More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (36 page)

In empowered relationships, when a co-parent is about to make a choice that another parent doesn't feel is best for the family, she can raise her concerns. The adults can talk about the concerns and make their choices with those concerns in mind. If one person in the partnership begins consistently making choices that aren't best for the family, then it may be time to re-evaluate that partnership—just as happens in monogamous relationships. And just as happens in monogamous relationships, sometimes the best thing for everyone may be for the parental dyad to share parenting some other way—such as living apart, or in a live-in, platonic co-parenting relationship (an arrangement we've seen often among poly people).

If you don't like how someone is (or isn't) honoring their commitments to you, or you don't feel they can be trusted to honor their commitments and you can't talk it through with them, then they may not be a good choice as a co-parent. If an adult is willing to abandon her commitments, then hierarchy isn't going to force her to keep them!

So what happens if the original parental dyad does dissolve? Surely this scenario must be prevented at all costs if there are kids involved—right?

Relationships end. In a family with children, the end of a relationship will be sad and stressful for everyone. But the same thing happens in monogamous families, and there are ways to minimize the stress on the children. Often, in fact, a new relationship created with a more recent partner is more beneficial for a child than its parents' relationship was, if the parents' relationship was dysfunctional. We've seen this with monogamous blended families as well as poly families. Game changers, discussed in the next chapter, happen to everyone, not just to poly people. Sometimes children are affected.

CLARA'S STORY
Clara and Ramon's relationship was a game changer for both of them. Ramon raised the bar for her in terms of what she wanted out of relationships, and in the end, her relationship with Elijah did not survive—nor did Ramon's with Caitlin. Clara and Ramon are now separated from their spouses and living with each other.

It's always hard for kids when parents separate, but all four parents have worked hard to minimize the effects of the separation on their children. Clara and her children still live in the same home as before, and their schedules have remained the same. Elijah comes to visit them two nights a week, and they spend the night with him every Saturday. This is less than he used to see them, and the elder child has experienced some grief at seeing her father less often.

Ramon and Caitlin's children live with Caitlin and visit Ramon several times a week, including overnights. They have had a rougher time with their parents' separation than have Clara and Elijah's children, because they are somewhat older, with a better grasp of the situation, and have overheard conversations that have exposed them to some of Caitlin's emotional distress. Both Clara and Ramon have experienced serious parental shaming from friends and family.

Despite the struggles, Clara feels clear that she made the right decision. She believes that had she stayed with Elijah, her unhappiness would have undoubtedly affected her children.

Many of us still carry an idea, preserved from the soulmate fairy tale, that a parental dyad is critical, often above all other concerns, for a child's well-being—even more important than family happiness or functionality. Many imagine that keeping someone in an unhappy relationship "for the sake of the children" is better than allowing two parents to live apart. We learned that from monogamous culture, after all. Among some poly people, this extends to a belief that is it dangerous to allow each adult to make her own choices in a way she needs while also allowing her to honor her relationships and commitments as best she can.

For a child, having happy, fulfilled parents who are committed to that child (in whatever configuration those parents come, and even if that configuration changes), and who are living lives that fulfill them, is far superior to having two parents who are "together" dysfunctionally only because rules and a hierarchy keep them in line. And this situation is certainly better than having people in the household who are treated as secondary to other people. If children observe such behavior in their families, they will take those ideas out into the world and treat other people the same way.

An empowered approach to polyamorous parenting might include agreements that look like this:

I have chosen to parent with you because you share my values and hopes, and I trust you to honor your commitments to me and to make decisions in your relationships that are in the best interest of our family. If your decisions do not support us, I will tell you how and why, and I trust you to work with me—and your other partners, if necessary—to make it right. If you begin behaving in a way that is harmful to me, our relationship or our child, and you don't rectify it, we will need to renegotiate the terms of our relationship and our co-parenting arrangement.

It is absolutely true that guidelines and structure benefit children. They are naturally conservative creatures, thriving on order, predictability and outside direction, and falling apart when given freedom they can't yet handle. Parents can create structure and prioritize their children without making one adult partner subject to restrictions created by another partner. Guidelines and structure can be achieved without hierarchy, because adults can be trusted to build a family out of goodwill, free choice, and their love for their partner and their child.

TRUST AND COURAGE

In chapter 8 you met Mila, whose story we return to in chapter 18. Mila, new to poly and planning to have a child with her partner, found the idea of hierarchy seductive, but deliberately turned away from it because of her own values and her concerns for her partner and metamours. She worked through her fears and built a strong relationship with her partner, Morgan, based on trust—in Morgan's love and integrity, and in her own ability to handle what came her way.

Empowered relationships rely on trust. Trust your partner to want to cherish and support you. Trust that if you make your needs known, your partner will want to meet your needs. This requires courage. Building relationships on a shared understanding of needs means having the courage to stand in the face of a negative emotion and ask, "What is this feeling telling me? Is there a need that is not being met? Is there something I can do to enlist my partner as my ally in dealing with this?"

If you're the person whose partner is experiencing emotional hardship, it can be tempting to read this chapter as a way of saying "You have the responsibility to deal with your own emotions, so I don't want you putting restrictions on me." That is partly true, in the sense that you can't solve someone else's problem for them, and if your partner places restrictions on your behavior, those restrictions rarely resolve the underlying issue.

But it's a mistake to put what Douglas Adams calls a Somebody Else's Problem field around a partner's distress. If you care, you will help. Behaving with compassion means working
together
to overcome relationship issues. That's how relationships become strong and healthy.

Another valuable technique in the toolkit of strategies for happy, trusting relationships is to let go of attachment to the
form
that a partner's behavior must take. For example, suppose you feel you aren't getting enough time with your partner. One way to address this is to insist, for example, that he be home by nine o'clock. This may or may not succeed. In one instance Franklin has seen, it did not work even though the person did start coming home by nine, because he would then spend the rest of the evening talking or texting with the person he had just left. The partner who made the request had assumed that being home at nine meant paying attention to her needs, but that wasn't what she actually asked for. What did work was junking the nine o'clock rule in favor of a direct statement: "I need some of your undivided attention every day."

When Franklin has a need, he tells his partners: "These are the things I need in order to feel loved and cherished. These are the things that make me feel special in your eyes." He says these things without expectation or compulsion. He says them without attachment to the way they have to happen. For example, he might say something like "I feel loved and cherished when you spend time with me and reassure me whenever I feel threatened." And then he lets his partners do those things.

Life is occasionally chaotic and unpredictable, from flat tires to late-night emergency-room visits. Sometimes, even when we make a good-faith effort to meet our partners' needs, life gets in the way. Flexibility is important. Resiliency in the face of adversity is a powerful tool for building happy relationships.

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF

Empowerment in poly relationships and structures can be difficult to define, but its presence or absence is usually clearly felt. The following are some questions that can help you and your partners think about the level of empowerment in your relationships:

• How do I encourage decision-making participation by all my partners? In what ways do I show my partners they are empowered?
  
• If I feel a desire to restrict relationships between my partners and their partners, what underlying need am I trying to meet?
  
• What are my existing commitments? How can I meet them while still making room for new relationships?
  
• What evidence do I have that my partners love and care for me?
  
• Are there specific things I can ask my partners to do for me to help me feel loved and cared for?
  
• In what ways am I empowered in my relationships? What things help me to feel empowered?
  
• Can I renegotiate the agreements in my relationships? Can my partners?
  

14

PRACTICAL POLY AGREEMENTS

You cannot shake hands

with a clenched fist.

INDIRA
GANDHI

Most relationships require some bare minimum of structure. Without it, it's difficult to navigate commitments and responsibilities. In the last few chapters, we talked about the distinctions between rules, boundaries and agreements, and we made a case for why we think rules-based structures can create problems in poly relationships. Preparing the ground for relationships to flourish means thinking carefully about not just how to meet your needs, but how to meet the needs of all the people involved. In this chapter, we discuss practical strategies for approaching relationship agreements with this careful analysis as your foundation. It starts with thinking about why people do what they do.

FRANKLIN'S STORY
Many years ago I ran a small consulting business. I had an office in downtown Tampa, Florida. Every day on the way to the office, I drove past a building where people applied for passports. The application office was very small, with room for perhaps five people to sit inside. On most days I would see at least twenty people outside, waiting in line to get in.

Just outside the building was a wall about three feet high. The people in line often sat on the wall. It's easy to understand why. They might have more than an hour's wait in the hot Florida sun.

Whoever managed the passport office was offended by people sitting on the wall. I would see sheets of paper that read "Do Not Sit On Wall" taped to the wall. The signs were routinely ignored. The workers in the passport office didn't want people sitting on the wall, but they didn't think about
why
people sat on the wall. When you're waiting in a hot concrete courtyard for an hour, you're going to get tired and want to sit down. The rule was guaranteed to fail.

A more effective way to prevent people from sitting on the wall, if that was really a problem, would have been to address the need rather than the action—say, by installing benches.

The memory of that office and its courtyard has stuck with me. In my own relationships, 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. I try to put benches in the courtyard, rather than putting up signs telling them not to sit on the wall.