Primary and Secondary: What the Hierarchical Terms Mean to Me

Titles often weird me out.  I don't know why.  When my Hubby decided to start going by a shortened version of his name, it took me years to use it properly.  I still use the name I knew him by first about fifty percent of the time.  When we got married, I had to say "husband" over and over again before it felt right.  When Not-My-Boyfriend became my boyfriend, it was weird to use that term as well.  That's why I've put a lot of thought into the use of the hierarchical terms of the poly world. 

There is a lot of controversy about this.  I can understand why some poly people are opposed to them.  They prioritize people and that's sort of wrong, but it's also sort of natural.  We do it from the time we are kids, organizing our friends into "friends" and "best friends".  We do it on Facebook now with a range of intimacy.  I can have "close friends" and "acquaintances" and decide what I want to share with each group.  We do it with family.  The fact is that we are forced to prioritize due to the limited resource of time.  Sometimes friends only become close friends because of close geographical proximity, correlating schedules or situations which place you close to that person on a regular basis, such as working together.  Although we may have the same feelings of love for all of our friends and family, we must make choices on who we see more often.  This fluctuates depending on life circumstances.  I see my friends more often when my husband and I work opposite schedules as I am more likely to stay home with him if we have the time off together.  I will make an effort to see a friend more often when they need extra support or I need support from them.  Life circumstance brings friends closer together too.  I expect my friend circle to shift when my baby arrives as I will spend more time with people who are tolerant of children or have children of their own.  

We tend to prioritize the people we care about based on life circumstance and what our needs are and what their needs are at the time.  This is necessary and not morally wrong.  Human brains are programmed to see patterns and organize things and people.  That's why stereotyping comes so easily.  It's innate and it's necessary to have some organization in your life.  A large part of my job is deciding what the priority problem is and how to organize my work and time most effectively to get things done.  I do this in my life as well to maintain relationships.

Having been in two relationships for several months now, I feel I've finally come to a conclusion on how I feel about hierarchical terms.  Saying that you are in a primary relationship doesn't mean you love or care for your secondary partner any less, but it does mean that you organize your life around one person more than another.  This isn't a bad thing.  One needs priorities and organization in life to reach goals and maintain order.  I don't like drama in my life.  As my marriage will expand into a small family soon, I want that family to be my priority.  I want my boyfriend's family to be his priority.

To think that every poly person can and should reach this ideal of total equality across relationships doesn't make sense to me in the structure of our society.  The exception is poly groups.  If you are in a poly group and everyone is functionally an equal, then the terms primary and secondary do not make sense.  However, for people like myself, who started out in long term monogamous relationships, who have or want families, who don't desire to upset the status quo and invite huge upsetting life changes (not always preventable, I know), who live with one partner...  it makes more sense to me to apply the labels "primary" and "secondary" and maybe add "casual".

This is not something I have discussed with my boyfriend, though I'm certain we will after this post, but I feel like this is how we naturally organized our relationship.  I never had any desire to upset his life, family or marriage.  I consider myself a secondary and I'm comfortable with that.  I am respected and loved in his life, but living an hour away from each other and each of us having preexisting life priorities, it just doesn't make any sense to say that our relationship to each other is on equal grounds with that of our marriages.  We've each asked the other to change plans around our spouses and always confirm with our spouses before we settle on definite plans. With the exception of my early insecurities, this relationship has been easy to enjoy and I think the acceptance of each others lives and the ease of falling into these roles has contributed to this.  There are many other factors at play here, but that deserves a blog post of it's own. 

I have finally drawn my own conclusions on how I feel about hierarchical terms in my poly world.  I'm okay with them.  Unless I someday end up in a triad or a quad or some sort of poly group that lives together, I can't see myself being able to practically treat all of my partners exactly the same.  That doesn't mean I love my boyfriend any less, but that love is certainly different than the love I feel for my husband and the love I feel for my friends.  It doesn't mean it's inferior.  It doesn't mean it's less important in my heart.  It does mean that my husband and my impending family are my priority in my day to day life.  This is no different than the way my marriage has always taken precedence over my friends, but I also choose friends that support my marriage, just as I've done with my boyfriend.

Perhaps in a differently structured society or a commune-type situation, the hierarchical terms wouldn't make sense.  Right now, in my life and the society that I live in, they make the most sense and that's okay.