More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (26 page)

On a practical level, it is not always possible to make another person feel empowered. Indeed, we have noticed on many occasions that it's the person who feels disempowered who insists on rules, and then sees attempts to negotiate or modify the rules as further evidence of disempowerment. Feelings are not always congruent with reality.

Neither of us has met anyone who makes up rules by rolling dice or drawing words out of a hat. A rule is made to solve a problem or meet a need. However, making rules can quickly become complicated, because it's very easy to confuse
needs
with
feelings
. A person who says, "I don't ever want you to spend the night with another lover" might think the rule serves a need, such as "I need to wake up with you in the morning." But if we examine that need, it may come down to "I feel lonely if I wake up by myself." The rule is meant to prevent triggering a negative feeling, in this case a feeling of loneliness. The actual issue—"I feel lonely when I wake up alone"—is not being directly addressed.

Leading with the need ("How can we help make sure I understand how I am valued by you?"), rather than the action, opens the door to finding ways to solve the problem without imposing rules.

HOW AGREEMENTS BECOME RULES

When someone talks about why they need a
rule
, they tell you something about their fears. So it's not surprising that agreements become rules when they are grounded in fear. It often goes like this: people in a relationship—often a couple—sit down and negotiate a set of relationship agreements. At this point there aren't any new partners, so the people negotiating the agreements rarely consider the effect their agreements will have on others. Then a new person comes along. The partners present the new person with the agreement, with the expectation that the new person will sign on. She has little investment in the relationship at this point—and may be inexperienced with polyamory and unfamiliar with any other models of it—so she agrees.

After a time, one or more of the original people experience some sort of insecurity or feel threatened. The newer person is blamed for violating the agreement—sometimes a subtle, creative interpretation of it. The existing partners either end the relationship with the newer person over this infraction or use the infraction to justify imposing greater restrictions. Well, she agreed to it, right? What gives her the right to complain now?

When things go wrong—when an agreement is hurting someone or isn't having the intended effect and needs to be renegotiated—saying "But you agreed to this!" is just twisting the knife (and never helps solve the problem). At the beginning of a relationship, we are not yet emotionally invested in it, and we don't know how it will progress. So it can be easy to accept rules or agreements that later, as we become more vulnerable and more emotionally invested, become quite painful.

FRANKLIN'S STORY
I had an agreement with my wife, Celeste, that no other partner would live with us. This agreement was presented to all of my new partners, including Bella and Amber. They both agreed to it—and why not? At the start of dating someone, living together often seems vague and remote.

So they agreed easily. There was no emotional investment yet, no pull toward a shared life. The prohibition on living together didn't become a source of pain until much later—in Bella's case, years later. Once we had built a deep, loving relationship, that pull toward a shared life began. And the agreement I had with Celeste left no room for that. The fact that Bella and Amber had signed on to this restriction up front did not change the fact that they were not allowed to express their needs when the nature of the relationship between us changed.

Bella was never allowed to renegotiate this agreement, and our relationship suffered because of it. Eventually it ended. After ten years of trying to remain within the constraints of my agreements with Celeste, Bella found it simply too painful to remain with me.

The truth, which we never acknowledged directly, was that my agreement with Celeste had less to do with sharing a roof than preventing certain types of relationships. My relationship with Bella was painful and crippled because the real, unspoken intent of the agreements, the reason these agreements were important to Celeste, was that she didn't want me in a relationship of such depth and significance that I
wanted
to live with another partner. The agreements achieved covertly what a direct statement could not do overtly: they created an environment so inflexible, so hostile to intimacy, that close, intimate relationships would suffer.

Rules that new partners are expected to sign on to, but which they have little or no say in, rarely provide space for new relationships to grow. Sometimes these rules are deliberately designed to keep new relationships away from sunlight and water, forcing them to remain stunted or to wither away altogether.

It's not possible to ever feel completely secure in a relationship whose structures are built on fear. Even if you follow all the rules, or the rules are easy for you, at some level you will always be aware that another person's potential fears are a driving force in the relationship. If the day comes when that person is afraid of you, look out.

In extreme cases, rules can become tools of emotional blackmail. They constitute a contract that specifies acts of betrayal, and a person who breaks a rule is cast in the role of the villain. Rules-based systems judge people's characters on the basis of adherence to the rules. When rules are used as a tool with which to attack someone's character—especially when the attacks are based on creative interpretations of the rules—they become a nearly invisible but extremely corrosive form of emotional abuse.

ALTERNATIVES TO RULES

Some of Franklin's most controversial (and popular) blog posts concern what he calls rules-based relationships. His skepticism about rules has led a lot of people to believe that he opposes them altogether. So we want to make clear that when we talk about relationships that are not rules-
based
, we're not talking about relationships with no rules whatever. Rather, we're talking about relationships that don't use rules as the first go-to problem-solving tactic, and which don't attempt to deal with emotional or security issues by creating frameworks of rules.

Many people say, "I need rules in my relationship," but when they are asked why, it quickly becomes obvious that what they need is actually something else. It is usually something like security or stability, a sense of empowerment, predictability, or safety. Those are all reasonable needs. What's not obvious is that it's possible to have those things without rules.

Conflating rules with needs is common, because we live in societies that teach us we need external structures and authority in order to act like civilized people. Many of us internalize the idea that the only way we can rely on people to behave with kindness, responsibility, respect and compassion is to create rigid codes compelling them to. We believe that if people make choices from personal autonomy, then responsibilities will be neglected and kindness will fade.

In reality, relationships without rules are (usually) far from a madhouse in which everyone does whatever they want without regard for anyone else. Instead, if you look at such relationships, they tend to show very high levels of communication, negotiation, compassion and understanding. Does this surprise you? We often think of "rules" and "commitment" as being almost interchangeable: we demonstrate commitment by agreeing to rules that limit our behavior. From that position, it can be hard to imagine what a relationship without rules would even look like, except perhaps a free-for-all.

Relationships, especially cohabiting relationships, often involve many commitments and responsibilities. One might think,
How can I be sure the kid will be picked up from school if I don't have a rule telling my partner to be home by 3:30 on weekdays? If there's no rule against late-night dates, how do I know my partner will be able to get up in the morning to go to work?
And the answer is: you don't. But if a partner is willing to skip out on commitments and responsibilities, she's probably
just as willing to break rules!

To understand relationships that are not rules-based, we need to go back to two of the themes we emphasize in this book: trust and boundaries. You have to trust that your partners want to take care of you—that given the freedom to do whatever they choose, they will make choices that respect your needs and honor their commitments. Placing that level of trust in someone can be scary. Rules can feel safer. But they're not. And they hide the real concerns. Talking about the things I need can feel scary and vulnerable; it's easier to say, "I want you to be home every night before midnight" than to say "I feel lonely when I wake up in an empty bed without you. How can we work together to deal with that?"

Poly blogger Andrea Zanin has said: "Rules have
an inverse relationship to trust
. They are intended to bind someone to someone else's preferences. They are aimed at constraint. I will limit you, and you will limit me, and then we'll both be safe." The problem with rules, though, is we can never actually force our partners to abide by them. A partner who can't be trusted to meet your needs can't be trusted to follow your rules. What you need is a trustworthy partner. And you need to be trustworthy yourself.

Sometimes rules try to compensate for poor boundaries. We've talked to many people who say they use rules to "prevent drama" or to protect themselves from someone who might want to "split them up." We believe such rules aren't necessary if we know, have and assert good boundaries. Nobody can make you and your partner split up, or engage you in drama, if you don't agree to it. If you can simply say "No, I won't participate in this dynamic," or "I choose to remain with my partner. I'm not interested in dissolving this relationship," then you don't need to rely on structures or rules to attempt to do that for you.

In the end, whether you choose to rely on putting in place rules or agreements, or simply advocating for your needs and giving your partners the opportunity to address them, no relationship will succeed if your partners don't want to invest in it. If they cannot be trusted to make the relationship work, it won't, rules be damned.

RULES AS "TRAINING WHEELS"

Another common idea in the poly community is the notion of rules as "training wheels," a way to learn the skills to navigate poly relationships without feeling threatened. A person (or more often a couple) may start out with a list of highly restrictive rules, thinking they will learn trust by seeing other people obey the restrictions. Then, once that trust has been built, the rules can slowly be relaxed.

This idea may have become popular from the observation that lots of successful poly relationships seem to have grown this way. A couple or group will sometimes start out drawing up a long, detailed relationship agreement with many pages of rules and specifications, and then, as it's renegotiated over time, it becomes ever simpler and more general, until perhaps a ten-page document has been condensed to something like "Use good judgment. Be thoughtful. Take responsibility. Don't be a dick." The group's success makes this strategy look like a winner, and they proudly blog about it.

In fact, we believe the popularity of this idea confuses cause and effect. Because they were thoughtful people who take responsibility, they didn't need ten pages of rules in the first place. And if they hadn't been thoughtful people, the rules wouldn't have helped.

"Training wheels" rules are a seductive idea. They offer a justification for a tightly restricted model of poly, but also offer the promise that someday they won't be necessary. We have even been told that empowered poly relationships are only an option for people who already have lots of poly experience or a secure attachment style. Everyone else starting out is supposed to need the comfort of rules to learn the trust that leads to poly enlightenment.

The biggest problem with the "training wheels" metaphor is that it treats people as things. In the case of a couple, they're telling new partners, "We don't really trust you, and we don't have the skills to treat you well, so we're going to use you as practice to learn how to treat our future partners well." The idea is, if you don't trust your partner, the way to gain trust is to restrict her—and anyone else she is involved with.

But not everyone learns to ride a bike by using training wheels. Some people even believe that relying on training wheels teaches bad habits that must be unlearned when the training wheels come off. In polyamorous relationships, using rules to avoid dealing with thorny problems like jealousy and insecurity can cause us to learn some very bad relationship habits indeed. Even under the best of circumstances, talking about our fears and insecurities is hard. When we talk about our frailties, we become exposed and vulnerable, and that is uncomfortable. Relying on rules to deal with these feelings teaches us that we don't have to talk about them, which prevents us from learning the skills we need to find lasting solutions.