More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (30 page)

Problems arise when the natural flows are bigger than the gate. They won't shrink on their own, much as we might wish they would, so they continue to push back on the gate. The restriction might stifle or eventually kill the new relationship, stunting its growth in the way a sunshine-loving plant growing under the shade of a big tree becomes stunted. But if the flows are too powerful, they will eventually crash through the gate, often causing great damage to the relationship that the power originally emanated from.

Monogamous, one-true-soulmate conditioning goes very deep, and it's hard to root out all the ways it influences our thinking. It's hard work to consider the implications of our decisions on unknown future partners, and it's very tempting not to do that work. And it's particularly difficult to consider someone else's needs when we're scared. So it is often true that people in hierarchical relationships may behave in ways that are unnecessarily cruel to some partners—not out of malice, but merely out of thoughtlessness.

Returning to our garden analogy, you could think of a relationship about to be opened up as a big tree with deep roots—maybe one that's been bearing fruit for many years, seen a few rough seasons and spread its branches. Then you plant another seed in your garden: a new relationship. You don't know what the seed will grow into, but if you're like many primary partners, there's a good chance you have some hope, spoken or unspoken, that it will be an annual, or stay small, or at least thrive in the shade of that big tree. Certainly it won't ever get as big or demand as much space, right?

We tend to think of secondary relationships as "new" relationships, without giving thought to the fact that they might endure for years. It's common to hear variations on this theme: "But you can't expect a new partner to have the same rights as a spouse!" True, but relationships don't stay new forever. There was a time when your spouse of fifteen years was your new girlfriend or boyfriend, and a time could come when your relationship with your new partner will also be established. Sure, it's possible that you'll want the same kind of relationship in fifteen years that you wanted at six months, but it's unlikely.

Yet couples often seem to hope to keep secondary relationships frozen at that six-month size and shape forever. It doesn't work that way. If you plant an acorn in a flowerpot and the sapling manages to survive, you'll just end up with a broken flowerpot.

Often primary couples manage this structural flaw by simply jettisoning any relationship that threatens to grow bigger than the space they allotted to it. Many people often implicitly assume that a secondary relationship that becomes too well established may threaten the primary relationship—which is odd, considering the primary relationship has already had the time and energy to grow deep roots. Commonly, a secondary partner will sense that his happiness is not that big a concern to the primary couple, even if he can't put his finger on why. He may be sensing that even though the couple have never actually been callous or unethical, the structure of the relationship itself may not respect his rights and feelings, or give his relationship space to grow.

FRANKLIN'S STORY
Over time, the agreements I had made with Celeste became painful to my other partners. A year or so after I started dating Amber, one of the things she wanted was to live with me. Celeste and I didn't know what to do; we didn't have a way to handle a situation where another relationship grew to the point where it threatened to overrun the limits we had placed on it. As a result, when Amber mentioned the idea of living with me, Celeste perceived this as an attempt to undermine her place in my life.

I thought it was most important to keep to my agreements, whatever the cost. This meant I hurt the people I loved, and who loved me, unfairly and unnecessarily. All this pain could have been avoided if I had simply thought about these agreements from someone else's point of view before I made them. Amber eventually did move in with us, after other events (discussed in the next chapter) led to an attempt at greater flexibility in my and Celeste's relationship.

Ironically, hierarchy can create precisely the situation the primary couple is trying to avoid. A person who feels relegated to a subordinate position may demand more decision-making power or more freedom to grow in the relationship. These demands may feel hostile to the primary couple. They respond by tightening the restrictions or by reminding the secondary partner, "Hey, you agreed to all these rules when you signed on," which only makes the secondary partner feel more disempowered. And the next thing you know, what could have been a positive and healthy relationship ends up eating itself in a big ball of suck.

Another danger unique to hierarchical relationships is that a secondary partner might start a new relationship with someone else, someone who does not subscribe to hierarchy, and that new relationship can feel threatening to the partner in the primary relationship…not because it's a threat to the couple, but because the new relationship offers things the hierarchical relationship forbids. Franklin's relationship with Ruby, described in chapter 8, is a perfect example of how this can happen, and we've both seen it many times. People in hierarchical relationships typically find that letting a
secondary
partner have other partners is scarier than letting their
primary
partner have others!

NOT EVERYONE USES "PRIMARY" AND "SECONDARY"

The words
primary
and
secondary
to refer to partners first became popular among early-generation poly people (some people even had "tertiary" partners). Often these adjectives got pressed into service as nouns themselves, so people had "primaries" and "secondaries." In many places, these words remain popular, and it's still fairly common to hear people talk about primary relationships, but the word secondary is falling out of favor (although some people simply use "non-primary" instead).

This language can get confusing, because not everyone who uses the words primary and secondary is talking about a hierarchical relationship. The confusion arises because these words may be used in two different ways:
prescriptively
(as when a primary couple decides in advance what limitations any other relationship will be subject to) or
descriptively
(to describe whether a relationship has naturally grown to be more or less entangled than another). For example, some people use "primary" to refer to all live-in relationships and "secondary" for all relationships that aren't financially or domestically entwined. As well, hierarchical polyamorists often (though not always) expect that there can be only one primary relationship, whereas with descriptive "primary/secondary" relationships, someone may have several primary partners. We've even heard people who practice non-hierarchical poly say, "My primary is whichever partner I'm with at the time" (even if it's more than one partner).

Neither one of us describes any of our relationships as "primary" or "secondary," and neither do our partners, their partners or most of our close associates. Many poly people have made the choice not to do this, and they tend to find that words such as
partner, lover, girlfriend, boyfriend, fiancé
and
spouse
convey more meaning than the words
primary
and
secondary
. The two of us call the people we live with "nesting partners"; some people also refer to "domestic partners."
Co-parent
and
life partner
are also commonly used; we've also heard "life mate."
Um friend
is sometimes used for casual lovers (as in, "He's my, um, friend"). Many poly people, including us, refer to all their partners as "sweeties" or "loves," and the term
paramour
(from which
metamour
is derived) is popular in the United Kingdom. There are plenty of made-up terms and phrases too—you may have noticed that poly people are good at making up words!

Despite the fact that some people still use the words
primary
and
secondary
descriptively, we discourage this use—particularly
secondary
—because it is confusing, and because many people find the word
secondary
hurtful outside of (and sometimes within!) hierarchies. In this book, we only use these terms when speaking of explicitly hierarchical relationships.

SERVICE SECONDARIES

One common feature of hierarchical relationships is the notion that the secondary partner must provide the primary couple with some form of service as compensation for being in a relationship with one of them. For instance, the secondary partner may have to babysit. (We even know of a case where the secondary partner was expected to present in public as the couple's nanny.) Or the service could be other domestic duties. Sex is another service that secondary partners are often asked to provide, in cases where they are expected to be sexually involved with both members of a couple.

We refer to such arrangements as "service secondaries," and you would be well advised to avoid them—no matter which role you would play in the structure. What's wrong with these arrangements? Isn't it fair to look for partners who will want to support you, help around the house and participate in your family life, if that's what matters to you? Well, sure. But starting out with the view that a new partner is
taking something away
, and therefore
needs to compensate
by doing work for the couple, is not a healthy foundation for a relationship.

Let's take a deeper look at this. First, we're not talking about mutually supportive relationships where everyone pitches in and helps each other. These arrangements are nonreciprocal. If you don't see the primary couple showing up at the secondary partner's house on a Friday night to do her dishes and laundry, the service arrangement is probably one-way.

Second, some help-out arrangements may be perfectly reasonable at the start—particularly if the secondary partner actually likes the chore—but they can become coercive as the partners bond and as the job becomes habitual. Once the relationship has become established, the secondary partner may feel he has to continue doing the work in order to "pay" for continued access to intimacy.

Finally, in prescribing in advance what service they expect a secondary partner to perform, the couple is objectifying any potential new partners.

Service secondary arrangements enshrine the idea that the secondary partner must compensate the couple for being there. There's something inherently demeaning about telling someone they have to perform a service for you in exchange for enriching your life. If a partner doesn't add to your life, then why are you bringing her into it? If she does add to your life, then why make her work for you in order to be there?

Many people do like to express their love (or have love expressed for them) through acts of service, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And many people like to go out of their way to extend themselves to a new metamour, to make them feel welcome and cared for. But if you want to know whether you're looking at a mutually supportive relationship that may include acts of service as expressions of love, or you're slipping into a hierarchical "service secondary" arrangement, here are some things to think about:

• Is what I am looking for reciprocal—am I ready to offer as much care and service as I'm expecting in return?
  
• Is my partner free to choose the acts of service that he uses to express his love for me?
  
• Am I making access to a relationship contingent upon continued acts of service?
  
• Am I choosing partners on the basis of the service they are willing to provide?
  

FIND A PRIMARY OF YOUR OWN?

We've discussed before that people are not need-fulfillment machines, and that (except in certain limited instances) the "My needs aren't being met, let's find someone else" approach to poly problem-solving is fraught with peril. Nowhere is this more true than in the idea that if a secondary partner wants more time and attention, the solution is for him to go find a primary of his own.

FRANKLIN'S STORY
Bella wanted a committed, closely bonded relationship with me, but the terms of my agreement with Celeste relegated my other partners to a prescribed secondary status. Bella and I thought, seemingly reasonably, that if she had another "primary" partner, her needs for that kind of relationship would be met, and she would no longer need those things from me.

That idea turned out to be disastrously wrong. The thing she wanted wasn't "a primary," it was a closer relationship
with
me
. Being close to other people didn't meet that need. When she did find another partner, she discovered this didn't change what she wanted from me.

Our relationship ended because not being able to have her needs met damaged it beyond our ability to repair. When she ended the relationship, she was clear that she did not believe it was possible for someone to be close to me under the terms that Celeste and I wanted, regardless of whether that person had an existing "primary" relationship or not. I struggled to understand why. Because I was still trapped in the mindset that polyamory was something Celeste allowed me to do, and protecting that "main" relationship with her had to be my first priority, I could not see how I was treating Bella as an accessory to my relationship rather than as a real person. I did not realize that thinking Bella just needed a primary of her own was actually a way of saying her feelings for me were not okay, and that she needed to transfer those feelings to someone else.