More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (48 page)

The reasons a person chooses to cheat are important when looking for a path from cheating to honest non-monogamy. And yes, it is a choice. Many folks who are caught cheating say, "It was an accident!" as though they slipped on an icy sidewalk and fell into someone's bed. Cheating might not be planned, but "unplanned" is not the same thing as "accidental." Calling cheating an accident is a way of avoiding responsibility for making the decision.

Finding the path to polyamory starts with acknowledging the affair—and, just as importantly, acknowledging that it was a choice, not an accident. It also requires assuming responsibility for the cheating. All too often, cheaters shift the blame. "If my partner were thus-and-such, then I wouldn't have needed to cheat." The "thus and such" might be "more sexually available" or "more adventurous" or "less reluctant to do what I want." In reality, the affair is a choice made by the cheating partner, and that's where the responsibility lies.

Rebuilding trust is hard. In fact, it's so hard after cheating that we advise talking to an experienced, poly-friendly counselor or therapist (we talk in chapter 25 about finding one). Professional help will almost certainly be an important part of building the trust necessary for an ethical polyamorous relationship.

That trust will never be rebuilt unless you are willing to tell the truth, about everything. Come 100 percent clean. No evasions, no holding back. The path from cheating to poly isn't easy, and an absolute commitment to honesty is the only thing that makes it possible. Honest, open transparency is a learned skill, and mastering it takes time and effort. A relationship might have all sorts of patterns that make honesty hard. Again, this is something a qualified counselor or therapist can help with.

In this case, it's also important to think about whether polyamory is really what you want. Many of the people Franklin has spoken to who try to move from cheating to polyamory originally started their affairs because having an affair seemed less scary than talking openly with their partners. As often as not, the scary part about open non-monogamy was the idea that their partner might also want another lover. In other words, they cheated because they wanted to have additional lovers but didn't want their partner to.

Sometimes, when caught in this situation, people are tempted to say, "We can start a polyfidelitous relationship with the person I was cheating with!" This can feel like a solution that lets the cheater go on having the affair, sometimes with a "side helping" of watching his spouse and his illicit partner getting it on with each other, but without the fear of having his spouse explore other relationships. As you can guess, we view this fantasy very skeptically. For starters, a person who has already shown a willingness to cheat in a monogamous relationship may well cheat in a polyfidelitous relationship. The same factors that led to the affair may still be present. Moreover, it's difficult to sympathize with the notion that "we'll be polyfidelitous so I can keep my illicit partner but you can't have one."

Finding the path from cheating to polyamory requires the active buy-in of everyone, and building fairness means
not
starting from the assumption that the cheated-upon person will never have other partners in the future, even if they can't imagine wanting them now. If you're trying to move from cheating to polyamory, be prepared to question
everything
about your relationship. It's also reasonable for the cheated-upon person to need time. Expecting someone who's just been cheated on to embrace polyamory immediately after learning of the infidelity is excessively optimistic. For a functional poly relationship to arise overnight from the ashes of an affair is highly unlikely.

Even when a relationship does move from cheating to polyamory, you don't always get to keep your illicit lover. Often the illicit lover won't be okay with this. Even if he is, the cheated-upon person may never be okay with someone who's already shown a reckless disregard for his needs and boundaries. And when we say finding the path requires the active participation of everyone involved, that includes the third person. For the relationship to transition to polyamory with the same cast of characters, that person is going to need to feel included, empowered and welcomed. Yes, welcomed. Like we said, this isn't easy.

In most situations, couples counselors recommend that a person caught in an affair cut off all contact with the third person. Obviously, if the goal is to create a working polyamorous relationship, that's not going to be good advice. But you can't have it both ways. Relationships tend to work when everyone feels empowered. A polyamorous relationship isn't likely to succeed if the third person is simultaneously treated like a partner and a resented outsider. As uncomfortable as it may be, including that person in counseling might be a good idea.

During this transition it might help for each person to consider what they want the new relationship to look like, and then negotiate for that. After infidelity, you're essentially creating an entirely new relationship. Being willing to start from first principles, and build something that reflects the needs of everyone involved, is going to be necessary.

Of course, not all cheating is the same. Different people have different ideas of where the "cheating" line is. To some, cybersex chat with strangers is cheating; to others it's their spouse's harmless fun. The point is, there are levels of cheating and differences of opinion about it. Generally speaking, if you're doing something you can't tell your partner about, you're probably cheating.

Because there are gradations of cheating, some violations are easier to recover from than others. If your relationship prohibits kissing someone else, it will probably be easier to recover from a kiss than from someone getting pregnant. In any case, talking to your partner and coming clean will almost certainly be easier if you do it sooner rather than later. Put another way, if you steal first base, talk to your partner before you hit a home run.

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF

If you're thinking about transitioning from a monogamous relationship into polyamory, you're not alone, but you're in for some pretty big changes. The things you probably think are important likely won't be, and things you haven't thought about might matter most. Here are some questions that may be helpful:

• What assumptions do I have about what my relationships "should" look like? How are these assumptions influenced by the cultural narratives about monogamy, and how much are they truly mine?
  
• What parts of my relationships are most important? How can I preserve those elements while knowing that my relationships will change over time?
  
• What guarantees do I want from my relationships? Are they realistic?
  
• How much space do I have to devote to new relationships right now?
  
• As I seek new relationships, what guarantees can I offer my new partners that I will make space for them, listen to their needs, and be able to change to accommodate these new relationships?
  
• Where does my sense of security come from in my relationships? What am I willing to do to help my partners feel secure, and will those things come at a cost to any new relationships I may start?
  

18

MONO/POLY RELATIONSHIPS

Surely the most ubiquitous misunderstanding of love is "love hurts." Loving never hurts—it's wanting others to be different from how they are, and not getting what you want, that we find so painful.

CHRISTOPHER
WALLIS

A fish and a bird can fall in love, so the saying goes…and so can a monogamist and a polyamorist. It happens a lot, actually. This isn't surprising, given how outnumbered poly people are by mono people. But it sure puts the fairy-tale idea that "true love conquers all" to the test (spoiler alert: it doesn't). What can you do? Is your relationship doomed? Can such a pairing ever work? The good news is that the mono/poly relationship is common enough that it's become something of a poly archetype, so there are plenty of people willing to share their experiences.

A good mono/poly relationship is possible. We have both seen examples of successful, happy relationships between a monogamous and a polyamorous person. But getting there is hard. In fact, it is among the most difficult poly structures to navigate in a way that promotes and respects the happiness of everyone involved. These relationships require patience, persistence and compassion. They require careful communication and a willingness to do some deep soul-searching. The people must be willing to work together, and the poly person's other partners also need to be willing to show sensitivity and kindness to the needs of the monogamous person.

DEFINING MONOGAMY

The concept of monogamy is more complicated than it seems. When someone calls herself "monogamous," talk about what expectations she has. Some people consider themselves monogamous because
they
want only one partner, but it's okay if the partner has other lovers. Others identify as monogamous because they want a relationship in which their one partner is also exclusively faithful to them. The concept gets more complicated, because different people have different ideas about what constitutes fidelity. Some swingers self-identify as monogamous; for them, sex without emotional attachment doesn't count. Other people consider even a platonic relationship, perhaps online where the people never meet, to be a profound betrayal.

As you might imagine, a poly relationship with a monogamous partner who says, "I only want her, but it's okay if she has other relationships" is a lot easier than a poly relationship with someone who says, "I want it to be only you and me." Mono/poly relationships also follow a different course when the monogamous person falls in love with a poly person who already has other partners than when a couple start a relationship together and the door to polyamory opens later.

The two of us have extensive experience with mono/poly relationships of both varieties. For eighteen years Franklin was in a mono/poly relationship with his ex-wife Celeste, who strongly preferred a relationship involving only two people, and for three of those years, he had a second partner who was this variety of monogamous as well. Today he has a partner whose husband self-identifies as monogamous but is okay with his wife having multiple relationships. Eve's ex-partner Ray was married to a monogamous woman. Both of us have close friends in mono/poly pairings. We have learned a lot of lessons from these experiences.

YOU WON'T CHANGE EACH OTHER

Poly folks have heard this story a million times: George and Iris have been together a couple of years. He's poly, she's mono. In fact, Iris says the very thought of polyamory exhausts her. But George believes she will someday "wake up" to its advantages. Iris believes that George will eventually "settle down" to monogamy. George has even said he would marry Iris if it didn't mean pledging a lifetime of exclusivity to her. They're in love, and each is prepared to patiently wait for the other to change.

We have a word in the poly world for monogamous people like Iris who knowingly pair up with a poly person, hoping to change them: cowgirls (or cowboys). They ride up alongside a poly crowd to "rope one out of the herd." There's no special nickname for the poly person who hopes to change his mono partner, but there should be. Both are setting themselves up for long-term pain and thwarted dreams.

The cowgirl/cowboy story usually goes like this: the monogamous person has internalized the narrative of monogamous culture—that polyamory is just a phase, that when he meets The One (who is, of course, herself), he'll settle down. The poly person, meanwhile, believes the mono person will come around once she feels secure, or starts to want variety, or sees other poly relationships working, or just sees the light.

Each
says
they accept the other's nature. The monogamous person may even agree to an open relationship in theory—just not yet, not until the relationship is stable and feels secure. And the poly person gives her that time. And more time. And whenever they talk about opening the relationship, there's some reason not to. Maybe there's some external stressor, or there's something wrong with the person the poly partner wants to date. And after a lot of time has passed, and the two are deeply bonded, and the poly person seriously falls for someone new…well, of course that person is seen as a threat, because the poly person wants to change the now-long-established default.

The problem is that both parties entered, and continued, the relationship on the assumption that they would eventually change the other. Yet for many people, polyamory and monogamy aren't things they can simply change; they are fundamental. Mistress Matisse put it well when, in her
column on cowboys
and cowgirls, she said, "Dismissing people's stated definitions of their sexuality as something you can make them change is not love." Mono/poly relationships only work when each person wholeheartedly embraces who the other is, allowing them to live the way that's most authentic for them, without judgment. Solid intimate relationships do not come from a place of wishing our loved ones would be someone else. Intimacy comes from accepting and loving others for who they are.

THE COST OF MONO/POLY RELATIONSHIPS

That's all well and good when both start the relationship understanding who the other is. It's harder when they both planned on a monogamous relationship and then one of them realizes his or her true poly nature or beliefs. In this case, giving up monogamy is a scarier step. The monogamous person may feel deep loss: the relationship doesn't look the way he wants or the way other relationships look. It can feel like the polyamorous person is always getting what she wants—other lovers, other intimate companions. The monogamous person can feel like he's losing time, attention and focus—and sometimes this may be absolutely true.

From the poly person's point of view, a mono/poly relationship can feel constricting. The poly person may feel that she is not permitted to follow her heart. She may feel controlled. She may feel that her partner doesn't really understand or accept her, and that she is being forced to live out a dream deferred.