More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (46 page)

• When my partners have competing desires, how well do I express what I need? Do I make sure my own desires aren't lost in the shuffle?
  
• Do I take responsibility for my choices, or do I expect my partners to make them for me?
  
• What does "fairness" mean to me? How does this affect the way I make choices and interact with my partners?
  
• What do I value most in each of my relationships?
  
• Do I prefer to spend time with my partners separately or together? How do they feel about that? Do I respect their other time commitments?
  
• What boundaries do I set for myself in relation to each of my partners?
  
• What accommodations do I make if one of my partners experiences jealousy?
  
• Do my accommodations improve my relationships or create other problems?
  
• Do I support my partners' relationships with one another in ways that respect their agency and right to choose their level of intimacy?
  
• How can I help support a partner who is feeling jealous or passed over?
  
• How do I handle my own feelings of jealousy?
  

17

OPENING FROM A COUPLE

If you love someone, set them free. If they fly away, they were never yours to begin with. If they come back, be grateful and sweet and happy they are near you, and recognize that they can fly away any time, so just don't be an asshole, okay?

EDWARD
MARTIN
III

Many people come to polyamory from an established monogamous couple. Monogamy is the default for most relationships, and even people for whom polyamory is the best fit often discover it only after starting monogamous relationships. But the journey from monogamy to polyamory has many potential pitfalls. We aren't taught how to navigate multiple relationships, and if we try too hard to protect an existing relationship from monogamy, we can end up doing damage to others close to us. This is a journey Eve and her husband Peter made, and many couples will likely find similarities in their travels.

EVE'S STORY
After Peter and I had been together monogamously for four years, we separated. We were both unhappy in the relationship, but we also cared deeply for each other. After sleeping apart for several months, we began to reconcile. The separation gave us a chance to start fresh in many ways, and to renegotiate the terms of our relationship into something that worked better for both of us.

One of the things we agreed on almost right away was that we did not want monogamy. I can't even remember which of us mentioned it first. I do remember that I read him the
swinging chapter
from Dan Savage's book
Skipping Towards Gomorrah
(which, ironically, we had borrowed from my mother), and that served as a jumping-off point for the discussion. Initially, swinging seemed appealing: a safe, controlled, relatively uncomplicated way to have sexual variety without threatening our own relationship. We checked out some swinging groups nearby, went to a swinging party (and watched but didn't play), and set up profiles on sites such as AdultFriendFinder.com. But that world left us feeling a little flat.

About a year later, I had a late-night, drunken flirtation with a very old and dear friend, which led to lots of processing between me and Peter about the possibility of permitting scary things like emotion and intimacy with people other than each other. I realized that I have a hard time forming sexual connections with people I have no emotional connection with, so an open relationship that allowed only casual sex was not, for me, particularly open. Peter—eventually—agreed we could be open to more intimate connections. It was, shall we say, a slippery slope from there to out-and-out polyamory.

For years we read everything we could (including Franklin's website). I started following and interacting with people on various poly blogs. We each went on a few dates. We left the small town we were living in and moved to a large city, where we began attending the local poly group. Finally, fully four years after reading that Dan Savage book, one of us (me) finally started up a new relationship with someone else, my now ex-boyfriend Ray.

Four years went by between our agreeing to open up and actually doing it, but during those four years we weren't static: we were connecting with poly people and reading and preparing. Even then, though, I can't say we were really ready. The reality reminded me a bit of going to study in India when I was twenty: no amount of planning could have truly prepared me for setting foot on the ground in that country. I started a relationship with Ray, and the months that followed were filled with rapid change and many hours of conversation. My relationship with Peter almost didn't survive the transition. All the preparation helped, though. Those early dates had provided opportunities to handle small pangs of jealousy. We had at least a theoretical basis for structuring our relationships and dealing with issues. And perhaps most importantly, we had a poly support system we could turn to with our struggles, whose first response wouldn't be to blame our problems on the fact that we were poly.

People who want to transition their relationship from monogamous to polyamorous tend to ask a lot of questions like: How can I protect the relationship I've already built? How can I ensure that my existing obligations will continue to be met? What do I do if someone gets jealous? What happens if a new relationship threatens the existing one? What if my partner meets someone she loves more? How can I still feel special? How can I control what other people do? (The answer to that one is easy: you can't.) How do I find poly people to date? How do I tell my partner I want this?

The last question needs to be dealt with first, so that's where we'll start. (The other questions are what much of the rest of this book is about.)

BRINGING IT UP

There is no "right" time or "right" way to bring up the idea of polyamory with your partner. You're talking about negotiating a change in the most basic structures of your relationship. This is not likely to be a conversation that happens in five minutes while you're chopping vegetables. "Hi there, I want to totally change the foundation of our relationship, whaddya think? Can you pass the salt?" is probably not how this conversation will go. The idea will probably take a while to sink in. It may be weeks or months—or longer!—before you're finished talking about it. Likely both of you will need some time to come to terms with this degree of change.

Start simply. Ask your partner, "I've been hearing about polyamory. What do you think of it?" And then,
listen to the answer.
This is a dialogue, and dialogues are two-way; half of communication is
listening.
If you go into the conversation with the goal of persuading your partner to do what you want, he may end up feeling pressured or browbeaten. Read about it. Do some research. If there's an organized poly group in your area, consider talking to the people in it; many of them will have come from the same place you're coming from. You don't have to be polyamorous to go to a poly discussion group! Read books about polyamory, together if you can.

Talk to your partner about how you came to this idea. More importantly, talk about
why.
Talk about what interests you and what you find appealing about it. Be direct and honest, but also compassionate. If your partner has fears, listen to them. Talk about your own fears. And then listen some more. If a poly relationship is to be healthy and successful, it has to work for everyone. That means your partner can't just do it for your sake; it has to work for her too. Going into polyamory when it isn't a good fit for
you,
just because your partner wants it, means there's tension baked in from the start, and in our experience that inevitably causes problems down the road.

Unfortunately, usually the innocent new partners bear the brunt of these problems. One member of a couple can very easily sabotage new relationships in incredibly subtle ways (even unconsciously) if he or she is only reluctantly poly. This problem is amplified if you're going along with a partner's desire to be poly because you feel you couldn't stand to be alone or lose your partner. That creates a circumstance where you feel you have no choice but to agree, and people who don't have a choice cannot give meaningful consent.

When you start discussing the idea of polyamory, remember there's a very real chance your partner may
never
be on board with a non-monogamous relationship. Some people are happiest in monogamy, and that's okay. If your partner is monogamous, that isn't a rejection of you, and it doesn't mean your partner is unevolved or unenlightened. It may, however, mean you have to make a choice: how important is polyamory to you? Can you be happy if your partner wants you to remain monogamous for life? If not, you may be faced with ending the relationship.

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.

If your partner accepts the idea of polyamory, it's normal to sit down and try to negotiate agreements about how you will approach it. Be careful! Think about what effects any agreements you make will have on future people who get involved with you. Think about what assumptions your agreements are based on. It can be easy to forget that each of us has the right to build a life suited to our needs. Polyamory isn't a privilege your partner extends to you. If you start from the premise that you don't actually have any right to be polyamorous, that your partner is doing you a favor by permitting you to "get away with" having other lovers, you can end up believing that you should accept whatever conditions your partner may impose, even if they mean anyone you start a relationship with will be treated badly.

GIVING IT A TRY

Moving from monogamy to polyamory demands new skills and new ways of thinking about relationships. So many couples try to ease into it gradually, often making many rules that tightly constrain new relationships or try to limit their speed. We talk a great deal in the next few chapters about using structures and limits to try to manage fear and insecurity. But before we do, we'd like to address a common trap.

If you're in a monogamous relationship and your partner suggests polyamory, or if you're single and considering dating someone who's poly, it's tempting to think,
Okay, sure, I can give this a go. If it doesn't work, we can go back to being exclusive.
That makes sense at first blush, but consider what would happen if you had no children and your partner said, "Honey, I'd like to have kids." Would you say, "Sure, we can try it, but if I don't like how it works out, let's go back to being childless"?

What venturing into polyamory and having a child have in common is this: they involve other people. People who weren't part of your discussion. When we have a child, we know the decision can't be undone; the needs of the child will always matter, and we must take them into account. 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.

You'll often hear poly people talking about how scary it is to open an existing relationship. You don't hear as much from people who are starting a relationship with a member of an established couple, even though it's just as scary. Couples are able to make all kinds of rules and structures to transfer their risk onto new partners, without recognizing that a person starting a relationship with one or both of them is already assuming a lot of risk. When we fall in love, we are all vulnerable; we all put our hearts in other people's hands, knowing they might be broken. Too often, the vulnerability and fear within an existing couple is given the highest priority, with little or no recognition of the vulnerability and fear of a new person starting a relationship with them. Everyone in the foxhole is at risk, but that doesn't make it okay to use someone there as your human shield.

Polyamory, like child-rearing, isn't for everyone. And, like child-rearing, you can't predict what effect it will have on your life. We're not saying you can never close a relationship after opening it—but when other people are involved, it's dangerous to assume your desires should always supersede theirs. And if you try to go back to your old mono relationship, you will find that it has changed.