NRE is potent stuff, man. It's that intoxicating feeling at the beginning of the relationship where your new lover is so sparkly and neat and everything they say is funny and even their bad habits are cute and OMG I DO THAT TOO! And you fall in love with this wonderful person because everything is a new discovery, and if you're not careful you disappear from sight because sure, you have friends, but are they as cool as Schmoopie over here? I think not.
If you're a monogamous person, there's one simple way to handle NRE: You break up with your old partner. Or at least that's what toxic monogamous relationships do, because they date someone long enough for the new-lover sheen to wear off and the gritty, tedious bits of day-to-day living start to seep in... And then it's time to find someone else sparkly! And so they Tarzan-swing from NRE high to NRE high, usually cheating a little in the intermission spaces, always baffled by the way their relationships never seem to last longer than eight months - but not baffled for long, because then they run into Charlie, and caught up in Charlie's mystique, they forget about all their troubles.
That's what NRE is really good for: forgetting.
But if you're a polyamorous person, well... you can be just as dumb as the monogamous mistake-makers. Because you find your new lover with their fabulous new energy, and suddenly your old partner looks shabby. Why would you spend time debating whose turn it is to take out the garbage when you could fly, fly, fly over to Robin's house and lose yourself in an afternoon making furious love? And so you'll find a classic poly pattern, which is just like the monogamy Tarzan-swing except with multiple partners. They may have three lovers - but once they find lover #4, old-and-busted lover #1 is going to hit the skids, because s/he's just dull now and is asking for too much.
(Or, if that NRE-addict is very lucky, s/he will have a stable, low-libido partner at home who's willing to hang around in the background while s/he runs amuck with all the NREs and then cries on low-libido's shoulder when things don't quite work out.)
New Relationship Energy's danger comes from the fact that no single partner can provide you with 100% of your Daily Recommended Amusement. Sane monogamous people recognize that your partner is not going to be a one-stop shop, and so they cultivate friends to share other activities with. So your husband's not into shopping for clothes, or your wife's not big into World of Warcraft? It's traditional! Find some buddies to go hang with! And so you have a web of people who keep you fulfilled, and it doesn't have to be romantic at all.
Yet polyamorous folk are far more likely to fall into the trap of, "Oh, they like World of Warcraft and Chris doesn't. I should fuck them"... Without necessarily thinking that a shared hobby is not necessarily a basis for a stable relationship, or even a satisfying one. And then they fall deeply in love, overlooking the deeper problems - because when you're in NRE, it's easy to tolerate bad habits that would drive you nuts otherwise, and it's easy to forgive offenses that are actually things you shouldn't be forgiving.
Worse, when folks are caught up in NRE, they tend to abandon their old partners. The NRE becomes an escape valve - you've had that same argument with Jessie about respecting your boundaries a thousand times before, but now when it comes up, fuck Jessie. You have someone new to go snuggle! Why do you need Jessie when New Partner is so understanding about all your issues? And so you abandon Jessie, because Life Is Not Hollywood. In Hollywood, you'd have one Big Talk with Jessie and s/he would immediately understand where you were coming from and change hir behavior to suit you... But in real life, Jessie makes a thousand variants of the same essential mistake, and you have to correct hir every time and God why can't s/he just read your mind?
Easier to go with new partner.
Plus, NRE fills gaps. Maybe Jessie's not good at keeping the apartment neat... But New Partner is. Maybe Jessie doesn't listen to your stories with rapt attention... But New Partner is. And New Partner looks so good because you haven't been with them yet to see their serious flaws - they have some, trust me - and they're so brimming with the same NRE that they've overlooking your flaws, too.
So you Tarzan-swing. Jessie? Bah. Too much trouble. New Partner? Flawless! And you dosey-do, swapping one set of imperfections for a whole new set that will become glaringly obvious half a year down the line. Whee!
That, my friends, is why NRE gets a bad rap. (That, and inspiring some of the most awful poetry in existence.)
Thing is, the long-term stable poly relationships are often much stronger than monogamous relationships - and that's because used properly, NRE can fix problems you didn't know you had. Because in any long-term relationship, you tend to just go numb to the things your partner's bad at providing. Not that you didn't try earlier, but you've come to accept that your lover isn't particularly romantic, or they can't take criticism without flying off the handle, or they're bad about being there for you at the end of a long work day. You tried enough times, and now that's a dead space.
You know what, though? New Lover's good at that. New Lover's reawakening parts of you you never knew you had. New Lover is connecting with you on emotional channels you'd flipped off.
The trick is not to switch all those channels over to New Lover.
If you're an old hand at NRE, that's when you go to your partner, without comparing, and say, "Look. I've been dating Jamie, and she's been really good about giving me lots of cuddles when I'm down. I can get it with her... But I want it from you."
If you're lucky and open in your communications (and careful not to pass judgment), you can make your old partner realize that these are things you really need, and hopefully s/he will try once again to open up a channel you'd closed a long time ago. You don't want to do that with everything, but used properly, NRE can have you recognize what's missing in your old relationships - and then try to make that happen.
...which doesn't negate the new partner. Chances are, if Jamie's all good at cuddling, s/he's going to be better at it than Old Partner simply because it's in her nature. Some people are just more inclined to do certain things. But just because Jessie's a soppy romantic doesn't mean that your old-and-stiff partner can't learn to bring home flowers once in a while. In a way, it means more from your older partner because it's not their nature, and when they do it it's a purer expression of love.
In this way you can come to realize what's critical to your well-being, because a lack is never sharper than when it's being fulfilled elsewhere. The trick is not to see new partner as an escape, but a lesson in "What makes you truly satisfied" that can be put to use elsewhere.
This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/120408.h
