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society has taught us to view commitment only through the lens of sexual exclusivity; this diminishes all the other important ways that we commit to one another.
Happy, healthy romantic lives require not just continual reinvestment but constant awareness of the changes in our partners, our situations and ourselves.
Polyamory can feel threatening because it upsets our fairy-tale assumption that the right partner will keep us safe from change.
The relationship fairy tale carries other hidden falsehoods. For instance, it promises that one person will always be able to meet our needs.
Abandoning the benchmarks of monogamy can be scary. Without them, how will we know what to do?
Relationships—like living things, but unlike buildings—grow, change, and go through cycles. Some offer fruit and others flowers, and there might even be times when it seems like they're providing nothing at all. They have seasons, and they can die.
It seems on the face of it absurd to tell another person "I forbid you to have your sexual needs met by anyone but me, and I won't meet your sexual needs,"
Yes, some people can work on it, and many couples can work through reduced desire—but many can't, and there's nothing wrong with them. Sometimes you just don't want it—and sometimes you just don't want the person you're supposed to want.
You should never have to have sex when you don't want to.
As Eliezer Yudkowsky says, "You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in."
Ethics are crucial to polyamorous relationships,
directions we've seen that lead to strong, vibrant, happy relationships are courage, communication, willingness to accept responsibility for your own emotions, respect for the autonomy of others, compassion and empathy.
For each person, the "right" way to do poly is to talk about your needs, fears and insecurities; to talk about the ways your partner can support you; and to honor your commitments—without being controlling or placing rules on other people to protect you from your own emotional triggers. Above all else, trust that you don't have to control your partner, because your partner, given the freedom to do anything, will want to cherish and support you. And always, always move in the direction of greatest courage, toward the best possible version of yourself.
Strong, ethical polyamorous relationships are not a destination,...
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choices that maximize well-being are not ethical if they infringe on another person's rights.
We have the right to want what we want. We do not, however, have the right to get what we want.
The people in a relationship are more important than the relationship. Don't treat people as things.
But while it is often necessary to make sacrifices of time, short-term gratification or non-essential desires for the long-term benefit of a relationship (or a partner), it is never desirable to sacrifice your self for a relationship.
relationships exist to serve the people in them.
A RELATIONSHIP BILL OF RIGHTS
You cannot force someone to make the choice you want them to make, and if you lie or withhold information, you deny them the ability to know there was a choice to be made.
When we talk about honesty in this book, we will do so from the position that a lie of omission is still a lie.
Klamstwo to nie tylko nie mowienie prawdy wprost. To takze zatajanie waznych informacji, ktore moga miec wplyw na ksztalt relacji i wybory drugiej osoby.
we ask you to look at your partners and ask yourself if you respect their ability to choose—even if a choice hurts you, even if it's not what you would choose—because we cannot consent if we do not have a choice.
Empowering people to make their own choices is actually the best way to have our own needs met.
Being an ethical person means being ethical to everyone—partners and children. Children are not an ethical Get Out of Jail Free card:
It is not ethical to hurt one person to protect another.
the measure of a person's ethics lies in what she does when things are difficult.
Being an ethical person means looking at the consequences of our choices on others.
What skills are we talking about? Communication. Jealousy management. Being honest, compassionate, understanding.
jealousy is the bugaboo we hear people mention most often. It is beaten most effectively by developing a strong sense of self-confidence and by confronting your personal demons of insecurity.
Develop the habits of being open and honest with the people around you, and you'll likely find that communicating with a lover does not take work; it's automatic.
You can't have what you want if you don't know what you want.
Understanding and programming your own mind is your responsibility; if you fail to do this, the world will program it for you, and you'll end up in the relationship other people think you should have, not the relationship you want.
Self-awareness starts with awareness, period.
"You can come with baggage, but you're responsible for knowing what's in the suitcases."
There's a dangerous side to focusing on needs, though, which we discuss more later. This is the risk of treating people as need-fulfillment machines. For example, it's not uncommon to see people create detailed descriptions of what their future partners will have to look like, be like and want: what role they should play. That's dangerous.
To mieszanie potrzeb ze strategiami.
Although self-awareness is important, so is self-compassion.
The reason you need to understand where you are right now is so that you can understand your limitations.
Think of compassion and free will as values you strive for, not attributes you have.
If we do not believe in our worth, we become disempowered, unable to advocate for our needs. We do not see or embrace the love that is actually around us in our lives. It becomes harder to treat our partners well, because we do not see what we bring to their lives. And if we don't understand our value to them, we are more likely to feed our jealousy and fear of loss.
It can be tempting to look to the outside for validation—to
Ocenianie swojej wartosci przez pryzmat uznania innych, wynikajacy z tego brak poczucia bezpieczenstwa prowadzacy w konsekwencji do zazdrosci i ciaglej proby kontrolowania.
when we rely on outside things in order to feel worthy, we fear losing them all the more.
Low self-worth will try to protect itself, sometimes in sneaky ways.
Courage is a verb, grammarians be damned: it's not something you have, it's something you do.
Security that rests on another person's actions is fragile, and easily lost.
Four principles about personal security seem to be true:
Self-image, like playing the piano, is something you become good at by practice.
Here's a three-step exercise that he has found incredibly valuable for building internal security: Step 1. Understand that you have a choice. You did not choose your past experiences, of course (the people who made fun of you in fifth grade, or a past partner who told you you weren't good enough), but right now you have a choice about continuing to believe them, or changing the things you believe about yourself. The single hardest thing to do to change your self-image is to realize that you have the choice. The rest gets easier. Step 2. Act like someone who is self-confident, even if you
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cultural script that says if you aren't torn apart by the thought of losing a partner, it means you don't really love them.
Often the fear of loss is more closely linked to a fear of being alone than commitment to a partner;
