More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (62 page)

Because people tend to assume good intent on the part of their existing partners, while treating new people as possible threats, it can be easy to overlook the pattern and accept that it's the new prospects who are doing something wrong. This can become justification for a
screening veto
: "My partner has poor judgment! I have to keep screening out those choices of hers!"

Finally, if dysfunctional patterns such as abuse or codependency exist, a new partner who disrupts those patterns may be a very good thing indeed—but the benefits may not be recognized until much later.

A basic expectation of civility, if not friendliness, is reasonable toward metamours. In any extended family, we all realize that not everyone will get along with everyone else. Being able to get along with people we wouldn't necessarily choose for ourselves is an important life skill, and that goes doubly for polyamory. It is not always possible to see what your partner sees in someone else. Sometimes you have to take it on faith when a partner sees value in another person. Respect for a partner means respect for her choices.

DON'T BE CREEPY

Approaching a partner's other partner can seem like an emotional minefield, where one misstep will lead to explosively unfortunate consequences. And metamour relationships can make or break a relationship, so it's natural that a lot of folks approach them with trepidation.

Remember that if you're in a relationship with someone who starts seeing someone new, you hold a lot of power. You're likely to be more intimidating to that new partner than he is to you. While you see new relationship energy and the excitement of a budding romance, he sees a shared history that is not accessible to him. A new relationship is a time of intense vulnerability for you
and
the new metamour. Treat that vulnerability with kindness and compassion. Forced interaction of any sort, whether it's forced family or forced distance, is still forced.

Part of treating a partner's other partner as a person rather than as a blank slate for your own fears means not being creepy. "Creepy" is a loaded term, but romantic relationships provide ample opportunity for you to be invasive and intrusive. We encourage you not to take advantage of these opportunities. Here is a partial list of things that will likely be seen as creepy or intrusive (all of which we've seen or experienced):

• Spying on your partner or her interactions with your metamours, such as reading her email, monitoring her social media, reading her text messages or listening to her phone calls.
  
• Eavesdropping on other aspects of your partner's other relationships, for example by checking up on his whereabouts or monitoring his activities.
  
• Calling, texting or otherwise being needy whenever your partner is on a date. Emergencies happen, and many people like to prearrange check-ins so they know their partners are safe. But beyond that, a habit of constant contact with a partner who's with someone else can quickly become intrusive.
  
• Oversharing or asking inappropriately intimate questions of a metamour. "Appropriate" is a relative term, and different people have different boundaries around their personal lives. Still, it's good form to pay attention and back off if you're starting to make your metamour uncomfortable.
  
• Copying a metamour in any way that's not invited or consensual, such as adopting their style of dress, makeup or fragrances, or giving similar gifts, or doing similar activities with a partner (if you're doing it
  because
  that's what your metamour did, not because that's something you too enjoy).
  
• Turning up uninvited to places you know your partner will be with your metamour.
  
• Expecting to be included in all their activities, especially intimate ones.
  
• Disclosing intimate details of your relationship with your shared partner without establishing whether that's welcome. As we discussed at length previously, everyone has a right to set boundaries around privacy.
  

As with just about every other part of polyamorous relating, the impulse to deal with the unknown by trying to control the outcome is less likely to succeed than allowing relationships between you and your partners' other partners to take their own course. People, like animals, react poorly to being cornered. Attempting to script how the relationship with a partner's new partner must go is one way to make someone feel cornered. Flexibility in metamour relationships, as in all things poly, is your best approach.

In practical terms, this means seeing your partner's other partner as a person, not a projection of your own fears and hopes. The best approach is the same you might take with a friend of a friend: be open and welcoming, look for shared interests, ask questions. Take the time to get to know them, but without being pushy or intrusive. Make a warm and welcoming space for them, but don't try to force them into it.

TRIANGULATION AND "INTERFERING" METAMOURS

Not getting along with metamours—or having inflated expectations about how excellently you
should
get along—is one of the two biggest pitfalls of metamour relations. The other is triangulation: blaming metamours for your partner's behavior and holding them responsible for your dissatisfaction in your own relationships. No matter how awesome your partner is, how happy he makes you or how head over heels you are, eventually he will do something you don't like. If it's something to do with another of his relationships—investing time in another partner, perhaps, when you would like him to be investing it in you—you can be sorely tempted to misdirect blame onto the other partner.

Why? First, it's easier to be angry with someone we're not involved with. It's less painful to frame an unhappy situation as the fault of a third party than as a problem in our own relationship. It's easier to sit and steam about someone else than to risk the vulnerability of a frank discussion with an intimate partner about our unmet needs.

It's also easy, particularly in conflicts over resource allocation, to see the issue as a conflict between the metamours—one in which the pivot tends to get lost, even though she is the one choosing how to allocate her resources. If Greg is struggling to give enough time to Connor and Paul, it's easy for the conversation to become all about Connor and Paul, no matter who's speaking. The question "What does
Greg
want?" comes up surprisingly less often than you might think. The pivot makes his or her own decisions, and that's where the discussions should be happening. We discussed this in detail in chapters 6 ("
Triangular communication
") and 16 ("
Who owns your choices?
").

EVE'S STORY
Franklin and I have a long-distance relationship. Each of us lives with another partner and has an active social life. Between our visits, we try to stay connected through frequent Skype and phone calls, "work dates" where we log on to Skype and quietly do our own work (or work on this book), and reading together over the phone.

For about the first six months of our relationship, I had access to Franklin's Google calendar. I found that the pain having this access caused me was greater than any small benefit we got from ease of scheduling, especially since we always arranged our visits through direct negotiation. When I had access to his calendar, I could see everything he was doing when he was
not
with me, including the social events I could not attend, the date nights and camping trips with his nesting partner that collectively exceeded
all
the time he and I had together, and, perhaps most importantly, the things he was choosing to do when he was not available to me.

Eventually, I asked Franklin to remove my access to his calendar. I found that it was far easier for me to feel satisfied in our relationship if I could focus on what I was being given, rather than what I wasn't. Without access to information about his day-to-day life, I am able to practice gratitude for the time Franklin makes for me and cherish the things
we
do together—and pay attention only to my own life the rest of the time.

If we focus on the relationship we're
not
in, it's easy to become invested in what our metamour is getting that we aren't, rather than on what we want and need. Chapter 16 described the monkeys who were happy to get cucumbers until they saw another monkey getting a grape. We humans are not much different. It is much more useful, in creating healthy, fulfilling relationships for ourselves, to focus on what
we
want, what feeds us.

But what if a metamour is just too demanding? What if his demands come not just from trying to get his needs met, but from trying to suck time and energy away from our partner's time with us? What if he's—we've heard this a million times—trying to
interfere
in our relationship? Surely my partner needs to act, doesn't she? Confront him for his destructive behavior? Veto him, if she has that power? In a word, no. Instead, you need to do the same thing as always: work on making your own relationship awesome, advocate for your own needs, set boundaries for how you need to be treated, and let her work out the business with your metamour. Above all,
trust
her to make choices that respect and cherish you. If she's not going to do that, you can't make her.

We've heard people say, "So-and-so broke up my relationship with my ex," but in reality, that's not what happened. Your ex broke up with you herself—because she chose to. Nobody can break up a relationship unless someone in that relationship agrees to it.

WHEN YOUR METAMOURS ARE IN CONFLICT

As you might imagine, in poly relationships there are plenty of configurations in which the urge to take sides can arise: we've already talked about taking sides between partners when you're the pivot, and taking sides during a breakup. But if you're poly long enough, at some point you're likely to have two or more metamours through a single partner who aren't getting along. This will likely cause pain to your shared partner. When that happens, it can be very hard not to want to intervene.

When people we care about are embroiled in conflict, it's tempting to try to mediate. Maybe we think we can offer some special insight, or that we have enough distance to help everyone see everyone else's point of view. If you have rock-solid relationships with everyone involved, and if you are a skilled negotiator—and able to keep your own emotions in check—you may decide to wade into those waters to try to bring peace to your polycule, and you might actually do some good.

However, maybe you're not just an objective mediator; maybe you think someone is right and someone else is wrong. In truth, maybe one person is indeed being unreasonable, even obstinate or manipulative. Maybe your shared partner can't see this. Should you share your observations with your partner, or try to make the unreasonable metamour see the light, or stand by the wronged metamour—taking sides?

We won't say no, but we will say, "Tread very carefully here." Our friend Edward Martin has compared people to the fuel rods and control rods in a nuclear reactor. The control rods are neutron absorbers; they absorb stray neutrons to prevent them from reaching other fuel rods. They are attenuators: they calm things down when things start to go wrong. The fuel rods, on the other hand, are where the runaway chain reactions take place. They're amplifiers: when things go wrong, the fuel rods escalate the problem. When choosing people to include in his life, Edward likes to look for attenuators rather than amplifiers. Faced with conflict, amplifiers escalate the situation—with demands, tantrums, ultimatums and sleep deprivation via all-night processing sessions. Attenuators tend to be flexible, with high emotional intelligence and good conflict-resolution skills.

Taking sides in a conflict between your metamours—or between a metamour and a partner—amplifies rather than attenuates the problem. Your investment in the situation raises the stakes (which may already feel or be quite high), and the metamour you're opposing is likely to become even more entrenched and defensive, lowering the possibilities for a successful resolution. If you are going to be involved at all, it's useful to think about how you can act as an attenuator.

When part of your network is embroiled in a conflict that doesn't directly involve you, probably the most useful thing you can do is listen. We discussed active listening in chapter 7; it's useful here. Offer empathy, without analyzing, fixing or blaming. Many people remain embroiled in conflicts because they desperately need to feel heard. You can help by hearing them. There's also a gotcha here, though. If you're helping your metamours (or partners) by actively listening to them, you may be tempted to start carrying messages between them. After all, they're not hearing each other, right? Maybe they just need some translation help? Nope. No. Uh-uh. Don't do it. If you begin playing messenger, you are likely to
increase
the distance between them rather than decrease it. If they start to rely on you as their interlocutor, it will become harder and harder for them to communicate with each other.