14

Practical poly agreements

You cannot shake hands

with a clenched fist.

indira gandhi

Most relationships require some bare minimum of structure. Without it, it's difficult to navigate commitments and responsibilities. In the last few chapters, we talked about the distinctions between rules, boundaries and agreements, and we made a case for why we think rules-based structures can create problems in poly relationships. Preparing the ground for relationships to flourish means thinking carefully about not just how to meet your needs, but how to meet the needs of all the people involved. In this chapter, we discuss practical strategies for approaching relationship agreements with this careful analysis as your foundation. It starts with thinking about why people do what they do.

Franklin's Story Many years ago I ran a small consulting business. I had an office in downtown Tampa, Florida. Every day on the way to the office, I drove past a building where people applied for passports. The application office was very small, with room for perhaps five people to sit inside. On most days I would see at least twenty people outside, waiting in line to get in.

Just outside the building was a wall about three feet high. The people in line often sat on the wall. It's easy to understand why. They might have more than an hour's wait in the hot Florida sun.

Whoever managed the passport office was offended by people sitting on the wall. I would see sheets of paper that read "Do Not Sit On Wall" taped to the wall. The signs were routinely ignored. The workers in the passport office didn't want people sitting on the wall, but they didn't think about why people sat on the wall. When you're waiting in a hot concrete courtyard for an hour, you're going to get tired and want to sit down. The rule was guaranteed to fail.

A more effective way to prevent people from sitting on the wall, if that was really a problem, would have been to address the need rather than the action—say, by installing benches.

The memory of that office and its courtyard has stuck with me. In my own relationships, when I see people doing things I'd rather they didn't do, I try to find out why they're doing it and what might help take care of the need. I try to put benches in the courtyard, rather than putting up signs telling them not to sit on the wall. pinstripe

Effective relationship strategies take work. They are things that meet people's needs. And meeting these needs involves asking why people are doing whatever you wish they wouldn't do. What need does their behavior meet? What function does it serve? Is there something else, something that might be less threatening, that could meet the same need? How invested is the person in doing that particular thing, and why?

Creating such strategies also involves looking at some scary things inside yourself. Why is it not okay with you if that person does that thing? Are the problems you see really problems? Is passing a rule actually an attempt to shift responsibility for your own emotions onto someone else? Does the person doing the thing reasonably have a right to do it? How much does it really affect others, and in what way? Are you just trying to avoid discomfort? If so, is your discomfort more important than someone else's choices?

From there, you can work on finding the park bench. What might help everyone get their needs met? If something makes you uncomfortable, how can the person do it and still support you?

Why be skeptical of rules?

Monogamous society teaches us that to keep our partners faithful and ourselves secure, we should limit their opportunity, keeping them away from desirable people. If that mindset carries over into poly, it leads to trying to keep ourselves secure by limiting who our partners are allowed to have relationships with, or how much time they can be together, or what they do. If we're setting these rules because we are afraid, deep inside, that we aren't good enough and our partners might replace us, a self-reinforcing cycle can develop. We feel low self-esteem, so we make rules to feel safe, and then we don't want to develop self-esteem because if we do that, we won't need rules anymore, and if we don't have rules, we won't feel safe!

Sometimes we can try to use rules to address things we are shy about discussing. It feels scary to talk about our vulnerabilities and insecurities. Often talking about rules becomes a way to try to do that by proxy. It doesn't work, because if we can't talk about the reason for the rule, our partners won't understand the rule's intent, and that leads to trouble, mischief and rules-lawyering: insisting on the letter of the rule without being clear on the intent.

Not all rules are intrinsically bad (see, for instance, "Limited-duration rules,"). However, rules always have the potential to become straitjackets, constraining relationships and not allowing them to grow. Sometimes this is intentional—and such rules can be very damaging indeed. If your partner tells you, "I don't want you ever to grow any new relationship beyond this point," and eventually a relationship comes along that you want to see flourish, your original relationship may fail—not in spite of the rule, but because of it.

Rules that seek to dictate the structure of a relationship that is yet to exist (for example, "We will only be in a quad") are attempts to map a country you have not yet seen. These types of rules, we have seen, are most often created by people with little experience in polyamorous relationships. Often they attempt to impose order on something that seems mysterious and dangerous. Psychologists have discovered that we are remarkably poor at predicting how we will respond to novel situations. We want certainty; we don't want to get too far from familiar land. But we cannot explore the ocean if we're unwilling to lose sight of the shore. Trying to retain the certainty and order of monogamy against the apparent scary disorder of polyamory usually ends up creating failures in both.

Some rules indicate fears or discomforts that someone doesn't want to face. Someone might say, "We want to have other partners, but the thought of my partner prioritizing anyone else when I want attention brings up my fears of abandonment. So we will pass a rule saying I can always interrupt my partner's other dates, or I must approve my partner's scheduled time with other people."* When two (or more) people have discomforts they're trying to avoid, they may play the mutual-assured-destruction game: I will let you control me to avoid your discomforts, if you let me control you to avoid my discomforts. Or, as the poly blogger Andrea Zanin has written, "I will limit you, and you will limit me, and then we'll both be safe." Avoiding discomfort isn't really the same thing as creating happiness; real happiness is often on the other side of our comfort zone. If our relationships aren't creating happiness, what's the point?

* Note, however, that restrictions on sex in a shared bed are a very common limited-duration rule, discussed in chapter 10.

Creating effective relationship agreements

Agreements and boundaries will be part of any polyamorous relationship. Some expectations are reasonable, though "reasonable" and "unreasonable" carry a great deal of wibbly-wobbly subjectivity. Here is one crude tell-tale sign of unreasonable rules that we use: When people have agreements that are reasonable, such as around safer sex, they generally can talk about them calmly and dispassionately. When someone states a rule and then refuses to discuss it, answers questions about it with "That's just how I feel," or becomes offended or upset about it, look out. Something else is going on—something that isn't being addressed directly.

Healthy agreements are those that encourage moving in the direction of greatest courage. "I feel threatened by the idea of my woman having sex with other men. She can't do that" is based on fear and insecurity, not courage. "I feel threatened by this idea, so when you do this, I will ask for your support and I will want some time with you afterward to help ground and settle me" is a request that moves in the direction of greatest courage. It recognizes that the other person has the right to choose her partners, while at the same time asking for the support to help deal with unpleasant emotional responses.

The agreements that work most consistently are those that are rooted in compassion, encourage mutual respect and empowerment, leave it to our partners' judgment how to implement them, and have input from—and apply equally to—everyone affected by them. These include principles like the following: Treat all others with kindness. Don't try to force relationships to be something they are not. Don't try to impose yourself on other people. Understand when things are Not About You. Understand that just because you feel bad, it doesn't necessarily mean someone else did something wrong. Know that your feelings sometimes lie to you. Own your own mess. Favor trust over rules.

Here are some other common characteristics of successful relationship agreements:

Negotiating in good faith

When you are negotiating agreements in your relationship, it can be hard to hear that your partners have different needs or sensitivities than you do. Truly understanding that other people are as real as you are is hard. If you want to negotiate in good faith, here are some things to keep in mind:

When you didn't write the rules

In polyamory, you will likely find yourself starting relationships with people who already have partners. And that may mean going into relationships that have rules already in place. Accepting someone else's rules at the beginning of a relationship sets a dangerous precedent: it says that you're on board with relationships that are built around other people's needs.

Anyone who goes into a rules-based relationship, knowing the rules up front, is agreeing voluntarily to be bound by them, right? Well, maybe. All kinds of things might cause someone to enter a relationship that isn't a good fit—a scarcity model of relationships, for example.

It's absolutely true that if you enter a rules-based relationship you are, implicitly and explicitly, agreeing to those rules. And yet "You knew the rules when you signed on!" is so often the parting shot amidst a relationship's wreckage. Consider why. Most of the time, when we start a relationship, we expect our partners to meet us in the middle, to negotiate with us, to consider our needs. Those seem like reasonable expectations, right? So it can be quite a shock when your partner suddenly slams the door on something and says it's non-negotiable. ("What is this about Bob's Crab Shack, anyway? Why can't I go there with you? I just want to get some seafood!")

Rules might seem reasonable at first but end up leading to absurd outcomes. In one relationship we know of, a married couple had rules concerning what sexual positions could and couldn't be used with "new" partners. When the wife started a relationship with someone else, those rules remained in force a decade into the "new" relationship. I think most of us would probably agree that a ten-year relationship is not a "new" relationship. We probably expect, reasonably, that if a rule takes us to an absurd destination, it should be revisited—and we can be shocked to be met with "No, sorry, you knew the rule when you signed on."

It is okay to assume that flexibility and agency in our relationships are part of the social contract. It probably wouldn't occur to us even to have to say "By the way, if I've been with you for ten years, I expect you to be willing to consider my needs." So in that sense, "You knew the rules when you signed on" is not actually true. We did not grasp that flexibility and negotiation were forbidden.

At the beginning of a relationship, we can't predict what feelings we will have, or how deeply we will attach to someone, because we aren't there yet. Therefore, it's easy to say yes to rules that treat us as disposable, or don't give us a voice in advocating for our needs, because we don't have the needs yet. The true test of compassion is what we do when compassion is hard. Any well-implemented set of agreements needs to allow for the vulnerability of human hearts and the unpredictability of life.

Rules that cause problems

We have seen certain relationship rules among poly people fail again and again. The following agreements have proven to be fraught with problems and require great care if you attempt them.

"Don't ask, don't tell" agreements. In these arrangements, a person says, "You can have other lovers, but I don't want to know about them." This often indicates that someone wishes the relationship weren't poly at all and hopes to pretend it's not happening. This charade makes it impossible to communicate about important things, or for new partners to verify that the relationship is in fact open. "We're in a 'Don't ask, don't tell!' " is a favorite lie that monogamous cheaters use to explain why you can't just call their spouse to check out whether the relationship is really open.

Rules that require a person to be sexually involved with another, or that require some other form of service. When you make sex or intimacy with one person the price of sex or intimacy with another, you plant the seeds of coercion, as discussed in the section titled "Service secondaries."

Rules that fetishize or objectify people. We have known people who treat a partner's other lovers as fetish objects, demanding detailed, blow-by-blow accounts of every sexual encounter for their own gratification. Your partner's significant others are not your sex aids. Unless they consent to having the details of their sexual encounters shared with a third person for the purpose of arousal, they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Rules that restrict certain things, places, activities or sex acts to one partner. These rules are often seen as ways to protect the "specialness" of one relationship. A person who does not already feel unique in her partner's eyes, however, is unlikely to gain greater self-worth by restricting others from "special" things. And over time, the symbols of specialness, like Bob's Crab Shack, can start to be more important than the actual fact of specialness. They begin to feel hollow, because they are. The feeling of specialness actually arises from all of the daily ways in which we invest in a relationship and express love. Such rules also court disaster when the lists of limited activities become—as they may over the years—long and complicated.

Leila's Story Molly and Jeff are a married couple with a notebook filled with rules, including a detailed list of which sexual activities are permitted with which partners. When Leila became involved with Jeff, the rules in the book were applied to her too. One of the rules was that Leila could not touch another partner on an area of the body covered by underwear without Jeff's permission. Leila assumed "underwear" meant briefs; Jeff assumed boxers. While on a date, she touched a new partner on the inner thigh. This led to recriminations and accusations, with Jeff claiming Leila had violated an agreement.

After the relationship ended, Leila described to us the feeling of trying to navigate these labyrinthine rules. She said, "A rule is not just an agreed-upon avoidance of consequences. Rules-based systems judge your moral character based on your adherence to the rules. It's a contract that frames things as acts of betrayal and leaves the 'betrayer' buried under moral judgment. The guilt or potential guilt in that situation is like breathing acid." pinstripe

"Love me, love my partner" rules

Human beings don't fall in love at the same time in the same way at the same rate with two people at once. It just doesn't happen. And when rules make assumptions about sexual access to someone's body ("If you have sex with me, you must have sex with my partner too"), they can quickly overrun personal boundaries, or even become coercive: Sex with one person becomes the grit-your-teeth price that must be paid to have a relationship with the other. Such rules discourage honesty. If your new partner loves you but not your partner, will she tell you that, knowing that telling you means being kicked out?

Rules that specify what happens if one relationship runs into trouble. For example, there could be a rule that other relationships must be ended or scaled back. When a couple agrees "If we run into trouble, we'll drop any other relationships to work on the problem," they treat their other partners as disposable things. If a couple had three kids and decided to send two of them into foster homes to focus on a problem the third one was having, we might call them monsters. This kind of behavior is also a questionable way to treat romantic partners.

Rules that are disguised as personal preferences. Sometimes a person might present a rule as just a statement of personal preference. An example from Franklin's experience is a married couple who had a rule that the wife was not permitted to have any male partners. When Franklin asked why this rule existed, she said it was just her personal preference; she didn't want any male partners.

So then why was the rule made at all? This was a big warning flag of underlying issues in the marriage. It took about two years for the wife to admit that, yes, she really did want male partners; she'd said she didn't to reassure her husband, who felt threatened by the idea and obtained the rule at what seemed like no cost to anyone. It took another five years for the dust to settle. In the end, she was able to have another boyfriend, but it took a lot of unnecessary turmoil and drama to get there. As uncomfortable as it was for her husband to come to terms with her hidden need, two years of him naively believing that she didn't want other male lovers only made him feel worse about the reality when he found out. Honesty from the beginning would have saved everyone considerable grief.

Paging Dr. Münchausen

There's one rule, quite common in hierarchical relationships, which we believe is particularly dangerous and deserves special attention: a rule that a person who is sick, injured or in crisis will only be supported by the primary partner. Other partners are not permitted to care for that person. This rule was part of Franklin's relationship with Celeste.

You will often see caring for someone in need billed as a way for a primary partner to preserve a sense of intimacy and specialness. Caring for a partner is one of the most loving things we can do, but the idea that only one person should be able to do it is very troubling.

When someone is sick or injured or in crisis, the focus should be on that person. Rules that say "Only the primary can provide support" divert the focus from the person in need, shifting it to the issue of who can do what. Worse, if a person's sense of specialness or intimacy depends on caring for someone in need, that's codependency. In its most extreme form, it becomes Münchausen by proxy syndrome, a recognized psychiatric disorder. When someone is in the hospital or laid up, this is not the time for displays of territoriality or ego.

Writing it down

"Good fences make good neighbors"—or so they say. Many people who give poly advice will urge you to write down and even sign your agreements. The "relationship contract" is quite common in polyamory (and is growing in popularity even among monogamous people, or so we hear: Mark Zuckerberg's wife famously negotiated a contract with him guaranteeing 100 minutes of his undivided time for her each week). These written agreements can range from a few sentences on a Post-It note to, in one case we've seen, approximately 48 pages of single-spaced type.

Certainly there are many situations in which explicit, written agreements are just common sense. Eve won't do business with a new client without a contract (and usually a deposit). It's too easy even for honest people to remember a verbal agreement very differently from each other, or for one to genuinely forget they even made it.

But while written relationship contracts might seem like good communication, they contain a hidden trap. Communication is a dialogue. A contract—especially one that's presented to new people as a done deal—very often isn't. Communication and discussion are essential for the health of any relationship. This is why, as we have said before, we see agreements as far better than rules. The difference is that agreements are mutually agreed to among equals, but turning an agreement into paperwork too soon can become an expression of power.

We've seen two different types of written relationship contracts: those that are written when all the people affected come together to work out a solution to a problem everyone is facing, and pre-emptive contracts that one set of people (often a couple) writes down, expecting any new partners they meet to sign on.

Some written relationship agreements are intended to address only a particularly narrow subject, such as safer sex boundaries, or whom the partners can be out to, or whether a veto exists and how it may be used. (Some people have found it just as helpful to record that veto does not exist as to record that it does—such a reminder can be helpful when times get rough.) Other agreements include some of the provisions mentioned above, concerning permitted or forbidden sex acts or restaurants, ranging all the way to pet names that new partners are not allowed to use. We even know of one contract that limits playing certain kinds of strategy war games to only certain partners.

In general, written agreements are more successful when they

Written agreements tend to work poorly when they

Successful written agreements are documents that you hold yourself to, not something others hold you to. They are reminders to yourself of commitments you have made and tools for communicating those commitments to other partners. They should not be used as devices to shame, manipulate or punish. And remember our ethical axiom: The people in the relationship are more important than the relationship. If you find yourselves haggling over clauses in an agreement and whether they have been violated, rather than discussing the hurt feelings, the needs behind a partner's actions and ways to make amends, you've probably reached a place where the people are serving the rules, and not the other way around.

Perhaps the most serious danger in written contracts is when they are inflexible. The longer and more complex they are, the more they are likely to be trying to script a relationship or treat people (at best) as a threat to be managed and (at worst) as a commodity. If one partner is finding herself unable to hold to a provision of the agreement, there's a good chance the agreement needs to be renegotiated to work for all partners—and not that she is dishonest or doesn't care about the agreement.

People who keep long, complex written agreements often build relationships that are unable to change when their needs change. They often spend a lot of time rules-lawyering (consider the story of Leila and Jeff).

Imagine that you were looking for a conventional monogamous relationship, and on a date, somewhere between the Caesar salad and the barbecued shrimp, your date pulled out a 48-page document and said, "This contract spells out how our relationship will go from here. Sign here, here and here, and initial here, please." You would quite likely find it off-putting—especially if the contract specified that you couldn't play Scrabble, couldn't go to Bob's Crab Shack, and were expected not to engage in oral sex, all so that your date's best friend from college wouldn't feel threatened by you.

Good written agreements are instead reminders of our own boundaries or commitments. One very short contract we've seen contains elements such as "My partner is important," "Do your chores before going on a date," "Don't spend joint money on your own dates," and "Don't fuck it up." An agreement that's about what you will each do to care for each other is a very different thing from an agreement that tells new partners how they are expected to behave.

We urge those of you considering written agreements to draw up short, specific lists of boundaries or intentions, rather than than long, complex documents that tell others what they are and aren't allowed to do. Ultimately, remember that your relationship belongs to the living, feeling people involved in it, not a list of rules. Make sure that people, not pieces of paper, are always at the center of your relationships.

Drop the permission model

A factor that often portends failure of a rule is whether it's linked to a "permission model" of relationships. This is the idea that when we enter a relationship, we give up control over our actions to our partner. If we wish to do things like enter into another relationship, visit another partner or take a new lover, we must seek the permission of our existing partner. As soon as we start a relationship with someone, that person becomes the gatekeeper to all our future relationships.

In our experience, relationships that provide everyone in them the most happiness follow a different model. The people who seem happiest in relationships start with the premise "I can have the kind of relationship I want. I can make choices I want to. My best course of action is to learn to choose people who want something similar, to take responsibility for the consequences of my choices, and to pay attention to the effects my choices have on the people around me."

When evaluating agreements or structures, look also to the language built into them. Watch for the slippery words we talked about in the communication chapters. Respect is one of those words. You can hardly argue with it; when faced with a provision that says, "You must treat me and my other partners with respect," few would say, "Well, you know, I think I'd rather be disrespectful." Most people will agree to such a provision without a second thought. But what, exactly, does respect mean? If respect means "be subordinate to," it creates a very different relationship dynamic than if respect means "take seriously and treat with compassion."

The best agreements are not ones that steer people away from bad things, but rather ones that point us toward good things. We both subscribe to the radical idea that the best way to create security in a relationship is to create happiness: the people in the relationship are more important than the relationship. To that end, when you make agreements, look for the ones that move in the direction of greatest happiness. Franklin's partner Sylvia likes to say her primary relationship rule is "If I am not a positive aspect of your life, I don't want to be in your life, and vice versa." While it sounds simple, that approach to relationship requires courage—especially the courage to know that you can lose a relationship that does not make you happy, and that's okay.

Game changers

When we open our hearts to multiple relationships, every now and then someone comes along who changes everything. This is one of the truths of polyamory rarely talked about: the game changer.

A game changer is a relationship that causes us to rethink all our relationships, and maybe even our lives, entirely. It may be a relationship with someone who fits with us so naturally that the person raises the bar on what we want and need from other relationships. It may be a connection so profound that it causes us to look at our lives in a new way. It's a relationship that alters the landscape of life. A game changer doesn't even have to be a good relationship. It can be one that's dysfunctional on such a deep level that it changes what we look for thereafter.

A game-changing relationship is invariably disruptive. It makes us see things in a new light. It opens us to new ways of thinking, or perhaps answers needs we didn't know we had (or didn't think could be met). Because of that, game-changing relationships are scary. Indeed, they are arguably one of the scariest things that can happen in poly relationships.

Many rules in poly relationships can be seen as ways to control the fear of a game changer. Franklin has experienced not one but two game-changing relationships, both of which substantially rearranged his life. Given how scary and disruptive game changers are, many people try to set up barriers to prevent them, erecting fortifications to protect their lives and hearts from disruption. In practice, this is often about as effective as building a tornado shelter from straw. Love is a powerful thing. Sometimes it transforms us.

Not only are structures designed to prevent game-changing relationships unlikely to work, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing if they did. Change is scary, but that doesn't make it bad. There is nothing noble in trying to preserve the status quo from things that can make our lives better.

Unfortunately, when a game changer happens to someone who's already in a relationship, it tends to concentrate the wonderfulness in one place but spread the disruption around. So when your partner starts new relationships, you may feel compelled to seek reassurances that things won't change for you, at least in ways you don't like. It can feel very reassuring to extract a pledge from your partner that you will always have some measure of control. Good luck with that.

Game changers change things. It's in the name. They upset existing arrangements. People confronted with a game-changing relationship will not be likely to remain happy with old rules and agreements for long; the definition of a game-changing relationship is that it reshuffles priorities. Expecting an agreement to protect you from a game changer is a bit like expecting a river to obey a law against flooding.

Being a parent is not a protection against game changers. In chapter 13 we told the story of Clara and Elijah, a married couple with children who separated after Clara's game-changing relationship with Ramon. Of game changers, Clara says, "You realize what's really important to you in a relationship and re-evaluate what you have." She doesn't regret the decisions she's made, despite the changes they've caused to her co-parenting relationship.

Game changers are not just a poly thing: they happen in monogamous relationships all the time. Nearly half of marriages end in divorce, and game-changing affairs are one major reason. Sometimes, game-changing events have nothing to do with romantic relationships. A promotion, a baby, a car accident, a job loss, a death in the family—all these can permanently and irrevocably alter our lives, and our relationships, in ways we can't predict. We accept the reality of game changers all the time when they don't come in the form of romantic relationships, as happened in Eve's life.

Eve's Story Arguably the biggest game changer in my marriage was my mother-in-law. In 2008 she had a massive stroke that paralyzed her on one side. In just a few minutes, this active, healthy, youthful sixty-seven-year-old woman became completely dependent on round-the-clock care. That stroke represented a seismic shift in my marriage, dictating our priorities, budget and travel schedules for years. Peter made the ten-hour round trip over the mountains to visit her and his father every two to four weeks for years. In 2012 he went to live with his parents for over eight months, to assist his father, who was facing burnout.

Few would fault him. Elder care is accepted as something that often is a game changer. And yet it resulted in significant strain on our lives and our relationship. pinstripe

We understand that no promise of "forever" can stand up to the #39 bus with bad brakes that puts someone in a coma. These are the risks we take when we open our hearts to someone else. Sometimes things really change. Relationships take courage.

Still, polyamory complicates the emotional calculus in new ways. Relationship game changers feel more frightening than other kinds. Whether it's insecurities that whisper that others are prettier, smarter and more deserving; or the social fable that romantic love connects us to only one person at a time; or the idea that every new connection our partner makes takes away our specialness (as though specialness were a currency sitting in a bank account somewhere, available in limited quantities, with substantial penalties for early withdrawal)—relationships seem uniquely able to push our buttons.

The desire not to lose what you have because your partner meets someone new is rational and reasonable. What is neither rational nor reasonable, though, is attempting to build structures that allow your partner to have other relationships while guaranteeing that nothing will change for you. Relationships don't work that way. We live in a world with no guarantees.

Franklin's Story I spent my first five or six years of non-monogamous relationships trying very hard to create a system of rules that would guarantee I always felt safe and in control. When I didn't feel safe, it seemed like I hadn't found quite the right rules. So I returned to the rules, tinkering with them, adding exceptions and new clauses, searching for just the right combination that would protect me from changes I did not want to face.

In the end, this strategy didn't work. When the first game-changing relationship came along, neither I nor Celeste were prepared for it. I met Amber, who is still my partner as I write this. She tried very hard to fit herself into the space we'd carved out for her with our rules, and something profound happened. For the first time, I was able to see how contorting herself to fit into the space left by our fears and our desire for safety hurt her. As soon as I saw that, the relationship became a game changer.

Had we been more flexible, or had Celeste and I been more open to the possibility that parts of our relationship could change and we'd still be okay, I might have been able to accommodate the new relationship in a way that allowed me to strengthen my bond with Celeste, and my life would look very different now.

That's the funny thing about fear of change. Sometimes the more rigid we are when we insist that we do not want our lives to change, the more catastrophically things break when change comes along. I handled my own game-changing relationship poorly. Rather than facing down my fears, having the courage to accept change and the flexibility to adapt to it gracefully, I had become so invested in the idea that polyamory would not mean changing my existing relationship that on the day this became impossible, I had no tools for handling change. pinstripe

The starting point to a happy poly life is the ability to say "Our relationships can change, and that is okay. My partner and I can still build things that will make us both happy even if they don't look quite the way they do now." As we've said, this takes courage. And it means having trust in your partner and yourself.

From there, the next step is to say "Even if things change, I have worth. I believe my partners will make choices that honor and cherish our connection, whatever may come, because I add value to their lives. I will build relationships that are resilient enough to handle change, flexible enough to accommodate change, and supportive enough to create a foundation that welcomes change. Change is the one eternal of life. What I have now I will cherish, and what we build tomorrow I will cherish, without fear."

Life rewards courage. The game changer that turns everything upside down might just leave you in a better place. The only real control you have in your relationships comes from working together to express the things you need even while change is happening all around you.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Relationship agreements work best when they do not impose limits on what form new relationships are allowed to take; when they serve the needs of all the people involved, including the people yet to show up; and when they are flexible and adaptable as you change and grow. These questions can help guide you toward ethical agreements that work.

When considering an agreement:

  • What is the purpose of this agreement?
  • Does the agreement serve the purpose it is intended to serve?
  • Is this agreement the only way to serve this purpose?
  • What will happen if someone breaks the agreement? Do we have a path for re-establishing trust?
  • Is everyone affected by the agreement at the table in negotiating it?
  • Can the agreement be renegotiated?

When renegotiating an agreement:

  • Are the needs now the same as the needs when we agreed to this?
  • Has this agreement been successful in meeting the needs it was intended to meet?
  • Has anyone been harmed by this agreement?
  • Is this agreement serving the people involved, or are the people serving it?