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February 16 - March 19, 2020
Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.
Monogamy tells us what to expect. Polyamory does not. There are no rigid templates, only nuance and shades of gray. This is both a blessing and a curse. Polyamory embraces the idea that relationships are, first and foremost, individual affairs, closely tailored to the specific needs of all the people involved. At the same time, it doesn’t give us a clear path to follow, no royal road to “a good relationship.” Abandoning the benchmarks of monogamy can be scary. Without them, how will we know what to do?
Indeed, if polyamory is part of your identity (for some people, it is; for others, it isn’t), you might be in a monogamous relationship and still be poly.
Strong, ethical polyamorous relationships are not a destination, they are a journey. Nurturing such relationships is like walking toward a point on the horizon: you move toward it or away from it with each choice you make, but you never actually arrive. Sometimes you’ll make a choice that takes you farther away, but that’s okay, because you can always make another choice and start moving again in the direction you want to go.
We have the right to want what we want. We do not, however, have the right to get what we want.
That brings us to the idea of relevance. An omission is a lie when it is calculated to conceal information that, were it known to the other party, would be materially relevant to her.
Although self-awareness is important, so is self-compassion.
I wanted to be the strong, noble poly person who never felt jealous or insecure. I was looking at where I wanted to be standing instead of where I was standing, at what I wanted to offer instead of what I actually could at the time.
Worthiness is not the same as validation. A sense of self-worth comes from within, not from someone else. It can be tempting to look to the outside for validation—to look to your partner and say, “She loves me, therefore I am worthy.” That creates fear rather than reducing fear, because when we rely on outside things in order to feel worthy, we fear losing them all the more.
Everyone who tries to create love with an emotionally unaware partner suffers.
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Insecurity invents its own evidence and supports its own premises.
Compassion means coming from a place of understanding that others have needs of their own, which might be different than ours, and extending to them the same understanding, the same willingness to appreciate their own struggles, that we would want them to extend to us. We practice it every time we feel that surge of annoyance when someone does something we don’t like, and then check ourselves and try to see the reason for their behavior from their perspective.
By hiding the truth, we deny our partners the opportunity to consent to continuing a relationship with us. Controlling information to try to keep a partner (or to get a partner to do what we want) is one way we treat people as things. And remember, honesty begins inside. A person who is dishonest with himself cannot be honest with anyone else.
Metamours are not children, and as a pivot partner you are not Halloween candy to divide up. Negotiating resource investments in relationships is not like deciding who gets how many Snickers bars and who is stuck with the malted milk balls. Three-way communication is useful to build trust and get a clear understanding of needs and capabilities, but ultimately the pivot partner is the master of her own decisions and resources. If someone isn’t getting what he needs from her, that’s something he needs to take up with her, his partner. And she needs to take responsibility.
“If you’re afraid to say it, that means you need to say it.” When we are feeling most raw, most vulnerable, most scared of opening up, those are the times we most need to open up. We can’t expect others to respect our boundaries and limits if we don’t talk about them or, worse, pretend they don’t exist.
The best measure of the health of any relationship is the quality of the communication in it. Every single thing that we can’t or won’t talk about, openly and without fear or shame, is a crack in the relationship’s foundation.
What’s necessary is simply to understand that we don’t have to put our emotions in the driver’s seat. We feel what we feel; the secret is to understand that we still have power even in the face of our feelings. We can still choose to act with courage, compassion and grace, even when we’re terrified, uncertain and insecure.
Understand that your emotions often lie to you. Feelings aren’t fact.
Avoid making decisions, especially irrevocable, life-altering decisions, when in the grip of strong emotions.
... guilty. )=
If we want our lovers to be honest with us, we have to make it safe for them to be honest. We need to accept what we hear without anger, recriminations or blame, even when we’re surprised or we hear something we really don’t want to. We must be willing to take a deep breath, switch gears and say, “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
We feel what we feel, but there is a difference between jealous feelings and jealous actions. Regardless of the origin of jealous feelings, the actions we take are within our control.
Rules tend to come from the idea that it’s acceptable, or even desirable, for you to control someone else’s behavior, or for someone else to control yours. Boundaries derive from the idea that the only person you really control is yourself.
As the term is used in this book, rules are binding limitations placed on someone’s behavior that are not up for negotiation. Even when a rule is agreed to, it’s a mandate that can only be obeyed or broken.
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.
Try to leave people better than when you found them.
You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.
Celeste relegated my other partners to a prescribed secondary status. Bella and I thought, seemingly reasonably, that if she had another “primary” partner, her needs for that kind of relationship would be met, and she would no longer need those things from me. That idea turned out to be disastrously wrong. The thing she wanted wasn’t “a primary,” it was a closer relationship with me. Being close to other people didn’t meet that need. When she did find another partner, she discovered this didn’t change what she wanted from me.
Vetoes are like nuclear weapons: they may keep others in line, but their use tends to forever alter the landscape.
You don’t have to demand that your partner end a relationship in order to make it end; you just have to starve it of the resources it needs to thrive.
Line-item veto.
At the beginning of a relationship, we can’t predict what feelings we will have, or how deeply we will attach to someone, because we aren’t there yet. Therefore, it’s easy to say yes to rules that treat us as disposable, or don’t give us a voice in advocating for our needs, because we don’t have the needs yet.
Shifting responsibility for your choices onto your other partners (“Sophie made me do it!”) is cowardly.
Mono/poly relationships only work when each person wholeheartedly embraces who the other is, allowing them to live the way that’s most authentic for them, without judgment.
And remember that no matter how much you love each other, you are not obligated to be in a relationship with each other. You have a choice. If it doesn’t work, if one of you is hurting too much, it’s okay to let it go.
Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out.
If your partner starts a relationship with someone who raises the bar, you are challenged to rise above your limitations and move with courage toward the best version of yourself.
You’re likely to be more intimidating to that new partner than he is to you. While you see new relationship energy and the excitement of a budding romance, he sees a shared history that is not accessible to him. A new relationship is a time of intense vulnerability for you and the new metamour. Treat that vulnerability with kindness and compassion.
If the idea of dating someone doesn’t prompt an enthusiastic “Fuck yes!” then the answer is no. Ambivalence has little place in romance.
