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

by Franklin Veaux

At the other extreme, some people insist on knowing absolutely nothing about a partner's other lovers. Not even how many, not even their names. These "Don't ask, don't tell" relationships raise troubling questions about boundaries, consent and denial. If we know nothing about a partner's other activities, we will find it difficult to make informed choices about our relationship—particularly the sexual aspects. "Don't ask, don't tell" relationships put outside lovers in an unenviable position too. Often such relationships include restrictions on calling a partner at home, and they almost always preclude visiting a partner at home, much less meeting the other partner to check on how this setup is sitting with him.

Prioritization of relationships does not necessarily imply hierarchy by our definition. For example, the two of us each have a partner (not each other) with whom we live and own property. Sharing a home means we have financial commitments that lead us to prioritize whom we spend money on. The mortgage must be paid before we spend a lot on dates! And if we start dating a new partner, that new person doesn't immediately get a vote on whether we sell the house. Other examples: You probably don't give the keys to your car to someone on the first date. And most parents, mono or poly, are rightly cautious about whom they introduce their young children to, and when. Exercising your personal judgment in these kinds of decisions, and expecting your partners to make good judgments, is not displaying a hierarchy toward the person affected. Nor is requiring a partner to get your consent for things that concern both of you (such as property or children).

Had Meadow's husband chosen to talk about his feelings rather than using a veto, their relationship might have improved. But it can be hard to say "Wow, seeing you excited like this makes me feel insecure. Let's talk about what that means, and how we can work together to strengthen and support our relationship until what we have brings you this much joy."

Solid boundary-setting is another important tool in managing veto-free relationships (see chapter 9). Your partner may choose a partner you don't particularly like to be around. She may choose a partner who encourages her to make choices that hurt you. At these times, you need to be able to set clear guidelines about what you will and won't accept within your own relationship. You do not need to spend time with someone you don't like. If you feel uncomfortable or unsafe with a certain person in your home or your bed (or around your children), you have a right to (and should) set limits about who you will permit in your space.

your partner also has the right to choose a different living arrangement if your boundaries become unworkable for her.

(if highly sleep deprived)

when I see people doing things I'd rather they didn't do, I try to find out why they're doing it and what might help take care of the need.

We prefer to avoid the quagmire of evolutionary psychology; our intent with this example isn't to talk about how our feelings about fairness may be rooted deep in our brains. Instead, we want to talk about how we decide what are "cucumbers" and what are "grapes" in our relationships. By way of example, think of Ali, Tatiana and Alexis, three people whom we've fictionalized a bit only because theirs is such a common pattern in polyamory that it's more of an archetype. (In fact, both of us are in positions similar to Ali's.) 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 together for a long weekend at a bed-and-breakfast. Most people in Tatiana's position would feel like she's getting all the cucumbers and Alexis is getting all the grapes. The things Ali and Alexis do are fun, right? They're dates—something long-established couples can have a tendency to forget about, or not have time for. And it is very important for live-in couple...

Of course, as the pivot, you can't (and shouldn't) stop your partners from meeting, even if you don't feel ready. Trying to dissuade your partners from having contact raises an instant red flag among poly people that something dishonest may be going on, even if it isn't, and lays the groundwork for mistrust. If your partners want to meet, let them. But there's another important point of etiquette to bear in mind. When two monogamous folks are dating, and their relationship grows serious, at some point it gets to be meet-the-family time. Bringing someone home to meet the parents (or whoever else is in your family unit) is typically taken as a statement: "This person is important to me. I am considering making this person part of my family." Don't underestimate the importance of a little ritual like this in introducing new partners to the rest of your network. Sure, your partners are grown-ups who are capable of calling up another grown-up for a coffee date. But it can feel a little awkward, a little intrusive—and often, a little humiliating—for Glen to call up Juan and say, "Hey, I know Petra hasn't introduced us yet, but I've been seeing her for awhile now, and I think it's time for you and me to meet." That puts Glen in the position of saying to one of the most important people in Petra's life that Petra is important to Glen…but maybe Glen is not quite as important to Petra, or she would have set this up herself. To meet someone who may have an important influence on your...

wibbles (a poly term for minor jealous twinges),

There's danger lurking here, though. You can all too easily get so caught up in a jealous partner's pain that you agree to accommodations that hurt your other partner. Damaging one relationship to try to fix another usually ends up creating two broken relationships. Another danger: If the accommodations by you and your others make the jealous partner too comfortable, while discomfiting everyone else, he may have little motivation to work through his jealousy. Accommodations rarely solve jealousy; its solution comes almost always from within. Remember, you are your partners' advocates. This doesn't go just one way. You have a right, and a responsibility, to advocate for all your relationships. It's not okay to damage one relationship or hurt one person to try to help another.

If you give in to the demand and never spend the night with another lover, he may never let go of that fear. Not only will he never have the opportunity to see that you'll come back, you've shown him that he can control your behavior as long as he holds onto that fear.

In our experience, working through jealousy normally takes weeks or months, especially if it's a partner's first experience sharing. If the process is taking years, though, something's stuck.

Also, while it might not necessarily be obvious, once you've had this conversation, your relationship has changed. Even if you ultimately decide not to pursue polyamory, just the fact that you've expressed interest means a part of your relationship is now different. Simply having the question raised is, for some people, a difficult thing to accept.

With polyamory, as soon as another person is involved in the relationship, that person's heart is on the line too. That person's feelings matter. Polyamory isn't something you can try on like a new set of clothes. If you expect to be able to dump everyone else and go back to monogamy, you're saying you have the right to break someone else's heart, or to demand that your partner break someone's heart. You are treating people as things.

Generally speaking, if you're doing something you can't tell your partner about, you're probably cheating.

This idea seems easier to grasp for old relationships than for new ones. When Franklin was married to Celeste, he started a relationship with Elaine, who also self-identified as monogamous.* She did not feel threatened by Franklin's two existing partners. Because they predated his relationship with her, it seemed obvious that their existence wasn't a reflection on her worth. However, a year later, when someone else expressed an interest in Franklin, Elaine became very upset and asked, "Why am I not enough? What am I lacking that makes you need to start dating someone else?" When a monogamous person begins dating a polyamorous person, existing relationships are part of the landscape. Simply being comfortable with existing relationships is not necessarily a good indicator of how much success a monogamous person will have in a mono/poly relationship. Be ready to talk about that.

Two keys to having low-stress conversations about sex are being direct and asking questions. Listen and ask questions about how your partners define sex. Coded language and euphemisms only muddy things and create embarrassment. Here are some questions to open the discussion. Do you consider kissing sex? How about making out? Erotic massage? Clothed or unclothed fondling? Oral sex? Anal sex? Mutual masturbation? Same-room masturbation? Text or cybersex? Sharing sexual fantasies? Phone sex? What kinds of activities do you want to know about? At what point do you consider someone a sexual partner? If you ask about a prospective partner's sexual past, do you and she have similar ideas about what makes someone a lover?

the approach both of us take is that any of our partners are free to have whatever kind of sex they want with whomever they want, provided they are honest about it. We then take charge of our own precautions. We communicate our sexual health boundaries, and our partners who value being able to have unprotected sex with us respect those boundaries. Should a partner choose not to, then we may choose to use barriers with that partner. This arrangement protects the right of all the people involved to make choices about their own bodies and level of risk, and to take responsibility for their own protection.

Conversations about safer sex usually revolve around mitigating the risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and it's surprising how many polyamorous people don't talk about pregnancy. It is a fact of nature often unacknowledged that when fertile heterosexual people have PIV sex, pregnancy sometimes results. Even, occasionally, when using contraception. It pays to talk about pregnancy risks and contingencies. What happens if someone accidentally becomes pregnant? By whom? Consider each possible combination. What are your expectations and contingencies concerning pregnancy and child-rearing?

The loss of excitement in the familiar scares poly newbies and veterans alike. "What if my partner finds someone who she's hotter for than boring old me? How can I compete with all the frantic sex of a new relationship?" The answer is, you probably can't. This is normal, and it's not about you. So stop worrying. The newness of the new person will wear off too.

to assume that if someone likes one person she should be sexually available to that person's partner comes across as very, very creepy. Which is part of why couples who take this approach find it so difficult to find partners.

When we consider how often sexual infidelity occurs within supposedly monogamous relationships, the picture becomes even murkier. An article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine reveals that the overall risk of STI infection is higher in monogamous relationships involving cheating than in openly non-monogamous relationships. The report also found that openly non-monogamous people are more likely to talk about sexual boundaries and sexual health, more likely to use barriers with partners, and more likely to have frequent STI screening than the population as a whole. As a result, the STI risk in communities of openly non-monogamous people is significantly lower than intuition might suggest (and the risk in monogamous relationships is likely higher). The information in this book is as accurate as we can make it. However, this is an area where new research is being done all the time. The information you'll find here is current as of spring 2014, but we encourage you to do your own research and keep up with new findings. Our numerous sources are listed in the notes for this chapter.

Asking for testing doesn't mean you don't trust your partner; it means you recognize that microbes don't care about human values of right and wrong or trust and distrust.

Poly people like to say that one of the advantages of polyamory is we don't have to give up an existing relationship when someone new comes along. That's true, but…sometimes we meet a new person who highlights the flaws in an existing relationship and teaches us that there's truly a better way to live. Or maybe your existing relationship was just fine, but the new partner may show you new things, make you happier, help you realize you can have something you never thought possible, help you see the world in a different light. They may lead you to want more, or they may help you to be more. After that you can't quite go home again. Sometimes a bar-raiser can change what we want from all our relationships, or change what we look for in a partner. Sometimes they end up making our other relationships better—though often not until after a fair amount of strife. Sometimes we may decide that other relationships should end. Bar-raisers show us that things we had taken for granted aren't necessarily true. In doing that, they show us paths to happiness we didn't know existed. Suddenly, things we had always accepted don't look so acceptable anymore.

When your partner lands in a relationship that's at a whole new level of awesome, it can be difficult not to internalize feelings of shame, inadequacy or failure. But doing that can make the problem worse, because when we feel ashamed or inadequate, we're more likely to lash out or be controlling. Feelings of inadequacy create a climate hostile to compassion and understanding.

therapy usually requires emotional distance—the exact opposite of what we need to nurture romantic relationships.

You will change. Your partner will change. Your relationship will change. This is a fact, something we must accept gracefully. If you fear change, if you cling too tightly to what your relationship is now and insist that this is the way it must always be, you risk breaking it. Yes, sometimes relationships change in ways we do not want, and people grow in ways that take them apart rather than bring them together. That's the risk you accept when you get involved in this messy, complicated business of romantic relationships.

"Whatever we believed or wanted a few years ago, do the people we are now belong in a relationship?"

We act as though the ones we love should not be allowed to grow and change or, if they do, it means they love us less.

We have both had relationships end. Almost everyone does. Neither of us would call these relationships "failures," because they contributed to making us who we are today. We have taken things from those relationships—joy, personal growth, learning, love, laughter—that have enriched our lives. We are better for having had them.

Other members of the network can suffer too when the two partners involved in the breakup are not clear with each other, or with their other partners, about what is happening. At the very least, metamour relationships can become awkward if you don't know whether you're really relating to a metamour. And as counterintuitive as it may seem, many people need to grieve their partners' lost relationships too. Letting a relationship drift off into the ether without closure can make this process much harder. Clear conversations about relationship transitions can be important for everyone affected.

If there's a happy note on which to end this chapter, maybe it's this. The poly talk of "transitioning" a relationship rather than just "breaking up" is often a correct description, not a euphemism. In monogamous culture, the idea of ending a romance and becoming "just friends" is often treated as a joke. In the poly world, it's often entirely real. It's common for poly folks to be friends with their exes pretty much for life. But resuming contact may take a while; breakups are painful and raw, and a cooling-off period of no contact is often advisable, possibly for months or years. But time mellows all things, and poly exes often eventually find that they can build a lasting friendship.

It's normal to experience compersion, and it's awesome if you do, but it's also normal never to experience it. Not experiencing it doesn't mean you're broken, or that you can't still benefit from having metamours in your life.

That's a good ideal to hope for and even work for, but there can be a trap: We've also seen a craving for that ideal badly fuck up what could have otherwise been some pretty decent situations. If you begin to prize that ideal over the actual needs and personalities of the people involved, you are violating our ethical axiom 1: the people in the relationship are more important than the relationship.

In one way, metamours are like the family you grew up in: They are people in your life whom you did not choose. And in that sense, it often is useful to think of polycules as being like real families. Not everyone may like each other, but even at worst, you need to be able to sit down to dinner together, smile and make polite conversation at least a couple of times a year.

When we try to use a relationship with a new partner as a balm to soothe our own fear or jealousy, we are, in effect, using them. Treating a relationship as a tool for dealing with our own fears is a covert way of treating people as things. Expecting metamours always to enjoy each other's company—or to screen potential partners based on how well they fit into an existing network—can also create a pocket veto,

No matter how awesome your partner is, how happy he makes you or how head over heels you are, eventually he will do something you don't like. If it's something to do with another of his relationships—investing time in another partner, perhaps, when you would like him to be investing it in you—you can be sorely

tempted to misdirect blame onto the other partner.

"Tread very carefully here."

Do I have to know my metamours? Do I expect to have close relationships with them?

If someone isn't okay with polyamory, you want to know right away so you don't waste each other's time. Putting off the conversation too long will make an incompatible partner feel like you pulled a bait and switch; you deprived him of the chance to give informed consent to being on a date with you at all. Our policy is unapologetic openness: If one of us is on a first date with someone, that person is already well aware we are polyamorous.

You can skip right over vast quantities of relationship problems by exercising good partner selection skills at the outset—and yes, partner selection is a skill. Part of it is recognizing the choices we make, and part of recognizing our choices is acknowledging that while we may not always have control over our feelings, we have control over whom we are in relationships with. Love, of and by itself, is not enough to guarantee a good relationship. Good relationships grow by careful tending, but they start with good selection.

When selecting a partner, there's a strange state of limbo you can end up in: a person doesn't display any particular red flags or deal-breakers, but you also don't feel really enthusiastic about her, either. If we make choices based on whether or not someone hits any of our deal-breakers, we might plow ahead with a relationship without considering whether or not that person has the qualities we want in a partner.

If the idea of dating someone doesn't prompt an enthusiastic "Fuck yes!" then the answer is no.

At minimum, you at least want to feel like your kids are safe around your partners.

the right time to introduce a new partner to a child will probably need to be decided by all the child's parents.

This doesn't necessarily mean, however, that all parents need to have veto over new relationships. It might mean that certain partners don't meet the children or come to the home. That will, of course, restrict a relationship in many ways, but choices about how those restrictions will then play out can be left to the people in the relationship.

Am I being asked to give up anything to be in this relationship? If so, do I feel that what I will get in return is worth the price?

Being polyamorous is still not as well understood as, for example, being gay or bisexual. So it's likely that the people you come out to will have a lot of questions about what it means. It helps to have a short spiel about what polyamory is. You can explain the basics: It's a form of romantic relationship where you have more than one romantic partner at the same time with everybody's knowledge and consent. It's not a form of cheating, sanctioned or otherwise. The focus of polyamory is different from the focus in swinging, which tends to be more concerned with recreational sex rather than romantic relationships. It's not the same as polygamy, which is the practice of having multiple spouses. It's not about collecting a harem, as polyamory tends to give all the people involved freedom to be involved in more than one relationship at once. It doesn't mean that your existing relationship, if you have one, is in trouble.