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

by Franklin Veaux

Conversely, there is a community saying: "Some people go into poly to have more sex; some go into poly to have less sex." A monogamous couple with mismatched sex drives has a major problem. Constant frustration on one side, and constant unwanted demands on the other, kill marriages routinely. But when the couple is part of a larger network of lovers, everyone can more easily find their own level, and the pressure is off.

You may hear some poly people sighing about AFLE or AFOG: "another fucking learning experience" or "another fucking opportunity for growth."

Many people try to protect themselves by placing strict controls on the form their relationships may take, or on the level to which they may grow. We have never seen this approach succeed; it merely replaces one kind of pain with another. Polyamory takes guts. It increases love and joy, but it also increases the odds that you'll be hurt. That's how it goes with romantic relationships.

Polyamory means giving things up. When your lover has another lover, there will be times when you will lose something, even if it's just time and attention.

We find it's not very useful to tell you what you should do. It's far more effective to pose questions when you're contemplating a course of action.

If I am already in a relationship, does my desire for others come from dissatisfaction or unhappiness with my current relationship? If I were in a relationship that met my needs, would I still want multiple partners?

Sometimes we try to follow the standard relationship trajectory with multiple people: We start by searching for two or three live-in fidelitous partners before we even know what they want.

For example, there's often no need to "break up" a relationship if something (or someone) changes. Maybe we can keep a connection and reshape it in another way. We can build relationships that are free to develop however they naturally want to flow.

Monogamy tells us that successful, "real" relationships all look about the same. Relationships that last a long time are called successes, without regard to misery, and those that end are called failures, without regard to happiness.

Emotional intimacy and physical intimacy are so tightly entwined that some self-help books speak of "emotional infidelity" and encourage married couples not to permit each other to become too close to their friends. Advice columnists and television personalities will speak gravely of the dangers that "emotional affairs" pose to a monogamous marriage and ask, "Is emotional infidelity worse than sexual infidelity?" Monogamy can leave surprisingly little room for close friendships, much less nonsexual romances. Your intimate friend and your sexual partner are presumed to be one and the same.

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," but that's precisely what happens.

As Eliezer Yudkowsky says, "You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in."

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.

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.

So I failed to set boundaries, and I failed to take care of myself. During Clio's first overnight visit with us, we were walking down the street toward the party the three of us were attending together. I wasn't prepared when he put his arm around her and I felt my throat constrict and the ground drop out from under me. I wasn't prepared when, surrounded by people in a packed room that allowed very little movement, I got separated from them and watched from across the room while they sat together and flirted and I felt the walls closing in. And I wasn't prepared to lie awake the entire night while he spent the night with her in the guest room, or for my emotional meltdown the next day.

You can't control how your partners' other relationships develop, but you can control how you allow them to intersect with and affect your life. You are allowed to set boundaries on your personal space and time. You don't have to make the first time you hang out with your husband and his girlfriend be a public appearance at a crowded party. You don't have to be okay with hearing them have sex, now or ever. Take care of yourself so you can take care of those around you.

We were talking about worthiness and how it connects to our sense of belonging, which we get when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and are accepted as we are. But being able to allow that vulnerability requires—gotcha!—a sense of worthiness. To connect with others, we must take a leap of faith and believe we are worthy of connection.

"worthiness" was so far outside my realm of personal experience that I couldn't even imagine it.

fear and grief at the thought of losing Peter, joy at the new connection with Ray. And then, suddenly, I accepted the situation. I imagined myself without Peter, was able to picture my life without him, and I realized that even without him or Ray, even alone, I would be okay. I would mourn, but my life would go on, and I would rebuild. I wrote in my journal that day, "After a few days of feeling in free-fall, it's like I suddenly looked behind me and realized…Oh. I have wings."

the courage it takes to confess a crush. The courage it takes to say, "Yes, I am going to open my heart to this person, even though I don't know what the outcome will be."

The courage to begin a relationship with someone who's already partnered, trusting that person to carve out the space for you that you're going to need.

Allowing the people you love to make their own choices without controlling them is scary. The kind of courage we're talking about involves being willing to let go of guarantees—and love and trust your partners anyway.

We try to build the skills that can help us face our fears by doing things that are completely unrelated to courage—things like avoiding the triggers for our fears, or creating structures that shelter us from the things we're afraid of, waiting until we feel brave.

If we fear that a partner might want to leave us, we lay down regulations telling her not to. If we fear being replaced by someone sexier than we are, we are tempted to create prohibitions that restrict certain kinds of sex.

What makes me feel cherished, loved and secure?

Trying to avoid upsetting a partner by giving in to their insecurity, or steering around their sensitivities and triggers, can become enabling: reinforcing rather than alleviating the problem. The very things we do to try to make a partner feel more secure can make the insecurity worse.

Often the fear of loss is more closely linked to a fear of being alone than commitment to a partner; in monogamous relationships, losing a partner means being alone. And, paradoxically, if you want something too badly, the fear of losing it can become greater than the joy of having it. When that happens, we hold onto things not because they make us happy, but because the thought of losing them makes us suffer. Both having them and not having them become sources of pain.

Living in fear won't stop us from losing what we love, it will only stop us from enjoying it.

It's important to build relationships in such a way that the people within them can feel secure, can feel a sense of belonging, and can have some basic expectations they can rely on. But it's also essential that people have agency in their relationships, that relationships be built on a foundation of choice and free will. These are not mutually exclusive goals.

(Couples counselors say that financial stress is more likely to ruin a marriage than any other single factor, including infidelity.)

An important skill in creating happy poly relationships involves learning to see other lovers, particularly a partner's other lovers, as people who make life better for both of you rather than a hazard to be managed.

And if we don't feel like we've fully consented to a relationship but instead are there because being alone is worse, then it's easy to feel like the relationship is something that's done to us rather than something that enriches our lives. From here, it's very easy to become resentful of our partners—especially when they do anything that reminds us of our fear of being alone.

One of the core ingredients of a successful polyamorous relationship is the ability to treat all the folks involved, including not only our partners but their partners as well, with compassion and empathy.

Often, though, it really means "Don't let your partner do anything you're not comfortable with," or "Don't explore unknown situations if they make you uncomfortable." In such cases, we think "Don't do anything you're not comfortable with" is terrible advice. There is more to life than avoiding discomfort.

Real compassion requires strong boundaries, because if we are letting someone take advantage of us, it becomes very hard to be authentically vulnerable to them.

the poly community putting its best face forward publicly in order to gain mainstream acceptance.

Relationships are always voluntary; you have the right to end a relationship that does not meet your needs (and so does your partner), but you do not have the right to demand that your partner do what you want.

It can be tempting to call a relationship successful if it lasts, but what if the members of that relationship treat their other partners poorly?

Or treat themselves poorly, even

The most common reason is emotional vulnerability: fear of rejection, fear of being ridiculed, fear of being wrong, of hearing no, of being found less desirable by our partners. And even as we claim to want honesty, we may subtly discourage our partners from being honest with us because we don't feel prepared to hear truths that might be painful.

someone who doesn't know that his partner is unsatisfied will never improve, and an unsatisfying relationship is always under stress. Problem is, one of the most basic rules of life is that you cannot get what you want if you don't ask for what you want.

People are dishonest with themselves for many reasons, including having ideas about what they "should" be. If they think desiring multiple partners is dishonorable, they may convince themselves that they don't even if they do. Likewise, if someone wants only one partner, she may convince herself otherwise because she believes polyamory is more "enlightened."

The solution to triangular communication is simple in theory—don't do it—but difficult in practice, because it's easier to talk about things that bother us with anyone but the person whose behavior is at issue.

Communication is scary. We fear open communication when we fear the vulnerability that comes with it. Open communication means exposing yourself to rejection or judgment or trouble. It may mean finding out that what you assumed your lover thinks and feels is wrong. It presents the possibility of hearing no to your deepest wishes, and it may mean having your needs or desires turned against you if the relationship is unhealthy. There is no communication—at least not meaningful communication—without vulnerability.

If you're hurting because of a boundary your partner has set, knowing how to practice active listening can be especially useful. Active listening involves asking genuine, open-ended, non-leading questions, then listening quietly to the answer, and then repeating back what you heard so it's clear that you heard it correctly, as we discuss in the next chapter.

Statements like "Why do you have to have sex with someone else when you know how much that hurts me?" are a common tactic that shifts responsibility for one person's emotional state onto another person.

Polyamory doesn't give us the luxury of avoiding tough, uncomfortable subjects.

Luxury, my ass

We sometimes think we're being too needy when we ask for things…but when our needs are not being met, they tend to feel bottomless to us, and therefore to the people around us.

"I'm not telling you not to go on your date this Saturday, but I wanted to let you know I'm feeling some anxiety about it."

Adria's story contains a couple of lessons. The most immediate is that if you tell your partner "It's okay to ask for anything you want," it better be true. If you're not prepared to make it safe for your partner to open up to you, he won't. Because he'll feel he can't.

we often forget how many ways we can make it very expensive for people to be honest with us. When we love someone, it's hard even under the best of circumstances to say something that will make them unhappy. It requires a lot of vulnerability and courage to do that. We expose ourselves emotionally, because our partners' feelings affect ours. When that vulnerability is met with defensiveness, annoyance, passive-aggressiveness, silence, anger or resentment, honesty becomes damn near impossible.