16

In the middle

When I dwell less on the conflicts and compromises, and more on being fully engaged with the task at hand, the center holds and I feel content.

sheryl sandberg

When you have more than one partner, at some point you may face the unique challenges that come with being the pivot: the person in the middle, between two partners. The waters here can be turbulent. Your partners may have contradictory needs, or want the same thing from you at the same time, or end up in conflict with each other. You may find it difficult, when this happens, not to feel pulled in two directions.

Even when your partners are romantically involved with each other in an intimate relationship of their own, there will be times when you're in the middle. Maybe they'll both want your attention, but in different ways or for different reasons. Maybe each has different plans for the day and wants you to participate. This will happen, sure as night follows day. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it helps to be prepared.

Of course, this situation isn't unique to polyamory, as anyone with more than one child can tell you. When you're asked to care for, support and cherish two (or more) people who have different ideas and needs, life can be a balancing act. The difference in polyamory is that you're not the boss. You're dealing with self-determining adults, which means "Because I said so!" is not a workable fallback argument. You'll be asked to make decisions that are ethical and responsible while still respecting the autonomy of each of your partners.

Boundaries for the pivot

Successfully navigating your role as the pivot starts with good boundaries. When your partners have competing needs or desires, if you don't have good boundaries you can become a prize to be fought over, rather than an autonomous person with decision-making capability and needs of your own. This can happen even when everyone is acting in good faith.

When faced with tension between your partners, the first thing to do is to ask yourself, "Does it involve me directly?" If not, you're well advised to leave the conflict to them to work out themselves. If it does, the next question is, what do I want? When people you love have different ideas or opinions, the question of what you want can easily get lost in the struggle to please others. Moreover, if you're focused on trying to please your partners rather than taking responsibility for your choices, it becomes easy for your partners to focus on each other as the reason you're not doing what each of them wants. Advocating for what you want when you're being pulled in different directions is a powerful tool to help resolve conflict, contrary to what you might imagine.

Boundaries around communication are another important part of balancing your role as a pivot. We discussed triangular communication in chapter 6. Short version: It's a trap to stay out of. As a pivot, triangular communication can be tempting in two ways:

Part of setting good boundaries as the pivot is to speak only for yourself, not your partners. If a partner asks you what another is thinking or feeling, what he wants or why he did something, resist the urge to answer. The best response is, "I think you should ask him yourself."

Who owns your choices?

We talk so much about communication and negotiation in poly that it can be easy to forget that the pivot actually holds a great deal of responsibility for making decisions. And make them you must. Negotiation is important, but it's also important not to lose sight of the purpose of a negotiation, which is ultimately to make a choice. A choice, hopefully, that upholds your commitments and honors the needs of everyone affected, but a choice nonetheless. Gather data, certainly. Discuss, negotiate, listen and empathize. But then make a decision.

EVE's Story In the early months of Peter's relationship with Clio, she and I did a lot of planning for him, to make sure they were able to visit each other. In fact, he would sometimes joke about how we could just figure things out for him. But that changed about six months in, and that change altered not just our relationship with Peter, but my approach to poly relationships since then.

Peter and I had each been to visit Clio separately, but this was our first visit together to her house. The first night, we were trying to decide who was going to sleep where. Peter wanted Clio and me to make the decision, but neither of us wanted to make it for him. Peter asked each of us—we were in separate rooms—what we wanted to do about sleeping arrangements, and ended up running back and forth relaying messages between the two of us. He also wouldn't tell us what he wanted. He became frustrated—and finally slept on the couch, while Clio and I slept in Clio's bed.

It hadn't occurred to us that there was a flaw in our decision-making process; we were all pretty happy with the results up to then. But we realized that weekend that Peter wasn't taking an active role. He was letting Clio and me figure things out for him. The couch incident was the first time the three of us had been confronted with a situation where we had to make a spur-of-the-moment decision all together.

The next morning, we each talked with each other in our three separate dyads, and then the three of us all talked together. The outcome of all this talking was that Peter needed to take a more proactive role in making our group decisions. Peter initially resisted, though today, neither he nor I remembers why. Clio explained the role we wanted him to take as being like a central data processor: collecting information from both of us, interpreting it in the context of his own needs and wants, and making his decisions in line with his priorities of nurturing our relationships.

Our process changed after that. Peter became much more independent in making plans with Clio. Rather than asking me to make decisions concerning visits or sleeping arrangements, he would ask me about my feelings or plans, then make proposals for me to respond to. Quite quickly, he became fully independent in managing his relationships. pinstripe

Writer Ferret Steinmetz has called this "ping-pong poly": a pattern of running back and forth between your partners, trying to please everyone but rarely making a choice (or worse, making decisions that only last until you see your other partner). Nearly everyone who's been a pivot has probably committed ping-pong poly at least once; it's an easy pattern to fall into. But if it becomes chronic, it will wear you and your partners down and damage trust among all of you.

Shifting responsibility for your choices onto your other partners ("Sophie made me do it!") is cowardly. If your partners buy into this—and many will—you will be able to deflect their unhappiness onto each other instead of you. However, this ploy serves you poorly, for a couple of reasons. One, taking responsibility for your choices is a sign of integrity, which helps build trust. Shifting that responsibility will, over time, undermine not just your partners' trust in each other, but their trust in you. Two, even if your partners never become close, it's in your interest for them to trust each other and feel safe communicating with one another. Deflecting tensions from their relationship with you onto whatever friction they may have with each other can easily create confusion and conflict.

Your choices are always yours, regardless of whether they make you or your partners happy or unhappy. Own up to them. If you use phrases such as "Jill won't let me," or "Karen made me," or even "The rules say I have to," you are shifting responsibility.

Time management

Discussed a lot in poly support groups, time management is one of the toughest parts of having multiple relationships—for some folks, it's harder than issues like jealousy. It also doesn't come naturally to many people.

As with many other poly skills, effective time management really comes down to communication. Good communication about time includes being clear about what time commitments you are available for, how much time you need in each relationship (including how much needs to be dyad time as opposed to group time), how much you need for yourself (especially important if you're introverted), and what time commitments you already have. It also includes being very clear about what you are committing to and with whom—which can be harder than it sounds.

For example, on two occasions Eve scheduled vacation days off work for plans she'd made with a partner. In both cases, at the beginning (and once in the middle!) of her time with them, the partner informed her they had made plans with others for part of the time scheduled. In both cases, the partner was self-employed or in school and didn't understand that "I'm scheduling vacation time" represents a serious commitment for someone in a salaried job. Her partners had considered the plans to be tentative. For his part, Franklin has more than once invited partners to participate in his plans with other partners without asking the latter, only to find out, too late, that the partners he had made plans with expected to be alone with him.

Many poly people set up regular "date nights" with specific partners. For people who are into scheduling, this is a good tool to help let everyone know what to expect—though, as with everything else, you need to be somewhat flexible. Life isn't always tidy, and should a conflict come up, or a partner become ill or injured, it's reasonable to be able to rearrange the schedule without causing undue grief. As with anything, use judgment: if a long-distance partner comes into town for a week every six months, it's reasonable to expect date night to get rescheduled. Be aware, too, that schedules may need to change permanently to accommodate a new relationship.

Regular date nights are a great way to help nurture any relationship. They create a setting where the people involved can get back in touch with the romantic part of the relationship, free of distractions like chores, housework and kids. Sometimes polyamory makes this easier; when you have more than two people involved, it becomes easier to trade off one person taking care of the little things that always need taking care of while the two others spend time alone together. As long as the same opportunities are available to everyone, and everyone treats one another compassionately and without resentment, scheduled, focused time with each partner helps all the relationships thrive. (It's important that this not become a "service secondary" issue, as discussed in chapter 11.)

Google Calendar has become tremendously popular among poly people for time management. There's a standing joke that poly couldn't take off until Google Calendar was invented. It's so popular because, unlike a paper day planner or similar tools, it's also a communication tool: calendars can be shared among multiple people, with different levels of access, and several people's calendars can be viewed simultaneously. You can pull up six or seven calendars at once to look for opportunities for dates, shared time, and so on.

Google Calendar is so powerful that it requires careful negotiation before you start to use it. Failure to set explicit expectations about the purpose and use of the calendar can lead to serious misunderstandings and hurt feelings. In chapter 6, Eve told one story about how a lack of communication around calendar expectations helped sink a relationship.

What are your boundaries about what you are willing to share, and how you want your partners to interact with your calendar? Do you want them to see only free or busy times, have read-only access or have write access? You can schedule private events, which can only be viewed by those with owner-level permissions on your calendar—so even if someone has read or write access, you can keep some of your life private. When scheduling shared events, do you prefer to have the event added directly to your calendar or sent to you as an invitation that you can accept or decline?

Shared calendars can also pose a couple of special problems in poly. If a person doesn't feel her needs are being met, but sees on her partner's calendar the time he is spending with other partners (or doing other things), this can trigger jealousy. Some people find it easy to slip into feeling that unscheduled time should be theirs—it can be easy to forget that time for one's self is just as (or more) important, and is not a snub. Also, if Joe has write access to Jane's calendar, and Jane trusts him to schedule events without asking, Joe needs to remember that the time he is scheduling does not belong to him.

Different people have very different boundaries around sharing calendars and assumptions about what sharing means. For some it's a deeply intimate exchange, while for others it's just a logistical convenience. Discussing these meanings can help avoid misunderstandings and heartache.

Zero-sum and inclusive relationships

People new to polyamory often fear that embarking on this road means giving up time; every minute that your partner's other partner gets is a minute that you don't, right? That need not be true—if you and your partner's other partner get along well. When you can spend time with your partner together with his or her other lover, a minute given to that person does not necessarily mean a minute taken away from you.

Time-management issues can be eased or worsened by how comfortable you all are spending time together as a group, and whether you can get some of the same things from group time as from dyad time. That is, how much time needs to be one-on-one, and how much can be shared activities? Is your time a zero-sum affair, to be carved up among your different partners and other commitments, or are you able to take a more inclusive approach, where parts of your relationships and time are shared?

There is no right answer, though you often hear people forcefully arguing for one approach or another. Each approach has benefits and trade-offs, and some people are simply better suited for one approach than another. Watch out if you end up in relationships with people who are suited to different approaches—the styles often don't mix well. Both of us, happily, like spending time with all our partners together. We also don't feel cheated if another comes along with the two of us, if it's someone we both get along with. When this works, it's a tremendous benefit: We've met some awesome people through our partners, people who have become friends independent of our connection by dating the same person.

But if you assume that your relationships have to be inclusive, one of your partners may find himself spending a lot of time in the presence of someone he doesn't much care for. Each person needs to be able to set boundaries without blame. As much as we may crave inclusive relationships, it's not okay to force them. It's not okay to try to shame or threaten our partners into liking each other, even when, as we've seen happen, you're angry at them for not getting along. If an important relationship is contingent on any other relationship, this can introduce a strain that is not just about getting along, but about feeling like something deep in you is being violated—a loss of consent. If your partners are to be free from coercion, then separate time, or even complete separation, needs to remain an option.

Of course, there are consequences of such zero-sum relationships. Intimacy will be affected. And you may have to grieve for what is lost when those boundaries are set. Those losses may include one or more of your relationships. But don't blame. It needs to be okay, in every moment, for your partners to set boundaries—with you, and with each other.

Tyranny of the calendar

With a few exceptions, poly people are good at time management—or learn to be good at it out of necessity. So good at it, in fact, that many of us treat our calendars like games of Tetris, seeing how much we can pack into a day, week or month. We're scheduled to the hilt. Among poly people, you'll often hear complaints like these:

"I feel like I have to make an appointment to be with my husband."

"I wish I could be more spontaneous."

"Sometimes I just really feel like I need to be with Greg, but I have

to keep my date with Alice."

"I'm exhausted. I don't have any time for myself."

We tend to have lots of commitments—not just relationships, but work, projects, social lives. Many of us sometimes end up feeling like all our time is allocated to other people—even like we've lost control over our lives.

When Eve (briefly, for a couple of months) had four partners, three of whom were local, she often found herself committed to each of them one night a week, with business engagements at least two nights, and social engagements on the seventh. She began to feel like an automaton, numbly moving from one commitment to the next, with little room—it felt—for personal choice and zero room for spontaneity or self-care. And she felt helpless in the face of this: she loved her partners, and each one of them needed and deserved her time. She came to call this state "the tyranny of the calendar."

Less extreme examples also prevail. In the flush of a new relationship, it's normal to crave the presence of a new partner almost constantly. Or when you're going through a breakup and are heartbroken, maybe all you want to do is hide in your room watching Doctor Who and eating pints of Ben & Jerry's. It can be difficult to balance your desire to be with someone when your calendar says you need to be elsewhere. But part of personal integrity is showing up and meeting your commitments. Blowing off dates with your long-standing partners—or your kids—to go running through a sunbeam-filled meadow with your new shiny isn't going to win you points in the integrity department.

So it’s important to keep your commitments, to show up—not just physically, but with your whole heart. When you’re with someone, work on being present with her. She will feel it if you’re not, and if it happens enough, it will damage your relationship with her. Maybe someone else is on your mind, but the person you’ve committed your time to is in front of you right now. This is essentially a practice of mindfulness—being fully present with each of our loves, and open to the person we’re with in the moment—and it’s an advanced but essential poly skill that isn’t often discussed. It takes years to become good at. But it makes us better partners.

And in all this, don't forget that you need to make time for yourself. Avoid the mistake Eve made in scheduling herself 24/7. Now she blocks off time on her calendar as "Eve time," and everyone who shares her calendar sees this. We know quite a few poly people who forget this. Taking time for yourself can be crucial in maintaining the emotional balance required for the other challenging aspects of being poly.

Who owns your time?

One of the default assumptions that many of us carry from monogamous culture is that in a long-term relationship, especially when we live with a partner, our partner's time becomes "ours" by default. So when he chooses to do something social that's independent of us, it's outside the norm—and thus can feel like he's taking away something that rightfully belongs to us.

AUDREY's Story From the beginning, Audrey and Joseph have planned their time together around their many pre-existing commitments. Joseph and his wife, Jasmine, have a standing three evenings and one weekend day together. Joseph and Audrey have two evenings a week together. What little remains of Joseph's time isn't specifically allocated, and he considers it his—but in practice, with home and family commitments, it's usually spent at home. Even though that time does not "belong" to Jasmine, Jasmine sees it as an opportunity to spend time with Joseph; thus, when Joseph spends some of his free time with Audrey, Jasmine feels it as a loss.

Jasmine has always been concerned about how "big" the relationship with Audrey will become. Will they let their time "creep" and eventually take over the marriage? This has not happened in the decade-long relationship, but Jasmine still wants Joseph to agree to a limit—which he is unwilling to do. Joseph is willing to say what time he will spend with Jasmine, and the amount of time above that that he expects to be home to meet his responsibilities, but has been unwilling to agree to a specific limit on his relationship with Audrey.

Joseph and Audrey are working from an intent to honor pre-existing commitments, allocating time to those first, with the result being that their own relationship is limited in time. Jasmine wants to start from a time limit and define that first. Although the end result may be the same—Joseph and Audrey's time is constrained—Jasmine hasn't gained the reassurance she needs, because of the lack of a cap. Audrey characterizes the underlying issue as one of different ideas about who Joseph's time belongs to.pinstripe

Understand and accept that each person owns his own time. A relationship, even one designated "primary," does not confer ownership of another person's time. When someone gives time to his partners, it is just that—a gift. While promises can certainly be made, and should be honored, gifts of time in the absence of promises do not constitute entitlements for similar gifts in the future. People can (and should) express their needs and wants, and a skilled pivot will take these into account when choosing how to allocate time.

Such an approach can benefit you and your partners in a few ways. First, if you start from the premise that you are an autonomous adult responsible for your own allocation of time, your partners will be less likely to see you as a commodity to be fought over. Second, if you start from the assumption that your time is yours until it's given to someone, this reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the possibility that a partner will see time given to another as a personal loss. But, perhaps most importantly, when you understand that time spent with a partner is a gift and not an entitlement, this will help you cultivate a sense of gratitude for it, and gratitude is a powerful shield against jealousy and fear.

Fairness begins with compassion

"That's not fair!" Below a certain age, we hear people say this all the time. Past that age our vision gets longer, and we learn that fairness operates best on a global, not a local, scale. If you did the dishes last night and it's your sister's turn tonight, but she isn't doing the dishes because she just got back from dental surgery, it may seem unfair to you from a purely selfish perspective…but really, would you want to trade places with her? And if you were the one who'd just been through the root canal, wouldn't you appreciate a pass on the dishes tonight? Sometimes compassion dictates that a rigid schedule should change.

By the time we're adults, we've pretty much figured this out. That, or we've just given in to exhaustion and stopped worrying so much about what's "fair" on such a granular level. Yet in relationships, and especially in polyamorous relationships, the little whisperings of our five-year-old selves poke through and say, "That's not fair!" when things don't go the way we expect. Even when we don't talk about our expectations. Even when we know our expectations are silly. Hell, sometimes even when what's happening is not only fair, but most excellent as well. When you're balancing more than one partner, you will surely hear this sentiment. The words may change, but the meaning is predictably constant: "That's not fair!"

In dealing with human beings, issues of "fairness" sometimes need to go right out the window. People change and needs change, but often our notions about what is "fair" remain static, so deeply buried that we're not even aware of them. The fairness that is important in relationships isn't the tit-for-tat "I did the dishes last night, so it isn't fair that I have to do them tonight too!" variety. In fact, sometimes a tit-for-tat approach to fairness creates a situation that's decidedly unfair. In chapter 13, you read about Franklin's acquaintance who demanded that her husband break up with his girlfriend and told him "I'll break up with my girlfriend too, so it will be fair." Three broken hearts for the price of one is a peculiar definition of the word fair, and it illustrates an important point: Symmetry is not the same thing as fairness.

The kind of fairness that really counts is the kind that begins with compassion. Doing the dishes two days in a row because your sister has just had a root canal is compassionate (we've both had root canals, and believe us, the last thing you want to be doing when the anesthetic wears off is standing upright). On the other hand, saying "I'll dump my partner of many years just to get you to dump yours" is hardly compassionate. Fairness means saying things like "I realize that my insecurity belongs to me, so I will not use it as a blunt instrument on you, nor expect you to plot your life around it. I may, however, ask you to talk to me while I'm dealing with it."

This isn't the kind of fairness our inner five-year-old understands; he's far more likely to be worried about someone else getting something that he doesn't have, or getting something for a lower "price" than he paid for it. At the end of the day, though, our mental five-year-old isn't likely to make our lives better, no matter how much of a fuss he puts up.

Of monkeys and cucumbers

You may have seen this on YouTube or TED by now: primatologist Frans de Waal has experimented with primate reactions to inequality by placing two monkeys within sight of each other and rewarding them for doing a small task, such as handing a rock to a human lab aide. The reward is either a tasty piece of cucumber or an even tastier grape. When both monkeys get a cucumber, everything's fine—they'll happily complete the task dozens of times. But give one of them a cucumber and one of them a grape, and watch out! The "lower paid" monkey completely loses it: it throws the cucumber back at the aide, pounds the floor, rattles the cage. Like any good scientist, De Waal has repeated this experiment many times, with different species and variations. Same result.

We prefer to avoid the quagmire of evolutionary psychology; our intent with this example isn't to talk about how our feelings about fairness may be rooted deep in our brains. Instead, we want to talk about how we decide what are "cucumbers" and what are "grapes" in our relationships. By way of example, think of Ali, Tatiana and Alexis, three people whom we've fictionalized a bit only because theirs is such a common pattern in polyamory that it's more of an archetype. (In fact, both of us are in positions similar to Ali's.) Ali lives with Tatiana and is also in a relationship with Alexis. Ali and Tatiana have two young children. Their relationship involves a lot of housework, diaper changes and arguing over the budget. Their downtime together consists of a lot of cuddling in front of Doctor Who but not much sex and only the occasional night out.

Ali and Alexis only see each other a couple of times a month, so their time together is intense. They usually spend half of it having sex, the other half in deep conversation or doing exciting things—all focused on one another. Maybe once or twice a year they'll get away together for a long weekend at a bed-and-breakfast.

Most people in Tatiana's position would feel like she's getting all the cucumbers and Alexis is getting all the grapes. The things Ali and Alexis do are fun, right? They're dates—something long-established couples can have a tendency to forget about, or not have time for. And it is very important for live-in couples to take time to care for their relationship, so they don't take each other for granted. But it's also worth considering why we might think Tatiana is getting the cucumbers—and how, to Alexis, they might actually look a lot like grapes.

Ali and Alexis might have a vacation relationship—they may have more fun together, and Ali and Tatiana more work. But Ali and Tatiana share some things that are arguably far more precious, and which Alexis may never have access to. Things like

After all, Ali and Tatiana chose the life they have together. If they had wanted, they could have had a relationship that looked instead like Ali and Alexis's. They did not have to move in together, mingle finances or have children. They chose to. They valued the things on this list. When people talk about taking a relationship—or a partner—for granted, these sorts of things are often discounted. And these things, in a relationship, can be very sweet indeed.

If one of your partners feels like he's getting all the cucumbers and someone else is getting all the grapes, remember that you and your partner chose to have the kind of relationship you have. Take time to notice and express gratitude for the benefits that come from it. If you have a live-in partner, those benefits might be the small touches, the opportunities to care for each other (even if it's grumbling as you pick up someone's dirty socks), the chance to sleep close to each other, the cuddles and shared meals, your small daily interactions, the future you're building together. If you live apart and see each other less frequently, the benefit may be the fact that your partner is carving out time from her busy and full life to focus exclusively on you.

This is another reason why fairness is not the same thing as symmetry. Tatiana and Alexis may envy each other for the things each has with Ali. They may need to work with Ali to reshape their relationships, so that each gets more of what they need. But it's possible that we primates all have a hard time seeing the value of what we have when we are busy looking at what someone else is getting. The monkeys in the experiment threw their cucumbers away—cucumbers that a few minutes before, they were eager to have. And it's also important to remember, if you're in the middle, that very few relationships can survive on only cucumbers or only grapes. Most relationships need a mix of work and play to grow strong over the long term.

Introducing your partners

If you're involved with two or more partners who don't already know each other, sooner or later it will be a good idea for them to meet. When is largely a matter of personal preference—yours and theirs—and is something we discuss at length in chapter 23. However, a couple of things are worth mentioning specifically to the pivot.

Some people like their existing partners to meet potential new partners right away, before any relationship begins to grow—and many people, likewise, want to meet the existing partners of someone they're considering becoming involved with. Others—often people who place a higher value on autonomy—prefer to wait until a relationship is taking root, when they're fairly certain that a new person is going to be important in their life, before expending the time and energy to meet "the family"—particularly if the family is large or far-flung.

Of course, as the pivot, you can't (and shouldn't) stop your partners from meeting, even if you don't feel ready. Trying to dissuade your partners from having contact raises an instant red flag among poly people that something dishonest may be going on, even if it isn't, and lays the groundwork for mistrust. If your partners want to meet, let them. But there's another important point of etiquette to bear in mind.

When two monogamous folks are dating, and their relationship grows serious, at some point it gets to be meet-the-family time. Bringing someone home to meet the parents (or whoever else is in your family unit) is typically taken as a statement: "This person is important to me. I am considering making this person part of my family."

Don't underestimate the importance of a little ritual like this in introducing new partners to the rest of your network. Sure, your partners are grown-ups who are capable of calling up another grown-up for a coffee date. But it can feel a little awkward, a little intrusive—and often, a little humiliating—for Glen to call up Juan and say, "Hey, I know Petra hasn't introduced us yet, but I've been seeing her for awhile now, and I think it's time for you and me to meet." That puts Glen in the position of saying to one of the most important people in Petra's life that Petra is important to Glen…but maybe Glen is not quite as important to Petra, or she would have set this up herself. To meet someone who may have an important influence on your future happiness under this awkward circumstance can be profoundly disempowering.

So it's good etiquette for the pivot to take the initiative and ask the others if they would like to meet. If one of your partners expresses an interest first in meeting the other, be the one to make it happen, and make it clear that the meeting matters to you, too. How you introduce a new partner to your network can make all the difference in how welcome she feels.

Jealousy in the middle

Dealing with your own jealousy is hard. Dealing with your partner's jealousy about another partner when you're stuck between them is no picnic either. When you have two lovers and one or both is feeling jealous of your time and attention, you can easily feel pulled apart. When one feels threatened by the other, a cooperative situation can quickly turn competitive, and a jealous partner may blame you for his jealousy. He might ask for things that hurt your other partner. Your other partner might have limits on what accommodations she is willing to make for him, and those limits might be perfectly reasonable. And there you are, poor sod, caught between.

This is a miserable place to be. Your power in this situation is limited; no matter what you do, you cannot solve someone else's jealousy. You may be able to make it easier for him to deal with it, but that's all. The good news is that it will pass. As long as everyone is committed to working through the issues, jealousy—as painful and intractable as it may seem in the moment—is a conquerable emotion. Millions of polyamorous people, though they may still grapple with the occasional wibbles (a poly term for minor jealous twinges), have learned coping skills and are able to have relationships that are relatively unburdened by jealousy.

Although your partner has to do the heavy lifting himself, there are things you can do to help make his work easier. The first is to listen. Nobody wants to be jealous. Nobody enjoys it. Your partner isn't doing this to hurt you, or out of spite. So listen, compassionately, without judging or shaming. Allow space for him to feel what he's feeling. Remember that saying "You shouldn't feel that" probably won't change anything. Creating a safe space for your partner to talk openly about his feelings goes a long way toward making a solution possible.

Reassure your partner. A lot. Talk about the things you value in him and the ways you love him. (And, really, do this even when your partners aren't in crisis. There's never a bad time to remind them how much you cherish them.) When you're done, reassure him some more. Accept that he is feeling what he's feeling, even though it's inconvenient.

Sometimes you may be able to change things about your relationship to help accommodate the jealous partner. For example, you might slow down the progress of a new relationship to give your old partner time to adjust. An analogy Franklin likes to use for dealing with relationship problems is fixing a broken refrigerator. If the refrigerator isn't working, it might be a good idea to stop putting things into it until you get it fixed.

There's danger lurking here, though. You can all too easily get so caught up in a jealous partner's pain that you agree to accommodations that hurt your other partner. Damaging one relationship to try to fix another usually ends up creating two broken relationships. Another danger: If the accommodations by you and your others make the jealous partner too comfortable, while discomfiting everyone else, he may have little motivation to work through his jealousy. Accommodations rarely solve jealousy; its solution comes almost always from within. Remember, you are your partners' advocates. This doesn't go just one way. You have a right, and a responsibility, to advocate for all your relationships. It's not okay to damage one relationship or hurt one person to try to help another.

The only strategies we've ever found that work long term are identifying and resolving the insecurities and fears that underlie jealousy. Ironically, trying to make compromises to accommodate a jealous partner can actually make the jealousy worse. For example, if your partner is afraid of abandonment, and demands that you never spend the night at another partner's house, maybe what he needs to get past the fear is to see that you can spend a night away from home and you'll still come back to him. If you give in to the demand and never spend the night with another lover, he may never let go of that fear. Not only will he never have the opportunity to see that you'll come back, you've shown him that he can control your behavior as long as he holds onto that fear.

Even the most insightful, self-aware person can't make deeply rooted insecurities vanish overnight. In our experience, working through jealousy normally takes weeks or months, especially if it's a partner's first experience sharing. If the process is taking years, though, something's stuck. Either your partner has become invested in the status quo and is dragging his heels, or he needs professional assistance to do the work (or both).

In the analogy of the refrigerator: once you've stopped putting more things into it, you can't just shove it in a corner and forget about it. You have to fix it, so that you can use it again. You and your partner should be able to see and feel progress.

You also must be willing to set boundaries, not only with your partner who isn't experiencing the jealousy, but with the one who is. If you don't, you may find yourself playing ping-pong poly again: bouncing back and forth without making a decision. If, in your estimation, some accommodation your jealous partner is asking for seems reasonable, then say so. If it doesn't seem reasonable, then say so too. If he asks for something that would damage your other relationships, decline. You may have to make a decision someone doesn't like, but that's better than being tossed around on the rocks indefinitely.

For most people, the bottom line in dealing with a partner's jealousy is listening and loving. Reassure your partners, be diligent in honoring your commitments, and let them feel all their feelings. And remember that, as long as everyone is committed to working through the issues, it won't stay this hard forever.

Questions to Ask Yourself

If you're the pivot person between two or more others, being able to set good boundaries for yourself and advocate for your needs, while also being considerate of your partners, can feel hard. As you build the skills to do this, here are some questions to ask yourself: