More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (27 page)

The entire purpose of many relationship rules is risk avoidance. If we already have a relationship when we start exploring polyamory, it's natural to say "I would like to protect the relationship I already have, so I want to explore polyamory without risk." If we come to poly when we're single, it's natural to say "I want to protect my heart, so when I have a partner, I will ask her not to do anything that makes me feel threatened."

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.

We know we're expecting a great deal of courage by suggesting that you start exploring polyamory without relying on rules to feel safe. It does seem that the secret to healthy, dynamic relationships keeps coming back to courage. Forget training wheels. Forget trying to figure out the right rules that will keep you safe forever; there is no safe forever. Instead, go into the world seeking to treat others with compassion whenever you touch them. Try to leave people better than when you found them. Communicate your needs. Understand and advocate for your boundaries. And look for other people who will do the same. Trust them when they say they love you; where communication and compassion exist, you don't need rules to keep you safe. We don't learn how to be compassionate by disenfranchising other people; we learn how to be compassionate by practicing compassion.

LIMITED-DURATION RULES

Sometimes a rule can be useful, even necessary. When you're up to your ass in alligators, sometimes you just need the alligators off your ass for a while.

We recognize that the work it takes to become secure and confident is
hard
. In some situations, rules that are specific, narrow in scope and, most importantly, limited in duration can be valuable tools for problem-solving. If you've found that some thing your partners are doing just absolutely drives you crazy, asking them to temporarily stop doing it can give you the emotional space to process whatever's underneath.

EVE'S STORY
When I first started dating Ray, Peter and I had extremely strict boundaries around sexual health, which included barriers for giving and receiving oral sex. After a couple of months, and after Ray and I had exchanged STI test results, I wanted to stop using barriers for oral sex, but Peter didn't feel safe about it. I did my research and was able to give Peter what I believed were reliable sources showing how low the risk was that I would catch anything from Ray during those activities, but Peter was still uncomfortable.

He confessed that his discomfort was with the emotional implications of me and Ray having unprotected oral sex. I agreed to continue using barriers with Ray, as long as Peter agreed to work on his emotional blockage around the issue. We agreed to revisit the agreement in two weeks.

Two weeks later, we sat down again to talk about it. Peter said he had worked through his discomfort with me having that kind of sex with Ray, and our relationship proceeded.

Implementing time-limited rules can be helpful in specific situations, but there's also a risk in doing so: when we're comfortable, we tend to want to stay there. That's why we recommend a
sunset clause in any rule: a way to say "After three weeks (or some other period of time), we will revisit this issue." And it goes on the calendar. How much time? That depends on the circumstances and the people, but broadly, for most people a week is too short and a year is too long.

A sunset clause doesn't mean you're under a deadline to fix the emotional issue. It's merely a promise to re-examine and renegotiate. You're asking your partners to trust that you are willing to work on whatever the underlying problem is. You're asking your partners to trust that you won't simply keep extending the rule every three weeks into infinity. Your partners are asking
you
to trust that they genuinely want to help support you in fixing the issue, that they are willing to give you space while you're working on it.

DO THE RULES SERVE THE PEOPLE?

It's incredibly easy to fall into prioritizing the rules of a relationship over the happiness of the people involved. We believe it's important to remember the ethical axiom:
The people in the relationship are more important than the relationship.
Sacrificing the happiness of human beings in the service of rules, rather than making rules that serve the needs of the people, takes us further away from joyful, fulfilling lives, not closer to them.

FRANKLIN'S STORY
Celeste and I negotiated rules that placed tight restrictions on me and my partners. Even when I became aware that these restrictions were not benefiting our relationships, I held on to the idea that I should honor my commitments above all else, even at the expense of my happiness. Only years later did I start to realize how much these restrictions were hurting not just me, but also my other partners.

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.

When my relationship with Celeste ended, we both became happier. We found relationships that were more aligned with what we wanted. 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.

RE-EVALUATING AGREEMENTS

Anyone should be able to reopen discussions about an agreement at any time. It helps to think of agreements as mutable, organic things that will be revisited and modified as people grow and relationships change. When we see these structures as static, they can make relationships less rather than more stable, because they will fail to adapt to change…sometimes spectacularly.

A good relationship is not something you
have
, it's something you
do
. Over and over, the best, happiest relationships we have seen and been involved in are those whose members are constantly willing to renegotiate the groundwork beneath them. In fact, some people set periodic dates in their calendar when they will review their relationship agreements with each other to make sure they're still working and see if anything needs to change.

Both of us have experience with renegotiating our own long-term relationships. Eve tells three stories in this book (
here
,
here
and
here
) about renegotiating her relationship with her husband, Peter. Franklin describes doing so with Amber
here
. These are lifelong partnerships that have endured because they were able to adapt to the changing circumstances around them and the changing people within them.

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?"

CREEPING CONCESSIONS

Flexibility and willingness to renegotiate agreements are vital parts of a growing, thriving polyamorous relationship. There's a potential danger lurking in this flexibility, though, which we call "creeping concessions."

For example, neither one of us will ever enter a relationship with someone who has or wants a veto arrangement. That's a boundary. But sometimes people can end up in relationships that cross boundaries without their even noticing it. Perhaps you have a partner who's having difficulty and asks you to give up something while he works through his issue. You naturally want to support your partners, so you agree. Later that person may say, "Well, this still isn't working. Dreadfully sorry, but can you give up a little bit more? I'm really struggling with this."

Because our partner's happiness is important to you, you say yes. And perhaps time goes by and your partner says, "Look, um, I'm terribly sorry to bring this up, but I'm still having issues here. Can you perhaps find it in your heart to make this other small concession over here, just this one little thing that will really help me?" Bit by bit, inch by inch, you may find yourself negotiating away things that are important. If each individual step is small enough, you might give up a boundary without even seeing it.

At times we may be aware that we're conceding things we once thought inviolate, but we do it anyway because we've already invested so much. Economists have a name for this: the sunk cost fallacy. A "sunk cost" is an investment of time, energy, attention or something else that can't be recovered. If you spend a year in a relationship that isn't a good fit for you, you can't go back and get that year back again. The "fallacy" part involves making decisions for the future based on that past investment, rather than on whether the decisions are likely to benefit you in the future. Say, for example, you've bought tickets to a movie, and you realize early into the movie that you're not going to enjoy it. You've already bought the tickets; you can't get your money back. Do you stay and watch the movie and have a miserable time, or do you walk out and browse the bookstore, which is much more enjoyable? It's hard to walk away from the movie, although the cost of the tickets is gone either way.

When you're deciding whether to agree to a compromise or concession that gives you a sick feeling, knowing that the alternative might be to end the relationship, you might think,
I've invested a year of my life in this relationship. I can't let it go!
rather than
This relationship is not working, and if I make this concession, it's going to work even less. It is better to choose whether to agree based on my future happiness, not on the year I've already spent.

AGREEMENTS ABOUT PRIVACY AND DISCLOSURE

We've talked a lot about how open, honest communication is, in our experience, absolutely essential to polyamory. However, we all have the right to set boundaries around access to our bodies and our emotions. One of those boundaries concerns privacy. The right to privacy is often considered a basic human right.

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.