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Ethical polyamory
The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
emma goldman
We're not going to teach you the easy way to be poly. The tools we recommend will seem hard, because they are—at first. Like starting anything new, practicing polyamory comes with a steep learning curve, and requires a lot of hard work, as you build new skills and challenge old ways of thinking. Our goal is to equip you with the tools you'll need to grow strong, loving relationships.
Ethics are crucial to polyamorous relationships, and we believe it is worth developing an explicit ethical compass to guide us. That shouldn't be a controversial statement, but it is: many people believe that ethics do not exist in any absolute sense, that they are all culturally determined. Even if that's the case, well then, with polyamory, we're building a new culture. What kind of culture do we want to build? Those are our ethics. The ethics of nontraditional relationships are such a huge topic that we can only touch on them here. But this entire book is about conducting polyamorous relationships ethically, so we must explain what we mean by that.
Right and wrong poly?
One of the things you'll hear a lot from poly people is that "there's no one right way to do poly." This is true. There are many ways to "do poly" (live polyamorously) that give you a decent chance of having joyful, fulfilling, meaningful relationships with low conflict. But when people say "There's no one right way," it sometimes seems they mean there are no bad ways to do poly. We disagree. There are plenty of choices likely to lead you into pain, stress, drama and tears. There are ways to do poly that shift most of the emotional risk that comes with any intimate relationship onto one person. There are ways to do poly that reliably cause suffering.
It seems pretty fair to say that approaches that are likely to cause pain to you and those you love probably aren't very good strategies. We are even comfortable calling such approaches "bad" ways of doing poly—though we are wary of the word "wrong," which tends to make people unnecessarily defensive. After all, we're all ultimately trying to do the best we can. Choosing a flawed strategy doesn't make someone a bad person; the two of us have gone down some of those roads ourselves. We are all struggling to meet the same basic human needs. People make mistakes because they're trying to solve a problem, and many of the less successful approaches to poly tend to promise quick relief—but come with insidious, hidden costs.
All of us have done some very bad things. We've all hurt other people when we thought we were doing the right thing, or at least not a bad thing. We were probably trying to get our own needs met—blinded, perhaps, by those needs. The two of us are no exception: in fact, it is our many mistakes, and what we have learned from them, that qualify us to write this book.
So what does it mean to be ethically polyamorous, given that we're all going to make mistakes, hurt others, be buffeted by our emotions and fall down sometimes? Being ethical means that you're willing to look at your actions and their effects on other people. If you're presented with evidence that you're causing harm, or that what you're doing won't achieve what you and your partner(s) want, you will look for ways to change this. In making decisions, you will consider the well-being of everyone involved, not just some. Being ethical also means that you're willing to have the kinds of discussions that would permit an honest analysis of the way you're choosing to do poly, without getting defensive or accusatory.
Because after all, we're all learning. We are pioneers, and unless we're willing to assess the path we're on and whether it's taking us where we want to go, we're likely to end up in some pretty messed-up places.
Evidence-based polyamory
We wrote the first draft of this book from a cabin deep in the temperate rain forest of the Pacific Northwest. On a half-hour walk from our front door, we passed a couple dozen varieties of wild mushrooms. Some made delicious additions to our nightly dinners. Others would sicken or kill us. Luckily, we had a book telling us which was which, and what poisonous look-alikes are most easily mixed up with safe and tasty edibles. After identifying a mushroom in the book, we might make a spore print, just to be sure. And then we would take a little piece of the mushroom, sauté it, eat it and wait a few hours, just to be sure neither of us got an upset tummy or started seeing the garden gnomes (oh God, so many garden gnomes!) climbing up the walls. Only then would we cook up a nice big batch into mushroom pie. Obviously, because you're reading this book, this strategy worked for us.
So let's imagine that we, as polyamorous people living in a mononormative society, are intrepid mushroom hunters discovering exotic, tasty treats by venturing into the forest. But here's the thing: we're new to this. Few are doing it; it's not part of our culture. There's no illustrated field guide, no cultural background to help us know what is poisonous, what's tasty, or what might give us the hallucinogenic trip of our lives.
So what do we do? We might look for other people—people already living off the land we're foraging on, say—and ask them what mushrooms they eat and which they avoid. We might watch what happens to others when they eat certain mushrooms. And if we can't find that kind of information—or maybe even if we could—we wouldn't wolf down a batch of some new mushroom all in one go. Probably we'd try a little piece, wait awhile, then try a little more.
And once we've determined that we can eat something with no ill effects, would we have a big dinner party and feed it to everyone else? If a dinner guest or two begins convulsing after consuming our delectable meal, would we shrug, say "Well, it works for me," and continue to feed it to others? No.
What we have just described is the process of collecting data. We like to do this as we explore new ways of relating too. We can observe, as we and others try out new relationship patterns, which choices tend to lead to pain and conflict and which tend to lead to harmony. Eventually, gradually, these patterns become evidence of what actions are most likely to promote the well-being of everyone in a relationship network. These might not be "right" ways to do poly—like there are no "right" foods—we might call them "good" ways.
Call this evidence-based polyamory, if you will.* That's what we're striving to give you in this book. Everything we suggest you do comes from what we have observed to work most often. The things we recommend you avoid are things we have observed, over and over, to cause strife. We're not criticizing the people doing the "bad" things, unless they act with malice, and we're not holding up the people doing the things that work as perfect poly role models that would be a good idea to emulate (though sometimes, maybe, you should). All we're saying is, if you want to choose strategies to help you get where you want to go, these are the ones we've observed to be most successful in the long term.
Polyamory is still new. We are not "experts," because there are no experts. At times, we present questions that don't have answers yet. In joining us in this big experiment, you will be helping to forge a path that others can follow, contributing to the body of knowledge on polyamory that is taking shape. In this book, we lay our own experiences—and, especially, our mistakes—open to view, in hopes that you can learn from them and avoid the same mistakes. We invite you to go out and explore the vast, fertile fields of new, undiscovered mistakes yet to be made! And then, perhaps, to share your experiences through your own blogs or comments on ours (at morethantwo.com), in poly forums and with one another—so we can all keep learning together.
* We use the term evidence cautiously. The formal study of multi-partnered relationships is in its infancy, and genuine scientific evidence is sparse. Where we can back up our claims with peer-reviewed research, we will, but such instances will be rare. We look forward to a day when the state of knowledge has advanced to where it's possible to give genuinely evidence-based advice, but for now it is more accurate to refer to the cases in this book as "anecdote-based poly."
A moral compass
Think of this book as a compass, not a map. There is no magic road to poly happiness. That said, as we emphasize over and over, the compass directions we've seen that lead to strong, vibrant, happy relationships are courage, communication, willingness to accept responsibility for your own emotions, respect for the autonomy of others, compassion and empathy.
For each person, the "right" way to do poly is to talk about your needs, fears and insecurities; to talk about the ways your partner can support you; and to honor your commitments—without being controlling or placing rules on other people to protect you from your own emotional triggers. Above all else, trust that you don't have to control your partner, because your partner, given the freedom to do anything, will want to cherish and support you. And always, always move in the direction of greatest courage, toward the best possible version of yourself.
Strong, ethical polyamorous relationships are not a destination, they are a journey. Nurturing such relationships is like walking toward a point on the horizon: you move toward it or away from it with each choice you make, but you never actually arrive. Sometimes you'll make a choice that takes you farther away, but that's okay, because you can always make another choice and start moving again in the direction you want to go.
Before we can talk about things like nurturing healthy relationships and maximizing well-being, we need to make some assumptions about the kinds of relationships you want—what we mean when we use the word healthy. We know that poly people are a diverse bunch, and we can't speak to the full range of backgrounds, choices, needs and expectations of our readers. Even so, we think that if we don't make the following assumptions, our advice would be pretty much rubbish. We assume that you:
** Some polyamorous people engage in a structure called "Don't ask, don't tell," in which the people involved don't talk about their other relationships or even mention they exist. This approach often causes problems (as we discuss in chapters 10, 14 and 18).
Accepting and honoring these assumptions will lead in a natural way to caring, supportive, open relationships. When we talk about "good" ways to do poly, we're talking about strategies that, in our experience, seem most often to lead people toward these kinds of relationships. When we talk about "healthy" relationships, we are talking about relationships that move toward these values more often than they move away from them.
On the subject of rights
We've talked about the idea of "right" (as opposed to "wrong"), but what about rights? Rights are a cornerstone of many systems of ethics, including ours. In fact, we believe that choices that maximize well-being are not ethical if they infringe on another person's rights. For example, a decision that improves the well-being of a group of people by violating the consent of one—say, telling a woman that she must bear a child that she doesn't want but the rest of her family does—is unethical, because bodily autonomy is a right whose defense supersedes group well-being.
It's common to hear the word "rights" used when the speaker actually means "things I really want." In relationships, a right often means "something I expect" or "something I feel entitled to," such as "I'm the wife, therefore I have a right to end your other relationships if they make me uncomfortable." Or "She and I have children together, so I have the right to decide who she can become involved with."
We have the right to want what we want. We do not, however, have the right to get what we want. For rights, a higher bar needs to be set. So what is a right? Many people believe in the idea of "natural rights": so-called inalienable rights we are all born with, such as life, liberty, and so on. Often people believe that such rights come from things like human nature or the edicts of a deity. That's one morass we're not going to wade into (at least not in this book). Instead, we will discuss "rights" that are more like legal rights: rights a person has by law or custom. Often, they must be fought for before they are granted—as with all of the "rights" enshrined in modern constitutional democracies, for example.
In proposing rights for relationships, we claim no natural authority for them, and we do not claim them as inalienable. Rather, we propose them as rights we think are essential to uphold if we are to build relationships based on the values we discussed. Such rights underpin ethical relationships. We suggest that these rights should be taken as a given for ethical polyamorous relationships; that individuals should embrace and defend them for themselves; and that polyamorous communities should uphold them.
The rights we talk about here derive from two axioms, which together are a lens through which any relationship choice should be viewed. These principles are:
These are simple, but not necessarily easy. We will be returning to them often.
Axiom 1, of course, does not mean that relationships aren't important. And it doesn't mean that you should never make personal sacrifices for the benefit of a relationship. But while it is often necessary to make sacrifices of time, short-term gratification or non-essential desires for the long-term benefit of a relationship (or a partner), it is never desirable to sacrifice your self for a relationship. We discuss this further in chapters 4 and 5. And while individual wishes do sometimes need to be subsumed to collective well-being, it's important to remember that relationships exist to serve the people in them. If a relationship stops serving the people in it, it's not doing its job. It may not even have a reason to exist anymore. Thus, axiom 1 is, like axiom 2, always true (that's why it's an axiom). Even though the people and the relationship need to serve each other, the people are always more important. Always.
In practice, these axioms mean that relationships are consensual, and people are not need-fulfillment machines. People cannot and should not be obligated to remain in any relationship: if a relationship ceases to meet the needs of the people in it, that relationship can end. People are not commodities; ethical relationships recognize the humanity, needs and desires of each individual involved.
In 2003 Franklin posted a "Secondary's Bill of Rights" on his growing polyamory website. It rapidly became both the most popular and most controversial page on the site. Many people at the time objected to the idea that secondary partners should have rights at all. Here we expand the Secondary's Bill of Rights to a Relationship Bill of Rights. To develop this list, we examined other documents that defined "rights," from United Nations documents to rules from domestic abuse organizations. We think a pretty high bar needs to be met before something can be called a right. Here's what passed the test. You have the right, without shame, blame or guilt:
In all intimate relationships:
In poly relationships:
In a poly network:
Consent, HONESTY and AGENCY
This Relationship Bill of Rights contains three important, intertwined ideas that need a bit more elaboration, because they are fundamental to the kind of ethical polyamory we are espousing: consent, honesty and agency.
Consent is about you: your body, your mind and your choices. Your consent is required to access what is yours. The people around you have agency: they do not need your consent to act, because you do not own their bodies, minds or choices. But if their behavior crosses into your personal space, then they need your consent.
Most of us will, over the course of our lives, encounter situations—perhaps at work, in our families of origin or on the streets—where we have to put up emotional walls and accept a loss of control over our lives, our minds or even our bodies. But we should never have to do that in our loving relationships. This may seem obvious, but make no mistake: it's a radical idea.
Honesty is an indispensable part of consent. Being able to share, to the best of your ability, who you are in a relationship is critical for that relationship to be consensual. You must give your partner the opportunity to make an informed decision to be in a relationship with you. If you lie or withhold critical information, you remove your partner's ability to consent to be in the relationship. If a partner of yours has sex with a dozen casual hookups, he may be breaking an agreement, but he has not (yet) violated your consent. If he then has sex with you—or engages in other forms of intimacy, including emotional intimacy—without telling you about his actions, he has violated your consent, because he has deprived you of the ability to make an informed choice.
It's especially important to communicate things that might be deal-breakers, or might be threatening to your partner's emotional or physical health. Your partner deserves to have a choice about how they want to participate in a relationship with you given the new information. Examples might be sexual activity with others, drug use, acquisition or use of weapons, and violent impulses or behavior. Anything you know or suspect might be a deal-breaker should be disclosed. You cannot force someone to make the choice you want them to make, and if you lie or withhold information, you deny them the ability to know there was a choice to be made.
When people talk about dishonesty, often it's in the context of uttering falsehoods. By the simplest definition, a lie is a statement that is factually untrue. But there are other kinds of lies. For example, Franklin has spoken to a married woman cheating on her husband who said, "I'm not lying to him, because I'm not telling him that I'm being faithful!" In truth, she was lying: she was concealing information that, if he knew about it, would have changed his assessment of their relationship. When we talk about honesty in this book, we will do so from the position that a lie of omission is still a lie.
Sometimes, when confronted with the notion of a lie of omission, people say, "Not mentioning something isn't a lie. I don't tell my partner every time I use the bathroom, and that's not lying!" That brings us to the idea of relevance. An omission is a lie when it is calculated to conceal information that, were it known to the other party, would be materially relevant to her. Failing to tell your partner how long it took to brush your teeth isn't a lie of omission. Failing to tell your partner you're having sex with the pool man is.
Agency is also intertwined with consent. Many people have been taught that if we are empowered to make our own choices—to have agency—we will become monsters, so we must surrender some of our decision-making power to external authority (which is somehow magically proof against becoming monstrous). This idea permeates society, but also seems to inform how we build our own intimate relationships. Without engaging in a debate about whether people are fundamentally good or bad (or option C), we ask you to look at your partners and ask yourself if you respect their ability to choose—even if a choice hurts you, even if it's not what you would choose—because we cannot consent if we do not have a choice.
Empowering people to make their own choices is actually the best way to have our own needs met. People who feel disempowered can become dangerous. Communicating our needs, and equipping others to meet them, succeeds more often than attempting to restrict or coerce another into meeting them. (We talk more in chapter 13 about what we mean by "empowerment.")
When it's hard to act ethically
Embracing polyamory may well expose you to a great deal more uncertainty and change than people in monogamous relationships experience. Every new relationship is a potential game changer. Every new relationship might change your life. And that's a good thing, right? Picture your best relationships. Can you think of any truly awesome relationship that didn't change your life in some important way? The first time you had a long-term partner, did it change things for you? The first time you fell in love, and had that love reciprocated, did it change things for you? Every person you become involved with stands a good chance of changing your life in a big or small way. If that weren't the case, well, what would be the point? The same goes for your partners and the new people they become involved with—and when their lives change, so will yours.
Change is scary for a lot of people, and so preparing for poly relationships in many ways is about assessing and improving your ability to handle change. Even just thinking about it, taking a deep breath and saying, "Yep, I know my life is about to change" is a huge step toward preparing yourself to live polyamorously.
In some cases, for some people, circumstances may make change even harder than usual. For example, if you've just had another big change—a new job, say, or a big move, or a marriage or divorce, or a new baby—additional changes might cause you a lot more stress than they otherwise would. In these situations, it's common for people to look at polyamory and how it could change their lives, and then try to limit the amount of change that can happen. In our experience, this tactic doesn't work very well and has a host of negative consequences, which we discuss in chapters 10 and 11.
A very common example is couples with young children. One real example we know of involved a couple with two very small children, one just a few months old. The mom was under intense stress, as often happens in such situations, and was emotionally volatile. As a result, the couple had a lot of restrictions in place to control each other's relationships. These restrictions were causing a lot of pain for the father's girlfriend, who was deeply in love with him but found her relationship with him unable to grow, while she was obliged to perform services such as babysitting for the couple in order to continue to have access to him.
In situations like this, it's easy to fall back on the idea of "putting the children first." Clearly, parents need to be able to live their lives in a way that allows them to care for their children's needs and provide loving, stable homes. (More on this later.) But too often, this need is used as an all-purpose shield to deflect any analysis of how a couple's behavior might be affecting other partners, or how it might be damaging their other relationships. Anything that looks like criticism can be framed as attacking the couple's right to care for their children.
Make no mistake, kids change things. They did not choose to come into the world, or choose the people who care for and make decisions for them. Only slowly and painfully, over many years, are children nurtured into agency and personal capability: with the ability to think and plan, to learn and make rational choices, to develop judgment and individual responsibility, and to consent or withhold consent.
When children come into a home, for the first time there are truly immature people present, making childish and selfish demands that have real moral legitimacy and must be dealt with. You have a choice how to deal with the issues, but you can't ignore them. Children add a categorically different new dynamic to the mix and, especially when they are very young, significantly subtract time and attention from adult matters. But that still doesn't mean you can use their needs as emotional blackmail or to excuse unethical behavior in the adults around them.
Being an ethical person means being ethical to everyone—partners and children. Children are not an ethical Get Out of Jail Free card: it's possible to be both a responsible parent and an ethical partner. We discuss ethical approaches to polyamory with children, with real-life poly parenting stories, in chapters 13, 15, 17 and 24.
Remember that not every time in your life will be a good time to add new partners. If you have young children and you simply can't stand the idea of your partner having other partners without, say, instituting a hierarchy, you might wait until your children are a little older before you start new relationships. If you (or a partner) are struggling with anxiety, insecurity, depression or other issues that leave you (or them) sobbing under the covers when the partner is with someone else, you could get into therapy and learn some coping strategies, or avoid polyamory altogether, instead of bringing someone into your life but surrounding them with metaphorical barbed-wire fences to keep them from getting too close. If you are dealing with a recent betrayal, you might want to work with your partners on building trust before testing that trust by investing in someone new.
If a particular relationship decision, such as placing a partner under a veto is unethical, don't make excuses for it by saying, "But I have to because…" Try reframing the situation. Instead of looking for partners who will let you treat them unethically, who will let you compromise their agency or keep them at arm's length, ask yourself if you are in a position to seek new partners at all. Put another way: It is not ethical to hurt one person to protect another. It's better to look at yourself and the relationships you have and ask what you need to do, individually and collectively, to enable you to have relationships that will let you treat everyone well.
Making ethical choices
Ethical decision-making is not always easy. That's fitting, because the measure of a person's ethics lies in what she does when things are difficult. We believe every decision that affects other people should be examined from an ethical perspective. Ethical relationships are something we do, not something we have. Being an ethical person means looking at the consequences of our choices on others. To make ethical choices and treat others with compassion, you need to have a strong internal foundation. Building this foundation is the subject of the next chapter, which begins Part 2: A Poly Toolkit.
Questions to ask yourself
Here are some questions we can ask when making decisions that affect other people, to help guide us toward ethical relationships: