that in the origins the human being was communitarian and polyamorous.
What I do think is that our ability to love is something very personal, individual and identity. There are people who could only have monogamous relationships because the intensity at which they love is only capable of dedicating it to one person and that's fine.
But I also consider that there are many people in monogamous relationships who have not known an alternative and feel suffocated by them. I believe that, like sexual orientation and gender identity, everyone's form of relationship exists on a spectrum from monogamy to relational anarchy and that it varies depending on how each person feels and defines love, in my opinion. opinion is not a choice, it is not possible to force someone to feel love in a certain way.
What do you think determines whether a person tends towards monogamy or other types of non-normative relationships?
No one can force themselves to be polyamorous or relational anarchist by conviction, in the same way that no one should force someone to be monogamous as is currently being done since the norm. Going polyamorous or relational anarchist is not like going vegan.
Polyamorous, relational anarchist or monogamous, you just need to take a good introspective journey to discover it, what I jokingly call “mental origami”, just like sexual orientation and gender identity. There are a lot of polyamorous people in the closet who don't know it yet and who suffer in their relationships. The only thing I defend is that relationships are not toxic, that there is emotional intelligence and that care is taken with co-dependence. This can happen in any relational way, it is not unique to any type of relationship.
How will you know which relationship model suits you best?
I believe that there are people who, after performing the “mental origami”, come to the conclusion that they are monogamous, that they are only capable of feeling certain feelings at a certain intensity exclusively with one person, and that is perfect.
But I also believe that there are external influences that are gradually eroding and that make invisible any type of relationship that is not monogamy, whether in your cultural, social, political or religious environment.
There are many more monogamous relationships than monogamous people and it is because that is how our societies approach it.. As with almost everything, regulations are an illusion and a prison for many. Breaking with the idea that there is a regulation is very important. The basic philosophical questions to be asked in order to discover one's own form of relationship are “what is love for me?”, “are there different types of love?”, “what is it for me to fall in love?", etc. And if you want to examine how much the external influence is on each answer, I would ask "Why do I think like this?". Maintaining this Socratic dialogue with oneself and being honest in the answers, one discovers how one feels and with what type of relationship one identifies more.
Is it possible that a person who considers himself monogamous can have a relationship with a person who is not?
Yes, resounding. As human beings we like symmetry and we tend to think that both parties in a relationship have to be symmetrical, if this is not the case we tend to think that an injustice is being committed or that someone is taking advantage of someone.
For a person with a monogamous feeling to be in a relationship with someone who is not, he must, being aware of how he feels love, be very sure in his relationship with her and know how to realize that the love that his partner professes for him never is in question, it is not invalidated because your partner loves other people. In fact, he may even be happy for her partner when he tells her that he has met someone interesting or special and not feel threatened.. There is a lot of talk in this society about jealousy, but very little about compersion* (not understanding), which is its opposite feeling and which means precisely feeling happy when a person you love feels happy with another person or doing something oblivious to you. The monogamous person may not want, be able or need to feel a connection on such a deep level with more people, but they can understand that their partner does and that seems very nice to me.
*compersion it is an empathic state of happiness and delight experienced when another individual experiences happiness and delight. It can sometimes be identified as the pride parents feel in their children's achievements or one's own excitement at the achievements of friends. It is usually used to describe when a person enjoys positive feelings when their lover enjoys another relationship. It is the opposite of jealousy [Wikipedia]
What is a relationship based on relational anarchy for you?
Relationship anarchy is often classified, wrongly in my opinion, within polyamory. But there is a fundamental characteristic that differentiates them. In polyamory you have several love relationships, but they continue to be distinguished from the rest of the relationships in your life, in relational anarchy they are not.
Every relationship is a conversation between two people that is built from the moment of greeting someone. An essential component of all anarchism is the questioning of what is already established and categorized for its analysis and evaluation. A relational anarchist sees all relationship without categories and without order of importance. This does not mean that you have the same relationship with the landlady as with your father as with your best friend, but it does mean that they have all been built based on the conversations that have been had with them. The degree and nature of the commitment that has been established with each of these people is different and the relationship with your best friend may be considered more important to you than the one with your boss, but even that can vary. at the end of the month.
The important thing is that you choose to share time and activities with different people but, for me, when you reach certain levels of intimacy, trust, etc. you begin to not distinguish which person is more important. because they are all equally important.
The absence of hierarchy is noted in that love equals friendship. I have a very romantic vision of friendship that makes me think that for me friendship is the form of love with the highest level of purity. Just as Valencians only call paella Valenciana paella and the rest is rice with things, I feel that friendship is love and the rest is love with things.
On a theoretical level, RA sounds fascinating, as well as polyamory, but are there any kind of guidelines that can be followed to learn to lead this type of relationship or is it perhaps something that one is born with? “Are you born or made anarchist/polyamorous”?
Anarchist / polyamorous is discovered. You are born without knowing how you feel, you are born without introspection tools. Hopefully, emotional intelligence and critical thinking are developed that allow one to examine oneself and decide how one is more comfortable and why one is more comfortable in a certain way or another, is it external influence, is it nurturing or is it an internal and insurmountable feeling ? Exploring and discovering oneself is essential to know how one feels and feels, it is a matter of identity.
To what extent are insecurities related to the desire to have a monogamous relationship? Do confident people tend to have less normative relationships?
They are not related and no. We all have insecurities, there are people who feel real fear of being alone and engage in relationship after relationship to avoid being alone, whether they are monogamous or polyamorous relationships. To explore yourself you have to question things, to question things you have to be unsure of the answers. Neither insecurity is bad nor security is good. You can be sure of yourself and be an unbearable narcissist, you can be insecure, but live your insecurity honestly and it has nothing to do with the way you relate.
Another of the premises of Relational Anarchy is that “Radical relationships must have conversation and communication as their central axis, not as a state of emergency that only appears when there are “problems”. Shouldn't all relationships be like this? Why are there so many communication problems between normative couples?
Conversation is the basis of every human relationship, whatever its type. The conversation can be divided into components such as intellectual, affective, intimacy or physical. Sex is nothing more than a physical and intimacy component of the conversation you have with a person.
Many times we avoid communicating feelings because of how they can affect the other or for fear of being contradictory because we are not even sure what we feel. Other times we procrastinate until we have something concise to communicate. We are all affected by the idea that, if we are not clear about something, if we are undecided, it is not worth communicating, but I think that it is important to vindicate indecision and contradiction as something human and say "I feel this, I don't know why I feel it or if it has to do with you, but I'm sorry, maybe tomorrow I'll feel the opposite and I don't know why, but maybe in the future I'll identify it".
Any relationship, whatever its type, benefits from honesty, although such honesty may harm the other, if we feel something contrary to the terms of the relationship and we risk having to re-examine those terms and, therefore, to end the relationship or to see it differently. I think that when you are in a monogamous relationship there is more at stake when it comes to communication, which increases that risk and therefore that fear, but I do not think that the lack of communication is exclusive to monogamy.
Do you have any kind of question that a couple can ask when trying to have a deep conversation or a guide to start a healthy relationship, whatever it is?
I would start by stating that Talking to that person is a safe space, free from judgement, that both people love each other and that nothing that is said is going to change that.. Afterwards, an empathy exercise would have to be done to understand how love feels and conceptualizes with the other person and if there are types or not.
Then it is necessary to examine if these two visions are compatible and in what way, symmetric or asymmetric, and be honest with the result.
To people with closed relationships who seek to open their relationship and have asked me, I always say the same thing: “Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you are 'opening up' the same relationship that you have been having. You are ending that relationship and starting another one from scratch with different terms”. They always tell me that advice has served them well.
If you want to read the full interview, we leave it here: Full Thompson interview.
Maybe you might be interested these series on LGTBI content.
Resources to understand Relational Anarchy
- The book by Juan Carlos Pérez Cortés, relational anarchy. The revolution from the links.
- YouTube channel of Juan Carlos Pérez Cortés
- CLARÍN EDITORIAL, (2018) Free love there is not one. What is relationship anarchy and why does it completely change the way we look at love relationships. Clarín. Viewed at: https://www.clarin.com/entremujeres/pareja/anarquia-relacional-cambia-completamente-mirada-relaciones-amorosas_0_GPqiiWfe0.html