Introduction

Will is married to Rachel. They own a beautiful house. Will (not his real name) is a successful businessman who runs a prosperous company. Every day, he comes home to Rachel and to her boyfriend Arnold, who also shares their home. Will and Arnold are good friends who often spend time together. The three of them plan vacations and go hiking together. Sometimes Arnold's girlfriend Leila joins them.

Santiago and Winona are engaged. They're both dating another woman, Helen. Santiago and Winona have been together for more than six years. He started dating Helen three years ago, and about a year after that, Helen and Winona started dating each other. Santiago and Winona live together. Helen lives nearby.

Eliza likes her independence. She doesn't fancy being tied down in a conventional relationship. She lives on her own, and she prefers it that way. She's been dating Kyle for about five years, and they're madly in love. Kyle is a long-distance partner; he lives in another state with his girlfriend Melody. When Eliza visits Kyle, she stays with them both. Eliza is also dating Stacie, who lives nearby with her husband, Seth. Eliza and Stacie have been dating for four years. Seth and Eliza are friends, though they aren't romantic partners. We know all of these people.

Yes, it is possible to live this way. Hundreds of thousands of people are doing it right now. It's called polyamory, which literally means "many loves." The crucial point: It's done with the full knowledge and consent of everyone who is affected.

Polyamorous relationships can be joyous, brimming with laughter and love. But they rarely just happen. They take work, and they require trust, communication and kindness. It's easier to build healthy, vibrant poly relationships and avoid disaster when you can see others doing it and learn from them. This is easier now than it used to be. In the past thirty years, the growing worldwide community of polyamorous people has built a treasure vault of hard-won wisdom. Much of it has been achieved at a bitter price, through many, many people's trials, errors, crashes and hard-won insights. We know far more than we did a generation ago about what is likely to work, and why, and how…and also what has a consistent track record of failure.

The authors of this book have been through a combined forty years of poly life. In addition to living it daily, we have observed literally thousands of poly relationships. For twenty years, Franklin has run probably the most linked-to polyamory information site on the Web.

Franklin started living polyamorously in the early 1980s, long before people were using the word. He had no language for what he felt, no community support, no role models, no one to talk to or learn from. He had to find his own way, and so he got to make all the mistakes on his own. That included marrying a monogamous woman and living for nearly two decades in a hierarchical, veto-based relationship that was never really happy for anyone. In 1997—the same year The Ethical Slut was published—he launched a website, then at Xeromag.com (now morethantwo.com), filled with introductory polyamory resources. His goal was to provide all the information that he wished he'd had when he first started out.

That website grew and changed, transforming over the years along with Franklin's relationships and his thinking about polyamory. It is now one of the first Google hits for "polyamory." Over the years, he's received thousands of emails from people thanking him for helping or even saving their relationships. His work is sometimes controversial, but the fact is, it helps people.

Eve first learned about polyamory when she was twelve, from a Sunday-school teacher who challenged her assumptions about monogamous relationships and introduced her to the concepts of "primary" and "secondary" partners. In high school, her social group flirted with polyamorous ideas and practices but didn't have a framework for exploring them under that name. After high school Eve's own relationships were monogamous, though she had friends who were poly. In her thirties she and her husband-to-be opened their monogamous relationship. She has embraced polyamory since 2008.

We tell our personal stories throughout this book. We're not experts on polyamory. We believe there are no experts. Polyamory is still too new for that. We wrote this book because we've spent a lot of time exploring this nearly trackless space, and along the way we've made plenty of mistakes we'd like to help you avoid. If what you find here serves you, use it. If it doesn't, that's okay too. Look at some of the other wonderful resources listed in the back of this book to find what meets your needs.

Poly jargon

As polyamory has grown as a relationship model, it has developed its own vocabulary. Folks in poly relationships will talk about "compersion," a feeling of joy at the happiness of a partner in a new relationship, and "new relationship energy" or NRE, the giddy, honeymoon phase of a newfound love. You might hear someone talk about "wibbles," or minor twinges of jealousy. An OSO is a person's "other significant other."

All this lingo can create a certain amount of confusion. After all, the idea of non-monogamous relationships isn't new; people have been stepping out, swapping wives and generally fooling around since the dawn of time. So why all these new words?

New terminology arises where old terminology doesn't fit. These terms evolved to give polyamorous people a way to discuss the joys, challenges and situations they encounter that might not have direct corollaries in monogamy or in the most common forms of non-monogamy, which aren't polyamorous. The new jargon is a way to talk about what polyamory is (ethical, open, consensual long-term romantic relationships) without using the language of cheating or of swinging, casual wife-swapping, and other forms of traditional non-monogamy. We have tried to be careful not to overload this book with jargon, but if you get lost, there's a glossary in the back.

Themes in this book

As you read this book, you will see several ideas we return to again and again. We have observed that happy, strong relationships of any kind have certain things in common, and we talk about them many times.

The first idea is trust. Many problems in any relationship, but especially in poly relationships, come down to "How much do I trust my partner?" Having such trust is often more difficult than it sounds, because internal emotions such as insecurity or low self-esteem can affect how much confidence we place in a partner's love for us.

The second theme is courage. We suggest many approaches to relationships that require confronting socially imposed norms and our own fears, and that takes courage. When many people think of "courage," they think of a firefighter charging into a burning building or a person facing down a hungry leopard—extraordinary acts of bravery in the face of danger. The kind of courage we mean is a more personal, ordinary thing: talking about our feelings even when we're afraid; giving a partner the freedom to explore new relationships even when we fear being abandoned; challenging ourselves to step outside our comfort zones even when we aren't sure there will be someone there to catch us.

The third theme is abundance. Looked at one way, polyamory might seem hopeless: we're seeking people who also want this unconventional way of life, which limits our potential dating pool; who have a compatible sexual orientation and gender identity, which narrows it further; who are available for new romantic connections, which narrows it still more; whose style of poly is compatible with ours; who we have chemistry with…how can we expect to find anyone? Looked at another way, we share this world with more than seven billion other people, so even 10 percent of 10 percent of 10 percent of 10 percent is over 700,000 potential partners—surely an embarrassment of riches. How we think about potential relationships, whether we view them as scarce or abundant, will make a huge difference in our romantic lives.

The fourth idea is ethics. We strongly believe there are ethical and unethical ways to treat other people, and we talk about them throughout this book. Treating people with compassion, integrity and respect, no matter what role they play in our lives, is something we believe to be of paramount importance in happy, healthy relationships.

The last theme we will often return to is empowerment. We believe that relationships work best when all the people involved feel empowered to help shape and guide their relationships, to advocate for their needs, and to feel that they have a hand in the outcomes.

Polyamory, like any worthwhile endeavor, is a journey. We hope to give you some signposts to help you along the way, but nobody can make the journey for you. It is up to you to navigate your way toward happy, ethical, compassionate relationships.