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

by Franklin Veaux

Mistakes happen because someone is trying to solve a problem or meet a need. It's easy, in the emotional aftermath, to see the mistake as a consequence of selfishness or some other moral failing. But recovery from a mistake depends on being able to see our partners as human beings doing their best to solve a problem rather than as caricatures or monsters. Compassion, like communication, is one of those things that's most valuable when it's most difficult.

"You terrible person, how could you make me feel this way?" We mean acknowledge and own the fear, and ask for support to deal with it. "When you're on a date with him and you do that thing with your tongue, I feel jealous. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but I sure could use some love and support."

addressing our fears in poly relationships is to ask our partners what they value in us…and trust that what they say is true. And if what they say doesn't stick, ask again. And listen. And keep at it until those things that make us magnificent in our partners' eyes start to sink in.

Another fear closely related to the fear of being left out is the fear of playing "second fiddle." Perhaps your partner is starting a new relationship, and maybe you aren't really being left behind—but you aren't the number one focus anymore, either. This, too, isn't just a problem in polyamory. You can become second fiddle to a new child (or grandchild), to a new job, to a new hobby…hell, Franklin has seen someone whose partner became second fiddle to a pet. (It was a very cute cat, mind, but still…)

Or say you answer yes to the question "Do I believe that if I am not my partner's only sexual partner, I am not special anymore?" The remedy there is to understand that value in a relationship comes from who you are, not from what you do, so if your partner has the same experience with another person that he has with you, the feeling of that experience is different, because nobody else is you.

When we tell another person, "Don't say or do things that upset me," we are not setting boundaries; we are trying to manage people whom we have already let too far over our boundaries. If we make others responsible for our own emotions, we introduce coercion into the relationship, and coercion erodes consent.

When you feel that you "need" a relationship, you may become afraid to raise your voice and assert the other things you need. It's hard to set boundaries in a relationship you feel you can't live without, because setting boundaries means admitting there are things that might end your relationship.

So when I began to accept, ten years ago (give or take), that relationships were actually supposed to be fulfilling for me, that laying my own needs (and even my own personality) at the feet of a partner was not actually a noble or desirable thing, the idea was a game changer. It nearly ended my marriage—twice. And I still struggle with it.

I give, and you give, and we draw lines in ourselves where we stop. I draw a line here, do you see it? It's the place just before it hurts me to give, because I know, if you love me, if you love the way I do, this is where you would beg me to stop.

If there is recrimination, anger or punishment in response to your partner's choices, then you had instituted a rule, regardless of the wording.

On the other hand, a compromise like agreeing not to have any other relationships until the kids have left home might be a boundary violation. If polyamory is essential to your happiness and part of your identity, this compromise requires giving up a part of who you are. With such a compromise, it's reasonable to question whether "spending time with the kids" has become a proxy for "I want a monogamous relationship, so I'm using concerns about the children as a pretext."

people who prefer a free-agent model can use boundaries around their personal decision-making as a way to avoid responsibility for the consequences of what they do. The choices we make belong to us, but so do their consequences. If you emphasize personal autonomy to the exclusion of listening to your partners' needs, you're not asserting boundaries, you're being a jerk.

Even in perfectly healthy relationships, people can change. What was okay last year may not be okay today. When relationships are good, they make us better, they make our lives bigger, and it's easy to forget about our boundaries, because there is no reason to enforce them. Yet when communication erodes, when trust comes into question, when we feel out of control or deeply unhappy and then we try to set a boundary, the experience can be terrifying.

You always have a right to regulate access to what is yours. But by the time the boundaries of your self have become blurred with those of your partner, setting boundaries and defining your self feels like taking something away from her that she had come to regard as hers.

And if your partner is setting a new boundary, remember that he has a right to do so, even if it means he's revoking consent to things he agreed to before. The change may hurt, but the solution is not to violate the boundaries or try to talk your partner out of them. No one should ever be punished for setting personal boundaries, or for withholding or revoking consent.

There are many signs of a harmful relationship dynamic, but the most unmistakable one is fear. Why am I so afraid in this relationship when there's no imminent physical danger? If you find you are asking yourself this question, check your boundaries. Do you know where they are? How much power have you given to others to affect your well-being, your self-esteem, even your desire to live? Remember, when you give someone the power to affect you and to come into your mind, you are only loaning what belongs to you. If you are afraid, you have given too much. When you look forward, do you see choices? Is leaving the relationship a viable option? Is changing the relationship a viable option? Is setting new boundaries an option? What happens if you say no?

It starts when you begin to bend yourself around your fears instead of embracing your dreams. We see plenty of relationships fall apart in sadness, anger, hurt and feelings of betrayal—but fear is worse.

An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way. harriet lerner

However, making rules can quickly become complicated, because it's very easy to confuse needs with feelings. A person who says, "I don't ever want you to spend the night with another lover" might think the rule serves a need, such as "I need to wake up with you in the morning." But if we examine that need, it may come down to "I feel lonely if I wake up by myself." The rule is meant to prevent triggering a negative feeling, in this case a feeling of loneliness. The actual issue—"I feel lonely when I wake up alone"—is not being directly addressed. Leading with the need ("How can we help make sure I understand how I am valued by you?"), rather than the action, opens the door to finding ways to solve the problem without imposing rules.

At the beginning of a relationship, we are not yet emotionally invested in it, and we don't know how it will progress. So it can be easy to accept rules or agreements that later, as we become more vulnerable and more emotionally invested, become quite painful.

It's not possible to ever feel completely secure in a relationship whose structures are built on fear. Even if you follow all the rules, or the rules are easy for you, at some level you will always be aware that another person's potential fears are a driving force in the relationship. If the day comes when that person is afraid of you, look out.

In extreme cases, rules can become tools of emotional blackmail. They constitute a contract that specifies acts of betrayal, and a person who breaks a rule is cast in the role of the villain. Rules-based systems judge people's characters on the basis of adherence to the rules. When rules are used as a tool with which to attack someone's character—especially when the attacks are based on creative interpretations of the rules—they become a nearly invisible but extremely corrosive form of emotional abuse.

Many people say, "I need rules in my relationship," but when they are asked why, it quickly becomes obvious that what they need is actually something else. It is usually something like security or stability, a sense of empowerment, predictability, or safety. Those are all reasonable needs. What's not obvious is that it's possible to have those things without rules.

"Rules have an inverse relationship to trust. They are intended to bind someone to someone else's preferences. They are aimed at constraint. I will limit you, and you will limit me, and then we'll both be safe."

It was easy to tell myself I was doing the right thing by saying "I will honor my commitments over my own needs." This gave me a sense of noble sacrifice: I loved Celeste so much, I was willing to give up my happiness for her! However, as years went by, doing this became harder when I saw that I was hurting other people too. Dismissing their pain by saying "It's okay, I'm honoring my commitments" started to feel unethical.

In the end, my stubborn insistence on "honoring my commitment" without renegotiation deprived her of happiness, too. Things ran off the rails when I started to believe I was subordinate to the needs of the commitments, rather than focusing on building commitments that served my needs and the needs of all the people I loved. When I made myself subordinate to the rules, it didn't make anyone happy—not me, not Celeste, and certainly not my other partners who ended up in harm's way because of it.

When looking at the structures of your relationship, ask yourself regularly: "Are they honest? Are they necessary? Are they kind? Are they respectful? Are they considerate of others?" If you've made agreements with an existing partner that you expect new partners to abide by, ask yourself, "Would I have become involved with my current partner if I were bound by these agreements at the start?"

Demanding to know everything undermines intimacy, but so does demanding to know nothing. When we demand to know nothing, we cut ourselves off from a part of our partners' experience, and that must necessarily limit how intimate we can be.

Do I feel like I need rules to feel safe? If so, will the rules actually keep me safe? Are my rules equally binding on everyone they affect, or do they create a double standard?

You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free. thích naht hanh

The assumption lurking beneath a desire for hierarchy is that we can't really trust our partners to act well without a set of rules. That without a formal ranking to remind our partners that we come first, we will lose our status, lose the things we most value about our relationship, lose our sense of security, or even lose the relationship entirely. But as we've said before, if your partner can't be trusted to work with you on your needs when asked, she probably can't be trusted to follow rules.

Um friend is sometimes used for casual lovers (as in, "He's my, um, friend").

I was still trapped in the mindset that polyamory was something Celeste allowed me to do, and protecting that "main" relationship with her had to be my first priority, I could not see how I was treating Bella as an accessory to my relationship rather than as a real person. I did not realize that thinking Bella just needed a primary of her own was actually a way of saying her feelings for me were not okay, and that she needed to transfer those feelings to someone else.

How do I view potential new partners, both for myself and for my existing partners? Do I see them as potential problems to be managed? Or do I see them as potential sources of joy to enrich my partner's life? How does my approach to hierarchy reflect that view? Are there specific assets, commitments or people (such as children) I am seeking to protect with a hierarchy? Can I imagine other avenues for achieving that protection? Am I open to secondary relationships someday becoming primary relationships, given enough time and investment? What will I do if a secondary partner becomes dissatisfied with the rules that apply to them? Am I willing or able to involve that partner in renegotiations of those rules?

Trust isn't something most of us are taught when growing up. The conventional fairy tale tells us to find true love and we'll be happy ever after. It doesn't mention trusting our partners even when we're afraid. It doesn't tell us how to assert good boundaries when faced with potentially disrupting relationships. Committing yourself to trusting that your partner wants to be with you, and will choose to be with you even if someone else tries to tug him away, takes courage. Asserting good boundaries around your partner's other partners takes work. But in the end, your partner is going to make the choices he makes whatever rules you put in place, so what other options do you really have?

We've known a few people who have been in relationships with monogamously inclined partners who agreed to a polyamorous relationship, but only after they "felt secure in the relationship." That turned out to be…never. Of course, if your reward for feeling secure is something you don't want, you don't have much incentive to ever feel secure. These relationships can last for years before ending. We know of at least one that has been going on for six years, the polyamorous partner still wistfully hopeful that someday his monogamous partner will "get there."

People who are disempowered have little to lose by breaking the rules. The worst possible outcome—losing the relationship—is something they're already risking by chafing under restrictions; by this point losing the relationship might not seem like such a bad idea.

engaging and participating in the decision-making process for decisions that affect you having a full range of options available when decisions are made, not a simple yes or no option (or, in extreme cases, the "Accept it or leave" option) having agency over one's own body, relationships and life being able to express needs, opinions, desires and boundaries having access to the information that materially affects your relationship, person, safety or security being able to propose alternatives having the ability to object to, and open negotiations about, rules, agreements or structures of the relationship having the ability to give, withhold or withdraw consent

Non-monogamous relationships clearly highlight the gap between our perception of our power and the reality of our power. It is often easier to see someone else's power than to see our own. If our partner begins a new relationship, we might see how he invests in the new relationship, and we feel powerless—without recognizing how the established structures, history, commitments and shared life experiences in our own relationship give us a tremendous amount of power that the newer partner doesn't have. The new partner, however, is often keenly aware of the power the existing partner has.

While we're working on the project of our own worthiness, though, we can also seek to understand our own power—even if we don't yet feel it in our hearts. Here, to go back to our mushroom-hunting metaphor: we look for evidence. If you are terrified of losing a ten-year relationship, step back and think about the fact that your partner has chosen to be in a relationship with you for ten years. This didn't happen by accident! It happened because for ten years, you have added value to your partner's life.

Practice gratitude for all of the ways, large and small, your partner invests in your relationship. It will help you understand the value of the relationship to them.

Both Clara and Ramon have experienced serious parental shaming from friends and family. Despite the struggles, Clara feels clear that she made the right decision. She believes that had she stayed with Elijah, her unhappiness would have undoubtedly affected her children.

Another valuable technique in the toolkit of strategies for happy, trusting relationships is to let go of attachment to the form that a partner's behavior must take. For example, suppose you feel you aren't getting enough time with your partner. One way to address this is to insist, for example, that he be home by nine o'clock. This may or may not succeed. In one instance Franklin has seen, it did not work even though the person did start coming home by nine, because he would then spend the rest of the evening talking or texting with the person he had just left. The partner who made the request had assumed that being home at nine meant paying attention to her needs, but that wasn't what she actually asked for. What did work was junking the nine o'clock rule in favor of a direct statement: "I need some of your undivided attention every day."

"These are the things I need in order to feel loved and cherished. These are the things that make me feel special in your eyes."

"I feel loved and cherished when you spend time with me and reassure me whenever I feel threatened."

If I feel a desire to restrict relationships between my partners and their partners, what underlying need am I trying to meet? What are my existing commitments? How can I meet them while still making room for new relationships? What evidence do I have that my partners love and care for me? Are there specific things I can ask my partners to do for me to help me feel loved and cared for? In what ways am I empowered in my relationships? What things help me to feel empowered? Can I renegotiate the agreements in my relationships? Can my partners?

Here is one crude tell-tale sign of unreasonable rules that we use: When people have agreements that are reasonable, such as around safer sex, they generally can talk about them calmly and dispassionately. When someone states a rule and then refuses to discuss it, answers questions about it with "That's just how I feel," or becomes offended or upset about it, look out. Something else is going on—something that isn't being addressed directly.

Healthy agreements are those that encourage moving in the direction of greatest courage. "I feel threatened by the idea of my woman having sex with other men. She can't do that" is based on fear and insecurity, not courage. "I feel threatened by this idea, so when you do this, I will ask for your support and I will want some time with you afterward to help ground and settle me" is a request that moves in the direction of greatest courage. It recognizes that the other person has the right to choose her partners, while at the same time asking for the support to help deal with unpleasant emotional responses.

They seek to place controls on one's self, not one's partners. You can't really control anyone but yourself. "You must," "You cannot…": Those kinds of statements work only if other people choose to let them.

They are clear, specific and limited in scope. "You must care for me more than you care for her" is not clear or specific. It doesn't define what "care for me" means or what steps can be taken to get there. "We will not have unbarriered exchange of bodily fluids before discussing it with each other" is clear, specific and limited in scope.