More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (9 page)

PART 2

A POLY TOOLKIT

4

TENDING YOUR SELF

To be a good person,

you have to always want to be

better than yourself right now.

P
.
Z
.
MYERS

Polyamory is awesome. But as you read this book, you might wonder why anyone would walk down this road. We're asking a lot of you, dear reader. We tell you what can go wrong and illustrate our lessons with messy examples from our own lives. So you might be tempted to throw up your hands and say, "Polyamory sounds hard!"

But polyamory
is
awesome. By opening ourselves to multiple romantic connections, the two of us have built amazing lives, filled with love and brilliance. Every person we have invited into our lives has made them better. Despite all the hard parts, neither of us would consider for even half a second going to a life of monogamy. We are nourished by the people who love and cherish us. Every partner we have had, all the relationships we have built, have made us stronger, taught us, supported us, made us better human beings.

We keep hearing that polyamory is hard work. We don't agree—at least not for the reasons that people say. But developing the
skills
to be successful in poly relationships? That's a different story. Learning to understand and express your needs, learning to take responsibility for your emotions...that's hard work. Once you've developed those skills, poly relationships aren't hard. The skills we're talking about aren't all unique to polyamory; they'll benefit any relationship. But poly will be really, really challenging without them. These skills have to be
learned
. And, alas, they aren't often taught.

Think of it like tilling the ground before planting a garden, so that things will more easily grow. You're learning a way of approaching relationships that helps them run smoothly. What skills are we talking about? Communication. Jealousy management. Being honest, compassionate, understanding. These are not easy to master. Relationship skills are
emergent phenomena
; they come from developing ways of thinking about relationships and about yourself. Once you've developed those ways of thinking, practicing these skills in your relationships starts to feel natural. If you get a handle on communication, compassion and self-awareness; if honesty and jealousy management become a part of your approach to life, then managing multiple romantic relationships become easy.

These attitudes and skills will express themselves outside of your relationships too. For instance, jealousy is the bugaboo we hear people mention most often. It is beaten most effectively by developing a strong sense of self-confidence and by confronting your personal demons of insecurity. Determine for yourself what you actually want and need from a relationship, and learn the communication tools to ask for those things. Construct a sense of what is and is not acceptable to you. All of these skills strengthen you in other ways as well. They're
life
skills, and they'll help when you're looking for a new job, or negotiating a raise, or buying a car.

The same is true for things like communication and honesty in a relationship. Develop the habits of being open and honest with the people around you, and you'll likely find that communicating with a lover does not take work; it's automatic. Develop the habit of behaving with integrity, and all of your life will become simpler and smoother. Developing these traits is work, sure, but it's not
relationship
work—it's work you do on
yourself
. It benefits you in ways beyond your relationship. In fact, this is work that's beneficial to do even if you have no relationships at all!

We discuss some big concepts in this chapter and the next. Things like integrity, courage, worthiness, compassion. Don't get scared off. These are not
states
you need to attain, and there's no magic bar you need to cross before you'll be "good enough" to be poly. These principles are meant as guides, as stars to navigate by. They are not innate character traits but practices you can cultivate, skills you can learn.

Of course, two chapters in one book can barely scratch the surface of the self-work that's involved in learning to practice ethical polyamory. What we're presenting is not a set of instructions, but a collection of principles that we believe are most important in building robust, ethical open relationships. These principles are only a jumping-off point; you will need additional resources. Books that we consider must-reads for anyone who still has work to do on building a strong sense of self, setting good boundaries and creating healthy intimate relationships are those by Harriet Lerner and Brené Brown listed in the
resources section
, particularly
The Dance of Intimacy
and
The Gifts of Imperfection
.

And if the things we discuss are linked for you to genuine
mental health issues, such as serious anxiety, depression or low self-worth, always consider professional help to work through those issues. We make this recommendation as people who have spent time in the therapist's office and have seen the transformative power of really good psychological help. Some problems can't be solved with self-help books. When you confront one of them, we urge you to get the help you need without shame or self-judgment. See Chapter 25 for
information on finding a poly-friendly mental health professional
.

NOSCE TE IPSUM

"Know thyself." You can't have what you want if you don't know what you want. You can't build a relationship that's satisfying without first understanding yourself and your needs. A willingness to question yourself, to challenge yourself, and to explore without fear the hidden parts of you are the best tools to gain that self-knowledge. A quote often attributed to Francis Bacon reads, "Your true self can be known only by systematic experimentation, and controlled only by being known." Understanding and programming your own mind is your responsibility; if you fail to do this, the world will program it for you, and you'll end up in the relationship other people think you should have, not the relationship you want.

Poly preparedness starts with taking responsibility for the work you need to do. It's not easy. We are very good at hiding the truth about ourselves from ourselves. Some of us are very good at making everything seem like someone else's problem. Others of us are too good at taking on other people's problems as our own. No one's self-awareness is perfect. But it starts with the simple act of looking inward, of asking yourself, "Is this my problem? What is the issue?" Self-awareness starts with awareness, period.

One of our readers recently said, "You can come with baggage, but you're responsible for knowing what's in the suitcases." This is often described as "owning your own shit." So what do you need to know? First, your needs. Most of us are never taught how to figure out what we need, let alone communicate it effectively. We are usually really good at feeling our feelings, but we tend to react to the
feeling
rather than the actual need. For example, we tend to think that when we feel angry, it's because someone else did something bad to us, so we react to that person, tell them how much they hurt us, and perhaps demand they stop. Sometimes anger really is about the thing you think it's about. But often, particularly in intimate relationships, the anger is about something else. It's about a need that's not being acknowledged or expressed, or even known.

Getting in touch with those needs can be really hard. So working to understand the needs driving strong emotions is a valuable practice. Then there's understanding your needs as they pertain to relationships. Do you need to be polyamorous? Do you need to be monogamous? Do you need at least the possibility of eventually moving in with a partner—or are you entirely closed to living together? Is sex an indispensable part of an intimate relationship for you? Are you open to nonsexual intimate connections? Are you willing to be involved in hierarchical relationships, where you are a secondary partner or subject to recoua veto? Or do you need to have a larger hand in the course your relationship takes?

You may find it helps to reframe some of what you are calling needs as things that feed you, things that give you joy. There's a dangerous side to focusing on needs, though, which we discuss more later. This is the risk of treating people as need-fulfillment machines. For example, it's not uncommon to see people create detailed descriptions of what their future partners will have to look like, be like and want: what role they should play. That's dangerous.

One way to think about (and seek) the kind of relationships you want without objectifying others is to think about what you have to offer (or not). Examples might be: I can offer life-partnering relationships. I can offer intimate relationships that don't include sex. I am interested in supporting a family. I am interested in caring for a family. I am not willing to move from my home for a partner. I have only two nights a week available for relationships. And so on.

This exercise can be useful in setting boundaries and helping clarify the kind of relationships you're looking for and can sustain. It also plays an important role in partner selection, something we'll talk about later. It's not going to be very satisfying, for example, for you to end up in a closed triad if what you really need is an open network with the potential to date other people. If you are looking for life partners, you may choose to be long-term friends, rather than romantic partners, with people who are looking for other types of relationships.

MINDING THE GAP

Lots of polyamorous people we know, ourselves included, tend to be idealists. We have lofty goals for our relationships and how we want to conduct ourselves within them. But becoming the kind of person who can live those ideals is a never-ending process. Not only doing the work is important. Understanding where you are
right now
is just as important. That includes understanding whether you are ready to share a partner or to be shared. The problem with being idealists about polyamory is that we risk putting ourselves into situations we're not ready for. If we do that, we risk hurting other people.

Although self-awareness is important, so is self-compassion. We don't look inward so that we can pass judgment on all our flaws. We do it so we can be aware of how our behavior is aligning with our values, what effect we're having on other people, how we may be sabotaging ourselves and our relationships. Understand where you are, yes, but also understand that it's okay to be there, at least for now.

In the book
Daring Greatly
, shame researcher Brené Brown introduces the idea of "minding the gap." She's talking about the values gap: the space between who we are now and who we want to be. Minding the gap is part of walking toward the horizon we talked about in the previous chapter. There will always be times when we are imperfect, when we fall short of the best possible versions of ourselves. Minding the gap is being
aware
of where we are now and striving to move in the direction we want to go. That's part of living with integrity.

EVE'S STORY
When my husband, Peter, and I opened up from monogamy, the first few months of my relationship with Ray were difficult for Peter, and for his relationship with me. He did a lot of work in those months to reach a place where he could come to terms with the connection between me and Ray—which flourished quite quickly—and give it space to grow.

When, about six months into that relationship, Peter started what would become a four-year long-distance relationship with Clio, I wanted to show him the same grace he had shown me—all at once. He'd done all that work, I reasoned; I wanted to show him I could do the same. But I neglected to give myself the time and space he had taken. I wanted to start out at the same place it had taken him six months to reach.

So I failed to set boundaries, and I failed to take care of myself. During Clio's first overnight visit with us, we were walking down the street toward the party the three of us were attending together. I wasn't prepared when he put his arm around her and I felt my throat constrict and the ground drop out from under me. I wasn't prepared when, surrounded by people in a packed room that allowed very little movement, I got separated from them and watched from across the room while they sat together and flirted and I felt the walls closing in. And I wasn't prepared to lie awake the entire night while he spent the night with her in the guest room, or for my emotional meltdown the next day.

There were some basic things Peter and Clio could have given me that would have helped me ease into the situation and feel safe—we talk about those in chapter 9—but I didn't know to ask for them. In fact, I actively avoided asking for them, because I wanted to be the strong, noble poly person who never felt jealous or insecure. I was looking at where I wanted to be standing instead of where I was standing, at what I wanted to offer instead of what I actually could at the time.