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

by Franklin Veaux

“Happily ever after” is a myth because people, unlike characters in fairy tales, are not static. We live, we grow, we change. Happy, healthy romantic lives require not just continual reinvestment but constant awareness of the changes in our partners, our situations and ourselves. Our partners do not owe us a guarantee that they will never change, nor do we owe anyone such a guarantee. And as we change, so do the things that make us happy.

The best way to understand why someone might be polyamorous is to ask, “What do people get out of relationships in the first place?” Romance is a fiddly business even in the best of circumstances; why not just give it all a miss and be done with it? A quick answer might be “We are happier when we’re in relationships than when we’re not.” Humans are social animals. We do better when we share our lives intimately with others. We’re built for it. As complicated and messy and unpredictable as romance is, its rewards are fantastic. Indeed, most of us feel driven to seek out people who see us for what we are, who share themselves with us, who love us.

Loving more than one person at the same time is not an escape from intimacy; it is an enthusiastic embrace of intimacy.

We believe relationships that are deliberately, intentionally constructed are more satisfying, and more likely to lead to happiness, than relationships whose shape is determined by default social expectations.

Navigating a disagreement or problem in a poly relationship requires outstanding communication skills and good problem-solving tools, which is kind of the point of this book.

the compass directions we’ve seen that lead to strong, vibrant, happy relationships are courage, communication, willingness to accept responsibility for your own emotions, respect for the autonomy of others, compassion and empathy. 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.

The people in a relationship are more important than the relationship. Don’t treat people as things.

The first part of laying the groundwork for polyamory concerns yourself—things like developing security, self-confidence and flexibility. The second involves creating fertile soil for growth in your existing relationship, if you have one.

Self-image, like playing the piano, is something you become good at by practice. If you practice being insecure—if you accept thoughts and ideas that tear down your sense of self, if you lie in bed at night and think about the reasons you are not worthy or good enough—then you become highly skilled at being insecure. On the other hand, if you practice security—if you reject thoughts and ideas that tear down your sense of self and accept ideas that build it up, if you lie in bed at night and think about the qualities that make you special and give the people in your life value—then you become skilled at being self-confident and secure.

Step 3. Practice. You become good at what you practice. A person who is insecure becomes very good at being insecure because he practices all the time.

People who are secure practice being secure. Stop thinking about those old insults; when they come to mind, tell yourself, “No, these are false, and I choose not to believe them anymore.” When you find yourself thinking about all the things that are wrong with you, stop and say “No, these are wrong. Here is a list of things that are good and sexy about me instead.”

Practicing security means continually turning toward the best version of yourself.

“Our beliefs about ourselves are all made up. So it’s a good idea to make up some good ones.”

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.

we’re still left with tens of thousands of potential partners, which is surely enough to keep even the most ambitious person busy.

What if you eliminate geographical limits? We can't all go globe trotting for love.

Understand that your emotions often lie to you. Feelings aren’t fact. It’s possible to feel threatened when there is no threat, for example, or feel powerless when you aren’t.

Try not to validate, suppress, hang on to or deny your emotions. Just feel them, understand what they’re trying to say…and then let them pass. Emotions are like weather; they come and go. Don’t tell yourself you “shouldn’t” feel them, but don’t keep rehearsing things that keep them alive, either. Acknowledge them and let them go.

Be curious Many conflicts arise because we’ve made judgments without full knowledge of the thoughts or feelings behind another person’s actions. If the two (or more) sides in a conflict work from their own assumptions without checking whether these are true, no one feels understood, all become even more hurt and angry, and the conflict escalates. Many conflict-resolution professionals stress the value of curiosity, accompanied by active listening.

Moving away from defensiveness, assumptions and judgments and toward curiosity requires us to step outside ourselves. And that involves recognizing that the world may not be exactly as we think it is—we may have been wrong about our assessment of other people. It can be hard to restrain our emotional responses for long enough to express curiosity and try to understand the feelings of the very person we believe is responsible for our pain. But it can defuse a lot of conflicts before they start.

The difference between expressing and controlling is in your expectations. What do you expect your partner to do? Is your goal to express your feelings or to change your partner’s behavior? Just as the difference between asking and demanding lies in whether you can accept a no, the difference between expressing a feeling and being controlling is in whether it’s okay for your partner to continue her present course of action. Are you demanding, or are you informing and negotiating?

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.

Almost always, jealousy is rooted in some sort of fear: of abandonment, of being replaced, of losing the attention of someone you love, of being alone. Jealousy isn’t really about the person you feel jealous of. It’s about you: your feeling that you might lose something precious. What is it saying? What’s the outcome you’re afraid will happen?

But there’s a different kind of comparison, and that is noticing differences in a way that helps you remain aware of what makes everyone unique. That kind of comparison, which is more about treasuring the things that make people who they are than about ranking people, is awesome, because it reminds us that people are not interchangeable. Remembering that people are not interchangeable can go a long way toward calming the fear of being replaced.

When we talk about setting boundaries, we’re not talking about restrictions on another’s behavior except as their behavior regards access to you.

The difference between “boundaries we set for ourselves” and “rules we place on someone else” might just seem like one of semantics, but it is profound. 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.

One form of sacrificing the self is embedded in many versions of the fairy tale. There are many toxic myths about love, but perhaps the worst is that “love conquers all.” This myth hurts us in all kinds of ways—such as the untold zillions of hours and wasted tears spent by people trying to heal, reform or otherwise change a partner. Especially pernicious is the idea that we’re supposed to “give until it hurts”—in fact, for some of us, that the measure of our worth is our ability to give, right down to the last drop of ourselves. That is wrong. Love isn’t supposed to hurt, and we should not and do not need to sacrifice our selves for good relationships.

This is also when codependency can take root: patterns laid down now can entrench over the years, our personalities can polarize in overfunctioning/underfunctioning dynamics (where one partner “takes care” of the other, removing their agency) or other unhealthy patterns, and the boundaries around our sense of self can blur. If we get stuck in a dysfunctional dynamic and want to reclaim our selves and re-establish a healthy relationship balance, we need to learn how to set new boundaries in old relationships.

Setting a new boundary is a change, and change is rarely comfortable. To your partner, the change can feel non-consensual. The key with boundaries is that you always set them around those things that are yours: your body, your mind, your emotions, your time, intimacy with you. 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.

There are many signs of a harmful relationship dynamic, but the most unmistakable one is fear.

On a practical level, it is not always possible to make another person feel empowered. Indeed, we have noticed on many occasions that it’s the person who feels disempowered who insists on rules, and then sees attempts to negotiate or modify the rules as further evidence of disempowerment. Feelings are not always congruent with reality.

A rule is made to solve a problem or meet a need. 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.

Unfortunately, when you seek to reduce risk by imposing constraints on other people’s behavior, you transfer that risk onto others. By doing this you say, “I want to explore polyamory but I don’t want to take this risk, so I will transfer it onto any new partners, by asking them to be open and vulnerable while also limiting how much they are allowed to advocate for their own needs.” We feel that doing this is a form of treating people as things.

Balancing the need for disclosure with a reasonable expectation of privacy is not always easy. There is no bright line where one stops and the other starts. Rules that mandate either disclosure or secrecy can make sense. For example, communication about sexual boundaries and sexual health is necessary to give informed consent, and a rule that text messages will be kept private protects the intimacy and trust of partners. But it can be easy to go to extremes and create rules that violate someone’s right to privacy or consent. For example, as mentioned in the previous chapter, under “Sudden left turns,” someone once emailed Franklin to say her husband wanted to see every single communication, such as texts and emails, between her and her boyfriend. Most of us would probably agree this is a serious violation of her boyfriend’s privacy; it is difficult for intimacy to grow under the eye of an outside observer. We all need private spaces if we are to reveal to a lover the deepest parts of ourselves, the furthest corners of our hearts, and (especially!) the wounded and vulnerable places within ourselves. Compulsory sharing is always a bit suspect. When others demand that we reveal ourselves, intimacy is undermined rather than strengthened, because something that is demanded cannot be shared freely as a gift. Intimacy is built by mutually consensual sharing, not by demands. At the other extreme, some people insist on knowing absolutely nothing about a partner’s other lovers. Not ...

Whenever rules apply unevenly to different people, there is potential for trouble, resentment and jealousy. (Ironically, double standards are often instituted as a way to prevent jealousy, at least within an established relationship, but far more often they end up creating it.) Rules that codify a double standard are disempowering. Be careful with rules that create double standards—both in setting them and, if you’re starting a new relationship with someone who has them, in agreeing to them.

When we talk here about a hierarchy, we mean a very specific power dynamic: where one relationship is subject to the control of someone outside that relationship. For instance, a hierarchy exists if a third party has the power to veto a relationship or limit the amount of time the people in it can spend together.

we have never seen a hierarchical relationship that worked well for everyone over the long term.

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?

Many hierarchical relationships have a veto provision that can be exercised at any time, even after another relationship has been well established. This kind of veto is popular because it seems to provide a safety switch to shut down a relationship that becomes too intense or threatening. But that sense of safety can carry a very high price. We have both seen many couples who have executed a veto only to break up shortly thereafter. Any time we choose to break our partner’s heart, the damage to our own relationship may be permanent.

While it’s not as damaging to veto a person before a relationship begins, depriving a partner of a source of joy is still a dangerous thing to do. When we see a partner clearly excited about something and take that thing away, we risk undermining our partner’s happiness, and that, too, is likely to damage our relationship.

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.”