More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (15 page)

Come first.
Another agreeable-sounding but vague phrase we've heard often is "My existing obligations come first." Nobody enters a relationship with a clean slate; we all have previous commitments that require tending, perhaps to children, a sick relative, a demanding job or a business association. This is true in monogamous relationships as well as polyamorous ones.

So if we say, "Existing obligations come first," does it simply mean we have outstanding responsibilities we intend to discharge? That's reasonable in any sort of relationship. Or is it a way of saying "I will look after your needs only if they aren't inconvenient to the other people in my life," as all too often seems true? Does it mean that an existing partner may always usurp time allocated to a new partner?

Better to spell out what existing commitments you have, and what you need to do to discharge them, rather than simply say they "come first."

Fair and equal.
These words can conjure up images of relationships where everyone is doled out the same-size slice of pumpkin pie, even if some folks are hungrier than others and some are allergic to pumpkins. Equality of opportunity is a very different thing than equality of circumstance; if people want different things, then it makes sense that their circumstances will be different. What's most fair is not necessarily an even division of resources, but rather a distribution that meets as many of the needs of all the people as possible.

Rights.
In chapter 3, we talked about the high bar something must reach to be called a "right." Few things rise to that level, so "right" is a word that should be used very cautiously.

Some things you do
not
have a right to expect in any relationship: to never be challenged, to always be comfortable, to always have other people navigate around your triggers and discomforts. Things you do not have a right to do include to treat people as expendable, to extract promises that someone will never leave you, and to control other people's relationships. All these things require negotiation. Relationships are always voluntary; you have the right to end a relationship that does not meet your needs (and so does your partner), but you do not have the right to demand that your partner do what you want.

Success.
When you think of successful relationships, what comes to mind? Relationships that last a certain amount of time? Relationships that have no disagreement? It can be tempting to call a relationship successful if it lasts, but what if the members of that relationship treat their other partners poorly?

"Success" should apply to everyone involved, not just some of them. If a poly couple stays together for a long time, but they treat their other partners poorly or hurt a lot of other people in the process, we would not necessarily consider their relationships a "success." When you use the word
success
, are you thinking only about a particular relationship or about all of them?

Reasonable.
The word
reasonable
(and its evil twin,
unreasonable
) get tossed around very easily. Is it reasonable to want to tell a partner what positions she is allowed to have sex in? Is it reasonable for a partner to kiss someone else in front of you? The problem is, what's "reasonable" is largely cultural and subjective. Most people would probably say it's not reasonable to have multiple lovers in the first place!

Polyamory is still new enough that we have not yet established cultural norms of reasonableness. So instead of talking about what's "reasonable," talk about the specifics of how something makes you feel. How do you react when you see your partner kiss someone else in front of you? Why? How can you negotiate with your partner about ways to do things differently? Talk about what you need and how your partner can help you, and negotiate a solution that works for everyone.

Healthy.
This is an especially dangerous word. Some relationships are genuinely healthy and others are unhealthy. But all too often, this word is used to judge behaviors we simply don't like. A relationship that violates your consent is indeed unhealthy. A relationship in which you are threatened with violence is unhealthy. A codependent or enabling relationship is unhealthy. But your partner doing something you don't like is not necessarily unhealthy. Sometimes healthy relationships are uncomfortable. Instead of using the word
healthy
, we recommend talking directly about behaviors that trouble you and why they do. If you sincerely believe your partner's behavior is unhealthy, it might be time to seek professional help (
with your partner if possible, and for yourself if your partner won't participate
).

DISHONESTY

Honesty is one of the defining factors that separate polyamorous relationships from cheating. It's also, not surprisingly, one of the defining elements of good communication. However, it can be harder than it sounds. Even though we all probably agree that honesty is important in a relationship, it's surprising how often we still choose not to be honest. Otherwise well-intentioned people who generally act in good faith can end up making that choice, for any number of reasons.

The most common reason is emotional vulnerability: fear of rejection, fear of being ridiculed, fear of being wrong, of hearing no, of being found less desirable by our partners. And even as we claim to want honesty, we may subtly discourage our partners from being honest with us because we don't feel prepared to hear truths that might be painful.

People who are dishonest with their partners, especially when they are dishonest not by lying but by concealing things or not saying what's on their minds, often seek to control information as a way to control their partner's behavior. Another reason people can be dishonest is that they fear "upsetting" or "offending" their partners. Especially about sex. If you don't enjoy what your partner does, you may say nothing to avoid making him feel bad. This tends to backfire in long-term relationships, because someone who doesn't know that his partner is unsatisfied will never improve, and an unsatisfying relationship is always under stress.

Problem is, one of the most basic rules of life is that you cannot get what you want if you don't ask for what you want.

Franklin runs a website of educational resources about BDSM (activities related to dominance and submission or sadomasochism). Many years ago, a person read his site and wrote to say he'd always wanted to try exploring BDSM but never had. He'd been married for ten years but never talked to his wife about it, because he was afraid of how she might react. He asked Franklin, "What do you think I should do?"

Naturally Franklin said, "Talk to her. Tell her 'This is something I'm interested in. What do you think?' " About a week later Franklin received a reply. The guy finally worked up the courage to talk to his wife about exploring BDSM. He discovered that years before they met, she'd been involved in BDSM and enjoyed it quite a lot, but she had never talked to him about it…because she was afraid of how
he
would react!

Such failures to communicate happen when we lead with our fears instead of our hopes. If we spend too much time thinking about what can go wrong, we forget what can go right. Life is better when you lead with your hopes, not your fears.

Perhaps the most common justification for dishonesty in a relationship is the notion that the truth will hurt worse than a lie. A person who cheats on a partner may think,
If I tell the truth, I will hurt my partner, but if I don't, my partner won't need to experience that pain.
This reasoning says more about the person making the argument than it does about the person he is "protecting," because consent is not valid if it is not informed. By hiding the truth, we deny our partners the opportunity to consent to continuing a relationship with us. Controlling information to try to keep a partner (or to get a partner to do what we want) is one way we treat people as things.

And remember, honesty begins inside. A person who is dishonest with
himself
cannot be honest with anyone else. People are dishonest with themselves for many reasons, including having ideas about what they "should" be. If they think desiring multiple partners is dishonorable, they may convince themselves that they don't even if they do. Likewise, if someone wants only one partner, she may convince herself otherwise because she believes polyamory is more "enlightened." We can lie to ourselves for more subtle reasons as well. A woman whose husband is threatened by the idea of her having another male lover might tell herself, "Well, it's okay, I really don't
want
to be with another man," even if, in some corner of her mind, she would.

PASSIVE COMMUNICATION

Passive communication refers to communicating through subtext, avoiding direct statements, and looking for hidden meanings. Passive communicators may use techniques such as asking questions or making vague, indirect statements in place of stating needs, preferences or boundaries. Directly asking for what you want creates vulnerability, and passive communication often comes from a desire to avoid this vulnerability. Passive communication also offers plausible deniability; if we state a desire for something indirectly, and we don't get it, it's easy to claim we didn't really want it. Stating our needs means standing up for them and taking the risk that others may not agree to meet them.

One way this happens is by couching desires as questions: "Would you like to go out for Thai food tonight?" (Or worse, "Don't you think it's been a long time since we went out for dinner?") To a passive communicator, such a statement can be a coded way to say, "I would like to go out for Thai food tonight." The problem is, a direct communicator might naturally hear only what was said and give a direct answer: "No, I don't really feel like going out tonight." This can leave the passive communicator feeling disregarded; she might end up thinking,
He never pays attention to my needs!
when, to the direct communicator, no request was stated; he was asked how he felt. The direct communicator might end up thinking, "She never asks for what she wants. She expects me to read her mind! If she wanted to go out, she could have said so."

When we're talking about dinner, indirect communication might not matter too much. When we're talking about things that are more complicated, like emotional boundaries or relationship expectations, indirect communication can lead to crises of misunderstanding.

EVE'S STORY
My relationship with Kira lasted only a few months, but the damage it left was lasting. By the time it ended, I felt profoundly unseen, unheard and unknown by someone I had only recently imagined I had a deep intimacy with. I felt not like a person, but like an actor who had been cast for a role. As though everything—the flirtation, the relationship, the breakup—was scripted in advance by Kira's expectations and beliefs. And I felt that I had little influence over this trajectory because Kira and I could not communicate.

Kira was raised in a family that communicated passively, and she spent her adolescence in a culture where passive communication was the norm. The irony was that she valued, and often talked about, assertive communication—but her habits were too deeply ingrained for her to recognize them, let alone unlearn them. I learned quickly the disorienting, frustrating and often maddening consequences of being in love with someone for whom every statement had a double meaning.

To Kira, what mattered was not what I said, but what she
imagined
I had said, and that appeared to come from scripts deep in her psyche. Kira would imagine I wanted things I'd never asked for, give them to me as though they were her idea, and then blame me when she was unhappy about having given them. Her ideas that I wanted them came from cryptic readings of things I had said or done, and it did no good for me to deny I had wanted or asked for them. To her, I
had
asked. Passively. I was not permitted to deny the reality of the hidden meanings that Kira believed in but I had never meant.

Kira would forward me messages she had received from others, or ask me to view online conversations she was participating in, expecting me to be deeply offended or outraged by what I read. When I could not find the offensive statements, she would explain to me at length the hidden meaning of the conversation, what was "really" happening behind the words that were being said. She could create a detailed story from very few words.

Our relationship ended with her telling me such a story. I listened in disbelief and no small anguish as she told me what I had wanted, what I believed, what I expected—all of which had been read into my words or actions, and none of which was true. And the hardest part was that I couldn't counter any of it: passive communication was so second nature to Kira that it simply wasn't possible for her to believe that my words had meant exactly what I said they did—that not everything had a hidden meaning. To Kira, what she imagined lay behind my words was more important than my words—and that ended the possibility of communication between us.