Whirlwind of Eager F*ck Ups

I don’t talk about polyamory very much, because I learned a long time ago that my relationships function a lot better when I keep them to myself. Not to say that I am hiding anything, more just that scrutiny from the public into my personal life is completely unnecessary and I have no obligation to anyone to engage in it. Of course, I care about visibility and normalization of polyam relationships, but what I do not want is every single monogamy-centric-hetero-cis-normative-busy-body-Dr.-Phil-watching-armchair-therapist asking me questions like, “Which one is your real partner?” Or even more cringe-worthy, “Your husband let’s you do that?” There is a myriad of awful horrible questions that people who have only ever been exposed to the idea that monogamy as the only way that a healthy relationship can flourish, feel the right to ask polyam people. Set aside the lie that one must be in a romantic relationship to be happy and live a fulfilling life in the first place, because it too. is bullshit. Romantics should be an addition to your fulfillment, not the road to it.

I’ve been polyam for basically as long as I have been dating. I might not always have multiple partners, but just like, me dating a man doesn’t make me any less pansexual than I was when I was single or dating a woman, who I am and the romantic dynamics that I function in best don’t change. I made a lot of mistakes when I first started polyam, and I chalked it up to I was 15 and what the fuck did I know? I am older now, and I have observed a lot of those same mistakes being made by adults. So, I thought I would write a thing about the mistakes I have made, and the mistakes I have observed. Before I do that though, just a small disclaimer:

I am not a relationship expert, in absolutely no way am I saying that what works for me is universal, or that the way I do polyam is the only way to do polyam. Every person and relationship dynamic is different, but there are things that can create a toxic relationship regardless of who you are. Being happy in a relationship is not indicative of the health of that relationship. If you don’t believe me, remember how happy Harley was with the Joker for a significant portion of their incredibly toxic relationship.

Getting into your first polyam relationship is a lot like rediscovering freedom. Especially if you have been force-fed monogamy your whole life. However, like a lot of things, when the restriction you have had imposed on you for a long time is lifted, people tend to overdo it. I had a friend who was never allowed to drink soda her whole life. Literally the very moment she went to college, and had access to a soda fountain in the dining hall, she drank herself sick on sugared sodas every single day, for months on end. A lot of people also experience this when they are finally allowed to legally drink. Even though I had been drinking for a long time prior to turning 21, because I was a delinquent, I still temporarily turned into an alcoholic after my 21st birthday. Drinking way more than I had the year before simply because I finally could do it without the threat of arrest.

I feel like this overindulgence is totally natural, but I also feel like it is the thing on this list that is the most potentially harmful. Almost every other thing I am about to write about stems from this one thing. This over-eager keenness to do all the things, can lead to a lot of hurt feelings and emotional wreckage in your path to finding your rhythm. Being aware that a lot of people have made these mistakes doesn’t make it any easier to avoid, but maybe it might make you realize you are making them before anyone gets too deeply devastated by your puppy tail enthusiasm ripping through the Fabergé egg exhibit.

So how do you avoid it?

Well just like everything the best way to avoid something is to be aware of what it is and what it looks like. This particular type of overindulgence, I usually find happens with the initial accumulation of partners. You are not Smaug the fucking Dragon, you don’t need a literal mountain hall full of partners. The first issue with this is a logistical one, how could you possibly give each person the amount of attention they deserve with 35 partners? I don’t care how good you are at time management and bullet journals, there is no way that you can spread yourself that thin and still have time to relax and reset. Plus, each partner is their own person and will have their own set of needs from you both emotional and physical. This wild episode of human hoarders inevitably ends with people feeling neglected and angry, and due to NRE (New Relationship Energy) you are likely to spend the most time with the most recent partner.

This becomes even more problematic when you are in a relationship that was previously monogamous, and suddenly you have 18 new loves. That could leave your original relationship partner feeling like perhaps they were never enough for you. Which leads to lines of uncomfortable questioning regarding the origin of the decision to open the relationship in the first place. That is definitely more likely to happen if only one half of that relationship is pulling a lot of partners, while the other is having trouble connecting.

In addition to just the matter of negligence, you’re also talking about a probability equation. Chemistry and attraction do not necessarily equate a healthy relationship, and just because you find another polyam person, or a person who is willing to try it, doesn’t mean that they are going to be compatible with you. When you find other people who are new to the scene like you, and need a slower introduction, not the full-on cannonball into the kiddie pool that you are doing, you are apt to send them scuttling back to the restrictive monogamy that they were hoping to escape. They will think that all polyam relationships feel like how you are making them feel. I don’t kink shame, and if harems and reverse harems are your thing, then do you. But for me, I have a hard time dating people who have more than 3 regular romantic partners other than me.

We also need to talk about the graphing that needs to happen when you expand your poly circle for the first time. You need to keep track of who you’re sleeping with, and the people you’re sleeping with need to do the same. That way if someone contracts an STI, everyone who could be affected is informed responsibly. A lot of people new to polyam- ...hmm how to put this delicately… fuck anyone that says yes for a while. While there is nothing wrong with that, and I frequently encourage people to slut it up, it’s also important that you do that responsibly. That means keeping track of who you sleep with and keeping contact information for them. I have learned to ask people if they do this before I sleep with them at this point, but I was not always this insightful. I used to wrongly assume that everyone I slept with, just by virtue of being polyam, was as responsible as me about those things. Getting tested regularly, keeping track of who they slept with and when, and informing responsibly. I was lucky and never contracted anything that a 2 day round of antibiotics couldn’t take care of, but that doesn’t change the fact that the basics of record keeping are important.

Speaking of diving into relationships and sex with everyone who says yes, just because a person is polyam doesn’t mean that the way they do polyam is compatible with the way you do. Some people like big poly families, where everyone dates each other, and no one is excluded. Some people like insular poly pods, where each partner has other partners (metamours) that do not date you. Some people make it out to be hierarchial, having a primary partner, and then a descending ladder of importance there downward. Some have insular relationships but round table style ranking, so everyone is on equal footing but their partners are all separate. Some like to live together, some don’t. Some want sex and romance, some only sex, some only romance. There are infinite differences between one human to the next, and so to there are infinite differences in how polyam can be accomplished. You need to learn what questions to ask in order to make sure that the person you’re about to sleep with after your 3rd date and are already envisioning your happy polyam ride off into the sunset is compatible with how YOU do polyam.

And another thing! Whenever people get sucked into a new show or series or whatever other special interest, I notice they do a lot of research, but I also have noticed that a lot of people don’t do that with Polyam. Well, you should! There are a lot of really great resources out there to help you navigate this new life you have chosen. From books to podcasts, there are people out there like me, who have been doing this a long time, and since polyam is not homogenous or monolithic it is good to hear a lot of anecdotal things from a wide variety of people who all do polyam in their own ways. That way you can take their experiences and apply it to your own feelings. Kind of like taking an emotional test drive. I definitely recommend checking out Nonmonogamyhelp.org and the Less Than83 podcast. More Than Two was also very helpful for me.

I also want to mention that emotional regulation is always more than you think it is. Saying things like, “I don’t get jealous” is all fine and good, except that it is a lie. It is always a lie. Jealousy and envy and feelings of doubt and questioning your worth are all perfectly normal and natural things that occur in polyam relationships. What separates a healthy relationship is how those feelings are handled. Stuffing down those feelings or beating yourself up about them is not healthy. Neither is stuffing them down until you’re an emotional volcano taking down the unsuspecting Pompeii of your relationships when someone coughs too loudly. Dictating how others feel is also not ok. You can’t tell your partners what is allowed to bother them, and what feelings they are allowed to feel. Finding healthy ways to communicate your feelings, and have feelings communicated to you, without getting defensive, or gaslighting your partner is imperative. How you choose to do that is entirely up to you, but it is vital to learn how to communicate honestly, openly, and without judgment. When you start suppressing your emotions, or the emotions of your partners that’s where we get the last big thing I want to mention.

Cheating in polyam is still a thing. Just because you can fuck and date more than one person doesn’t mean you can’t still cheat. You absolutely can. I personally practice radical honesty in my polyam relationships. No lies, no secrets, no omission. If I behave badly it is up to me to own up to it, accept responsibility for it, and be held accountable, even if, and especially when, it is uncomfortable to do so. I long ago, outgrew the veto rule. I don’t hold any veto power over my partners, I do not get a say in who they date and have sex with. The only thing I insist on is if a partner and I choose to have unprotected sex that both they and I do not have unprotected sex with anyone else. However there have been occasions in the past when a partner of mine has started to see someone I found to be less than savory. On one occasion I knew the person to be an abuser and a person who had sexually assaulted someone else in my friend circle. That situation was super uncomfortable for me, as my partner was super into her and my reluctance to hurt my partner’s feelings, by exposing this person was a factor.

Ultimately, I did voice my concerns, because of radical honesty, and it was a very hard discussion. My partner continued to see that person, for about 6 months, and I hated every second of it, but I respected my partner’s decisions enough to not interfere further. I voiced my concerns, and they were answered, and that is all I could do. Not getting your way is a hard thing. If we had been the kind of poly group that practiced veto powers, and I had said, I am vetoing, do not see this person anymore, and my partner had continued to see them behind my back, that would have most definitely been cheating. Emotional entanglements unsanctioned by the rest of your poly group are just as deceitful. There was a fairly shitty show about polyam couples on some channel or other a few years ago. There was a triad where one of the women had been secretly seeing another man behind her husband and their girlfriend’s back. A lot of response to the show was, “What does it matter? They are poly anyway?” The answer is because she kept it a secret. She lied, she did it deceitfully.

In fact, I would argue that cheating in a polyam relationship is more hurtful than in a monogamous one, because it is a conscious choice to lie and deceive when you don’t have to. I see a lot of new to polyam people do this. They have a lot of internalized shame about breaking the walls down that monogamy put up around them. As a result they hide their activities from other partners, despite being seemingly loud and proud about being polyam.

The best rule when in any relationship, polyam or monogamous, is to remember that you are responsible for your own actions, and if you leave a trail of broken hearts and destroyed humans in your wake, it will not be forgotten easily. Shiny new lifestyles are exciting, and I know that enthusiasm can make us reckless, so I hope that this has brought some mindfulness back to your tail wagging, and you can go back to exploring your new options in a way that can build up not break down. The rule of progress applies to polyam. Just because you can do something (or someone), doesn’t mean you should.