5

Nurturing your relationships

Everyone who tries to create love with an emotionally unaware partner suffers.

bell hooks

When you start down the path of polyamory, your relationships may grow in all kinds of different directions. Shaking off the template of monogamy means you're free to build your life to your specifications, consistent with compassionate treatment of the people close to you. We can't tell you what your life will look like. We can tell you one thing, though, particularly if there are two of you starting from an existing relationship: it will change.

Quite likely, it will change in ways you don't expect. If there are weaknesses in your existing relationship, polyamory has a way of finding them. Trying to buffer these changes with rules probably won't work very well, for reasons we talk about in chapter 10. The things you think will be important might not be, and things you don't think about at all might be the ones that challenge you. We've spoken to countless couples who have come to polyamory, and the one thing we've heard over and over is, "When we talked about this, the things we thought would be the most important weren't, and things we hadn't thought about were."

The first part of laying the groundwork for polyamory concerns yourself—things like developing security, self-confidence and flexibility. The second involves creating fertile soil for growth in your existing relationship, if you have one. The tools for doing these two different things will be very similar. Those of you who are currently single or solo poly don't necessarily get to skip over this chapter, because past relationship experience, and the assumptions we carry with us, can still surprise us in unexpected and unpleasant ways.

The issue of security

Why do we seek romantic relationships? For many of us, relationships are a way to feel loved and treasured and to share some part of our life with people who support and nurture us. When we've found a relationship, or two, we want to feel safe there: to feel like we can relax into the security of our partners' love.

In poly relationships, the need for security tends to play out in two ways. First, we can be tempted to seek security by placing controls on our partners. Whether it's limiting a partner's access to other people to build our sense of security against being replaced, or restricting our partner's range of action with others to make ourselves feel safe, we can be lured by a feeling that if we can just get our partners to do what we want, we will feel secure.

Conversely, if we are at all compassionate, we want to help our partners feel safe. So we might be tempted to accept their restrictions, in the hopes that we can make our partners feel more secure. Security is a tricky thing. On the one hand, our choices do affect our partners' security a lot. On the other, genuine security has to be built from within. Security that rests on another person's actions is fragile, and easily lost.

Four principles about personal security seem to be true:

Another point we've learned: As counterintuitive as it may seem, sometimes a lasting sense of security comes more from knowing a partner is free to go but chooses to stay than from attempting to obligate that partner to stay.

Practicing security

Insecurity is toxic. You can't trust what you're always afraid of losing. You can never become a full partner in a relationship you do not believe you "deserve." You can never embrace happiness if you do not believe you are good enough for it. When we feel insecure, it can blind us to the love our partners offer, which can make us feel alienated, which makes us more insecure, which further blinds us to the love we're offered.

Eve's Story I have always been pretty profoundly insecure. Not long ago, I had an epiphany: it's as though I imagine that each person casts a circle of light around them. That light is their affection. People bring you closer in, into brighter light, depending on how much they like you. In all my relationships—personal and professional, romantic or friendship—I have always felt I was standing just outside that circle of light, always hesitant to take a step forward, always petitioning for entry. And always a bit sheepish about that petitioning, never sure I would be welcome.

Even in my closest relationships I never pictured myself included in the circle, so I could never simply feel calm and confident that the relationship existed and would continue. To say it another way, I always felt I was the one asking, never the one offering—as though time spent with people I cared about was something I took from them, not something I gave to them. This perception caused the end of at least a couple of my relationships, because it caused me to pull away, to stop investing: I felt that investing in relationships with the people I cared about was a burden on them.

I had a close friend in university who, for about a year, I spent most of my social time with. One weekend we spent three days backpacking together in the Olympic Mountains. I remember sitting by the fire with him, feeling insecure (of course), worried that I might be getting on his nerves. The thought crossed my mind, I hope he doesn't hate me. Then the absurdity of the thought struck me: If he hates you, why would he be spending three days in the mountains with you?

It took another, oh, decade and a half for this kind of realization to become normal. When I had the epiphany about the circles of light, I realized that in most of my relationships, I had been standing in the light all along. All it took for me to be inside it was to realize that I already was. I found that simply imagining that circle, and that it contained me, changed my interactions with the people close to me. That visualization is now an ongoing practice. pinstripe

Franklin has talked to many people who say things like "I'm just an insecure person," as if feeling insecure is something they're born with. In reality, it is something you can control. "Insecure" is something you can, if you want to, choose not to be. We are big believers in the affirmative power of choice, and we believe that people are often insecure because they make choices, dozens of times a day, that confirm and reinforce their own insecurity.

Changing the way you feel about yourself is painful and uncomfortable. For that reason many people choose, without necessarily even being aware that it is a choice, to hang onto destructive ideas about themselves rather than face the discomfort and fear of changing those ideas.

Self-image, like playing the piano, is something you become good at by practice. If you practice being insecure—if you accept thoughts and ideas that tear down your sense of self, if you lie in bed at night and think about the reasons you are not worthy or good enough—then you become highly skilled at being insecure. On the other hand, if you practice security—if you reject thoughts and ideas that tear down your sense of self and accept ideas that build it up, if you lie in bed at night and think about the qualities that make you special and give the people in your life value—then you become skilled at being self-confident and secure.

On his website, Franklin's "guide to becoming a secure person" is one of the most popular essays he's ever written. Here's a three-step exercise that he has found incredibly valuable for building internal security:

Step 1. Understand that you have a choice. You did not choose your past experiences, of course (the people who made fun of you in fifth grade, or a past partner who told you you weren't good enough), but right now you have a choice about continuing to believe them, or changing the things you believe about yourself. The single hardest thing to do to change your self-image is to realize that you have the choice. The rest gets easier.

Step 2. Act like someone who is self-confident, even if you aren't. "Fake it 'til you make it" is a great personal development strategy. You might not control your feelings, but you do control your actions. You control your body; you can choose to act self-confident even if you don't feel it. When faced with something that scares you or makes you feel threatened, think what choice you'd make if you were confident and secure…and then do that. Even if it scares the hell out of you. No one will know. Do you feel insecure when you see your partner kiss his other partner in front of you? Take a deep breath, say "I feel insecure when I see this, but I want you to do it anyway," and let it happen. Acting self-confident will feel phony and forced at first, but gradually it will become normal.

Step 3. Practice. You become good at what you practice. A person who is insecure becomes very good at being insecure because he practices all the time. You practice being insecure by thinking about those old insults you heard in fifth grade and telling yourself they are true. You practice being insecure by going over in your mind all the reasons you are not good enough to be with your partner.

People who are secure practice being secure. Stop thinking about those old insults; when they come to mind, tell yourself, "No, these are false, and I choose not to believe them anymore." When you find yourself thinking about all the things that are wrong with you, stop and say "No, these are wrong. Here is a list of things that are good and sexy about me instead." (Corny as it sounds, writing a list of things you like about yourself and keeping it in your pocket helps.) When you find yourself thinking about why your partner doesn't or shouldn't really want you, stop yourself and say "No, this is not true."

Practicing security means continually turning toward the best version of yourself. Each belief about yourself that you choose to hold onto, in each moment, is a step toward or away from the person you want to be. As Canadian entrepreneur Lynn Robinson says, "Our beliefs about ourselves are all made up. So it's a good idea to make up some good ones."

Fear of loss

We love our partners. Hopefully, we are with our partners because they bring us joy. And allowing that joy inside makes us vulnerable, because life is uncertain. With joy comes the fear of losing the thing that makes us joyful. For many of us, the kind of vulnerability that comes with letting in deep, heartfelt joy is a little scary. For some of us, it's terrifying. Some of us protect ourselves from that fear by never allowing ourselves to fully open up, or numbing ourselves by imagining worst-case scenarios. Others of us protect ourselves by trying to control the people around us, to keep the possibility of loss at bay.

Our distress may be compounded by the cultural script that says if you aren't torn apart by the thought of losing a partner, it means you don't really love them. In reality, commitment and fear of loss are only indirectly related. Often the fear of loss is more closely linked to a fear of being alone than commitment to a partner; in monogamous relationships, losing a partner means being alone. And, paradoxically, if you want something too badly, the fear of losing it can become greater than the joy of having it. When that happens, we hold onto things not because they make us happy, but because the thought of losing them makes us suffer. Both having them and not having them become sources of pain.

This is all a bit ironic, because the truth is that we will lose everything. Every one of our partners, friends, family members, everything that brings us joy will one day leave our lives—either through life's normal uncertainty and change, or through the inevitability of death. So we have two choices: embrace and love what we have and feel joy as deeply and fully as we can, and eventually lose everything—or shield ourselves, be miserable…and eventually lose everything. Living in fear won't stop us from losing what we love, it will only stop us from enjoying it.

What's the antidote to that fear? Gratitude. Welcome the people who care for you and the experiences you have together. Take joy in them, be thankful for them. Eve has found a gratitude journal to be incredibly helpful. Making an active practice out of gratitude creates constant reminders of what you have in your life. Know that you are lucky to have people in your life with the power to break your heart, because it means you have love.

The inevitability of change

We know our readers are approaching polyamory from a lot of different places. Some of you have never had a monogamous relationship. Others will be exploring polyamory after decades of monogamy. Some of you will be venturing into polyamory single, while others will be opening a previously monogamous partnership.

Eve's experience fell into the latter category. Like many couples venturing into poly, she and Peter initially tried to change as little as possible—especially their existing relationship. And like many, they gravitated toward rules and structures to try to preserve the relationship as it had been to create a feeling of security and stability. They agreed that the marriage was primary, and they had rules: things like "We will never spend more time with another partner than with each other," and "No one else is allowed to try to come between us." In fact, Eve's first online dating profile said (she shudders to recall), "Try to come between me and my primary and you'll be out of my life faster than you can say 'polyamory.' "

It's easy to understand why Eve and Peter wanted rules like these. Security, some basic predictability: these are fundamental human needs. At the same time, autonomy, independence and self-reliance are also fundamental values for many people, including both of us. We've seen how a focus on these latter values alone can lead to some pretty poor treatment of partners. It's important to build relationships in such a way that the people within them can feel secure, can feel a sense of belonging, and can have some basic expectations they can rely on. But it's also essential that people have agency in their relationships, that relationships be built on a foundation of choice and free will. These are not mutually exclusive goals.

Here's an uncomfortable truth, though. If you decide to do this, if you decide to open your heart and your life to loving more than one person and letting your partners love others too, your life will change. You will change. If you started this journey with a partner, your partner will change. Every new person you let into your heart will disrupt your life—sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ones.

Disruption is a fact of life. And that's okay. After all, almost everything else you do in life risks disruption to your relationships. Taking a new job. Losing a job. (Couples counselors say that financial stress is more likely to ruin a marriage than any other single factor, including infidelity.) Having a baby. Moving to another city. Getting sick or injured. Having problems in your family of origin. Taking up new hobbies. Experiencing a death in the family. Hell, every time you walk outside your door or step into a car, you're risking serious injury or death, and that'll disrupt a relationship real quick!

We don't live in fear of disruption when we're offered a new job or decide to have a child. We accept that these choices will change our lives. Ethical polyamory is similar: you accept that changes in your romantic life will affect your relationship, you resolve to act with integrity and honesty to cherish your partners to the best of your ability, and you trust that your partners will do the same for you.

Many problems we encounter in polyamory, particularly when we're in a relationship that was previously monogamous, come from attempts to explore new relationships without having anything change. Sometimes those changes involve coming face-to-face with our deepest fears: abandonment, fear of loss, fear of being replaced, fear of no longer being special. Relationship change is scary. Sometimes it comes on us in jarring ways.

Melissa's Story Melissa, a friend of Franklin's, loves sushi. She tried for months to get her husband, Niko, to try sushi with her, with no success whatsoever. He expressed in no uncertain terms that he was not interested in raw fish strapped to rice with electrical tape.

Long after she gave up trying to take him to the sushi house, he started dating a new partner, Naveen, who also loved sushi. One day Naveen suggested they go out for sushi, and this time he said, "Okay!" Unsurprisingly, he discovered he loved it.

Rather than think, Hey, this is awesome, now I can finally share my love of sushi with him! Melissa was less than thrilled. It hurt her to, as she said, make a request of her partner, get a no, and then see him doing it with another.pinstripe

Melissa's story illustrates one of the hidden assumptions we often make about relationships: we can feel entitled to have our partners experience new things with us first, and become hurt if a partner chooses to experience these things with someone else. For a single person starting a relationship with someone who's partnered, this hidden expectation can plant land mines everywhere. Something as innocuous as an invitation to go out for sushi might trigger an unexpected blowup.

Embracing polyamory involves not only examining the expectation that our partners will never change, but also examining expectations about how and when they change. People don't always change in the ways or on the timetable we want them to. New partners bring new experiences, and these experiences will change our relationships. Good relationships always change us; it's one of the best things about them!

One of the standard tropes of monogamy is that we can prevent infidelity by limiting our partner's access to members of the opposite sex. Opportunity creates infidelity, or so we're told, so we limit opportunity. In polyamorous relationships this trope can manifest in more subtle ways, such as by trying to limit the depth of a connection or the time a partner spends with another lover. As we discuss in chapter 11, it's common for people in a relationship to seek to use the power they have to constrict, limit or regulate a partner's other relationships, in the hopes that this will make those other relationships less disruptive or threatening. People try all kinds of structures to do this: enforced power hierarchies, limitations on how much a partner is permitted to experience emotional or sexual intimacy with others, rules that an established couple will only have sex with a third person if both are there for it (often on the assumption that this will prevent jealousy), and so on.

Of course, not everyone will have such feelings. If the idea of controlling your partner's other romantic connections to protect your relationship seems strange to you, you probably won't run into the problems we describe in this chapter. An important skill in creating happy poly relationships involves learning to see other lovers, particularly a partner's other lovers, as people who make life better for both of you rather than a hazard to be managed.

If such a perspective does not come naturally to you, though, it can be learned. Doing so requires investing in communication, overcoming fear and rejecting some of the pathological things we're taught about romance. It means accepting that you and your partners will grow and change, and the secret to maintaining relationships in the face of change is to be resilient and flexible. It also means cultivating a strong sense of security, accepting that we'll all make mistakes, building relationships robust enough to weather the mistakes, and making peace with change.

Being alone

Humans are social animals. We function best when we're surrounded by people who care about us. The fear of being alone is part of being human. But if we're driven by that fear, if we're so afraid of being alone that we think losing a partner will destroy us, it's almost impossible to have a healthy relationship. It's okay to dislike being alone, but when we believe we can't be alone, things run off the rails.

When that fear drives us, we can't easily set good boundaries or make reasoned choices. And if we don't feel like we've fully consented to a relationship but instead are there because being alone is worse, then it's easy to feel like the relationship is something that's done to us rather than something that enriches our lives. From here, it's very easy to become resentful of our partners—especially when they do anything that reminds us of our fear of being alone.

This fear and resentment can create a self-reinforcing cycle. When we're afraid of being alone, we get angry and resentful much more easily. This drives people away, which triggers the fear of being alone, which makes us angry and resentful. How do we break that cycle? By building relationships that move toward something rather than away from something. Relationships make us much happier when we move toward intimacy with people who bring out the best in us, rather than away from loneliness.

In polyamory it becomes especially vital to come to terms with the fear of being alone, first because you are likely to be alone from time to time, and second because more than one relationship is on the line. One of the core ingredients of a successful polyamorous relationship is the ability to treat all the folks involved, including not only our partners but their partners as well, with compassion and empathy. It's almost impossible to be compassionate when all we feel is fear of loss.

Scarcity vs. abundance

When they approach romantic relationships, people often fall into one of two patterns. Some follow a starvation model, and some follow an abundance model.

In the starvation model, opportunities for love seem scarce. Potential partners are thin on the ground, and finding them is difficult. Because most people you meet expect monogamy, finding poly partners is particularly difficult. Every additional requirement you have narrows the pool still more. Since relationship opportunities are so rare, you'd better seize whatever opportunity comes by and hang on with both hands—after all, who knows when another chance will come along?

The abundance model says that relationship opportunities are all around us. Sure, only a small percentage of the population might meet our criteria, but in a world of more than seven billion people, opportunities abound. Even if we exclude everyone who isn't open to polyamory, and everyone of the "wrong" sex or orientation, and everyone who doesn't have whatever other traits we want, we're still left with tens of thousands of potential partners, which is surely enough to keep even the most ambitious person busy.

The sneaky thing about both models is they're both right: the model we hold tends to become self-fulfilling. If we have a starvation model of relationships, we may tend to dwell on the times we've been rejected, which may lower our self-esteem, which decreases our confidence…and that makes it harder to find partners, because confidence is sexy. We may start feeling desperate to find a relationship, which decreases our attractiveness further. So we end up with less success, which reinforces the idea that relationships are scarce.

When we hold an abundance model of relationships, it's easier to just go do the things that bring us joy, without worrying about searching for a partner. That tends to make us more attractive, because happy, confident people are desirable. If we're off doing the things that bring us joy, we meet other people there who are doing the same. Cool! The ease with which we find potential partners, even when we aren't looking for them, reinforces the idea that opportunities for love are abundant, which makes it easier for us to go about doing what makes us happy, without worrying overmuch about finding a partner…and 'round it goes. We think our perceptions are shaped by reality, but the truth is, the reality we get is often shaped by our perceptions.*

These ideas will also influence how willing we are to stay in relationships that aren't working for us, both directly and indirectly. If we believe relationships are rare and difficult to find, we may not give up a relationship even when it's damaging to us. Likewise, if we believe that relationships are hard to find, that may increase our fear of being alone, which can cause us to remain in relationships that aren't working for us.

Naturally, there's a fly in the ointment. Sometimes the things we're looking for, or the way we look for them, create artificial scarcity. This might be because we're doing something that puts other people off, or because we're looking for something unrealistic. If you're looking for a Nobel Prize–winning Canadian supermodel with a net worth of $20 million, you might find potential partners few and far between. Similarly, if you give people the impression that you've created a slot for them to fit into that they won't be able to grow out of, opportunities for relationships might not be abundant either.

* Cognitive scientists talk about confirmation bias—the tendency to notice things that confirm our ideas, and to discount, discredit or not notice things that don't.

Facing discomfort

Flexibility promotes resilience. It helps create relationships that can adapt to the winds of change without breaking. It has a cost, though. Being flexible means being willing to face discomfort, because change is often uncomfortable. Accepting change, welcoming the idea that there might be many ways to have our needs met, letting go of the desire to hide from our fears by controlling the structures of our relationships…at some point, these will almost certainly bring us nose to claw with uncomfortable feelings.

There is a trope in some circles, often applied to relationships: "Don't do anything you're not comfortable with." When it concerns access to your body, your space or your mind, it's good advice. We can always choose what we consent to. Often, though, it really means "Don't let your partner do anything you're not comfortable with," or "Don't explore unknown situations if they make you uncomfortable." In such cases, we think "Don't do anything you're not comfortable with" is terrible advice. There is more to life than avoiding discomfort. Sometimes discomfort is an inevitable part of learning and growth. Remember the first time you tried to ride a bike, or swim, or play a musical instrument? Remember how awkward and uncomfortable it felt? Having a brilliant life means going outside your comfort zone. And sometimes discomfort shows us ways we can improve.

We would like to suggest the radical notion that being uncomfortable is not, by itself, a reason not to do something, nor to forbid someone else from doing something. There is more to life than going from cradle to grave by the path of least discomfort. Furthermore, refusing to face discomfort can, if we are not careful, lead to unethical behavior. When avoidance of discomfort comes at the cost of placing controls on other people, we disempower those people.

The status quo in almost any relationship is usually less scary than change, no matter how beneficial the change. When new people come into our lives, they bring new challenges and new delights. When relationships grow, they change. We can be tempted to try to maintain as much of the status quo as possible by limiting what the people around us can do: "You may come into my life, but only this far. You may grow, but only to this level."

In our experience, building walls around each other's freedom is more damaging in the long run than trusting in our partners' desire to do what's right by us—and trusting in ourselves to be able to adapt, find happiness and feel cherished even when things change. Discomfort and change will find us, sooner or later, no matter how much we try to hide from them. Meeting these things on our own terms, believing that we can be happy even in the face of change—all go a long way to building security and stability that endures.

Living with integrity

Throughout this book, we position trust as an alternative to control in poly relationships. Fundamental to building trust is living with integrity. You build trust when you keep your promises—when you "walk your talk." Trust decays when you break agreements, violate boundaries and act in ways that are not in accordance with your professed values. Living with integrity can be the thing that holds you together when nothing else can. When you have no easy choices, and the effects of those choices on people you care about are impossible to predict, what serves as your guide? When you fail, or make mistakes, are you able to look back and say, "I upheld the values that are most important to me"?

Times can come in polyamorous relationships when there are no good choices, when you can't win and no one else can either. Maybe it's just a question of where everyone is going to spend Christmas. Maybe it's where the kids go after a breakup. Maybe it's what to do when two partners whom you cherish with all your heart can't stand being in the same room together. We can talk about negotiation and compromise and finding win-win solutions, but sometimes the happy medium doesn't exist. The more people you put in the mix, the more likely conflicts are to arise, and sometimes there are no easy solutions.

We've talked about the need for an ethical framework that maximizes the well-being of everyone involved. But sometimes you are stuck minimizing losses rather than maximizing gains, and no matter how you reason your way through a situation, it feels like crap to make choices that you know are going to hurt people. And sometimes you genuinely can't tell. Sometimes you're faced with choices that feel lousy in the short term and whose long-term effects can't be predicted. So when that happens—when you can't make a move without hurting yourself or someone else—how do you make your choices?

When we've come to those places, that's when we try to center back on integrity. But even that can be slippery. What does it mean to act with integrity? Some people define integrity as essentially the same thing as honesty. Others see it as consistency of action, or consistency of action with belief. But the root of the word integrity means "whole." Focusing on integrity, for us, means intense examination of the present moment: What am I doing right now, and is it in alignment with my most authentic self? If I look back at myself in ten years, would I like the person I see?

Compassion

Before we talk about compassion, it's worth repeating the two axioms that underpin the ethics of this book:

Following an ethical system that relies on not treating people as things means, well, treating people as people. And that means practicing compassion.

The word compassion is all over the place these days. But what does it mean? It's easy to throw it out as a glib admonishment, and ironically, it can sometimes include a shaming undertone. As in, "I am a compassionate person and you are not. Look how good I am because I am compassionate." If your social set intersects at all with New Age circles, you probably know someone who likes to play the "more compassionate than thou" Olympics. In fact, many of the ideas in this book can be used that way. Please don't do that.

Compassion is—again—not something you are, not something you feel, but something you practice. Compassion is putting ourselves in another's shoes. We can sit with a person in whatever they are feeling, bear witness to their pain while still loving who they are. Sometimes that person is ourselves.

Compassion is not politeness, and isn't even the same as kindness. It's not doing good deeds for someone while quietly judging them! Compassion engages your whole person, and it requires vulnerability, which is part of what makes it so hard. We have to be able to allow ourselves to be present as an equal with another person, recognize the darkness in them and accept it—and that forces us to embrace, as well, the darkness within ourselves.

A lack of boundaries is not the same thing as compassion, nor is letting someone walk all over us, or overlooking poor behavior or mistreatment of others. Real compassion requires strong boundaries, because if we are letting someone take advantage of us, it becomes very hard to be authentically vulnerable to them. Compassion requires a willingness to hold other people accountable for the things they do, while accepting them for who they are.

How do we practice compassion? The cornerstone of compassion is simple, but emotionally difficult to achieve. It means, first and foremost, assuming good intent from others. In other words, looking for the most charitable interpretation of someone else's deepest motives.

Until we all have magic mind-reading rubies in our foreheads, assuming another person's motives is always going to be dangerous. That's why we need compassion. When someone has done something we don't like, or that hurts us, or has failed to do what we want them to do, it's too easy to assume the worst motivations from them: "He doesn't care about my needs." "She completely disregards my feelings."

Compassion means coming from a place of understanding that others have needs of their own, which might be different than ours, and extending to them the same understanding, the same willingness to appreciate their own struggles, that we would want them to extend to us. We practice it every time we feel that surge of annoyance when someone does something we don't like, and then check ourselves and try to see the reason for their behavior from their perspective. We practice it every time we are gentle with others instead of being angry with them. And we practice it when we apply that same gentleness to ourselves: every time we accept that we are flawed and imperfect but are good despite that. We practice it in every recognition of each other's frailty and error.

As polyamorous people, we face particularly pressing needs to cultivate compassion for our partners, their partners and members of our community. But perhaps most important of all is compassion for ourselves. We are learning a new way of doing things. We're developing new skills that no one's taught us before and challenging ourselves in ways that many people never do. We're trying to learn how to treat not just one partner well, but an entire network of people whose well-being depends on what we do. And that's hard.

It's easy to beat yourself up for not being a perfect poly person, especially with the poly community putting its best face forward publicly in order to gain mainstream acceptance. Whether you're feeling jealous and insecure, or you're having trouble with anger management, or you can't figure out how to clearly communicate your needs…it's normal. You don't need to be a poly perfectionist. You're not the first person to have felt these things, not by a long shot. We've all been there. Try to treat yourself the same way you would treat someone you cared about who is having the same problem: with compassion and acceptance.

Check your expectations

The dictionary defines expectation as "a belief centered on the future; a belief that something will or should happen in the future." That doesn't suggest the mischief our expectations can cause. Expectations lead to disappointment when they aren't met, and fear of that disappointment can cause us to hide our expectations—sometimes even from ourselves.

Expectations differ from related feelings like hopes, fantasies, wishes or desires. If you have the latter and they don't come true, you may feel disappointment or even grief, but we don't think that means it's bad to have them. Expectations, on the other hand, can fuck with you. The difference is that an expectation implies a responsibility on the part of another person (or at least an entity, like God or Fate or "the universe"). Perhaps even a sense of entitlement. So when it's not fulfilled, in addition to whatever disappointment you might otherwise feel, you also feel anger or blame.

We all have expectations. Most of the time, our expectations are reasonable and normal. We expect that when we turn on the tap, water will come out. On a more basic level, we expect that the laws that govern our interactions with the world are stable and immutable. We expect water to be wet, fire to be hot, gravity to make things fall. Our expectations form part of the basis for our perception of the world. They provide a sense of stability and predictability; if we had no expectations at all, living would become nearly impossible.

Things get more slippery when we talk about expectations regarding other people. People are self-determining, with their own motivations and priorities. We can expect some things of other people—we expect that our friends won't set fire to the house or steal the cat when they come to visit—but our expectations are always going to be hampered by the fact that we can't really tell what's happening inside another person's head. Sometimes people do set fire to houses or steal cats.

Let's talk about "reasonable" and "unreasonable" expectations. The difference is subjective, and there's a lot of fuzzy gray overlap. Some expectations are clearly reasonable. We expect our friends not to punch us in the nose without provocation. We expect our romantic partners not to drain our bank account and run off to Cancun with the grocer. Other expectations are just as clearly unreasonable. We would not expect a new date who's just shown up in a fancy formal dress to be enthusiastic if we say, "You need to go clean the cat box for me."

Between the two clear extremes lie the waters where reefs lurk, ready to shipwreck the unwary. Our expectations can run aground at just about any point in a relationship.

We do not, by and large, have the right to expect things of people without their consent. We cannot be angry at someone for failing to do something she did not agree to do in the first place. The skill of expectation management means more than trying to navigate between reasonable and unreasonable expectations. It means recognizing that a desire on my part does not constitute an obligation on your part. And we can never reasonably be upset at someone for failing to live up to our expectations if we haven't talked about our expectations in the first place.

Questions to Ask Yourself

When you're thinking about what you want from your relationship life and how you'd like your relationships to be structured, here are some questions it might be useful to ask yourself (and talk over with your partner or partners, if you're in a relationship):