More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (More Than Two Essentials)

by Franklin Veaux

Your partner is poly because he is poly. There is nothing wrong with you. No matter who you are, no matter what you could be or do, he would still be poly. If you have a child and you decide to add another, it probably isn't because there's something wrong with the first child. It's about bringing more love and intimacy into your life. Polyamory is the same.

Good boundaries around sex must also be made knowing that everyone has a right to privacy about the details of their intimacy. There's no hard and fast line that clearly separates one person's right to be informed from another's right to privacy; setting these boundaries requires compassion and negotiation. Certainly, you have the right to know about your partner's sexual activities with other people in general terms, but at the same time, the details of intimate acts are things that your partner and his partner can reasonably expect to keep to themselves if they don't want to share them.

Some people assume that certain kinds of relationships, such as marriage, come with an unspoken understanding that the partners will dispense with condoms and other barriers. But unspoken assumptions should never substitute for explicit negotiation. Polyamory means examining all of our assumptions about sex. If a married couple wants unbarriered sex, that may be awesome, but it's not necessarily right for everyone or every circumstance.

Another tacit assumption is that partners who have chosen unprotected sex will have unprotected sex forever. Poly people have even (of course) made up a term to describe the decision to have unprotected sex: fluid bonding. The word bond implies, to many, a promise that this will be ongoing. Not all poly people use the term fluid bonding; many prefer to simply talk about using barriers or not, specifically to divest the idea of unbarriered sex from the emotional overtones that the term fluid bonding carries. They prefer to view unbarriered sex as a risk-management decision and, like all agreements, as something that can be renegotiated if necessary. Other people are deeply invested in fluid bonding and consider it an important part of intimacy.

usually jealousy isn't about allocation of resources; it's about insecurity, self-doubt, and feelings of unworthiness or fear.

Entitlement creep In any relationship, we can become so accustomed to a status quo that it slowly morphs into an entitlement. When this happens in polyamory, the disruption and resource reallocation that a new relationship brings can erupt into anger and conflict if an established partner feels something that is hers is being taken away.

So when you begin paring back time with Linda, her feelings of sadness or loneliness may be mixed with betrayal or outrage. You've broken a "promise" you never offered. That's entitlement creep.

the one who cares least about the damage being done to the relationships pulls hardest.

That's true, but…sometimes we meet a new person who highlights the flaws in an existing relationship and teaches us that there's truly a better way to live.

Or maybe your existing relationship was just fine, but the new partner may show you new things, make you happier, help you realize you can have something you never thought possible, help you see the world in a different light. They may lead you to want more, or they may help you to be more. After that you can't quite go home again. Sometimes a bar-raiser can change what we want from all

Re-evaluating relationships In long-term relationships, usually a time arrives when the two new people you've become over the years stand there looking at each other and ask, "Whatever we believed or wanted a few years ago, do the people we are now belong in a relationship?" Sometimes the answer is yes: these two new people still want to be together. And then you move forward, perhaps stronger than before. But sometimes the answer is no,

Since people change all the time, we can debate whether it even makes sense to make lifelong commitments, at least in the way society encourages us to.

Of course, part of the fairy tale that's deeply ingrained in most of us is the idea that relationships only succeed if they last until someone dies. This is, if you think about it, a strange metric for success.

The instant my grandmother died, her marriage became a success. Death parted my grandparents, not divorce, and death is the sole measure of a successful marriage. When a marriage ends in divorce, we say that it's failed. The marriage was a failure. Why? Because both parties got out alive. It doesn't matter if the parting is amicable, it doesn't matter if the exes are happier apart, it doesn't matter if two happy marriages take the place of one unhappy marriage. A marriage that ends in divorce failed. Only a marriage that ends with someone in the cooler down at Maloney's is a success.

Rather, one of the core beliefs that underlies this book is the idea that only relationships that enrich our lives are worth striving for.

It's common to see what we call Schrödinger relationships:* relationships that are near-over in practice, but have fallen into a pattern of comfortable non-contact or non-intimacy. It's easy for poly people to let such non-relationships linger a long time, because when you have multiple partners, there's often no incentive to formally end a relationship in order to "move on"—and it can feel easier to drift apart than to have a tough conversation.

How close or distant your relationship is to a metamour can vary enormously. He might be your deeply bonded co-intimate in a group that sleeps together in one big bed, or a guy you've never met. Whatever the case, though, the word polyamory carries an implication of goodwill and well-wishing among the people involved—an understanding that "we're all in this together" to some degree or another. Often your metamours become one of the biggest benefits of polyamory.

When we try to use a relationship with a new partner as a balm to soothe our own fear or jealousy, we are, in effect, using them. Treating a relationship as a tool for dealing with our own fears is a covert way of treating people as things. Expecting metamours always to enjoy each other's company—or to screen potential partners based on how well they fit into an existing network—can also create a pocket veto, discussed in chapter 12. We've seen situations where someone who felt threatened by the idea of her partner having other lovers simply found fault with anyone her partner was considering. "I'm just protecting you. You haven't met anyone who meets my standards!" are words we've actually heard. More than once.

If we, like Franklin's fellow panelist, accept the idea that we do not choose our partners, we tend to wake up and find ourselves in relationships by default, not design. We may end up, as the writer at the panel did, with partners who are a poor match, because we don't apply good partner selection criteria. We don't think to ask questions that might tell us how well matched we are.

Does this person have wisdom I find attractive? Has she done something that shows me she is likely, when faced with a difficult decision, to choose the path of greatest courage? Has she done something that shows me that, when faced by a personal fear or insecurity, she is dedicated to dealing with it with grace, and to investing in the effort it takes to confront, understand and grow beyond it? Does she show intellectual curiosity, intellectual rigor and intellectual growth? Has she dealt with past relationships, including relationships that have failed, with dignity and compassion? Is she a joyful person? Does she value personal happiness? Does she make me feel joy? Does she seem to have a continuing commitment to understanding herself? Does she value self-determinism? Does she approach things with energy and enthusiasm? Does she engage the world? Does she demonstrate personal integrity? Is she open, honest, enthusiastic and exploratory about sex?

Do I have access to a social support system that is friendly to and knowledgeable about polyamory? Do I feel like I have friends I can discuss relationship problems with who will not blame polyamory as the problem? Who in my life is important for me to be able to talk to about my relationships? Whom do I think it's important for my partners