that's not polyamory bruh

in which i get REAL judgmental about other people's polyamory practices

if you are one of the maybe five people that i talk to on a daily basis, then you are very familiar with one of my favorite disgusting corners of Beyonce’s internet: relationship advice Reddit. it’s just as horrifying as you would expect anything on Reddit to be, and there is nothing i love to read more than the “polyamorous” people seeking out advice and guidance. 

it’s usually something like: 

“my (22F) boyfriend (37M) and i opened up our relationship about six months ago. i didn’t want to at first, but after talking about it for a while, i saw the benefits of it for us. he found a second partner right away but i’ve mostly just had some drunken hook-ups with exes and bad first dates. i found out last week that he and his other girlfriend actually started seeing each other *before* we opened our relationship. when i confronted him about it, he said i was being a bad poly-partner and i needed to work on my jealousy. i feel like because he started seeing her before we were poly, he still cheated on me but i also understand that in polyamorous relationships, cheating isn’t viewed the same way it is in monogamous relationships. i feel like he betrayed my trust, but i also don’t want to be a source of toxic monogamy in our relationship, what should i do??”

obviously this isn’t a *real* entry from r/relationship_advice but each element of my hyperbolic example is something i’ve seen on there time and again.

if i could only give one piece of nonmonogamy advice, it would be this: transparency is the way forward.

nonmonogamous relationships take on a lot of formats but, by and large i happen to think a lot of those formats are bullshit. i never said this was a non-judgmental space, in case you thought it was, it definitely isn’t.

shit that i don’t think works: 

• putting limitations on the identity of the people your person can date— ever heard of a “one penis policy”? it’s just as toxic as it sounds. what about telling your partner they can’t date anyone younger than you? garbage. playing these kinds of games is a really great indication that there’s not a lot of trust in the relationship, and can also point to a lack of respect for the kinds of people that one’s partner *is* allowed to date.

• don’t ask don’t tell— listen, it didn’t work for the military, it won’t work for you. if simply hearing about your person’s extra-relationship activities threatens the stability of that relationship well, Molly, you in danger girl. i believe a good partnership includes supporting one another’s pursuits & passions. that doesn’t mean you’ve gotta dish every dirty detail of every hook up, but if you can’t tell your person “i’ve got a date on Friday and i’m nervous about it!” and get gassed up in return, it seems like y’all have some shit to talk about. 

• limiting your person’s level of investment in other people— people really love to use this phrase “catch feelings” and personally, i don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. this is not to say i don’t believe in relationships that are purely physical, absolutely i do. but this malarkey where people date but they’re not allowed to fall in love or whatever, i don’t get that. if i allow myself to care for someone, i cannot then limit the depth of feelings that organically develop. if i claim to be able to, all i am doing is denying that person my authenticity and vulnerability, and that’s pretty shitty. 

if i sound like kind of a zealot about any of this, it’s because one of my first “polyamorous relationships” was a whole entire mess. looking back on it, i’m pretty sure his girlfriend didn’t know about me and he was just cheating on her.

we didn’t get a lot of time together, maybe once a week, and i always had to come over to his place. if his girlfriend called or texted while we were together, he would stop what we were doing to talk to her. he also had to call her and say goodnight every night. i asked him if they could perhaps respect that we had limited time, and not make demands of his time while we were together, but he told me that was an unreasonable ask because she was his girlfriend and i was just his sub. (yes, i know, yikes)

i also really wanted to meet her, not because i thought we all needed to be friends and hang out, but just because i cared about him and i wanted to meet the woman he loved. just like i wanted to know about the art he loved, the food he liked to eat, or hear about his formative experiences or whatever else you do to get to know the people you care about. he told me that in fact the reason i wanted to meet her was because i was insecure, and i wanted to try and intimidate her with my youth and confidence. who knew?!

anyway, that’s how i learned that hierarchical polyamory isn’t for me! ditto for lying misogynists.

since that rather disastrous intro, i’ve been pretty unwavering about radical transparency in my polyamory. i don’t need to be friends with your people, but i’d like to know who they are. you don’t have to tell me every detail of every fuck, but if you don’t get a thrill from giggling and gossiping with me about the sex you’re having, we’re not gonna be a good fit.

as for hierarchy… i know it works for a lot of people, and honestly, i think the logistics of life sometimes dictate these things rather than what’s in our heart. if you live with one partner and not others (or share finances with one partner and not others, or co-parent with one partner and not others, or run a business with one partner and not others, etc…), it’s really hard for that person not to default to primary status, but that isn’t really what i’m talking about. 

for me, all of the relationships in my life are built on shared points of connection, otherwise known as “having things in common.” because these shared points of connection are equally important to me, i try to treat all of my relationships with equal importance. some people call this Relationship Anarchy. 

if i’m losing you, think about it like this. one of the points of connection between myself and my girlfriend is sex, one of the points of connection between myself and my best friend is queerness. sex is not more important to me than my queer identity, so why would i put more value on the relationship with my girlfriend than my best friend, just because i fuck my girlfriend and i don’t fuck my best friend?

i don’t want to get too far into points of connection, that’s a newsletter for another day, but what i’m saying is, i try really hard not to allow traditional relationship values (aka amatonormativity) dictate the importance of the relationships in my life.

i wanna wrap up by saying, this idea that you can’t be cheated on or lied to in a nonmonogamous relationship is nonsense. if it feels like your partner is doing something shady, they probably are and you should tell them how you feel. there is very little chance that you will be able to intellectualize your way out of those feelings that something just isn’t right. 

nobody on Reddit, no book on polyamory, not even a polyamory coach will be able to talk you out of that feeling in your gut that someone is doing you dirty. and that’s because we all have to determine for ourselves what makes us feel respected and cared for. sure some of those feelings might be informed by amatonormativity, but it doesn’t do anybody any good to pretend you feel a way you don’t. 

we all have to be honest about where we’re at and what we’re up for. those things can definitely change and evolve as we become more familiar with nonmonogamy (if that’s something you want), but pretending something is ok when it’s not, is definitely not ok.

be open, speak up, and love wildly. 

-d

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were Charlie’s grandparents polyamorous? sure looked like it to me!