Tag: communication

Help, I hate my metamour cover image featuring icon outlines of two men and a woman

“Help, I Hate My Metamour!” When a Metamour Relationship Goes Wrong [Polyamory Conversation Cards #5]

Published on by Amy

“Help, I hate my metamour!” This subject crops up in the polyamory groups and forums I frequent multiple times a week, so I thought it was time I wrote about it.

Throughout the 15 years I’ve been polyamorous, I’ve had a mixed bag when it comes to metamours. In recent years, I’ve mostly been very lucky. My partners are smart and discerning humans with excellent taste and judgement, so the people they date tend to be pretty damn cool.

In the past, though, I’ve had metamour I disliked, metamours who disliked me, metamours who (accidentally or intentionally) triggered some of my deepest insecurities and traumas, and even a couple of abusive or excessively controlling metamours.

One of the hardest things for many people to come to terms with, when they start being polyamorous, is the fact that they cannot control who their partner chooses to date, have sex with, fall in love with, or invite into their inner circle.

In some cases, metamours click beautifully and end up becoming close friends (or, more rarely, becoming partners themselves.) It’s wonderful when this happens. Often, metamours will coexist happily and healthily without drama but not feel the need to spend a tonne of time together. This, too, can be great. But what if your partner chooses someone who isn’t at all the type of person you’d have wanted for them? What if they’re dating someone you simply cannot stand for some reason?

In case you missed it, this post is part of a series inspired by Odder Being’s Polyamory Conversation Cards. Once a week or as often as I can, I’ll pull a card at random and write a piece of content based on it. There will likely be some essays, advice pieces, personal experiences, rants, and more! You can read the whole series at the dedicated tag. And if you want to support my work and get occasional bonus content, head on over to my Patreon.

This week’s card asks:

“To what extent and in what way would you prefer to be involved with your metamours or others in your polycule?”

First, let’s get clear on our terminology. A metamour (sometimes shortened to “meta”) is the partner of your partner, with whom you do not have a romantic or sexual relationship [*]. So if I’m dating Alice and Alice is married to Bob, Bob is my metamour. If Cleo is dating both Dave and Emily, but their partners are not dating one another, then Dave and Emily are metamours. The mutual partner connecting two metamours is often referred to as a “hinge.”

[*] There are nuances and grey areas here, of course. Some people do have sex with their metamours regularly or occasionally. Me and my former meta used to do this but weren’t romantically involved, and we called ourselves “metamours with benefits.” You’ll settle on the language to describe your relationships that works best for you.

With that understood, let’s talk about hating your metamour.

Metamour Relationships Are Unique to Polyamory… Except They’re Not

People think of the metamour relationship as a unique facet of polyamory that doesn’t apply anywhere else. And this is sort of true, in that polyamory is the only context in which your romantic partner is likely to have other romantic partners that you’re aware of.

However, even in a monogamous context, your partner will have other significant relationships outside of you. Friends, family, coworkers, and so on. These relationships may include people you don’t particularly care for, or even people you really cannot abide. In this way, I think “I hate my metamour” is just a variation on “my mother-in-law is the worst” or “I can’t stand my partner’s best friend.”

The fact that your partner has a romantic and possibly sexual relationship with your metamour doesn’t actually change the fundamentals of this type of situation all that much. Remembering this may help you to realise that this situation is, in most circumstances, entirely navigable.

Why Do You Dislike Your Metamour? Getting Specific

When someone says “I hate my metamour,” the first thing I want to ask them is “why?” Because the answer to this question will inform the advice I give next. The reasoning can also be hugely telling in itself. The reason think you hate your metamour might not be the actual reason when you really dig into it. So, obviously, the first thing we’re going to do is… really dig into it.

You’ll need to be really honest with yourself here. Observe your feelings without judgement or reactivity, and see what comes up for you. What is it about your metamour that rubs you the wrong way? Where do you think those thoughts and feelings are coming from?

Sometimes, two people simply do not get along. Neither of them have done anything wrong, but they are too different and cannot find a way to gel. For all the often-true jokes about polyamorous people who date three different versions of the same person, it’s equally likely that your partners will be very different from one another… and that your metamours will be very different from you. This is really, really normal. Unfortunately, these situations can sometimes lead to personality clashes.

If you determine that the cause of your “ick, I hate my metamour” feelings are just a personality clash, that’s pretty easy to handle. In a nutshell: don’t hang out with them! We’ll talk more about how to achieve this in practice a bit later on.

In some cases, your metamour might remind you of someone else you don’t care for. Perhaps they look, sound, smell, or behave like somebody who hurt you or your partner at some point in your life? This might mean that you’re projecting past experiences onto them due to baggage or trauma. This is also surprisingly common, especially if your partner has a “type” and your new metamour reminds you of a previous, problematic meta.

Of course, it’s possible you dislike your metamour for a really valid reason. You might have seen serious red flags in their behaviour or heard damning things about them in the community. Perhaps you don’t like the way they treat your mutual partner (or their other partners, or someone else in their life.) This gets more tricky to navigate and we’ll get into it in more detail below.

It’s also possible that your issue with your metamour is actually about something that’s going on within you. This is what we’ll talk about in the next section.

Is It About Them, or About You?

Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, metamours can inadvertently trigger insecurities, traumas, deep-seated fears, or other complicated and painful feelings. This is actually pretty normal and doesn’t necessarily mean anyone has done anything wrong. Realising that’s what is going on can even be pretty empowering. After all, if the issue is about your stuff, you have the power to work on and fix it.

Seeing your partner fall in love or lust or both with a new person can be challenging. This might be particularly true if you’re new to polyamory, if your relationship with your partner is having problems, or if you have particular traumas or insecurities that are getting triggered by the new relationship for some reason.

If you determine that your dislike of your metamour is more to do with your own stuff than with them, then you have several options. But before you do anything, take a breath. Don’t panic. You’re not broken or bad at polyamory or any of the things you’re probably telling yourself right now.

So what can you do next?

First, you can take a break from the metamour in question. We’re going to talk more about parallel polyamory a bit later on, but just know that it’s okay to minimise or pause social interactions with your metamour – even temporarily – if you need the space to get a handle on your difficult emotional response to them.

If you do this in a time-limited way with the intention of re-establishing contact and building some sort of positive relationship later, it can actually be hugely beneficial in the long run. There are also instances where staying parallel permanently (or at least indefinitely) is the right choice. You can decide what’s best for you with the help of your support network.

Alternatively, you can decide to consciously give your metamour a chance and try to build a positive relationship with them. We’ll look at how to do this more in the next section.

This is also the time to shore up your relationship with your mutual partner and ask for what you need. Do you need some reassurance, more quality time, a dedicated date night? You might have identified unhealthy patterns, unmet needs, or problematic behaviours from one or both of you that are being highlighted by the new relationship and need your partner to work on resolving these issues with you. Perhaps you just need them to hold space for you to talk through your feelings and difficulties in a non-judgemental, loving environment.

Finally, this is the time to work on yourself. Examine the things that the new relationship has triggered within you, and call upon your coping and healing strategies. If you’re not already, this is a great time to get yourself into therapy. Journal, find and consume relevant resources (Polysecure and Polywise, both by Jessica Fern, are two I highly recommend.) Reach out to your extended support network. Aim to build your self-esteem, confidence, and inner sense of security.

Can You Give Them a Chance?

The answer to this might be “no”, but I invite you to consider the possibility that you’re being overly harsh in your judgement of your metamour. Would you conceivably feel differently if you gave them a real chance? This is often a particularly beneficial option if you’ve determined that your issues with your metamour stem from your own trauma, baggage, or internal “stuff.”

Many people find that humanising their metamour by getting to know them is challenging initially but hugely beneficial in the long run. You’ll see that they’re neither a monster nor the embodiment of perfection. They’re just a person with their own quirks, flaws, wonderful qualities, and personality traits.

I’m going to write a whole piece on meeting your metamours successfully soon. In the meantime, though, here are some quick tips that might help you.

Timing is crucial here. I do not recommend meeting or instituting hangouts when you’re deep in the “I hate my metamour” rage-spiral. This will backfire spectacularly. Take the time to calm your nervous system, do some of your own internal work, and get to the place where you can genuinely meet them with an open mind and a generous spirit.

Whether you meet by yourselves or with your mutual partner is something you’ll have to negotiate. There are pros and cons to each approach. If your mutual partner will be in attendance, negotiate what levels of PDA you’re all comfortable with seeing and engaging in. Meet in a neutral space such as a bar, restaurant, or coffee shop rather than at someone’s house. It can also be helpful to bookend your time together with a built-in limit (e.g. “I’ve got two hours because I need to pick the kids up at 4.”)

Try to go in without too many expectations. The goal isn’t to become best friends. Remember that you’re just two humans who happen to love the same person. You’re both doing your best and, hopefully, want a good outcome for everyone involved. After that, just be yourself! Be polite and friendly, look for common ground, and treat them like you would any new person you’re trying to get to know.

This all assumes, of course, that your metamour is up for meeting you or hanging out. It’s never okay to force a meeting if one party really doesn’t want it or isn’t ready. But if things go well, you might very well find that this leap of faith does great things for your metamour relationship.

If they go badly, or if you really can’t bring yourself to give this metamour a chance? It’s time to consider going parallel.

Parallel Polyamory is Valid

Like many polyamorous people, I love kitchen table polyamory – the close, family-style structure where the various partners and metamours in a network are totally comfortable in each other’s presence and may even actively choose to hang out.

There are tonnes of potential benefits to kitchen table polyamory (KTP.) Your metamours can become dear friends and members of your chosen family. There’s more support for everyone when things are hard. There are more people to celebrate with when good things happen. If children are involved, there are more adults to love and care for those kids. There’s the potential for group outings, polycule trips and adventures, and even group sex if you’re all into that. However, practicing KTP is a personal preference and it won’t work for everyone.

Parallel polyamory is where you know about your metamours, but don’t spend time with them or have any involvement with them beyond essential information. Like parallel lines, the relationships do not meet or intersect. Despite having a bad reputation in some parts of the community, parallel polyamory is an equally valid choice. And in situations of dislike or animosity between metamours, it’s often the best one.

Some people even prefer parallel polyamory right from the beginning! It doesn’t have to come out of metamours disliking each other. Some just prefer to keep things very separate for all kinds of reasons.

Parallel polyamory can look a few different ways. The common thread, though, is that the metamours have little or no direct interaction. They may also prefer not to hear much or any information about the other person, or to have their own information shared. There’s also Garden Party Polyamory, a middle ground where metamours can be polite and friendly to one another in occasional social situations, but otherwise have little interaction and do not hang out independently of their mutual partner.

It’s possible to shift between structures over time as necessary or dictated by circumstances, too. You don’t have to pick one and stick to it forever! Like so many things in polyamory, it’s an ongoing journey and may require renegotiation over time.

Personally, as I’ve said, parallel polyamory isn’t my preference. But if there was ever a time when I had two partners who couldn’t get along with one another, or a metamour I really couldn’t stand (or vice versa,) I would accept it as the healthiest option for everyone in that situation. It’s not a lesser form of polyamory. It’s just different.

“I Hate My Metamour, But Our Partner Wants Us All to Live Together!”

I hear this (and its less extreme cousin, “I hate my metamour but my partner is desperate for us all to hang out”) so, so, so often.

It’s far too common for hinge partners to try to force closeness between metamours who don’t get along. This might look like trying to arrange group hangouts or social interactions despite the metamours’ wishes. At its most extreme, it can look like trying to force metamours to date (see: unicorn hunting), have sex, or live together.

If you’re one of the metamours in this situation: stand firm with your boundaries. You do not have to hang out with anyone you don’t want to hang out with. You certainly don’t have to date, have sex with, or live with anyone you don’t want to.

The fact that your partner wants it – even really, really wants it – is ultimately irrelevant here. You can hear and sympathise with their desires, of course. But you cannot and must not compromise your boundaries and needs for the sake of their desired structure. Doing so will just breed resentment and mistrust, ultimately destroying your relationships. At its most extreme, you may end up feeling coerced, violated, or abused.

If your partner continues to push for more of a relationship between you and your metamour than you want, and will not respect your boundaries when you state them clearly, then it might be time to consider leaving the relationship.

If you’re the hinge in this situation and trying to force a dynamic between your partners: stop it! I can’t overstate how damaging this is. Firstly, people tend to hate being coerced into things they don’t want. Secondly, let’s say they give in and do what you want. How do you think this is going to go? Does a social hangout with two people who don’t like each other sound fun to you? Does living with two people who don’t like each other sound fun!? Exactly.

I understand you have a dream for how you want your ideal polyamorous life to look. However, you’re dealing with actual people with actual personalities and feelings. When you try to force your partners to be friends, date, become lovers, or live together against their wills… chances are you’ll lose both or all of them.

If you want to be with these people, you’ll need to accept that (for now at least, possibly forever) they love you but care for each other much less. If anything other than kitchen table polyamory or nesting with all your partners is a dealbreaker for you, that might mean you need to end these relationships and find others that better meet your desires.

Friendship Isn’t Necessary, But Mutual Respect Probably Is

If you take nothing else away from this post, I hope you’ll take this: you don’t have to like your metamour! It’s perfectly fine to feel indifferent towards them. It’s also okay to actively dislike them, though I hope you’ll first follow the steps I’ve outlined to examine where that dislike is coming from and if it is truly warranted.

How you frame things, both in your mind and externally, really matters here. In the vast majority of circumstances, hanging on to intense dislike, disrespect, or contempt for another person isn’t going to do you or your relationships any good. Can you reframe “I hate my metamour” to “my metamour and I are very different people who don’t really get along, but our goal is to coexist peacefully because we both love our mutual partner”?

In the end, mutual respect for your metamour(s) – even if you are not friends or dislike one another – is both possible and desirable in most circumstances. Here’s what that can look like in practice:

  • Accepting and fully internalising that they have just as much right to their place in your mutual partner’s life as you do.
  • Giving your partner space to have their relationship with your metamour. For example, not trying to infringe on their dates or spoil their time together.
  • Articulating and maintaining clear personal boundaries around things that you control: your time, your space, your energy, and your possessions.
  • Hearing and respecting your metamour’s boundaries around the things that they control, even if those boundaries are different from your own.
  • Respecting your metamours’ privacy and consent. This includes things like not expecting intimate details about their activities with your hinge partner, unless they enthusiastically consent to such sharing. It also means not trying to find or use personal information about them that they may not wish you to have.
  • Ensuring that agreements you make with your hinge partner do not negatively impact your metamour or their relationship.
  • Retaining a reasonable level of flexibility around things like scheduling and the use of shared spaces.
  • Not trying to convince your partner to leave your metamour, change their relationship, or view them the way that you do.
  • Not badmouthing your metamour (either to your partner or to others.)
  • Resisting the temptation to compete or frame your metamour as an adversary.
  • Wherever you can, assuming good will. Your metamour probably isn’t trying to piss you off, trigger your insecurities, or replace you.

Sometimes Metamours Really Are Terrible

In the vast majority of circumstances, your metamour probably isn’t actually a bad person. They might be perfectly lovely but simply not one of your people. They might have their heart in the right place but still exhibit some behaviours that rub you the wrong way. In these situations, mutual respect, a little courtesy and goodwill, good communication from your mutual partner, and minimising unnecessary interactions will probably be all you need to keep things harmonious within your polycule.

But what if you’re right? What if your metamour actually is kind of terrible? Perhaps they hold horrible, oppressive views or regularly do unethical things. At the worst end of the spectrum, perhaps they’re abusing someone – your mutual partner, another partner or partners, or even a child.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it: this situation fucking sucks. It’s also probably largely out of your control. You cannot force your partner to leave someone, even for their own good. There are times when going parallel will sufficiently mitigate the issue. There are also times when it won’t. Firm boundaries, strengthening your relationship with your mutual partner, and calling on the rest of your support network can all help, too. Sometimes, though, even all of this won’t be enough.

Sadly, problematic metamours can sometimes lead to the end of a relationship. I once ended a relationship because my metamour was so controlling – and my partner was so willing to capitulate to all their demands – that we couldn’t actually have a relationship. Leaving devastated me, but ultimately staying would have been worse.

What About Abuse?

This article is about what to do when you dislike your metamour. But what if you suspect (or know) that your metamour is abusing your mutual partner?

I’m going to write a whole article soon about handling abuse within your polycule. That subject deserves thousands of words of its own and there isn’t space to delve deeply into it here.

I just wanted to acknowledge that this can happen, and that it’s heartbreaking and painful on a whole other level when it does. The reason I’m not going into it in this piece is that I want to give it the attention and space it deserves, taking the time and doing the background research to make sure I get it right.

In the meantime, Eve Rickert has compiled this incredible list of resources on abuse in polyamorous relationships.

Do You Have a Metamour Relationship Problem, or Do You Have a Hinge Partner Problem?

In polyamorous spaces, you’ll often see people say things like “metamour problems are really partner problems.” This isn’t always true, but it’s often true.

Take, for example, the controlling metamour I mentioned above. Ultimately, the problem was that my partner chose to follow all the arbitrary rules and restrictions they laid down. My partner had a choice there, and they could have refused. They weren’t powerless. They could have advocated for me and for our relationship. The fact that they didn’t is actually what ended things between us.

Obviously, this doesn’t apply to situations of abuse. In those situations, your partner may really be powerless in a very real way. But if your metamour is behaving unreasonably but not abusively, it is your partner’s job to manage the situation and ensure your metamour’s behaviour doesn’t spill over onto you and your relationship too much.

It’s almost impossible, in anything but the strictest form of parallel polyamory (and probably even then), to keep relationships from impacting each other entirely. After all, if I’ve had a fight with one of my partners and am then due to go on a date with another partner, that is likely to impact my mood and energy levels even if my partners have absolutely no interaction with one another.

The choices you make in one relationship can, and often do, affect your other relationships. This isn’t necessarily a bad or problematic thing in itself. It does, however, require intentionality and care to manage it well. That’s particularly true if the metamours do not get along.

In some cases, your partner’s choice of partners or behaviour in other relationships might directly impact how you view them. Let’s imagine, for a second, one of your partners knowingly brings home someone with extreme and violently right-wing politics. This problem isn’t going to be solved by going parallel. This problem is deeper, in that it says something pretty fundamental – and pretty damning – about your partner and their values.

One of the most important skills in polyamory is partner selection. This extends to being able to trust your partners’ judgement in their partner selection. Unfortunately, when “I hate my metamour” turns into “I hate that my partner chose this person and what that choice says about them”, there might be little you can do but leave the relationship.

Last Words

Wow, even for me this has turned into a mammoth essay! Like so many relationship-related subjects, it’s nuanced and highly contextual. To sum up, though, my 10 key points are as follows:

  • You do not have to be friends with your metamour, like them, or even ever meet them if you don’t want to.
  • If you’re deep in the “I hate my metamour” space, start by asking yourself why and really interrogating it.
  • Examine what your feelings about your metamour are telling you about what’s going on within you.
  • Give them a real and fair chance if you can.
  • It’s fine to be parallel polyamorous.
  • You never have to interact with your metamour in a way that violates your boundaries or consent, and your partner should never pressure you to.
  • Mutual respect, even in the face of indifference or dislike, will go a long way.
  • Metamour issues are often, but not always, really hinge partner issues. Hinge partners have a lot of responsibility here.
  • Relationships can and do impact one another, which is one of the reasons good partner selection is so vital.
  • It’s okay to end a relationship over unresolvable metamour issues, especially if your mutual partner isn’t respecting your boundaries or advocating for you appropriately.

Have you ever found yourself saying “I hate my metamour”? How did you handle it? Any horrors, cautionary tales, or success stories to share?

Candy hearts spilling out of a jar, for a post on polysaturation and how to know when you're polysaturated

Polysaturation: How Do You Know When You’re Polysaturated? [Polyamory Conversation Cards #4]

Published on by Amy

It’s safe to say that the polyamory community likes its cute wordplay. We’ve got “metamour,” from meta (beyond or after) + amor (love), to mean your partner’s partner. We’ve got “polycule”, from poly + molecule, to mean an interconnected network of relationships (because when we draw out our romantic networks they can kinda resemble scientific models of chemical molecules.) Then there’s the subject of today’s post: polysaturation, or “the state in which a polyamorous person has as many significant relationships as they can handle at a given time” (definition courtesy of Multiamory.)

In case you missed it, this post is part of a series inspired by Odder Being’s Polyamory Conversation Cards. Once a week or as often as I can, I’ll pull a card at random and write a piece of content based on it. There will likely be some essays, advice pieces, personal experiences, rants, and more! You can read the whole series at the dedicated tag. And if you want to support my work and get occasional bonus content, head on over to my Patreon.

This week’s card asks:

“How much time, energy, and other resources do you have left for potential new attachments?”

My personal answer to this is “very little,” but that doesn’t make a very exciting post, does it? So let’s delve into the topic of polysaturation, how to know when you’re at your relationship limit, and what do to about it.

What is Polysaturation?

Polysaturation is the point at which a polyamorous person has the maximum number of relationships that they can handle. Typically, when people are polysaturated, they stop actively looking for new relationships and may become entirely closed to the possibility of new relationships until or unless their circumstances change.

Polyamorous people feel differently about polysaturation. Personally, I kind of love the feeling of polysaturation. I find “dating” and actively trying to make romantic connections difficult and demoralising, so being at the point where I am comfortable and satisfied in my romantic life is wonderful. Others dislike it because they feel it limits their options for making connections if they happen to meet someone incredible but don’t have time to pursue a relationship with them.

What is an Average Polysaturation Number?

There’s no one right answer to this, because it depends on so many factors. Physical and mental health, work, child rearing and other caring responsibilities, life stage, geography, finances, and the status of existing relationships are just some of the factors that can play a role in determining someone’s polysaturation point.

I will say, though, that I have been polyamorous for 15 years and I’ve encountered very few people who can manage more than three serious relationships well. Overall, two and three are by far the most common polysaturation numbers.

My own polysaturation point, in case you’re wondering, is currently two serious relationships. I can enjoy situationships, friends-with-benefits, and casual encounters (such as occasional sex parties or swinging) alongside those relationships, because these casual dynamics demand very little in terms of ongoing time commitments or emotional investments. But actual, Capital-R Romantic Relationships with people I’m in love with? Right now it’s two, and I am struggling to imagine that number ever being higher than three.

More Partners =/= Doing Polyamory Better

I know or have known of people with five, seven, ten romantic partners. On the surface, it might look like these people are absolutely killing it in the realm of polyamory. In reality, though? When you look closer at this type of situation, you’ll often see an exhausted, burned-out person who’s massively overcommitted themself and a lot of neglected, pissed off, unsatisfied partners.

Are there exceptions? Sure. But not many.

What you need to let go of here is the idea that having more partners means you’re doing polyamory better. The goal of polyamory isn’t to constantly add new people, to “collect them all” à la Pokémon, or to compete to have more partners than anyone else. The most experienced and successful polyamorous people I know tend to be in anything from one to three committed romantic relationships at a time.

By the way: it’s totally possible to identify as polyamorous but go through a period where your polysaturation point is one partner, or even zero partners. Polyamory is an identity defined by the desire and ability to love and be in relationship with more than one person at a time. It doesn’t mean you always have to be actively doing so. There’s no “poly card” that someone will revoke if you don’t have two or more partners at all times!

How Do I Know If I’m Polysaturated?

When you first started exploring polyamory, you might have had some idea in your head about how many relationships you thought you’d be able to handle. If you’ve been practicing for some time, you might have found that that number is lower in reality than it was in theory. If so, that’s super normal. Many of us underestimate how much time and energy relationships take up, especially with the added complexities inherent in polyamory.

One of the keys to happiness in polyamory, I’ve found, is learning to identify when you’re polysaturated before you accidentally become polyoversaturated. That is, in more relationships than you can actually manage.

Polysaturation feels slightly different for everyone. I experience it as a lack of something, primarily. Specifically, a lack of any desire or inclination to add new romantic partners to my life. It also feels like a sort of “enoughness”, like my needs are being met and I’m satisfied. Kinda like the relationship equivalent of being comfortably full after a great meal, but not overly stuffed!

But in short, you’ll know you are polysaturated when you know – emotionally, intellectually, or both – that you are in a space where you cannot reasonably add any new partners to your life.

What If I’m Polysaturated But Meet Someone So Amazing I Simply Have to Pursue It?

This is a difficult one and I can’t give you a simple answer.

One of the realities of living a successful and happy polyamorous life is accepting that there are simply too many shiny people in the world to ever be able to build relationships with all of them. Sometimes, you have to let a potential interest go because you just do not have enough time in the day and it wouldn’t be fair to yourself, your existing partners, the new person, or others who also rely on you (such as your children or other dependents) to pursue something.

So your first option is simply “decide you don’t have the bandwidth, and leave it alone.”

It’s possible that this new relationship will be a low-time-and-energy-investment one, in which case you might be able to shift things around to accommodate it with relatively little pain and stress. But if it’s a relationship requiring a higher level of investment, particularly in the new relationship energy (NRE) phase, you might have some difficult decisions to make.

What you shouldn’t do, in almost any circumstances, is dump or demote an existing partner to make room for the new one. This is a profoundly shitty thing to do to someone you claim to love. Of course, if one of your relationships isn’t working or isn’t making you happy, you have the right to end it. But you should really be doing that at the point that it’s making you unhappy and isn’t fixable (or worth the energy to fix), not at the point that there’s a New Shiny to step in and fill the gap.

So if this new relationship seems too good to pass up, what can you do?

Be Honest with Yourself and Your Partners

What can you actually offer this new person in terms of time, energy, and current or future commitment? How will those choices impact you and your existing partner(s)?

Be unfailingly honest with everyone, yourself first of all. Don’t convince yourself you have energy or hours in the day that you simply don’t have. Don’t overcommit yourself to the new person just to let them down later. And don’t lie to or mislead your existing partners to get their buy-in if they are understandably reticent about you adding someone knew when you’re already at your polysaturation point.

Look at What Else You Can Move Around

If you decide you do want to pursue the new connection, something else in your life will likely have to give.

You might be able to shift some things around in your life to accommodate the new relationship with minimal disruption to your existing relationships, if you get creative. Is there a hobby or activity you’re willing to let slide (or dedicate a little less time to?) Will the grandparents take your kids for a few hours after school one evening a week to allow you to visit your new sweetie? Do you have the means and flexibility to take one fewer shifts at work or to move your working pattern around a bit?

The answer to all of these things might be no. But if nothing can realistically change and you don’t have the time or energy, then I’m back to my original advice: don’t pursue this new relationship.

Negotiate a Casual Relationship

When you meet someone new and make a connection, you don’t initially know what shape that connection might naturally take. So consider whether you and your new interest would be happy with an occasional, casual, friends-with-benefits or comet-style relationship.

Some relationships cannot be casual. Forcing a relationship that wants to be serious and committed into a casual box will hurt everyone involved and probably blow up in your face. But if circumstances allow and your needs and desires align, negotiating a low-key casual style relationship can be a great way to navigate this situation.

Avoiding Polyoversaturation Before It Happens

“Kid in a candy store syndrome” is a slightly snarky name for the phenomenon of newcomers who discover polyamory and immediately leap into DATING ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME. They’re overwhelmed by possibility and the next thing you know, they’ve got twelve partners and their Google Calendar is packed until August… of next year.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation then… I’m sorry. It’s an easy mistake to make and a hard situation to be in. I can’t tell you what to do about it, because it’s obviously not as easy as “just break up with six to eight of those partners to bring your polycule down to manageable numbers.” I will say that a lot of people make this mistake in the early days and things usually even out over time. Still, you might be in for a bumpy ride in the short term.

Experienced polyamorists, by the way, typically won’t date people who do this. We’ve seen it all before and we know the pain, neglect, and frustration it causes.

Fortunately, if you’ve not yet made this mistake, it’s fairly easy to avoid. Instead of seeing polyamory as a smorgasbord where you can indulge yourself without limits, approach dating and relationships with intention. Where possible, build new relationships one at a time (two will be doable for some people, but not for everyone. You know yourself and your capabilities best.) And before you get involved with a new person, take a clear-eyed and critical look at your current situation. Do you actually have the time, energy, and bandwidth?

Remember, to go back to that food analogy: the goal is “pleasantly full,” not “uncomfortably stuffed.” With time and self-awareness, you’ll get to know what that feels like for you.

Fall leaves. Header for a post on navigating change in polyamory

Polyamory Will Change Your Relationship: Navigating Change Well [Polyamory Conversation Cards #3]

Published on by Amy

“How can we do this without it changing our relationship?”

This is one of the most common questions people ask when they’re new to polyamory or consensual non-monogamy and exploring it from the place of a pre-existing relationship. On the surface, it’s a reasonable question. You love each other. You love the relationship you have, and you view polyamory as a way to add to your happiness together and separately, not detract from it. So how can you transition to polyamory without changing your existing relationship?

You can’t.

If there’s one thing I want new polyamorists to understand – right alongside “unicorn hunting is bad” and “jealousy is normal, what matters is how you handle it” – it’s this: polyamory. is. going. to. change. your. relationship.

There is simply no way around this fact. If you are not prepared for change, you are not ready to be non-monogamous.

In case you missed it, this post is part of a series inspired by Odder Being’s Polyamory Conversation Cards. Once a week or as often as I can, I’ll pull a card at random and write a piece of content based on it. There will likely be some essays, advice pieces, personal experiences, rants, and more! You can read the whole series at the dedicated tag. And if you want to support my work and get occasional bonus content, head on over to my Patreon.

This week’s card asks:

“What practices in your relationship help you feel safe when navigating change in your relationship dynamic?”

Okay, so let’s talk navigating the changes that will inevitably come when you’re exploring polyamory and non-monogamy for the first time… or when you’re significantly changing another aspect of your non-monogamous relationship in some way.

Why Polyamory Will Change Your Relationship

All relationships are constantly changing and evolving. Whether you’ve been with your partner for a year, a decade, or just celebrated your 50th wedding anniversary, chances are you do not have the same relationship now that you had on day one.

When you make big changes in your life, your relationship changes along with them. Perhaps, in the time you’ve been together, you and your partner have got married, had a baby, bought property, moved to a new city or country, changed jobs, or suffered bereavements? Any and all of those things, and so many others, can change a relationship.

Moving from monogamy to non-monogamy is, whichever way you slice it, a huge change. You are fundamentally altering the structure, the style, the modus operandi of your relationship. Even if you both want it desperately, this transition is likely to be challenging and sometimes difficult.

Polyamory brings new people into your lives in close, intimate ways. You cannot know in advance how those new people, those new relationships, will influence and change you as individuals and together as a couple. All the significant relationships in my life have changed me, and chances are yours have changed you too. This doesn’t just apply to your own romantic relationships either, by the way. I’ve had metamours and metamour relationships that have profoundly changed me in all sorts of ways.

Polyamory might mean exploring feelings, interests, and desires you’ve previously buried or didn’t even know you had. It might change practical life things such as your schedule and how you manage your finances. It involves personal work and relationship work. It’s going to change things.

The good news is that…

Change Does Not Have to Be Bad

The first step in navigating change successfully is understanding that change does not have to be a bad thing.

Let’s revisit those other big life changes we touched on above. So many things have likely shaped and changed your relationship in the time you’ve been together. But would you consider any of those changes “bad?” They might have been challenging. You might have had to work hard together to navigate them. But did you ultimately come out of them with a healthier, better relationship? Chances are that, often, you did.

The changes that polyamory will bring about don’t have to be bad, either. In fact, they can be profoundly joyful, healing, and life-enhancing.

Good Changes That Polyamory Can Bring

Perhaps, despite what I’ve said above, you’re now descending into a panic spiral about the impending change to your existing relationship that I’ve just told you is inevitable. Okay, slow down. Take a breath. Here are 20 positive ways that polyamory can change your relationship.

  1. It gives you opportunities to be vulnerable, share your feelings, hold space for one another, and support each other authentically
  2. Exploring dating, relationships and sex with new people will introduce you to new facets of yourselves which you can then bring home to each other
  3. Polyamory demands personal reflection, self-work, and internal growth which inevitably strengthens relationships
  4. You might get to see your partner through someone else’s eyes as they date new people, introducing you to new parts of them to love
  5. Experiencing new relationship energy (NRE) elsewhere can often spill over, causing an injection of romantic and/or sexual energy into your existing relationship
  6. You’ll have more people to support you through difficult times
  7. One or both of you might learn about new kinks, sex acts, or ways of being intimate that you can enjoy together as well as with your new partners
  8. Spending time apart in order to date separately can be scary, but absence really does make the heart grow fonder and you’ll enjoy your time together even more for it
  9. The scheduling demands of polyamory will require you to schedule quality time and date nights with each other as well as with your new partners
  10. If you have children, polyamory can potentially introduce new loving, supportive adults into those kids’ lives
  11. You’ll build security as you see that, even with the freedom to date or have sex with whomever they please, your partner still loves you and keeps coming back to you
  12. If you’re practicing kitchen table or garden party polyamory, your new metamours might become treasured friends or family members
  13. If one or both of you has hobbies, interests, or kinks that the other doesn’t share, you can get those wants and needs met elsewhere
  14. Seeing your partner happy and in love with someone else can bring about compersion, a hugely positive emotion in which you take joy in their joy
  15. You’ll both grow your relationship skills, communication skills, and emotional intelligence
  16. Polyamory can expose cracks in your relationship, which may sound scary but actually gives you a golden opportunity to face them, fix them, and enjoy a stronger relationship in the long run
  17. Polyamory can help you to break unhealthy unconscious patterns such as codependency
  18. You’ll face, tackle, and ultimately overcome deeply ingrained fears and insecurities within yourself, leading you to become a happier and healthier person
  19. You’ll enjoy more freedom, independence, and individuality without sacrificing the safety and comfort of your long-term relationship
  20. Hopefully, you’ll both be happier for having made the transition, which can only do good things for your relationship

Of course, not all of these will be true for every couple opening up. But if you and your partner approach this journey with communication and compassion, I bet at least a few of them will be true for you!

Navigating Change Positively in a Newly Polyamorous Relationship

Okay, so you’re ready and prepared for the possibility (certainty) of change as you transition to polyamory. But how do you actually navigate it well? Though I’m approaching this topic primarily through the lens of a transition from monogamy to polyamory/non-monogamy, these tips are also useful when you’re navigating any other significant change within your relationship.

Those changes could include a renegotiation of your relationship agreements, nesting (moving in together) or denesting (going from living together to living separately), a new partner, a break-up, or even a fundamental change of relationship style or structure. I found many of these strategies helpful when shifting my nesting relationship with Mr C&K from a hierarchical structure to a non-hierarchical one.

Reaffirm Your Love and Commitment Regularly

Fear of loss is one of the reasons that change is scary. When things start changing, even if it’s change you want, you might fear losing your partner or aspects of your relationship that you value. When you’re transitioning from monogamy to non-monogamy or navigating change in any area of your relationship, it can help to reaffirm your love for and commitment to one another regularly.

Learning each other’s love languages will help you tremendously here. There’s no point trying to show your partner you love them by doing the dishes when they’d rather you told them in words, or buying them a gift when what they’re really craving is quality time together.

If in doubt, start by saying to your partner something like “I love you and I am committed to the future and health of our relationship. How can I help you to feel loved and secure as we go through this transition together?”

Talk About Everything

A golden rule to live by: if you’re not sure whether you need to communicate about something, then you definitely do.

When you’re first transitioning to polyamory or navigating change in your polyamorous relationship, it’s hard to over-communicate. If something feels important to you, even if you can’t quite articulate why at first, you need to talk about it. If something bothers you, even if you feel it “shouldn’t,” you guessed it. You need to talk about it.

In the early stages in particular, but honestly throughout the duration of a polyamorous relationship, you and your partner should be talking about everything. This can take the form of scheduled, formalised check-ins (Multiamory’s RADAR is a good framework,) informal as-and-when conversations, or a mix of both, depending on your communication styles and individual needs.

Understand Your Own Values, Boundaries, Needs, Deal-Breakers, and Bottom Lines

I caution against setting lots of rules in polyamorous relationships. Some people think that polyamorous relationship rules are useful training wheels when you’re new to non-monogamy, but I tend to disagree with that, too. Having lots of rules offers an illusion of safety, but at the price of disempowering everyone involved and often treating incoming new partners pretty badly.

Instead, focus on understanding your own values, boundaries, needs, deal-breakers, and bottom lines. These will serve as your guiding lights in how you act within all your relationships.

Values are the things that are most important to you, the core principles on which you want to operate. Think about what’s most important to you in life and relationships, and come up with 3-5 words that encapsulate those values.

Boundaries are about yourself – what you will and won’t do or allow when it comes to the things that belong to you. Your body, mind, space, possessions, and so on. For example, “I will only have unbarriered sex with people who test regularly and take reasonable safer sex precautions.”

Needs are the things you require to feel happy, safe, secure, and loved in a relationship. For example, “I need my partner to show that they love me and value our relationship by spending quality, one-to-one time with me regularly.”

Deal-breakers and bottom lines are things you absolutely will not tolerate and that would cause you to leave a relationship. For example, “I will not be in relationship with someone who lies to me.” Ensure that the things you specify here are genuine deal-breakers, and not rules or attempts at control in disguise.

Focus on Adding, Not Taking Away

In a certain light, when you transition to from monogamy to polyamory, you are losing something. Specifically, you’re losing exclusivity and the (illusion of) security that it brings. However, you’re also adding so many wonderful things (refer back to the list above.) The same is true for many kinds of changes.

So, as much as possible, focus on what you can add to your relationship. How can this change make it better? For example, when you become non-monogamous, you might lose spending every night at home together. This makes sense because you’ll both be going out on dates and spending time with other partners. But can you make your time together a greater quality of time? Can you add in a dedicated regular date night to nurture your connection? In this way, you turn a perceived loss into a net gain for the health and happiness of your relationship.

Get Real About Your Feelings (But Don’t Let Them Rule You)

Navigating change of any kind, particularly a big change like transitioning to polyamory, can bring about intense feelings. You and your partner will need to get really real and vulnerable with each other to weather changes together successfully. Talk about your feelings, including the ones that make you feel scared or small or ashamed. Make space for the things that come up for you both, even those irrational and painful and trauma-based feelings.

There’s a difference, though, between honouring your feelings and letting them rule you. Emotions can offer tremendously valuable information (for example, Paige at Poly.land says that jealousy is a “check-engine light.”) They’re not always very specific, though, and the things they tell you won’t always be accurate.

Learning how to sit with your feelings, talk about them, and unpick them to ascertain what is real, what is your fear talking, and what (if anything) you need to do about them is one of the greatest non-monogamy skills – and relationship skills in general – that you will ever learn.

Get Some Outside Help

There’s abolutely no shame in getting a little additional help as you go through big relationship changes. In fact, I advocate enormously for this approach!

This can look a few different ways. If it’s within your budget, I hugely recommend seeking out a polyamory-friendly relationship therapist. They are trained to help you improve your communication, strengthen your relationship, and navigate all sorts of challenges together.

You can also seek out community and resources. All of us were new to polyamory once. Most of us remember exactly what it was like and how scary it can be. Some of the resources available to you that you might want to make use of include:

Trust Yourself and Your Partner

You are wiser than you know, and you know yourself better than anyone. Part of navigating change is learning to trust yourself and your partner. Trust that you can get through this transition, even the hard parts. Trust in your collective relationship and communication skills enough to know that you can face challenges and come out stronger.

Trusting your partner can be hard when you’re going through big changes such as a transition to polyamory. But it is so, so important. Remember that they love you and they’re with you because they choose to be. Look out for all the ways that they show you their love and commitment.

Trusting yourself, though, can be even harder than trusting someone else. When you’re transitioning to polyamory or navigating change within your relationship and finding it difficult, you might doubt your own abilities. You might even doubt your own mind, your own feelings, and your own perceptions. Self-trust will get you through and keep you focused on your eventual goal of a happy, healthy polyamorous relationship.

Navigating change is one of the biggest challenges to success in a newly polyamorous relationship. It’s not easy, but it can be done. I believe in you and I hope you can believe in yourself, too.

Red ceramic heart broken into pieces. Header for a post about cheating in polyamory

Broken Agreements, Breaches of Trust, and Cheating in Polyamory: What Now? [Polyamory Conversation Cards #2]

Published on by Amy

“What is cheating in polyamory?”

“My partner did this thing that really upset me. Did they cheat?”

“Is it cheating if I…?”

I see variations of these questions multiple times a week in polyamory groups, forums, and other discussion spaces. Cheating in polyamory is a complicated subject, and a divisive one. Often, when the subject of what constitutes “cheating” in polyamory comes up, something has happened that breaches a relationship agreement (or, sometimes, an unspoken assumption) or leads to someone feeling that their trust in their partner has been broken.

In case you missed it, this post is part of a series I’m doing inspired by Odder Being’s Polyamory Conversation Cards. Once a week or as often as I can, I’ll pull a card at random and write a piece of content based on it. There will likely be some essays, advice pieces, personal experiences, rants, and more! You can read the whole series at the dedicated tag.

This week’s card asks:

“If your partner cheats on you or breaks an agreement, how can they best communicate this and what do you need to restore any damaged trust?”

Ahh, cheating in polyamory and broken relationship agreements. I have a LOT to say about this one, so let’s dive straight in.

Does Cheating in Polyamory Even Exist?

Some people think it’s impossible to cheat in an open relationship. After all, in monogamy-land, “cheating” is typically defined as “doing romantic or sexual things with someone who is not your partner.” But an open or polyamorous relationship explicitly allows for those things, so how is it possible to cheat?

This belief comes from another, to which I also do not subscribe: that polyamory or consensual non-monogamy (CNM) is a no-holds-barred free-for-all. In fact, all the successful polyamorous relationships I know are carefully negotiated and based upon mutual respect and well-crafted relationship agreements that serve everyone’s best interests.

So yes, cheating in polyamory is a real thing. If you go behind your partner’s back, don’t notify them about something they’d reasonably expect to be told about (such as a new partner or a change in sexual health practices), you might be doing something that could be defined as cheating.

However, when a breach of trust or a broken agreement has happened, I also believe that “is this cheating?” is almost always the wrong question.

Why I Think “Is It Cheating?” is the Wrong Question

“Cheating” is such a loaded term in our society and relationship landscape. It comes with so many assumptions and beliefs, many of them neither helpful nor true. Consider, for example, the maxim “once a cheater, always a cheater.” This is demonstrably false. Making a bad choice once, or even many times, does not doom a person to continue to make it for the rest of their lives! Many people have cheated on a partner, then decided not to repeat that behaviour in that relationship or others.

Cheating is destructive and cruel, and it is something that I take a pretty hard line on in my relationships. I won’t stay with a partner who cheats on me and I won’t get or stay involved with someone who is actively cheating on another partner. However, I also have a fairly narrow and specific personal definition of cheating. I would only consider one of my partners to have cheated on me if they deliberately and willingly broke a relationship agreement we made and lied to me about it.

Also, and this is important: you’re allowed to be upset about something even if it doesn’t meet anyone’s reasonable definition of cheating in polyamory! To use a totally hypothetical example, let’s say a partner of mine skips my birthday party to go hook up with a new person. No-one would reasonably call that “cheating”, but it’s still unkind, inconsiderate and unloving behaviour about which I am legitimately within my rights to be pissed off.

So, if one of your partners does something that hurts you or violates an agreement, don’t leap straight to “did they cheat?” Instead, ask yourself how their actions make you feel. Perhaps you’re hurt. Angry. Betrayed. Scared. A mix of these emotions, or something else entirely. Allow yourself to feel those feelings, then consider what to do next (which we’ll get into below.)

Are Breaches Inevitable?

Another refrain I hear a lot in polyamorous spaces is, “the problem with rules is that they always get broken.” I don’t necessarily agree with this, though. In my early days in polyamory, my relationships had a lot of rules attached to them. I no longer think this was a particularly good or healthy approach, and now practice non-hierarchical polyamory that prioritises mutual agreements, personal boundaries, and care and consideration for everyone involved over rules.

However, what I did not do is break any of those rules when they were in place. To do so would have been dishonest, unkind, and relationship-damaging. So no, I do not necessarily believe that any rule you put in place will get broken, and I certainly don’t think that mutually-made relationship agreements will.

What is pretty much inevitable, though, is the occasional miscommunication or mistake. We’re all imperfect humans and we will sometimes misunderstand our partners, genuinely forget to communicate something important, or realise that we were interpreting the terms of an agreement differently to the other person or people involved.

The bad news is that, when these things happen, they suck. For everyone. The good news is that they’re often entirely recoverable.

Someone Cheated, Broke an Agreement, or Breached Your Trust. What Now?

Sometimes, someone will make a bad choice or one that causes hurt to their partner(s). It would be wonderful if this never happened, but we’re all humans and we live in the real world. The chances of it happening to any of us at some point are fairly high.

I’m approaching this section from the perspective of talking to the person whose trust was broken. However, if you’re the one who did the agreement-breaking, there should be plenty in here for you too.

So, your partner cheated, broke an agreement, or otherwise did something to violate your trust in your polyamorous relationship. What the hell do you do now?

Get the facts and assume good faith

When your feelings are hurt and you’re feeling scared, betrayed, or angry, it’s very easy to assume the worst of everyone involved. You might feel as though they don’t care about you at all, or even that causing you pain was their intention. However, this is often not the case.

Sure, some people are malicious actors who operate with absolutely no regard for their partners’ feelings or even set out to hurt their partners intentionally. The vast majority of people, though, are not like that. Many breaches of trust happen due to thoughtlessness rather than malice. Misunderstandings, forgetfulness, mental health issues, and intoxication are just some of the other non-malicious causes (or contributing factors) that can be behind hurtful choices. They’re not excuses, of course, but understanding that your partner did not harm you intentionally can be helpful in the immediate aftermath of a broken agreement.

Until you know all the facts, try to assume good faith on the part of your parter(s) and anyone else involved. It is far easier to recover from someone doing something stupid but thoughtless than it is to recover from someone intentionally and knowingly choosing to betray you.

The other important thing to do here is watch for patterns. If this is the first time your partner has done something like this and they seem genuinely remorseful, your reaction will likely be (and probably should be) different than if this is the fifth time they’ve done the same thing with the same excuse.

Decide whether repair is possible

You might be someone who considers a broken agreement to be an instant, relationship ending dealbreaker. And you get to make that choice! However, for most of us, this is likely to be contextual.

Choosing to break a safer sex agreement (e.g. not using a condom with a casual hook-up, if that’s what you’ve agreed) in the heat of the moment and then disclosing it to your partner straight away isn’t good, but it’s a world away from repeatedly and deliberately having unprotected sex for months without telling your existing partner(s.) The former is far more likely to be repairable than the latter. Misunderstanding the terms of an agreement in good faith is quantifiably different from understanding the spirit of an agreeement but rules-lawyering your way into violating it anyway.

If your partner has broken an agreement, cheated on you, or otherwise damaged your trust, only you can decide if repair is possible. In other words, are you going to stay and do the work with your partner to fix things, or are you going to leave the relationship?

Either choice is valid, of course. However, I’m personally big on forgiveness and not a fan of throwing relationships away over mistakes. A breach would have to be both huge and clearly deliberate for me to walk away from a relationship over it at this stage.

Feel and express your feelings

We touched on this above. It can be tempting to skip this step, because the feelings these kinds of incidents bring up can be painful and even traumatic. However, it’s essential that you allow yourself to feel and express your emotions. Repressing them doesn’t do anyone any good.

Note that expressing your emotions does not mean completely flying off the handle. However, it’s fair to be in a heightened emotional state and – as long as you’re not doing anything abusive such as screaming at your partner, using verbal abuse, showing physical aggression or violence, or threatening harm to them or yourself – you shouldn’t necessarily feel an obligation to tone this down. It’s okay to cry, to express anger, and to show how hurt you are.

Where possible, try to use “I” statements and to be as specific as possible. For example, “when I found out you’d had sex without a condom, I felt disregarded and uncared for” is better than “you obviously just don’t give a fuck about me.” If you need to take a little time and space before you can express your feelings in a healthy way, that’s fine too.

What do you need from your partner?

Assuming your partner made a genuine mistake, they are likely feeling remorseful for their actions, regretting hurting you, and wanting to make amends. Take the time to think about what you need from them for repair to happen.

This can look a bunch of different ways. I’ve had situations where all I needed was an explanation of what happened and why followed by a genuine apology, then we could forget the whole thing and move on. Other situations have required more intensive repair efforts.

Some of the things you might ask for include:

  • An apology
  • To talk through exactly what happened and why
  • A commitment that your partner won’t repeat the behaviour and for them to outline the steps they will take to ensure it doesn’t happen again
  • Some quality time with your partner to re-establish your connection
  • Some space from your partner. (Ensure that this doesn’t lead to you stonewalling them or giving them the silent treatment as a punishment. Time-limit it and let them know when you will return. For example, “I’m going to take until tomorrow to process this and care for myself, I’ll call you after work.”)
  • For the two of you to see a relationship counsellor or therapist together

…or something else that I haven’t thought of! Your partner doesn’t have to give you what you ask for, of course. This is about requests, not demands. But how they respond to your reasonable requests for reconnection, amends, or trust-rebuilding will probably tell you a lot about how they feel about having hurt you and how committed they are to repairing and strengthening your bond.

Resisting the urge to punish or retaliate

This part can be difficult for some people, but it’s essential. If your partner has cheated, violated an agreement, or breached your trust, you might feel a lot of anger. That’s understandable! What you must do, though, is resist the urge to punish them or retaliate from a place of anger.

I’ve seen this look various ways. In cases of agreement breaches or cheating in polyamory, two of the most common are “you have to be monogamous to me but I can still be open, because you broke the rules” and “I’m vetoing the person you made a mistake with, so you have to break up with them.” The other common version in all relationship structures, of course, is “you cheated on me so now I get to cheat on you and you can’t say anything about it.”

Assuming you’ve decided to remain in the relationship, the goal must be to repair, reconnect, and come back together having learned from whatever happened. Depending on the severity, this may not be easy and it may take some time to rebuild trust. However, punishing your partner or retaliating will actually lead you further away from a positive resolution. It may also irrevocably poison your relationship in the long run.

Give it time

Trust is often fragile, particularly for people with trauma histories. It can take a long time to repair when someone breaks it. So don’t expect overnight repair, no matter how remorseful the person who broke an agreement is or how sincerely they commit to ensuring it never happens again.

The best apology, as the saying goes, is changed behaviour. So see how your partner behaves in the aftermath of the trust breach. Do they make sincere efforts to display trustworthiness and make you feel loved and valued? Do they take steps to make sure they don’t repeat the mistake? If so, you’re good.

Broken agreements, trust violations, and cheating in polyamory are incredibly painful and can cause massive ruptures in relationships and polycules. But they don’t necessarily have to mean the end of everything.

FYI: this post contains an affiliate link.

Header image: no veto power does not mean having no say in a healthy polyamory dynamic

In Healthy Polyamory, No Veto Power Does Not Mean No Say [Polyamory Conversation Cards #1]

Published on by Amy

I recently received my set of Polyamory Conversation Cards, created by Odder Being, a project that I backed on Kickstarter months ago. With 49 questions across 7 different categories, these cards are designed to get you thinking, help you to discover your needs and boundaries, and spark open and constructive conversations with your partners. They are non-gendered and make no assumptions about relationship configuration.

I decided to use them as prompts for blog posts for this year. I’ll pull a card at random, one at a time until I’ve got through the entire deck, and use them to inspire a piece of content here. Some of them might be practical advice pieces. Others may be essays, personal pieces, or even rants. We’ll see! (And I am not putting a hard and fast timeframe on this because I don’t need that kind of pressure in my life. I’m going to aim for roughly one a week or getting through the whole deck in approximately a year, but we’ll see.)

Today’s card asks:

“To what extent are you okay with your partner(s) having influence over your romantic and/or sexual connections with others?”

This has made me think about the subject of veto power in polyamory. This controversial practice refers to giving one partner the power to unilaterally demand that you end an outside relationship at any time, and reasonably expect that you will comply. Most often, the person wielding veto power will be a spouse, “primary” partner, or nesting partner.

I am absolutely, unequivocally against veto power. I believe it’s abusive in almost all circumstances. Personal experience also tells me that, even if it is never actually used, the mere threat of a veto from one partner prevents emotional safety from ever truly existing in any other relationships. After all, how can you ever possibly feel safe if your metamour could yank your relationship away at any moment?

Just a few other reasons I’m against veto power include:

  • It reinforces relationship hierarchies and couple’s privilege.
  • It is a poor way of building safety and security, and simply outsources risk and pain onto others rather than actually confronting and working through difficult feelings.
  • Its intended impact is rarely its actual impact. In fact, in most cases, using (or even threatening) a veto will cause such resentment that it will irrevocably damage or end the relationship of the person who issued it.
  • It treats human beings with feelings as disposable toys.
  • It places the veto-giving partner into an authoritarian or parental role, rather than the role of an equal partner, and removes autonomy from their partner(s) and metamour(s).
  • In extreme cases, it can lead to sexual coercion or sexual violence (e.g. “if your partner won’t have a threesome with us, I’m vetoing them.”)

In healthy relationships, we do influence each other

It’s a myth, and a deeply toxic one, that healthy polyamorous relationships involve total autonomy without any cross-relationship or inter-relationship influence. Autonomy and self-determination are important, but they should not come at the expense of treating the people we love well. Moreover, they don’t have to.

If you take away nothing else from this post, please at least internalise this. It is entirely possible (and not even that difficult!) to both have autonomy and to practice kindness, consideration, and care for your partners and their feelings.

As humans, we are social creatures and we are influenced and changed by those around us, and particularly those close to us, in all sorts of ways. This is normal. This is healthy.

I am influenced by my partners and my close friends all the time, and mostly in very positive ways. They inspire me with their bravery and brilliance, they make me want to be the best version of myself, they challenge me when I am wrong, and they offer unique and valuable insights into all aspects of my life. In positive relationships (both romantic and otherwise,) we learn from each other. We are often changed by each other, and by our relationships, in profound and beautiful ways.

Loving people means caring for their feelings

Another toxic myth in the polyamory community is the idea that “your feelings are your problem.”

This started from a good place: that we all have a reasonable responsibility for our own emotional wellbeing and that we should not weaponise our feelings to control our partners. However, in its current guise, it has morphed into something deeply damaging. It has led to people thinking that there is something wrong with them if they have anything but positive feelings about anything their partner does. It has led to people utterly disregarding their partners’ valid needs and emotions to the point of cruelty or even abuse.

Because loving people and being in intimate relationship with them does include caring for their feelings. Emotions do not typically spring, fully formed, from nowhere. They are often reactive, though what they are in response to and how that response manifests can be changeable, unpredictable, at times hard to identify, and not necessarily an obvious straight line.

If you are in an intimate relationship with someone of any kind, you do have a degree of responsibility to care for their feelings. This doesn’t mean doing whatever they want, allowing them to dictate all the terms of the relationship, or allowing them to control or limit your other significant relationships. It does mean creating emotional safety, receiving their feelings – especially difficult or vulnerable ones – with love, and working with them to meet their needs. There might be times where it means not doing something you would have otherwise liked to do.

Case study: temporary frustration for the long-term good

I have, on a small handful of occasions, chosen not to pursue a casual hookup at that time because one of my serious partners was in a bad place emotionally and did not have the bandwidth to process or handle it.

If this was happening all the time we’d need to have a conversation. But once in a while? That strikes me as a normal part of being a loving and considerate partner to somebody in a serious relationship.

Some polyamorous people would balk at this, saying that my partner was being controlling or exerting undue influence. The key, though, is that the choice was ultimately mine. Nobody issued a veto or forbade me to do anything. I made an assessment and made a choice to act in the way I did – a choice that, ultimately, was more than worth the temporary frustration for the long-term benefit to my partner’s wellbeing and our relationship overall.

Important clarification: I view a situation like the one above as fundamentally different from curtailing another significant and serious relationship, which is not something I would ever do. That’s because, in the context of a serious relationship, all my partners have certain rights and certain things they can expect from me. Those things include not having another partner or relationship interfere with ours in a negative way.

There’s a huge difference between influence and control

Where I think this question gets really interesting is when we pick apart the difference between influence and control. At first glance they can seem similar, with the difference more semantic than substantial, but I actually think they’re enormously different things.

One crucial difference is that influence in a relationship is bidirectional, whereas control flows only one way. I consider my partners’ needs and feelings in my decisions, and I feel confident that they will consider mine in a similar way. A veto, by definition, does not consider the needs and feelings of either of the people whose relationship is being vetoed. It is designed to serve only the person issuing the veto. (And even then, it usually fails. Again: issuing a veto against one of your partner’s other relationships is likely to seriously damage your relationship with that partner, if it doesn’t end it entirely.)

Another difference is that, in the case of influence, we each ultimately still have the power and the space to make our own decisions. When control is being utilised, we do not. Influence can allow for negotiation, make room for compromise, and seek to come to solutions that serve the good of everyone affected by the situation. Control does none of those things.

Case studies: expressing a need vs. making a demand

Here’s an example. I might say to one of my partners, “I feel as though I’m not getting enough time with you lately, and that makes me feel sad and neglected.” This would lead to a conversation, and might result in some aspect of their behaviour changing. They might take more proactive steps to arrange time with me, move things around in their schedule so that we can see each other, or change how we spend time together so it’s a higher quality of shared time.

What I do NOT have the right to do is to say “you’re not spending enough time with me, so I demand that you break up with your other partner (or curtail/downgrade your relationship with them) to make more time for me.”

To give another example, let’s say I feel particularly insecure about a new metamour for some reason. I can say to my partner, “I’m feeling really insecure about your relationship with X, so I’d prefer it if you could share fewer details with me/hold space for me to talk things out/hold off on introducing me to them until I’ve worked through these feelings.” I cannot say, “they make me insecure so you can’t see them any more.”

That’s the difference between having a say (influence) and having a veto (control.)

What if one of your partners is concerned about a prospective partner, date, or hook-up, or vice-versa?

This is usually the first question that comes up when I say I don’t believe in veto. “But Amy, what if one of your partners wants to date someone really, truly terrible? Or what if you want to make a horrible dating choice, and your partners have no recourse to stop you?”

It’s a fair question but, I think, takes the wrong approach. It assumes that polyamorous people are all just waiting to make terrible dating choices, get involved with the worst kinds of humans, or casually disregard our own values, and that strict rules or the threat of a veto are the only things keeping us in line. The reality, in my experience, is quite the opposite. In fact, all the successful polyamorous people I know operate with the highest levels of integrity and seek to make good choices in partner selection and in the ways that their relationships are conducted.

The key here is to trust your partners’ judgement and intentions, both in the ways they manage their own dating lives and in any opinions they may express about yours.

Do I worry about one of my partners bringing home my abuser, a neo-Nazi, or (to use a less extreme and more common example) a monogamous person who has expressed a desire to cowperson them away from the rest of the polycule? No, because I trust their judgement. I know them well enough to know they wouldn’t do something like that, so it never occurs to me to worry about it.

With that said, we all have blind spots. We’re all capable of overlooking glaring red flags, falling for someone with bad intentions, or just making stupid decisions in the heat of lust. This is where that influence thing comes in again. Influence allows your partners to share their concerns with you and have their voices heard (and vice versa) without demanding that you choose one specific course of action.

That’s why you should talk to your partner about if it you have any legitimate concerns about someone they’re interested in. It’s also why you should listen if they bring up similar concerns about a prospective partner to you.

If your partner finds faults, concerns, or “red flags” in everyone you want to date, chances are there’s something deeper going on. They might be feeling jealous or insecure, or simply be having a hard time with trusting you to make good decisions for yourself. These are all common issues within polyamory, particularly – but not exclusively – when you’re newer to it.

If either of my partners raised a concern about someone I was interested in, though, I’d listen. This does not necessarily mean I’d always choose not to pursue the person in question. My eventual decision would depend on the circumstances and on a whole array of factors. But I would listen to my partner(s), I would hear their concerns, and I would give those concerns serious consideration. If I choose not to pursue the new connection as a result, that’s not veto power. That’s me making an informed decision based on all the information to which I have access.

My partners are smart and emotionally intelligent people who love me, know me very well, and have sound judgement. If they tell me they have a concern, I know that they legitimately do and are not simply trying to control or limit me.

The bottom line: what I will and won’t accept with regards to veto power, influence, and control

This card asks, “To what extent are you okay with your partner(s) having influence over your romantic and/or sexual connections with others?”

Ultimately, my answer is that I’m fine with them having a reasonable level of influence. I actually think that’s a good and healthy thing. What I won’t tolerate is anyone seeking to have control over my other connections, and I would be unlikely to stay long in a relationship with someone who wanted that control. Likewise, I want to have influence with my partners but I do not want to have control.

My answer to this question also depends, to a fairly significant extent, on what type of relationship we are talking about. My serious partners are always going to be far, far more important to me than one-off or casual hook-ups. This naturally means that they get a much higher level of priority and enjoy a greater degree of influence in the decisions I make and the ways I choose to operate.

What I won’t do, however, is accept veto power or be in a relationship with someone who has given that power to any of their other partners.

No-one gets to decide the reality, outcome, or direction of any of my relationships except me and the other person in it. I will never give anyone veto power or permission-granting/permission-refusing power over any aspect of other connections. But I will always take my partners’ needs and feelings into consideration and strive to make sure they feel loved, heard, and prioritised. Because no veto power does not mean no say.

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[Guest Post] Anorgasmia and The Pursuit of Pleasure by Alessandra Fraissinet

Published on by Amy

It’s been quite a while since we had a guest post, hasn’t it? I’m happy to be welcoming Alessandra Fraissinet (they/she), a queer, sex-positive relationship, sex and health educator (RSH), talking about anorgasmia, the orgasm gap, and orgasm difficulties. This has come at a pretty perfect time, especially given that I wrote recently about my own struggles with orgasm and vow to never “fake it” again.

The Pursuit of Pleasure by Alessandra Fraissinet

TW: mention of depression and sexual violence

Part of my job as a sex educator is to encourage people of all genders and sexualities to follow their pleasure. To have sex because it feels good, to release expectations, to be playful, and to move away from the idea of sex as a performance. Under heteronormativity, in particular, sex can be viewed as something you do with a particular aim and, specifically, something that must lead to orgasm.

Now, there are a few things to know about orgasms:

First, orgasms are an involuntary response to a mechanical stimulus, pretty much like a sneeze. That means you or your partner(s) can facilitate the reaction by creating a set of ideal circumstances (trust, relaxation, appropriate stimulation), but that technically no one can make you orgasm except for your own body.

And just as there are a few things you can do to facilitate orgasm, some things can also make it hard to reach. Relaxation, adequate stimulation, good pelvic floor health, safety and trust all contribute to creating an ideal environment for orgasms. On the other hand, physical and psychological factors like depression, anxiety, certain medications, stress, and sexual trauma can prevent you from having orgasms either occasionally or all the time.

People with vulvas, especially cis women who have sex with cishet men, are known to have it harder: this is a well-documented phenomenon known as the orgasm gap. When discussing the orgasm gap, people most often place emphasis on poor communication between partners, male selfishness, and a lack of appropriate pleasure education.

Regardless of sex, gender or sexual orientation, orgasms can be difficult to achieve. This can result in significant pressure during partnered sex especially. Unlearning the idea of sex as a performance, and embracing it as an experience, requires us to release our expectations of a specific outcome and allow pleasure to take whatever form comes naturally in a given moment. This is challenging, especially if – like me – you live with anorgasmia: the extreme difficulty or inability to orgasm.

Anorgasmia can be primary (when you have never had an orgasm) or secondary (when you used to be able to orgasm). It can depend on a variety of different factors: excessive worrying around sexual “performance”, depression and other mood disorders, chronic pain, sexual trauma, hormonal changes, gynaecological surgery, and other health conditions can all cause anorgasmia.

Being a Sex Educator with Anorgasmia

So here I am, embodying the contradiction of being a sex educator who is not only unable to orgasm, but is also consistently failing to address what is “wrong” with their body. Here I am telling people they need to stop obsessing over orgasms and start enjoying sex for pleasure and connection… when I can rarely practice what I preach.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy sex for the sake of pleasure and connection because I do. Because I don’t cum, pleasure and connection pretty much constitute the whole deal to me. But to be completely honest, most of the time, I am immensely frustrated with my body. I feel betrayed. And I feel like my body has failed me.

I can’t seem to recall my first orgasms – or even whether I have ever actually experienced one. My first experiences with sex were turbulent, to put it mildly. But even now, when I am having super hot sex, when I am really turned on, and when I am having sex with someone who I trust and who cares about me, I cannot ever bring myself to climax. No matter the amount of adequate stimulation I am receiving. No matter how many sex toys I’m aiding myself with.

I always come super close to it, and then… I wish I could say it’s like a deer in headlights that simply stops and goes away, never to be seen again. But the reality is that the pleasure becomes unbearable at this point, and I ask my partner to stop (or I stop if I am masturbating).

Reactions are mixed. Some people (you guessed it, mostly cis men) don’t say a word, and I am not even sure they notice. Some seem puzzled and thrown off or ask me questions. I then explain what happens to my body. While there is a general understanding, most people seem very surprised by it.

Talking About It

Telling partners about my anorgasmia can be even more frustrating than having the condition itself. Attempting to articulate what happens to my body while I’m experiencing intense pleasure without ever being able to follow through puts me right in front of the issue I’ve consistently been trying to avoid (which is another perfect example of “do as I say, not as I do”). And the reason why I avoid the issue is that actively trying to overcome it seems way too overwhelming.

There’s something terrifying about realising that you are indeed in charge of your own pleasure. Your partners can aid and facilitate it but cannot create it from scratch and give it to you. If you want to experience it, you must show up for yourself. That can mean a few different things: communicating with your partner openly and honestly and asking for what you want, making time and being intentional about solo sex, or going to therapy and facing uncomfortable truths. Sometimes all three, and more, together.

For years, I’ve refused to address my anorgasmia in the name of pleasure. Because sex feels good no matter what. Because I can still feel close to my partner. And because I firmly reject all sorts of expectations around sex. Wanting more doesn’t make me a hypocrite, though. If you take away one thing from this post, let it be this: you can embrace orgasm-less pleasure while being curious and trying to overcome your limitations. I deserve powerful, earth-shattering orgasms, and so do you.

“You deserve pleasure” has become a popular catchphrase in sex-positive communities, and rightfully so. But to internalise this message is difficult. And if you’ve been struggling with depression, low self-esteem or sexual trauma, taking charge of your own pleasure can feel overwhelming and out of
reach. There’s no quick fix and no magic wand, but there is important work to do.

If you would like to support me in bringing more amazing guest writers to the site, the best way to do that is by becoming a supporter on Patreon. You can also chip in by buying me a virtual coffee!

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Why I’m No Longer Using the Term “Fluid Bonding”

Published on by Amy

Today’s blog topic about why I’m rejecting the term “fluid bonding” was chosen by my patrons over on Patreon! If you’d like to support my work, you can do so for as little as $1 per month. Support at the $3 tier or above, and you’ll get to vote on future content too!

In the decade and a half I’ve been non-monogamous, I’ve had numerous conversations about so-called “fluid bonding.” I’ve negotiated the circumstances under which it is okay, not-okay, and maybe-okay to do it in various relationships. I have discussed the potential risks brought about by myself, my partners, or even my metamours choosing to fluid bond in certain relationships, and how those impacted might protect their sexual health. I’ve had literally hundreds of conversations involving this subject.

And I’m rejecting the term. When I talk about barriers, safer sex practices, and sexual health, I will no longer be using the term “fluid bonding.”

Here’s why.

“Fluid Bonding” is Vague

If you ask ten polyamorous people what “fluid bonding” means, most of them will probably tell you something like “having sex without barriers.” In practice, though, the term “fluid bonding” is far more specific in its widely accepted meaning than that. When most people say it, they are referring to the act of having penetrative penis-in-vagina (or, less commonly, penis-in-anus) sex without a condom.

Under this definition, I have only ever “fluid bonded” with two people in my entire life, including my current nesting partner. But that feels like a ridiculous, reductive, and wildly inaccurate assessment of how I have had sex over the years.

Notice I said most people use the term this way. Not all. And I’ve definitely seen instances where people thought they were on the same page about its meaning, leading to hurt and even feelings of violation and betrayal when it turned out they were not.

When we assume we all use a term in the same way, miscommunications are inevitable. Nowadays, if a partner or prospective partner tell me they’re “fluid bonded” with this or that person, or expresses a desire to fluid bond with me, I’m going to be asking far more questions rather than assuming I know what they mean.

“Fluid Bonding” Makes it Harder to Have Accurate Safer Sex Conversations

Here’s the reality: semen is one bodily fluid, but not the only one. And semen going into a vagina is just one way of sharing bodily fluids in a sexual relationship (and one way you can transmit an STI.)

If you’re having oral sex without a condom, dam, or other barrier, you are exhanging fluids. If you are touching your partner and then yourself with your hands (or touching more than one partner’s genitals in one session) without changing gloves or handwashing in between, you are exchanging fluids. Any kind of kink activity involving blood, such as needle play, is a fluid exchange risk. Hell, even saliva is a bodily fluid. So if we’re getting really technical about it, kissing is a form of fluid exchange (a low risk one, but some STIs can be transmitted in this way.) And that’s before we even get into the fact that for some STIs to spread, skin-to-skin contact is all you need.

I’m not telling you any of this to scare you. Quite the opposite, actually. STIs carry a heavy stigma but most of them are also easily avoidable, treatable, or manageable. I’m telling you this because having the correct information is how we can all make better choices to keep ourselves and our lovers safe and healthy. Regular testing, clear and specific negotiations about barrier use or lack thereof, and knowing the facts is how we do that.

I’ve also seen people, particularly non-monogamy newbies and those not clued up on sexual health, assume that if they are not “fluid bonded” (i.e. having unbarriered intercourse with a penis) with any of their partners, then they are free from any sexual health risk and can eschew testing. The reality is that anyone who is sexually active should be testing at least occasionally, if not regularly.

Continuing to use this term makes it harder to have accurate conversations about sexual health. It perpetuates the idea that penetrative sex with a penis is the only form of sex that carries a risk. This belief is simply inaccurate and frankly dangerous. It prevents people from being fully informed and protecting their sexual health accordingly.

“Fluid Bonding” is Heterocentric and Cissexist

Part of rejecting “fluid bonding” is tied to my broader and long-standing desire to completely decentre penetrative sex with a penis as some kind of pinnacle of sexual experience. Penis-in-vagina intercourse is one type of sex. It’s not “full” sex (look out for my rant on that subject, coming soon to a sex blog near you!) It’s not “real” sex. When we centre it above other activities in our discussions about sex, we are perpetuating cisheteronormativity.

When we talk about “fluid bonding”, we are assuming that one partner in the equation has a penis and the other has a vulva. This may or may not be true. Further, even if this does happen to be the combination of bodies we’re working with, penis-in-vagina (or anus) intercourse may or may not be a part of that couple’s sexual relationship.

This is heterocentric. It is also cissexist. In reality, relationships can include any combination of gender identities and genital types that you can think of. In reality, penetrative sex is a part of some sexual relationships but not all. And any sexual relationship likely involves at least some form of fluid exchange unless you’re covering your entire bodies in latex prior to sex and not kissing.

“Fluid Bonding” is Emotionally Loaded

If having unbarriered sex with your partners is emotionally meaningful to you, I’m not going to tell you it shouldn’t be. I also prefer to have unbarriered sex in situations where it feels safe and comfortable to do so! As I said, I’ve only had unbarriered penis-in-vagina sex with two people in my entire life. This should tell you that I do not, personally, consider it trivial.

However, I think we should be very, very careful about applying emotionally loaded terms to conversations about safer sex.

A relationship with Partner A isn’t less emotionally meaningful than a relationship with Partner B just because you use barriers with one partner and not the other. There are so many reasons you could make this choice. Perhaps one partner has much more casual sex outside of your relationship and using barriers makes you feel safer. Maybe you or one of your partners is trying to get pregnant in one relationship but not another. Perhaps one penis-owning person has had a vasectomy and another hasn’t. So many possible reasons, and none of them are “I love this person more than that person.”

With that said, some people do use so-called fluid bonding as a sign of emotional significance in a relationship. Again, I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t do this. The emotional weight you apply to sexual decisions is highly personal and up to you to negotiate with your partner(s.)

However, I believe the term “fluid bonding” automatically confers this emotional weight, whether or not the people in question believe in or experience it. That feeds into problematic (and often heteronormative and mononormative) assumptions about which sex acts do and don’t carry emotional significance.

Sex without a barrier is not inherently more connective (or “bonding”) than sex with one.

So What Am I Using Instead?

My overall goal in rejecting this term is to get far more accurate and specific in my conversations about sexual health. It might seem useful to have a shorthand but, as we’ve seen, that shorthand is so imprecise as to be functionally useless.

So instead, when negotiating sexual health, I’ll talk about what I am actually doing with whom. How many people am I having sex with? What barriers am I using or not using for which activities? How often and in which circumstances do I have casual sex, and what precautions am I taking when I do? How often do I and my partners test, and what were our most recent results? And so on.

Does it take longer? Sure. Is it a little clunkier? Yes. Can it feel more vulnerable, or even embarrassing, to get so specific? Yes. But it’s a hell of a lot more useful for everyone.

FYI: this post contains affiliate links.

Header image for a sponsored post for Whipple Tickle on talking about sex toys in a relationship

Talking About Sex Toys in Your Relationship: 5 Conversations You Need to Have

Published on by Amy

Using sex toys together in a sexual relationship can be a wonderful adventure. It can allow you to experience different kinds of pleasure, get to know your own and each other’s bodies better, and experiment with any kinks or fantasies you may have. But the first step to using sex toys together successfully is talking about sex toys together.

Not sure how to do that? Here are five conversations you might want to have if you’re thinking of introducing toys into your sex life with your partner.

“Do we want to use toys together?”

If you’ve never used sex toys together, this is where you’ll want to start. Even if one or both of you uses sex toys separately for solo masturbation, using them together is quite a different dynamic. So start by checking in with each other and finding out if this is something you’re both interested in.

If you’re the person who wants to introduce toys, just ask about it in a straightforward and no-pressure manner. You can be general or specific. A general question might be, “how would you feel about us using some toys together in the bedroom?” A more specific request might be something like, “I was thinking it’d be really hot to have you use a wand vibrator on me until I cum, would you be into that?”

Once you’ve established you’d like to use toys together, then you can move on to…

“What kinds of toys would we like to use together?”

Sex toys is a vast field and you might not both be thinking about the same things when you say “I’d like to use sex toys with my partner.” So talking about sex toys includes discussing which types of toys, specifically, you’d like to use.

Perhaps one of you would like to use a vibrator for additional clitoral stimulation, while the other is interested in exploring anal play. Maybe strap-on sex of some kind sounds fun to you both. You might be curious about bondage, kink, or BDSM and look for some gear to go along with that.

Or perhaps you don’t know what you’re into just yet. That’s okay too! “We’re not sure but we’d like to get a few toys and see what feels good to us” is also valuable information.

“Do we have any emotional hangups around toy use that we need to address?”

Talking about sex toys includes talking about your feelings around sex toys. Sex toy use in a relationship can bring up a lot of feelings. Even just broaching or having your partner broach the subject can be scary. It might feel as though you are saying something negative about your sex life or implying that you are currently dissatisfied.

If one of you can cum harder, more easily, or in a different way with a toy than from other kinds of stimulation, this might bring up feelings of inadequacy or insecurity around sexual performance for the other. The same can be true for the person experiencing the orgasms, by the way! Many cis women and other people with vulvas feel broken if they are able to climax more easily or reliably with a vibrator than in other ways.

For some people with penises, and cis men in particular, toys can bring up any lingering insecurities about their penis. For example, they may worry that it is not big enough, does not get hard enough, or that they cum too quickly during sex.

It’s important to remember that toys are tools, not your competition. They are there to enhance the sex you have together and give you both even more pleasure. They are not there to replace you or to make you feel inadequate. And they do things that bodies physically can’t do – that’s the whole point! By talking openly about your worries and offering one another reassurance to alleviate them, you can increase your chances of having a lovely and sexy time together.

“How do we feel about giving toys as gifts?”

I love giving and receiving sex toys as gifts with partners. (And some friends, actually, but my friendship circle is probably more open than most and YMMV.) But not everyone feels the same so if you’re not sure, it’s a good idea to have this conversation.

Some people would love receiving a toy as a gift, while others may experience it – no matter how well-intended – as a form of pressure. In addition, it can be hard to know other people’s toy preferences unless you either know each other’s bodies very well, have discussed or experimented with toys extensively together, or know that there’s a specific item they’d like.

If you want to get your partner a sexy gift but aren’t sure which toy to choose, a gift card can be a good idea. Then they can either pick out something that will work for them by themselves, or you can make a fun date night activity of going shopping together.

“Are our toys shareable?” (If you’re non-monogamous)

If you’re polyamorous, swingers, or otherwise in an open relationship, it’s also important to talk about whether your sex toys are shareable with other people. Let’s start by busting a myth: as long as you’re using body-safe and non porous toys, there is nothing inherently unhygienic about sharing them. Just clean them between partners or use a barrier if fluid sharing isn’t part of that relationship.

You might decide to keep your toys just for the two of you. The downside to this is that, if you want to also use toys with your other partners, it can get expensive to buy multiple sets. You might decide that all your toys are shareable, that they’re shareable under certain conditions (e.g. that they are sterilised between partners or that condoms are used on insertables), that they’re shareable with certain people (e.g. with trusted partners but not one night stands), or that some toys are shareable while others are not.

There’s no right answer here, but you need to make sure you’re both on the same page or can come to a compromise that works for everyone.

What conversations about sex toys have you had, or do you need to have, in your relationship?

This post was brought to you by Whipple Tickle, a new UK-based retailer selling all kinds of sex toys as well as lingerie, BDSM gear, and more. All views and writing are, as always, mine.

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Everything I Got Wrong About Hierarchical Polyamory

Published on by Amy1 Comment

I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time now, and writing this post on and off for a couple of few weeks months as new thoughts occur to me. I’ve had this blog for six and a half years now (!) and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I don’t feel the same way about some subjects as I did at the beginning of my sex writing journey. One of those subjects is hierarchical polyamory.

I’m not saying I got everything wrong, necessarily. I still stand by my original assertion that a complete lack of any kind of agreements or structure in relationships sounds incredibly stressful to me. But I was definitely coming at many aspects of the subject from a place of unaddressed trauma, deep unhealed wounds, and a hell of a lot of anger that coloured my perception. I definitely got a lot wrong.

I’m a few years older now and I’ve had a fucktonne of therapy, got to know myself a lot better, and spent countless hours deconstructing and reimagining basically everything I thought I knew about sex, relationships, love, and – yes – polyamory.

So what did I get wrong, and what do I believe now?

There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Control

When I first started out in polyamory, way back in the Dark Ages of early 2009, it seemed that virtually everyone in the polyamorous community was operating in the primary/secondary structure. Under this system, one partner (very occasionally more than one, such as in the case of “co-primaries”) is designated as “primary”, and all others are “secondary.” The primary partner typically has some level of control over their partner’s external relationships, and may be afforded certain privileges that secondaries are not. Back in the day, some even went as far as to designate some partners as “tertiary” – what we might now call a comet partnership or friend-with-benefits. I rarely see “tertiary” used any more, though the primary/secondary structure is still used by some.

My nesting partner, Mr C&K, and I stopped using the term “primary” to describe our relationship a few years ago, but not because our importance to each other had lessened. We simply found that it no longer conveyed the reality of how we wanted to operate in our polyamorous dynamic. (And he got there before I did!) Specifically, we no longer wanted to operate under a lot of rules that stressed us out, likely disenfranchised our other partners, and didn’t even achieve what they were designed to achieve. (More on this last point later…)

At one time, I believed that it was appropriate for a primary partner or spouse to set pretty much any rules and restrictions they wanted on their partner’s external relationships. That is largely because my first (and for a long time, only) exposures to polyamory were almost entirely to this type of dynamic. When proponents of non-hierarchical versions of polyamory did show up in our community media landscape, they were generally in the “fuck my partners’ needs, I do what I want” school of thought that is now sometimes called Relationship Libertarianism. Not exactly a glowing recommendation.

My long-term ex and his wife had a lot of rules, many of them subject to arbitrary changes, and a veto agreement[*]. Pretty much everyone I dated had a list of rules and limitations, ranging from “I have to love my primary the most” to “I’m only allowed to see you once a month.” And so, thinking this was how it was done and being the inexperienced newbies in our polyamorous network, my “primary” boyfriend at the time and I followed suit.

I carried this belief forward, operating on the basic assumption that a primary or spouse would – should – always get final say on any aspect of an external relationship. If they say no, it’s no. If they say yes, they can revoke that permission at any time and for any reason. I do not believe that any more. In fact, I now think that that kind of dynamic is likely to be deeply harmful to everyone involved. I also think that veto, specifically, is inherently abusive in almost all situations, whether it’s actually used or simply held over someone’s head as a potential threat.

I now believe that it is entirely possible for a partner to have too much control over their partner’s external relationships, and that this is something we must take care to avoid. It is this control that ultimately defines how hierarchical a relationship is, or if it is hierarchical at all (more on that shortly.)

[*] Veto: when someone can order their partner to end or deescalate another relationship at any time and expect that they will comply. Veto is usually a clumsy tool used to access a sense of security and safety – “if this all gets too much I have a kill-switch.” It is also generally considered extremely cruel, deeply unethical, and highly unlikely to achieve the desired effect of managing jealousy and building security.

Considering Your Partner’s Feelings and Needs is Not Control

With that said, it’s important to draw a clear distinction between considering your partner’s (or partners’) feelings and needs in the decisions you make, and allowing them to control your actions. Nothing we do exists in a vacuum, and part of loving people is considering them in the things we do and the ways that we operate in the world. This is one of the reasons I believe that relationship agreements and personal/interpersonal boundaries are so important: they allow us to show up consistently for one another and balance independence/autonomy with interdependence/mutual care in all of our relationships and as members of a polycule, network, or community.

This line isn’t always easy to draw, though. What seems like arbitrary control can actually be a good-faith attempt to get a need met, and what seems like an effort to care for a partner emotionally can actually be the result of control.

Let’s take a hypothetical example: your partner has a dramatic emotional meltdown every time you go out on a date. Eventually, you cancel all your dates and break up with your other partner(s) because this behaviour is just too stressful to deal with.

In this hypothetical example, control is taking on the slightly more subtle form of emotional manipulation. But it’s still control, even if it doesn’t look like slamming down a veto and saying “I forbid you to go on dates.” It’s very possible – even probable – that the person having the emotional meltdowns is doing so due to some unmet need, deep fear or insecurity, trauma, or some combination thereof. They deserve to have these needs and feelings addressed and cared for, and in a healthy non-monogamous relationship it is actually very possible to achieve that without them needing or being permitted to control their partner’s other relationships.

What might caring for your partner’s feelings look like in this situation, without allowing yourself to be manipulated or your other relationship(s) to be controlled? It might look like some of the following[**]:

  • Providing verbal affection and reassurance to your partner before/after a date
  • At a separate time, talking and processing with your partner to help them get to the bottom of their difficult feelings and work through them
  • Consistently telling your partner the truth (it can be tempting to falsely downplay other connections to make an insecure partner feel better. Don’t. This will bite you later when they realise you’ve been hiding the truth from them.)
  • Sticking to any relationship agreements the two of you have made
  • Planning a nice date or some one-to-one quality time with your partner to ensure they feel loved and special
  • Giving your partner plenty of affection, positive reinforcement, and focused time consistently and regularly. Ironically, this can be particularly important for nested couples (i.e. don’t rely on “we live together so you see me all the time” to carry your relationship in lieu of quality time together.)
  • Going to therapy with your partner to work through the worries and insecurities that are coming up for them
  • If you live and/or coparent together, making sure that your partner also has free time away from the home, children, and other responsibilities to do the things that matter to them (whether that’s going on their own dates, seeing their friends, doing hobbies, or just playing video games)

Considering how your actions impact your partner and caring for them emotionally isn’t a sign of being controlled. It’s a sign of being a good partner. Knowing the difference isn’t always easy, and the former can slip in via the backdoor of the latter. But with good communication, love, compassion, emotional intelligence, and strong personal boundaries on both sides, you can take care of each other without controlling each other.

[**] All of this is assuming that you and your partner have both consented to a polyamorous/non-monogamous relationship. Poly-under-duress is a whole different thing and not something you should either tolerate or do to another person.

If Control is Necessary to Get Your Needs Met, Something Has Gone Wrong

It’s fair to say that a few years ago, I was desperate for any semblance of a sense of control I could get my hands on. After years with my abuser, I’d felt so utterly out of control for so long that I just needed predictability and stability more than anything. So, because that was the model I’d seen and emulated for so long, I thought the way to get those things was to place a lot of rules and restrictions on external relationships outside of my nesting partnership.

The problem is that polyamory does not work like that. Neither does security. I still value stability and security in relationships highly, but those things come from having partners who value your relationship and honour their commitments to you, not partners who will capitulate to any arbitrary restrictions you set.

Security comes from knowing and feeling deeply that your partners love and value you. It does not come from partners who will agree not to have sex with anyone else in the Reverse Pile Driver position[***] because that’s our position, damnit! And it certainly doesn’t come from being able to unilaterally force your partner to break up with someone else they love.

I never did the veto thing personally, but I’ve known a lot of people who do and have. It never leaves anything but pain and destruction in its wake. In fact, the most common outcome I’ve seen when a veto is slammed down is that the primary couple breaks up over it – maybe immediately, or maybe after months or years of the simmering resentment it causes.

Looking back with the knowledge and (relative) wisdom I have now, I think one of the reasons I was formerly so (relatively) uncritically in favour of hierarchical dynamics is that I’d fallen into a really unhealthy pattern of believing that strict rules were the only way I could get my needs met. Because that’s what I’d witnessed again and again.

After coming out of an abusive relationship, and other dynamics that don’t rise to the level of abuse but were certainly neglectful and unkind, I had absolutely no idea how to go about getting my needs met in a relationship. Talking to those partners hadn’t worked. Begging them to please listen to me and give a damn about my feelings hadn’t worked. Eventually becoming unbalanced and hysterical and “crazy” because I felt so profoundly unheard and gaslit hadn’t worked. And no, trying to set rules hadn’t worked either. Nothing would have worked, because those partners did not love me and want to treat me well.

It has taken years of self-work, and of building a secure base in a safe and stable relationship, to truly internalise these two important messages that I now take forward into all my relationships:

  1. My feelings and needs in any given relationship, and my partner’s needs and feelings, are equally important and deserve to be equally heard and honoured
  2. If a partner loves me, they will make a good faith effort to meet my needs in a relationship as long as doing so doesn’t harm them or anyone else. If they don’t love or care about me, no amount of rules and restrictions can compel them to do so.

Ultimately, you cannot compel your partner to treat you well with giant lists of “thou shalt not”s. A partner who wants to love you and honour your relationship will do so. A partner who doesn’t will find a way to loophole their way around any rules you set down or agreements you make, anyway… if they don’t just flagrantly break them.

Next time you think about making a restrictive rule, ask yourself what purpose it is intended to serve. If it’s intended to address an unmet need or eliminate an insecurity, ask yourself if there aren’t better ways to get those things.

There’s a reason I now have a print on my office wall that reads I am the one thing in life I can control.

[***] Actually a thing, though I am not convinced it is physically possible.

Legislating Your Way Around Difficult Feelings Doesn’t Work

Another common reason people give for having exhaustive lists of rules is “because I’d feel too jealous [sad/scared/lonely/insert difficult emotion here] if my partner did that thing.”

And I get it, I really do. None of us want to feel those types of feelings! They suck! Jealousy, in particular, can feel like the absolute worst. It’s visceral, physical, painful, often overwhelming in its intensity. But here’s the thing: you can’t actually legislate yourself (or your partners) out of feeling things you don’t want to feel. It’s also healthy, normal, and human to feel difficult feelings sometimes. Yes, including that j-word that so many polyamorous folks are so terrified of.

If you’re using the most strict and stringent form of hierarchy to avoid difficult feelings, I’d also challenge you to consider this: are you in fact outsourcing the experience of difficult feelings to someone else?

What do I mean by that? For example, let’s say you have made a rule that says your partner cannot say “I love you” to anyone else, because that privilege is reserved for you alone. In creating a sense of security for yourself by keeping expressions of love exclusive to you, you have potentially created a situation in which your partner feels forced to repress their emotions and your metamour(s) feel unloved and undervalued because the person they’re dating cannot express love to them. All so that you don’t have to confront the insecurity behind the fear behind the rule. Is that fair? I don’t think it is.

It’s also not fair to you, by the way! Tremendous personal growth can come from confronting and deconstructing difficult feelings. And trying to legislate them away, then police the keeping of those rules, will actually just stress you out and drive you mad. Forbidding someone from expressing something also doesn’t stop them from feeling it, but that’s a whole other conversation.

I’m not saying that you can never object to something in a partner’s other relationship, of course. If you see a legitimate issue in how your partner is being treated or if you are being directly negatively impacted, you should raise it. That saying about not setting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm applies here. But I am saying that outsourcing feeling bad (“Your other partner must feel unloved so that I can feel secure”) is deeply unfair. In other words, don’t set your partners or metamours on fire to keep yourself warm.

Priority and Hierarchy Are Not Synonymous

The more I think about it, the more I realise that this is probably the crux of the issue. I think this is one of the key things that our community most often misunderstands and mixes up when it comes to this issue. It’s likely the reason we have been having the same “hierarchy: good or bad?” circular debate in the community for at least a decade. It’s also the reason I think that’s the wrong question to be asking.

When I used to say that I needed hierarchy, what I actually meant was that I needed to be secure in the fact that I was (and would remain) a priority to my partner.

When people advocate for an anti-hierarchy stance, it can sound like (and occasionally even is) another way of saying “you have to treat any new partner exactly the same as your spouse right out of the gate.” Which is, objectively, utterly ridiculous. In my experience, very few people actually believe this is a reasonable, sensible, or even possible thing to attempt. But relationships looking different from one another – based on their longevity, level of seriousness or entanglement, all kinds of factors from geographical distance to childrearing, and just what the people in them want – isn’t hierarchy. (We’ll delve into this in more depth in the next section.)

When we don’t deconstruct and understand the difference between priority and hierarchy, a non-hierarchical approach can also sound like “placing a high priority on your existing relationship(s) is bad.” There is, unfortunately, a vocal subsection of the polyamory community that has successfully pushed this narrative to the point that people believe taking their existing partners into consideration when making decisions is Bad, Actually. I do not believe this. I think this is ridiculous. Relationships need to be given a consistent level of priority in order to survive and thrive.

But hierarchy isn’t about priority. We all have different priorities in our lives. If you have children, they are likely your number one priority much of the time. People with jobs or businesses sometimes have to prioritise our work over everything else, because if we don’t keep our employers and clients happy, we get fired or don’t get paid. There are times when our number one priority might be a sick family member, a friend going through a crisis, a pet, a university programme, our own physical or mental health, a time-sensitive project, or any of a vast array of other things. But prioritising any of those things at a given time would never lead us to say “I am in a hierarchical relationship with [this aspect of my life.]”

It is also generally assumed that priorities are not necessarily entirely fixed. They shift and change according to circumstances. If I’m working on a deadline, that project is my priority until it’s submitted. If I’m on a date with a partner, that partner is my priority for that pocket of time. And if there’s an emergency, dealing with that is likely to supersede doing fun things in the immediate aftermath. None of these things imply hierarchy. They just imply… being a person who is able to manage different pulls on my time and energy along with my own and others’ wants and needs.

What I’m trying to get to here is that hierarchy is not, ultimately, about priority. Hierarchy is about power.

In what I now define as a hierarchical relationship, one partner has a level of control and influence that is not afforded to others outside of that designated “core couple.” An example might be “I need permission from my husband to have a date with my boyfriend, but not the other way around.” It might also imply a situation in which the wants of one person always come before the needs of another, such as “my date with my wife comes before my boyfriend’s medical emergency because my wife is my primary.”

It’s appropriate to give a high level of priority in your life to a person or people with whom you have built a long-term relationship, and to the agreements and commitments you have within those relationships. It’s appropriate not to move your brand new sweetie into your house, not to give your new metamour co-parenting rights to your children, and to make sure the mortgage is paid before splashing out on extravagent dates. Exercising fair and proportionate prioritisation in your life is not the same as automatically disempowering or placing unilateral limitations on anyone else you or your partner dates. In other words, it’s not hierarchy.

Want an example of what this looks like in practice?

“My spouse and I have a standing date night every Thursday, so I’m not usually available on that day, though I can occasionally move things around for really special occasions or emergencies.” = Priority, not hierarchy

“My spouse says I’m only allowed to see you once a week and it has to be while they’re at work.” = Hierarchy

“My nesting partner just got laid off and money for rent is tight, so unfortunately I can’t afford to go on a date to that fancy restaurant right now.” = Priority, not hierarchy

“My nesting partner has a rule that I can’t go to that restaurant with anyone else because sushi is our thing.” = Hierarchy

If I’m dating someone, I want to be treated as a priority to them. Not necessarily the top priority, and certainly not all of the time, but a priority nontheless. And they, of course, will also be a significant priority to me. But if no-one has power over anyone else? That is, by definition, not a hierarchy. And I do not want to be in relationships or polycules where anyone holds or wields power over anyone else.

Different Types of Relationships Aren’t Hierarchy, Either

Another thing that drives me mad about the hierarchy discourse is the assumption that to remove hierarchy is to have all relationships look the same. This is – as we touched upon above – impossible, unrealistic, undesirable to almsot everyone, and would be absolutely maddening to even attempt in practice.

All relationships look different. Even if I were dating identical twin siblings[****], had started dating them both at exactly the same time, and did all the same activities with each of them, the relationships would still be different. Because they are different people.

People want different things out of relationships. Not every relationship is well-suited to nesting, sharing finances, or raising children together, just as every relationship isn’t well-suited to being a casual “we’ll see each other and have sex once in a blue moon” situation. And the same is also true of every single possible place on the vast spectrum in between these two extremes. Connections, dynamics, and desires will be different with every person you are in relationship with. Not only is this normal, it is – in my opinion – one of the most beautiful things about polyamory.

It is my firm belief that one of the biggest sources of misery I see in polyamory is caused by people trying to force relationships into structures they’re not suited to. And this applies both ways: trying to force naturally-casual relationships to be serious, and trying to force naturally-intense relationships to be casual. It’s easy to fall into this trap if you think that removing hierarchy means that your relationships all have to operate in the same way.

I think most of us accept the concept that we have different types of relationships with our friends and family members. For example, you might have the friend you go on wild nights out with, the sibling you binge-watch Netflix with, the friend you tell all your deepest darkest secrets to, and the cousin who rocks up in town once a year at Christmas and whom you don’t talk to much in between. Why, then, is it such a stretch to believe that we also have many different types of relationships with our partners and lovers?

My relationship with one partner isn’t more or less valuable because we do or don’t share a mortgage, have children together, or make joint decisions about what colour to paint the bathroom. It’s just different. Because ultimately, the value of my relationships comes not from the external trappings, but from the people involved and the unique and beautiful ways in which we connect, share time and space and energy, and show up for each other with love.

[****] Which I obviously never would, but you’d be amazed at how often “is it weird to be metamours with your sibling?” comes up as a question in the polyamory groups. I’m making an executive ruling on this: you do you but yes, it’s weird.

“But What If Both Your Partners Were Dying at the Same Time?”

I saw a post in a polyamory group recently that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, and it was one of the catalysts for revisiting and finally finishing this piece. Paraphrased slightly from memory, it said this: “I love my boyfriend and husband absolutely equally and we don’t have a hierarchy but, if they were both on their deathbeds at the same time, I would be with my husband absolutely no question.”

When monogamous people ask me which of my partners I love the most, they get frustrated when I reject the premise of the question. I don’t believe in talking about who I love “more”. I don’t know how I would even begin to quantify that! They then try to come up with elaborate hypotheticals to “trick” me into answering the original question. If I allow this conversation to go on long enough, it will usually wind up in roughly the same place as the post I referenced above: “If they were both/all dying at the same time, who would you be with?”

Setting aside, for a second, the sheer unlikeliness of this scenario ever occuring in reality. The assumption is that, when all comes down to brass tacks, we want to be placed above and before everyone else in our partners’ lives. And I feel like this is a sad misunderstanding of what polyamory can be when it works at its best.

If an emergency were happening for both me and my metamour at the same time, I would hope that our shared partner would make an effort to support and be there for both of us in whatever ways were possible and made sense. And, partially because we’re polyamorous, we have a big extended support network who can also step in and offer love and care to whoever is going through a crisis.

I don’t want a polycule that’s a competitive power struggle for limited resources. I want a polycule that’s a committed to the health and happiness of all its members. My metamours aren’t my competition for the one and only spot of “Top Dog”. They are my teammates in the quest of making the amazing person we both love happy.

What Do I Still Believe About Hierarchical Polyamory?

Phew, that got long, didn’t it? So after all this, after all the things I no longer believe about hierarchical polyamory, what do I believe now?

I think when we talk about hierarchical polyamory, we have to be very clear what we are talking about. Do I think it is ever okay for someone who is outside of a relationship – including another partner or metamour – to have as much or more control over it than the people within it? No, I do not.

However, I don’t think that means we have to default to absolutely structureless, boundary-free chaos, either. It’s perfectly possible to build relationships and polyamorous networks with structures and agreements that work to meet everyone’s needs without disempowering or disenfranchising any members.

I also think that what some people might term “rules” can be perfectly fine and even healthy, up to a point (I’ve written more about this on a couple of occasions!) However, I also think that anything we could consider a sensible and ethical rule is probably more accurately called a relationship agreement since it should be flexible, adaptable to circumstances, renegotiable if necessary, and open to the input of everyone it affects.

As such, we all have a responsibility to behave with compassion, integrity, and to try to live up to our ethical standards. We also have to accept that we are all human, we make mistakes, and we deserve grace to learn, grow, and become the best possible versions of ourselves.

These days, if someone I’m interested in[*****] says that they have a hierarchical relationship, I’m going to be asking more questions rather than assuming I know what they mean. Does “my wife is my primary” mean that your wife is tremendously important to you, will always be a major priority in your life and that you’re not leaving her for anyone, or does it mean that your wife will be able to control how/if we can have sex or get the final say on whether we can even be in a relationship? Because those two things are wildly different. The first one is fine, even positive. Someone who has a track record of maintaining, nurturing, and honouring a long-term relationship is a huge green flag for dating! (Though I might gently encourage you to reconsider the hierarchical language in this case, as many experienced poly people will be put off by it.) The second is an instant dealbreaker.

So conclusions, if there are any to be drawn from all this? Fundamentally, I now believe two things:

  1. That the actions we take in polyamory impact not only ourselves but usually our partners, often our metamours, and sometimes our wider polycule or network. We all have a responsibility to be kind and thoughtful, to honour our agreements and commitments, to tell the truth, and to give each other space to make mistakes even as we’re doing our best.
  2. That nobody should be controlling a relationship that they are not in.

[*****] Extremely hypothetically, given that I’m very polysaturated with two partners and occasional casual encounters right now!

So Where Does This Leave Us?

This post is five thousand words long and comprises months of thinking and on-and-off writing, and I’m still not entirely sure how to wrap it up properly.

I guess all that remains to say is that I’m glad my thinking on this subject has evolved. It’s actually left me in a much happier and healthier place, better able to have positive relationships with my partners and metamours. It’s also improved my relationship with myself, started to heal some of my trust-based trauma, and allowed me to show up more fully and authentically for the people I love.

And for any incorrect and harmful ideas that appeared in my previous writings on this topic, I’m truly sorry.

My thanks go to Mr C&K for proofreading a draft of this post and offering his insights before publishing!

Header image for a post on how I deal with jealousy in polyamory

Five Tools I Use to Deal with Jealousy

Published on by Amy

Something I feel very strongly about non-monogamy, and relationships in general, is that jealousy is normal. It’s a human emotion and something that the overwhelming majority of us will feel from time to time. It is not the devil. And with a little knowledge, practice, and self-compassion, it’s actually not that hard to deal with jealousy without allowing it to run roughshod over your emotions and relationships.

When people claim to be immune to jealousy, I suspect that they are either suppressing their feelings to an unhealthy degree or that they simply have not encountered a jealousy-inducing situation yet. You can no more be immune to jealousy than you can be immune to happiness, sadness, grief, anger, or any of the rest of the vast array of feelings that make up the human experience.

So when I say that I’m polyamorous and people ask “but don’t you get jealous?”, my answer is “sure, sometimes.” That tends to throw people off, as they seemingly expected me to say “nope, never!” The key to a healthy polyamorous relationship, though, isn’t to never feel jealousy. It’s to deal with jealousy (again: a normal human emotion) in constructive rather than destructive ways.

To that end, here are five tools I use to help me deal with jealousy on those occasions that it does arise. If any of them resonate with you, as always, take what works and leave what doesn’t.

Fake It ‘Til I Make It

Sometimes, I like to ask myself “what would the best possible version of Amy do in this situation?” Then I simply do that thing! It might feel a little forced at first, but it usually ends up feeling natural quicker than you might expect.

What would the best version of you do? Perhaps they would be super kind and welcoming to their new metamour, even if they were feeling a little threatened by them deep down. Or perhaps they’d tell their partner they were happy for them after an amazing date, even if they were also feeling really wobbly about it. The point isn’t to lie or to hide your emotions, it’s just to lead with your best foot forward.

This strategy won’t be right for everyone. Some people will end up feeling angry, resentful, or even gaslit if they take this route (this is especially true if their jealousy is actually trying to tell them something important – see the next section for more on that.) But if you’re in the place where you know rationally that things are actually safe and okay, and you’re just waiting for your heart (and nervous system) to catch up to your head, this trick works surprisingly well.

Put simply, sometimes I deal with jealousy by simply choosing to act in the way a not-jealous person would act in that moment.

Ask What It’s Telling Me

Jealousy is a complex emotion, and often a composite one. This means it is made up of numerous other different emotions. However, I have learned that when I feel jealous, there’s usually a fear at the root of it. This means that one of the best ways to deal with jealousy is to identify that fear and face it head-on.

Am I afraid my partner likes this other person more than me? If they did, what would that mean for our relationship? Do I see any actual evidence that that’s what is happening? Or perhaps I am afraid that this person is “better” than me in some way (smarter, prettier, kinkier, whatever.) Again, what would it mean if this was true? Even if it was, I’m not in competition with my metamour… so what’s awesome and loveable about me?

Cunning Minx from Polyamory Weekly uses a version of this that she calls the “and then what?” exercise (learn more about it in this episode). It’s all about exposing what lies at the heart of those probably-irrational fears.

Occasionally, your jealousy will have something productive to tell you. It might indicate, for example, that you don’t feel like you’re getting enough of your partner’s attention or that you’d like more one-to-one special time with them. By taking a step back from the immediacy of the emotion, I can assess whether or not it’s telling me anything useful. If it is, I can address that issue by communicating with my partner, finding other ways to meet the need, or – if necessary – remove myself from the upsetting situation. If it’s not, it makes it easier to put the bad feeling to bed.

Talk About It (If Necessary)

The polyamory community preaches “communication, communication, communication”, and this is good advice in so far as it goes. However, something immensely valuable I’ve learned in the years I’ve been doing this is that not every single fleeting emotion needs to be communicated about.

Sometimes, in service of feeling like I had to communicate every feeling no matter how small, I’ve ended up having an hour long conversation with my partner over a tiny emotion that lasted no more than a minute. Nowadays that feels like an enormous waste of everyone’s time and energy. If I feel jealous for ten seconds or ten minutes or even an hour or two, I’m unlikely to communicate it to my partner unless I’ve determined that the feeling is trying to tell me something important (see above section).

However, if the jealousy lasts longer, is more intense or pressing, or is communicating something important, then talking to the partner(s) in question about it is the next step. This doesn’t always need to happen immediately, and often shouldn’t. I’m not going to pull my partner away from a nice date to discuss it, for example. It also doesn’t necessarily need to be a long discussion. Sometimes just a disclosure, a request for reassurance, and a hug is all that’s needed.

When communicating jealousy, it is best to speak as calmly as possible, approach the subject without blame, be vulnerable, and ask clearly for the support you need.

Many times, I’ve used sentences like “I just wanted to let you know that I felt a little jealous when I saw you kissing X yesterday. Obviously you didn’t do anything wrong but I’d love it if you could reassure me that your feelings for me haven’t changed.”

Practice Self-Care

After many years of doing this, I’ve gained a pretty good handle on what helps me in the moment when I’m feeling jealous. Fortunately, many of the things that help are things I’m able to give to myself without anyone else’s input.

I tend to save particularly loving or affectionate messages from my partners so that if I’m feeling low and they’re not around to offer reassurance, I can give it to myself by rereading some of the things they’ve said about me. Getting some love from elsewhere, such as by calling a friend or another partner, can also help to soothe the part of my brain that’s telling me I’m not loveable or not good enough.

Other things that can help include something that takes me out of my head and grounds me in my body, (masturbation is particularly helpful for me but sometimes exercise and yoga also work), warmth and cosiness (a bath, snuggling under a blanket, cuddling my cat), distraction (reading a book, watching TV, playing a game, doing a task), doing something creative, or just taking a goddamn nap.

Release the feelings

I very rarely feel intense jealousy these days. In the past, though, I’ve felt it powerfully enough for it to be overwhelming. In these instances, some kind of physical and/or emotional release can help to let the feelings out and, ultimately, lessen them or at least make them feel more manageable.

Of course, it’s important to choose a safe outlet or target. Yelling at your partner is not an acceptable emotional release for your jealousy! Some strategies I’ve either tried or heard others recommend include screaming into a pillow, venting to a consenting friend, doing some kind of intense physical pursuit such as running, dancing or weightlifting, hitting a pillow or punching bag, drawing or writing how you feel (which you can then share, keep, or tear up as you choose), laughing, playing loud music and singing along… whatever helps you to feel more relaxed, less tense, and to let out some of what you’re feeling is a great option.

You might find afterwards that you no longer have the difficult feelings any more… or that if you do, you feel more centered and ready to deal with them in a productive way.

How do you deal with jealousy and other hard feelings in relationships? Have any top tips to share?