More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (37 page)

Effective relationship strategies take work. They are things that meet people's needs. And meeting these needs involves asking why people are doing whatever you wish they wouldn't do. What need does their behavior meet? What function does it serve? Is there something else, something that might be less threatening, that could meet the same need? How invested is the person in doing that particular thing, and why?

Creating such strategies also involves looking at some scary things inside yourself. Why is it not okay with you if that person does that thing? Are the problems you see really problems? Is passing a rule actually an attempt to shift responsibility for your own emotions onto someone else? Does the person doing the thing reasonably have a right to do it? How much does it really affect others, and in what way? Are you just trying to avoid discomfort? If so, is your discomfort more important than someone else's choices?

From there, you can work on finding the park bench. What might help everyone get their needs met? If something makes you uncomfortable, how can the person do it and still support you?

WHY BE SKEPTICAL OF RULES?

Monogamous society teaches us that to keep our partners faithful and ourselves secure, we should limit their opportunity, keeping them away from desirable people. If that mindset carries over into poly, it leads to trying to keep ourselves secure by limiting who our partners are allowed to have relationships with, or how much time they can be together, or what they do. If we're setting these rules because we are afraid, deep inside, that we aren't good enough and our partners might replace us, a self-reinforcing cycle can develop. We feel low self-esteem, so we make rules to feel safe, and then we don't want to develop self-esteem because if we do that, we won't need rules anymore, and if we don't have rules, we won't feel safe!

Sometimes we can try to use rules to address things we are shy about discussing. It feels scary to talk about our vulnerabilities and insecurities. Often talking about rules becomes a way to try to do that by proxy. It doesn't work, because if we can't talk about the reason for the rule, our partners won't understand the rule's intent, and that leads to trouble, mischief and rules-lawyering: insisting on the letter of the rule without being clear on the intent.

Not all rules are intrinsically bad (see, for instance, "
Limited-duration rules
,"). However, rules always have the potential to become straitjackets, constraining relationships and not allowing them to grow. Sometimes this is intentional—and such rules can be very damaging indeed. If your partner tells you, "I don't want you ever to grow any new relationship beyond this point," and eventually a relationship comes along that you want to see flourish, your original relationship may fail—not in spite of the rule, but
because
of it.

Rules that seek to dictate the structure of a relationship that is yet to exist (for example, "We will only be in a quad") are attempts to map a country you have not yet seen. These types of rules, we have seen, are most often created by people with little experience in polyamorous relationships. Often they attempt to impose order on something that seems mysterious and dangerous. Psychologists have discovered that we are remarkably poor at predicting how we will respond to
novel situations
. We want certainty; we don't want to get too far from familiar land. But we cannot explore the ocean if we're unwilling to lose sight of the shore. Trying to retain the certainty and order of monogamy against the apparent scary disorder of polyamory usually ends up creating failures in both.

Some rules indicate fears or discomforts that someone doesn't want to face. Someone might say, "We want to have other partners, but the thought of my partner prioritizing anyone else when I want attention brings up my fears of abandonment. So we will pass a rule saying I can always interrupt my partner's other dates, or I must approve my partner's scheduled time with other people."
^*
When two (or more) people have discomforts they're trying to avoid, they may play the mutual-assured-destruction game: I will let you control me to avoid your discomforts, if you let me control you to avoid my discomforts.
Or, as the poly blogger Andrea Zanin has written
, "I will limit you, and you will limit me, and then we'll both be safe." Avoiding discomfort isn't really the same thing as creating happiness; real happiness is often on the other side of our comfort zone. If our relationships aren't creating happiness, what's the point?

* Note, however, that restrictions on sex in a shared bed are a very common limited-duration rule, discussed in chapter 10.

CREATING EFFECTIVE RELATIONSHIP AGREEMENTS

Agreements and boundaries will be part of any polyamorous relationship. Some expectations are reasonable, though "reasonable" and "unreasonable" carry a great deal of wibbly-wobbly subjectivity. Here is one crude tell-tale sign of unreasonable rules that we use: When people have agreements that are
reasonable
, such as around safer sex, they generally can talk about them calmly and dispassionately. When someone states a rule and then refuses to discuss it, answers questions about it with "That's just how I feel," or becomes offended or upset about it, look out. Something else is going on—something that isn't being addressed directly.

Healthy agreements are those
that encourage moving in the direction of greatest courage.
"I feel threatened by the idea of my woman having sex with other men. She can't do that" is based on fear and insecurity, not courage. "I feel threatened by this idea, so when you do this, I will ask for your support and I will want some time with you afterward to help ground and settle me" is a request that moves in the direction of greatest courage. It recognizes that the other person has the right to choose her partners, while at the same time asking for the support to help deal with unpleasant emotional responses.

The agreements that work most consistently are those that are rooted in compassion, encourage mutual respect and empowerment, leave it to our partners' judgment how to implement them, and have input from—and apply equally to—everyone affected by them. These include principles like the following: Treat all others with kindness. Don't try to force relationships to be something they are not. Don't try to impose yourself on other people. Understand when things are Not About You. Understand that just because you feel bad, it doesn't necessarily mean someone else did something wrong. Know that your feelings sometimes lie to you. Own your own mess. Favor trust over rules.

Here are some other common characteristics of successful relationship agreements:

• They are not games of Mao.
  Named for the Chinese ruler Mao Zedong, Mao is a card game where at the start of the game none of the players except the dealer know the rules…and the players are penalized for breaking the rules. The players who figure out the rules the slowest lose. If you are to have relationship agreements, they must be clear and comprehensible. Everyone involved should know and understand them—and equally important, understand the intent behind them: the spirit as well as the letter.
  
• They seek to place controls on one's self, not one's partners.
  You can't really control anyone but yourself. "You must," "You cannot…": Those kinds of statements work only if other people choose to let them.
  
• They offer a clear path to success.
  Rules that try to protect anyone ever from feeling uncomfortable, for instance, don't have a clear path to success—discomfort often accompanies change, and sometimes attempting to prevent one person from being uncomfortable will make someone else uncomfortable.
  
• They are clear, specific and limited in scope.
  "You must care for me more than you care for her" is not clear or specific. It doesn't define what "care for me" means or what steps can be taken to get there. "We will not have unbarriered exchange of bodily fluids before discussing it with each other" is clear, specific and limited in scope.
  
• They have a defined practical purpose.
  "Don't do this because it makes me feel threatened" is vague and impractical. It places responsibility for the feeling on the partner of the person having the feeling. It's not always clear what need a particular feeling may be trying to communicate, and it can take some effort to work down from a feeling to discover the underlying need. Successful agreements address needs directly, rather than trying to address feelings about them.
  
• They do not seek to sweep problems under the rug.
  "I get jealous when I see you kiss someone, so don't kiss anyone in front of me" does not deal with the jealousy, it only addresses the trigger. The jealousy is still there, just waiting to emerge in some other way.
  
• They have a sunset clause if they are meant to provide space for dealing with a problem.
  A
  sunset clause
  means a restriction expires on a certain date. If there is no sunset clause, once the emotional trigger has been removed, it can be all too easy to say "I'll work on the problem tomorrow." And tomorrow becomes next week, then next month.
  
• They aren't aimed at unspoken expectations.
  For example, "Don't spend the night at a lover's house" may actually be a way of saying "Make sure I am never lonely." The overnight rule might sound reasonable, but the underlying expectation is not. We are human beings; we feel many things, including, from time to time, things we don't like, such as loneliness.
  
• They are renegotiable.
  Any agreement should be open to discussion at any time by anyone it affects. This includes anyone who enters a relationship after an agreement is made. Life is change; deal with it. Even if life never changed, we rarely build something exactly right the first time.
  
• They do not disempower people.
  It's common for a couple, or people in a romantic network, to pass rules governing in advance the behavior of a future new arrival, without giving that person a say. In ethical relationships, every adult has a voice.
  
• They do not try to legislate feelings.
  People cannot provide feelings on demand. Attempting to legislate feelings (for example, by saying "You must love both of us equally" or "You are not allowed to feel jealous") usually works about as well as trying to legislate the weather.
  

NEGOTIATING IN GOOD FAITH

When you are negotiating agreements in your relationship, it can be hard to hear that your partners have different needs or sensitivities than you do. Truly understanding that other people are as real as you are is hard. If you want to negotiate in good faith, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Focus on mutual benefit.
  To succeed, an agreement must benefit everyone. Even when people have what seem to be contradictory goals, it may be possible to find a solution by looking for the need underneath a proposed rule.
  
• Pay attention to the needs.
  If a partner tells you, "I don't want you to take any dates to Bob's Crab Shack" because that's a special place for the two of you, their statement may spring from a desire to feel unique in your eyes. Finding ways to show your partner that you consider him unique and irreplaceable may solve the need better than avoiding Bob's Crab Shack.
  
• Treat the other people in the negotiation as partners, not problems.
  It's easy to think,
  If only you would do what I say, everything would be okay! Why aren't you doing what I want?
  Remember that these people are not your adversaries; you
  all
  want happy relationships. Treat people with compassion.
  
• Don't compromise on behalf of other people without their input and consent.
  When you agree to limitations on your actions with other people, you are limiting them as well. They deserve a place at the negotiating table.
  

WHEN YOU DIDN'T WRITE THE RULES

In polyamory, you will likely find yourself starting relationships with people who already have partners. And that may mean going into relationships that have rules already in place. Accepting someone else's rules at the beginning of a relationship sets a dangerous precedent: it says that you're on board with relationships that are built around other people's needs.

Anyone who goes into a rules-based relationship, knowing the rules up front, is agreeing voluntarily to be bound by them, right? Well, maybe. All kinds of things might cause someone to enter a relationship that isn't a good fit—a scarcity model of relationships, for example.

It's absolutely true that if you enter a rules-based relationship you are, implicitly and explicitly, agreeing to those rules. And yet "You knew the rules when you signed on!" is so often the parting shot amidst a relationship's wreckage. Consider why. Most of the time, when we start a relationship, we expect our partners to meet us in the middle, to negotiate with us, to consider our needs. Those seem like reasonable expectations, right? So it can be quite a shock when your partner suddenly slams the door on something and says it's non-negotiable. ("What
is
this about Bob's Crab Shack, anyway? Why can't I go there with you? I just want to get some seafood!")

Rules might seem reasonable at first but end up leading to absurd outcomes. In one relationship we know of, a married couple had rules concerning what sexual positions could and couldn't be used with "new" partners. When the wife started a relationship with someone else, those rules remained in force a decade into the "new" relationship. I think most of us would probably agree that a ten-year relationship is not a "new" relationship. We probably expect, reasonably, that if a rule takes us to an absurd destination, it should be revisited—and we can be shocked to be met with "No, sorry, you knew the rule when you signed on."

It is okay to assume that flexibility and agency in our relationships are part of the social contract. It probably wouldn't occur to us even to
have
to say "By the way, if I've been with you for ten years, I expect you to be willing to consider my needs." So in that sense, "You knew the rules when you signed on" is not actually true.
We did not grasp
that flexibility and negotiation were forbidden.