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May 3 - May 31, 2017
"Don't do this because it makes me feel threatened" is vague and impractical. It places responsibility for the feeling on the partner of the person having the feeling.
They do not seek to sweep problems under the rug. "I get jealous when I see you kiss someone, so don't kiss anyone in front of me" does not deal with the jealousy, it only addresses the trigger. The jealousy is still there, just waiting to emerge in some other way.
They do not try to legislate feelings. People cannot provide feelings on demand. Attempting to legislate feelings (for example, by saying "You must love both of us equally" or "You are not allowed to feel jealous") usually works about as well as trying to legislate the weather.
Rules-based systems judge your moral character based on your adherence to the rules. It's a contract that frames things as acts of betrayal and leaves the 'betrayer' buried under moral judgment. The guilt or potential guilt in that situation is like breathing acid."
"I can have the kind of relationship I want. I can make choices I want to. My best course of action is to learn to choose people who want something similar, to take responsibility for the consequences of my choices, and to pay attention to the effects my choices have on the people around me."
We both subscribe to the radical idea that the best way to create security in a relationship is to create happiness: the people in the relationship are more important than the relationship.
The desire not to lose what you have because your partner meets someone new is rational and reasonable. What is neither rational nor reasonable, though, is attempting to build structures that allow your partner to have other relationships while guaranteeing that nothing will change for you. Relationships don't work that way. We live in a world with no guarantees.
The starting point to a happy poly life is the ability to say "Our relationships can change, and that is okay. My partner and I can still build things that will make us both happy even if they don't look quite the way they do now." As we've said, this takes courage. And it means having trust in your partner and yourself.
It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. nora ephron
In any relationship, it pays to check in often with yourself and your partner about the state of the union. Is it growing in ways that serve your needs? Is the pace of the relationship appropriate for your mutual desires? Does it cause unnecessary difficulties for your other partners?
During the early stages of a romantic relationship, our brains go a little haywire. Several neurotransmitters, most notably dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine,* are produced in greater quantities, generally producing emotional effects that are part attraction and devotion, part obsessive-compulsive disorder, part mystical experience and part physical lust.
For the partner of a person starting a new relationship, NRE is scary stuff. The overwhelming feelings can make existing relationships feel drab by comparison. Worse, the tendency to idolize new partners can easily trick us into making too many commitments too quickly, which can create chaos in the existing relationships.
We're not saying NRE is a bad thing. On the contrary, it's transcendent. NRE lets us start a relationship bathed in delight.
But to make it through NRE while preserving our other relationships, we need to recognize it for what it is, nurture our other partners when we feel it, and not mistake it for love.
A more effective way to deal with with a partner's NRE involves both communication and patience. The good news is that this biochemical madness doesn't last forever; the bad news is that it can last as long as two or three years. Patience is important, because a person experiencing NRE literally isn't quite in their right mind. Communication is important too; when you observe your partner behaving in ways that make you feel insecure, neglected, threatened or taken for granted, you need to say so. Patience in communication is also key, because a partner in the throes of NRE may not hear you the
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When you're the one experiencing NRE, mindfulness is the only consistently successful strategy we've seen. Be aware that you're not in your right mind, that your perceptions are distorted, and that your judgment is impaired. Don't make life-altering decisions while intoxicated. Don't pledge your life to this marvelous person you met last week. Be aware that you will be predisposed to neglect your existing relationships, and try not to do that. Be willing to do a reality check.
Polyamory means creating relationships deliberately, not making assumptions about what they "should" look like. If you want your partner to make a certain commitment to you, don't assume…ask. If you are uncertain what commitments your partner thinks he or she has made, ask. And be realistic about what commitments you can make. This means not just being realistic about your other commitments now, but about the flexibility you may require in the future when a new person enters your life.
Commitments to always put one person "first" in certain things, or to always restrict certain activities to one person, can become problematic if someone enters the picture for whom one of the restricted activities is important. And everyone needs to be put first sometimes.
Similarly, "I commit to living with you, remaining your ally throughout your life, and looking after you in your old age" is different from "I commit to never living with anyone else, never being a lifelong ally to someone else, and never taking time away from our relationship to care for another partner who needs help."
as much as you may want to build a life with someone, consent to intimacy exists only right now, right here, in this moment. Consent means that you will be able to choose at all times the intimacy you participate in.
You can state future intentions, but you cannot pre-consent, and both people must recognize and respect personal boundaries in the present time, regardless of intentions stated in the past. This is important to understand, or else the relationship can easily become coercive.
The moment you begin expecting any form of intimacy from a partner because of a commitment he has made to you, or ignore boundaries because you feel your partner has no right to set them because of prior commitments, your relationship has become coercive.
People who take a free-agent approach often look for partners who value them and their needs even when the relationship doesn't follow a traditional trajectory. So it's often not their partners who misunderstand the importance of their relationships, but their metamours.
It has sometimes been difficult for other people to recognize how committed Amy and I are to one another. This has been true with partners of mine who don't understand how we can "really" be committed to one another if we aren't planning an entwined future, and to partners of hers who don't consider ours a "real" relationship because, despite all the years we've been with each other, we haven't made any move toward living together. At times I've felt it necessary to stand up for our relationship against assumptions that it can't really be serious, and she has had to set boundaries when new or
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Long-distance relationships When you look around at poly people, you'll see a disproportionate number of long-distance relationships. Often you'll see deeply committed, long-term LDRs—something that's fairly rare among monogamous people.
But there are many ways to nourish an LDR when the partners are apart; the two of us, for example, spend a lot of time on Skype, and we're both avid texters.
The time when long-distance partners are physically together, surprisingly, can create the most stress. When you have both local and long-distance partners (as both of us do, and all our long-distance partners do), it can be easy to get so caught up in the normal, day-to-day relationship with a local partner that you forget to make space for the distant one. Sometimes literally.
A long-distance partner can be a sort of "invisible" person: someone whose needs aren't necessarily obvious. For example, do you leave a place in your home for your long-distance partner to stay on visits? If you have a regular schedule with local partners—every Friday is date night, say—a...
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Long-distance relationships concentrate the fun, flashy parts of a relationship, but at the cost of all the small things that build intimacy every day. We know few local partners who would be willing to trade places with a long-distance partner!
So if we aren't monogamous, and we aren't sexual, what does it mean for me to be married to Peter? It means I've tied my life to his. It's not just financial, though that's a big part of it: we are creating one financial future together, built on pooled resources that we share equally. We also know that we'll always be there for each other, and that our lives are tied in parallel if not identical trajectories. Whatever happens to one of us, the other is in it with them. Each of us will take care of the other if they can't take care of themselves. In making our choices, we have to take the
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When I had been married previously, Celeste identified as monogamous; for eighteen years we were in a mono/poly relationship—a relationship between a polyamorous person and a monogamous person.
What are my existing commitments? How much time do they leave for new partners? When am I open to taking new partners? What assumptions do I make about commitments in my relationships? What do I need from my relationships? How often do I re-evaluate my needs? How do I define "commitment"? Do my definitions leave room for nontraditional commitments and nontraditional relationship trajectories? How do I leave space for new people to come into my life?
When your partners have competing needs or desires, if you don't have good boundaries you can become a prize to be fought over, rather than an autonomous person with decision-making capability and needs of your own. This can happen even when everyone is acting in good faith.
ask yourself, "Does it involve me directly?" If not, you're well advised to leave the conflict to them to work out themselves. If it does, the next question is, what do I want? When people you love have different ideas or opinions, the question of what you want can easily get lost in the struggle to please others. Moreover, if you're focused on trying to please your partners rather than taking responsibility for your choices, it becomes easy for your partners to focus on each other as the reason you're not doing what each of them wants. Advocating for what you want when you're being pulled in
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Peter became much more independent in making plans with Clio. Rather than asking me to make decisions concerning visits or sleeping arrangements, he would ask me about my feelings or plans, then make proposals for me to respond to.
Your choices are always yours, regardless of whether they make you or your partners happy or unhappy. Own up to them. If you use phrases such as "Jill won't let me," or "Karen made me," or even "The rules say I have to," you are shifting responsibility.
Good communication about time includes being clear about what time commitments you are available for, how much time you need in each relationship (including how much needs to be dyad time as opposed to group time), how much you need for yourself (especially important if you're introverted), and what time commitments you already have. It also includes being very clear about what you are committing to and with whom—which can be harder than it sounds.
There's a standing joke that poly couldn't take off until Google Calendar was invented.
Some people find it easy to slip into feeling that unscheduled time should be theirs—it can be easy to forget that time for one's self is just as (or more) important, and is not a snub. Also, if Joe has write access to Jane's calendar, and Jane trusts him to schedule events without asking, Joe needs to remember that the time he is scheduling does not belong to him.
But if you assume that your relationships have to be inclusive, one of your partners may find himself spending a lot of time in the presence of someone he doesn't much care for. Each person needs to be able to set boundaries without blame. As much as we may crave inclusive relationships, it's not okay to force them. It's not okay to try to shame or threaten our partners into liking each other, even when, as we've seen happen, you're angry at them for not getting along. If an important relationship is contingent on any other relationship, this can introduce a strain that is not just about
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part of personal integrity is showing up and meeting your commitments. Blowing off dates with your long-standing partners—or your kids—to go running through a sunbeam-filled meadow with your new shiny isn't going to win you points in the integrity department.
One of the default assumptions that many of us carry from monogamous culture is that in a long-term relationship, especially when we live with a partner, our partner's time becomes "ours" by default. So when he chooses to do something social that's independent of us, it's outside the norm—and thus can feel like he's taking away something that rightfully belongs to us.
Understand and accept that each person owns his own time. A relationship, even one designated "primary," does not confer ownership of another person's time. When someone gives time to his partners, it is just that—a gift. While promises can certainly be made, and should be honored, gifts of time in the absence of promises do not constitute entitlements for similar gifts in the future. People can (and should) express their needs and wants, and a skilled pivot will take these into account when choosing how to allocate time.
if you start from the premise that you are an autonomous adult responsible for your own allocation of time, your partners will be less likely to see you as a commodity to be fought over.
most importantly, when you understand that time spent with a partner is a gift and not an entitlement, this will help you cultivate a sense of gratitude for it, and gratitude is a powerful shield against jealousy and fear.
in relationships, and especially in polyamorous relationships, the little whisperings of our five-year-old selves poke through and say, "That's not fair!" when things don't go the way we expect.
Fairness means saying things like "I realize that my insecurity belongs to me, so I will not use it as a blunt instrument on you, nor expect you to plot your life around it. I may, however, ask you to talk to me while I'm dealing with it."
Ali lives with Tatiana and is also in a relationship with Alexis. Ali and Tatiana have two young children. Their relationship involves a lot of housework, diaper changes and arguing over the budget. Their downtime together consists of a lot of cuddling in front of Doctor Who but not much sex and only the occasional night out. Ali and Alexis only see each other a couple of times a month, so their time together is intense. They usually spend half of it having sex, the other half in deep conversation or doing exciting things—all focused on one another. Maybe once or twice a year they'll get away
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So it's good etiquette for the pivot to take the initiative and ask the others if they would like to meet. If one of your partners expresses an interest first in meeting the other, be the one to make it happen, and make it clear that the meeting matters to you, too. How you introduce a new partner to your network can make all the difference in how welcome she feels.
Although your partner has to do the heavy lifting himself, there are things you can do to help make his work easier. The first is to listen. Nobody wants to be jealous. Nobody enjoys it. Your partner isn't doing this to hurt you, or out of spite. So listen, compassionately, without judging or shaming. Allow space for him to feel what he's feeling. Remember that saying "You shouldn't feel that" probably won't change anything. Creating a safe space for your partner to talk openly about his feelings goes a long way toward making a solution possible.
