More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (13 page)

Melissa's story illustrates one of the hidden assumptions we often make about relationships: we can feel entitled to have our partners experience new things with us first, and become hurt if a partner chooses to experience these things with someone else. For a single person starting a relationship with someone who's partnered, this hidden expectation can plant land mines everywhere. Something as innocuous as an invitation to go out for sushi might trigger an unexpected blowup.

Poly readiness involves not only examining the expectation that our partners will never change, but also examining expectations about how and when they change. People don't always change in the ways or on the timetable we want them to. New partners bring new experiences, and these experiences will change our relationships. Good relationships always change us; it's one of the best things about them!

One of the standard tropes of monogamy is that we can prevent infidelity by limiting our partner's access to members of the opposite sex. Opportunity creates infidelity, or so we're told, so we limit opportunity. In polyamorous relationships this trope can manifest in more subtle ways, such as by trying to limit the depth of a connection or the time a partner spends with another lover. As we discuss in chapter 11, it's common for people in a relationship to seek to use the power they have to constrict, limit or regulate a partner's other relationships, in the hopes that this will make those other relationships less disruptive or threatening. People try all kinds of structures to do this: enforced power hierarchies, limitations on how much a partner is permitted to experience emotional or sexual intimacy with others, rules that an established couple will only have sex with a third person if both are there for it (often on the assumption that this will prevent jealousy), and so on.

Of course, not everyone will have such feelings. If the idea of controlling your partner's other romantic connections to protect your relationship seems strange to you, you probably won't run into the problems we describe in this chapter. An important skill in creating happy poly relationships involves learning to see other lovers, particularly a partner's other lovers, as people who make life better for both of you rather than a hazard to be managed.

If such a perspective does not come naturally to you, though, it can be learned. Doing so requires investing in communication, overcoming fear and rejecting some of the pathological things we're taught about romance. It means accepting that you and your partners
will
grow and change, and the secret to maintaining relationships in the face of change is to be resilient and flexible. It also means cultivating a strong sense of security, accepting that we'll all make mistakes, building relationships robust enough to weather the mistakes, and making peace with change.

BEING ALONE

Humans are social animals. We function best when we're surrounded by people who care about us. The fear of being alone is part of being human. But if we're driven by that fear, if we're so afraid of being alone that we think losing a partner will destroy us, it's almost impossible to have a healthy relationship. It's okay to dislike being alone, but when we believe we
can't
be alone, things run off the rails.

When that fear drives us, we can't easily set good boundaries or make reasoned choices. And if we don't feel like we've fully consented to a relationship but instead are there because being alone is worse, then it's easy to feel like the relationship is something that's done to us rather than something that enriches our lives. From here, it's very easy to become resentful of our partners—especially when they do anything that reminds us of our fear of being alone.

This fear and resentment can create a self-reinforcing cycle. When we're afraid of being alone, we get angry and resentful much more easily. This drives people away, which triggers the fear of being alone, which makes us angry and resentful. How do we break that cycle? By building relationships that move toward something rather than away from something. Relationships make us much happier when we move toward intimacy with people who bring out the best in us, rather than away from loneliness.

In polyamory it becomes especially vital to come to terms with the fear of being alone, first because you
are
likely to be alone from time to time, and second because more than one relationship is on the line. One of the core ingredients of a successful polyamorous relationship is the ability to treat all the folks involved, including not only our partners but their partners as well, with compassion and empathy. It's almost impossible to be compassionate when all we feel is fear of loss.

SCARCITY VS. ABUNDANCE

When they approach romantic relationships, people often fall into one of two patterns. Some follow a starvation model, and some follow an abundance model.

In the starvation model, opportunities for love seem scarce. Potential partners are thin on the ground, and finding them is difficult. Because most people you meet expect monogamy, finding poly partners is particularly difficult. Every additional requirement you have narrows the pool still more. Since relationship opportunities are so rare, you'd better seize whatever opportunity comes by and hang on with both hands—after all, who knows when another chance will come along?

The abundance model says that relationship opportunities are all around us. Sure, only a small percentage of the population might meet our criteria, but in a world of more than seven billion people, opportunities abound. Even if we exclude everyone who isn't open to polyamory, and everyone of the "wrong" sex or orientation, and everyone who doesn't have whatever other traits we want, we're still left with tens of thousands of potential partners, which is surely enough to keep even the most ambitious person busy.

The sneaky thing about both models is they're both right: the model we hold tends to become self-fulfilling. If we have a starvation model of relationships, we may tend to dwell on the times we've been rejected, which may lower our self-esteem, which decreases our confidence…and that makes it harder to find partners, because confidence is sexy. We may start feeling desperate to find a relationship, which decreases our attractiveness further. So we end up with less success, which reinforces the idea that relationships are scarce.

When we hold an abundance model of relationships, it's easier to just go do the things that bring us joy, without worrying about searching for a partner. That tends to make us more attractive, because happy, confident people are desirable. If we're off doing the things that bring us joy, we meet other people there who are doing the same. Cool! The ease with which we find potential partners, even when we aren't looking for them, reinforces the idea that opportunities for love are abundant, which makes it easier for us to go about doing what makes us happy, without worrying overmuch about finding a partner…and 'round it goes. We think our perceptions are shaped by reality, but the truth is, the reality we get is often shaped by our perceptions.
^*

These ideas will also influence how willing we are to stay in relationships that aren't working for us, both directly and indirectly. If we believe relationships are rare and difficult to find, we may not give up a relationship even when it's damaging to us. Likewise, if we believe that relationships are hard to find, that may increase our fear of being alone, which can cause us to remain in relationships that aren't working for us.

Naturally, there's a fly in the ointment. Sometimes the things we're looking for, or the way we look for them, create artificial scarcity. This might be because we're doing something that puts other people off, or because we're looking for something unrealistic. If you're looking for a Nobel Prize–winning Canadian supermodel with a net worth of $20 million, you might find potential partners few and far between. Similarly, if you give people the impression that you've created a slot for them to fit into that they won't be able to grow out of, opportunities for relationships might not be abundant either.

* Cognitive scientists talk about confirmation bias—the tendency to notice things that confirm our ideas, and to discount, discredit or not notice things that don't.

FACING DISCOMFORT

Flexibility promotes resilience. It helps create relationships that can adapt to the winds of change without breaking. It has a cost, though. Being flexible means being willing to face discomfort, because change is often uncomfortable. Accepting change, welcoming the idea that there might be many ways to have our needs met, letting go of the desire to hide from our fears by controlling the structures of our relationships…at some point, these will almost certainly bring us nose to claw with uncomfortable feelings.

There is a trope in some circles, often applied to relationships: "Don't do anything you're not comfortable with." When it concerns access to your body, your space or your mind, it's good advice. We can always choose what we consent to. Often, though, it really means "Don't
let your partner
do anything you're not comfortable with," or "Don't explore unknown situations if they make you uncomfortable." In such cases, we think "Don't do anything you're not comfortable with" is terrible advice. There is more to life than avoiding discomfort. Sometimes discomfort is an inevitable part of learning and growth. Remember the first time you tried to ride a bike, or swim, or play a musical instrument? Remember how awkward and uncomfortable it felt? Having a brilliant life means going outside your comfort zone. And sometimes discomfort shows us ways we can improve.

We would like to suggest the radical notion that being uncomfortable is not, by itself, a reason not to do something, nor to forbid someone else from doing something. There is more to life than going from cradle to grave by the path of least discomfort. Furthermore, refusing to face discomfort can, if we are not careful, lead to unethical behavior. When avoidance of discomfort comes at the cost of placing controls on other people, we disempower those people.

The status quo in almost any relationship is usually less scary than change, no matter how beneficial the change. When new people come into our lives, they bring new challenges and new delights. When relationships grow, they change. We can be tempted to try to maintain as much of the status quo as possible by limiting what the people around us can do: "You may come into my life, but only this far. You may grow, but only to this level."

In our experience, building walls around each other's freedom is more damaging in the long run than trusting in our partners' desire to do what's right by us—and trusting in ourselves to be able to adapt, find happiness and feel cherished even when things change. Discomfort and change will find us, sooner or later, no matter how much we try to hide from them. Meeting these things on our own terms, believing that we can be happy even in the face of change—all go a long way to building security and stability that endures.

LIVING WITH INTEGRITY

Throughout this book, we position trust as an alternative to control in poly relationships. Fundamental to
building
trust is living with integrity. You build trust when you keep your promises—when you "walk your talk." Trust decays when you break agreements, violate boundaries and act in ways that are not in accordance with your professed values. Living with integrity can be the thing that holds you together when nothing else can. When you have no easy choices, and the effects of those choices on people you care about are impossible to predict, what serves as your guide? When you fail, or make mistakes, are you able to look back and say, "I upheld the values that are most important to me"?

Times can come in polyamorous relationships when there are no good choices, when you can't win and no one else can either. Maybe it's just a question of where everyone is going to spend Christmas. Maybe it's where the kids go after a breakup. Maybe it's what to do when two partners whom you cherish with all your heart can't stand being in the same room together. We can talk about negotiation and compromise and finding win-win solutions, but sometimes the happy medium doesn't exist. The more people you put in the mix, the more likely conflicts are to arise, and sometimes there are no easy solutions.

We've talked about the need for an ethical framework that maximizes the well-being of everyone involved. But sometimes you are stuck minimizing losses rather than maximizing gains, and no matter how you reason your way through a situation, it feels like crap to make choices that you know are going to hurt people. And sometimes you genuinely can't tell. Sometimes you're faced with choices that feel lousy in the short term and whose long-term effects can't be predicted. So when that happens—when you can't make a move without hurting yourself or someone else—how do you make your choices?

When we've come to those places, that's when we try to center back on integrity. But even that can be slippery. What does it mean to act with integrity? Some people define integrity as essentially the same thing as honesty. Others see it as consistency of action, or consistency of action with belief. But the root of the word integrity means "whole." Focusing on integrity, for us, means intense examination of the present moment:
What am I doing right now, and is it in alignment with my most authentic self? If I look back at myself in ten years, would I like the person I see?

COMPASSION

Before we talk about compassion, it's worth repeating the two axioms that underpin the ethics of this book:

• The people in the relationship are more important than the relationship.
  
• Don't treat people as things.
  

Following an ethical system that relies on not treating people as things means, well, treating people as people. And that means practicing compassion.

The word
compassion
is all over the place these days. But what does it mean? It's easy to throw it out as a glib admonishment, and ironically, it can sometimes include a shaming undertone. As in, "I am a compassionate person and you are not. Look how good I am because I am compassionate." If your social set intersects at all with New Age circles, you probably know someone who likes to play the "more compassionate than thou" Olympics. In fact, many of the ideas in this book can be used that way. Please don't do that.