The Gray Area

Avoiding the “relationship escalator” by building your own stairs

Story by Jemma Alexander

Illustration by Sofie Pichler

Last June, a few days before graduating from Western Washington University, Rina Timmins met her beau, Jaxx Bosteter, outside the Woods Coffee at Boulevard Park – the location of their first date – for what they both intended to be the end. They exchanged bittersweet goodbyes, reminders of their care for each other and promises to crash any future wedding plans.

“It was a very perfect and sweet goodbye,” Timmins said.

Over the course of the next month, Timmins and Bosteter would redefine, end, and once again redefine their relationship. Avoiding traditional labels and expectations of a romantic and sexual relationship, the two have now come to inhabit what Timmins refers to as a “non-monogamous queer long-term long-distance situationship.”

While this term might sound humorously long – and alarming to some – Timmins said that “it’s one of the most healthy relationships I have ever had.”

After graduating and saying goodbye to her life in Bellingham, which included Bosteter, Timmins moved to Portland. She next saw Bosteter at Seattle Pride, and then again when she went back to Bellingham for a friend’s birthday. The night ended with the sort of drunken 2 a.m. conversation that involves buried emotions revealed in front of an uncomfortable designated driver.

“I just can’t do this anymore,” Timmins told Bosteter.

The next morning, she reached out, hoping for a sober, sunlit conversation before driving back to Portland. They met again at the Woods Coffee by the ocean. Caffeine and salt mixing in the air, Timmins told Bosteter she could no longer maintain their friendship.

After a final “can I kiss you?” reminiscent of their first date, the two said goodbye – for the third time.

“It was just a beautiful, perfect last kiss. Like, it was a movie scene,” Timmins said.

It lasted about a week. The two just couldn’t keep themselves from saying “I miss you.”

Following each “breakup,” the two were able to adjust their expectations of the other. Timmins realized that she didn’t need Bosteter to meet all of her relationship expectations.

“We meet each other in the middle really well,” she said.

Timmins added that “through all of this, we have also been seeing other people.”

The two are comfortable discussing their various romantic and sexual endeavors, while still having those feelings for each other.

“I have such a large capacity for love,” Timmins said.

Timmins is only one example of a young romantic trying to establish new boundaries in a relationship.

“I didn’t even know what to call him,” said Aliyah Newman, 22, a Seattle native who now lives in New York City.

Newman had just broken up with her boyfriend of two and a half years, Terence Mulligan. Instead of the traditional routine of a girls’ night and tub of Ben and Jerry’s, following her “breakup” Newman strove to maintain a relationship, just with different parameters.

Young and in a transitional period of her life, Newman knew she could no longer be a capital-G Girlfriend. She wanted more space for herself, and she wanted the opportunity to get to know more people outside of the relationship.

“I made it very clear: ‘I still want you in my life in one way or another, however that works for us. I would really like to explore this gray area with you,’” Newman told Mulligan.

“Some people don’t want to get on that relationship escalator,” said Ruby Ben, a self-identified Indigequeer polyamorous professor of sociology at Western who will be teaching a course on the sociology of sexuality next year.

There is a status quo for relationships, Ben explained. You meet, you kiss, you say I love you, you move in, you progress up and up on a predetermined path. And the culture you live in, particularly the state, often defines that path.

Marriage is a state-sanctioned relationship model, and tax breaks are offered when you have children, Ben noted.

“Structurally, things are changing for young folks,” she added.

While these two couples have managed to find a dynamic that works for them, it was not an easy journey.

“He had made all these connections since our breakup with people that I didn’t know,” Newman said of Mulligan. The two had emphasized the need for communication and intense honesty to make their situation work.

It’s important to be able to take a step back, Timmins said. Ask yourself: “Why am I feeling this way? Do I really need to be feeling this way?” Timmins reminds herself that she and Bosteter have something that Bosteter does not have with anyone else.

Relationship anarchy is the act of not prioritizing one relationship over the other. Referencing her own indigenous culture, Ben described a world where the “couple” is not the center of one’s life. She also mentioned the Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord, an online resource that can be a useful tool for thinking about what you want out of a relationship.

Timmins said she and Bosteter have used “radical honesty” to maintain their relationship. Proponents of radical honesty define the term as reporting “out loud to another what you notice in front of you, in your body, and in your mind in the present moment.”

“It is absolutely not for everybody,” Timmins noted.

In a changing culture that is beginning to de-center traditional marriage, each of us must figure out what we want our relationships to look like and how to get there. Whether you’re single, headed toward marriage, or part of a “non-monogamous queer long-term long-distance situationship,” what’s most important is maintaining intention, communication and care.