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Poly puzzles

We can easily be hurt and broken, and it is good to remember that we can just as easily be the ones who have done the hurting and the breaking.

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Our experiences with polyamory have taken us nose to nose with some thorny difficulties, some of which we have not yet discovered solutions for. Those puzzles are the topic of this chapter. Some of these problems lack graceful answers. Others seem to lack answers at all. Should you run into one of these, the best advice we can offer is try to keep focused on behaving as ethically as you can, treat those around you with gentleness, and seek to be the best version of yourself. Above all else, use love and compassion as your guiding stars. If you discover a solution to these problems, we'd love to hear from you!

You may see yourself in some of the examples we give. That's okay. We're all still trying to carve trails through this terrain, and some of the dead ends and quagmires along the way look like tempting paths. Our purpose is not to chastise, but rather to alert you to hidden traps that might open unexpectedly beneath your feet.

Entitlement creep

In any relationship, we can become so accustomed to a status quo that it slowly morphs into an entitlement. When this happens in polyamory, the disruption and resource reallocation that a new relationship brings can erupt into anger and conflict if an established partner feels something that is hers is being taken away. Entitlement to another's time is the most obvious sort of entitlement creep. Say you have two partners, Linda and Richard. Richard is a busy fellow, so for the past year you've only been able to go on dates with him once a month. This lets you offer more time to Linda, who is used to seeing you three or four times a week. Then Richard's life changes, and he becomes more available to you. So now you see both Linda and Richard twice a week.

Linda might naturally grieve the loss of the more-connected relationship. But she may also have become so accustomed to it that she sees it as a promise that you will always spend the same amount of time with her. So when you begin paring back time with Linda, her feelings of sadness or loneliness may be mixed with betrayal or outrage. You've broken a "promise" you never offered. That's entitlement creep.

We've heard this phrased as "He's not respecting my relationship!"—even if the new partner is still receiving less time than the existing ones. Sometimes people do neglect their existing partners in the rush and glow of a new relationship. But "neglect" can be hard to define. New relationships will require diversion of resources from somewhere else—if not other relationships, then hobbies, work or even time alone. Not just time but also activities, support and money can be subject to entitlement creep. Communicate explicitly about expectations, rather than assuming that nothing should ever change. As we talk about in "Who owns your time?", it's important to recognize the agency of your partners and remember that their time and resources are always their own to give.

This recognition helps clear the way to another part of the solution, which is gratitude. If you believe you are getting something by right, it's easy to take it for granted and not recognize its value. Remember that your partner is acting freely, out of love for you and a desire to be with you. Be grateful for what they give, but understand they do not owe you the same thing forever.

Fatal cascades

When we are afraid of something—losing a partner, say, or being replaced, or not getting a job promotion we feel we deserve—we can act defensively, which can cause exactly the calamity we're trying to prevent. These actions can create cascading feedback loops that are often fatal to a relationship.

Franklin created one of these self-fulfilling prophesies of doom in his relationship with Ruby, described in chapter 8. He felt so threatened when she started dating Newton that he began to act defensively, criticizing her and withdrawing from her, until she broke up with him. He was not originally in danger of being replaced, but his fear of being replaced caused him to destroy the relationship.

When problems arise, look carefully to yourself. Are your actions making the problem worse? Are you blaming a partner for something she hasn't done yet, just because you're afraid she might? Are you actually pushing her toward doing what you don't want? What are the expectations between you? Have you communicated them clearly?

Another version of a destructive feedback loop is what we call the deadly chain. It usually begins simply, perhaps with a compromise that ends up bargaining away something you need to be happy, or with a series of concessions that turn into entitlement creep. Or maybe you've given up some degree of bodily autonomy, like agreeing not to choose a certain type of partner or agreeing not to have certain kinds of sex with new lovers. So now you've agreed to something, and you feel unhappy. Over time your feelings drift from "I'm unhappy that I made that choice," to "I'm unhappy," to "My partner is asking me to be unhappy," to "My partner is making me unhappy," to "I have the right to make my partner unhappy too." Now you're playing the tit-for-tat unhappiness game, where each of you considers your own comfort over the happiness of your partners—descending the deadly chain toward its bitter end.

You can avoid the deadly chain if you are willing to closely examine your priorities, especially as they relate to your happiness. What boundaries can you set to protect your actual needs? How important is your own autonomy? Are you communicating your boundaries and needs? If you have negotiated away something that turns out to be an essential part of your happiness, you always have the right to renegotiate to get it back.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle

The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play by Bertolt Brecht, based on the story of the Judgment of Solomon. It involves a young boy whose parentage is disputed: two women claim to be his mother. To decide custody, the judge assigns a test: a circle is drawn on the ground in chalk, and the boy is placed in the middle. The two women stand on either side of the circle, and each take an arm. The judge says that whoever pulls the boy out of the circle gets him. If they pull him apart, they will get part.

You can probably tell how this ends. One of the women refuses to pull hard enough. The judge declares her the true mother, because she is the one who refused to hurt the child. In poly relationships, there are overt cases where two (or more) partners try to pull a pivot person away from the other; the one who cares least about the damage being done to the relationships pulls hardest. And there are plenty of cases where a partner comes right out and says, "You have to choose between him and me." But the tug-of-war is often far subtler than that. Conflicts over scheduling or other commitments, or ongoing struggles with jealousy, or a desire to limit another relationship or to create a relationship structure that makes the other relationships more difficult can create chronic tension, with the pivot feeling pulled in two.

There's no wise judge, of course, to decide who is the more worthy partner. Even following the metaphor of the chalk circle—that the partner who is pulling the least is the more "worthy"—isn't always the best decision. A partner who's demanding that you make a choice might be engaging in valid boundary-setting: "I can no longer remain in a relationship with you if you continue your relationship with Ellen." If you're one of the people "pulling," and you see your partner in pain, it may seem obvious that the thing to do is stop pulling—but that's often harder than it seems. When you see someone else pulling on the other side, it can be terrifying just to let go—because if you do, they'll just go flying out of the circle, into the arms of the other partner. Right?

Of course, in poly relationships, the person in the circle is not a helpless child. She is an adult with agency, capable of making her own choices. To trust enough to stop pulling is to trust your partner to make choices to be with you and nurture your relationship of her own volition. And for the person in the circle, the best survival strategy is firm, clear boundary-setting, such as "I need you to stop pulling on me"—repeated as often as necessary. Make clear and specific commitments about allocating your time, attention and other resources, and then stick to them (see also ping-pong poly).

One possible coping strategy comes from the original story of the Judgment of Solomon, a solution known as "splitting the baby." In the Judgment of Solomon, the setup is similar: two putative mothers arguing over custody of a child. Solomon commands that the baby be cut in two, with each woman to receive half each. One woman proclaims, "It shall be neither mine nor yours—divide it!" The other woman begs Solomon to spare the child, even if it means giving it to the other woman. Solomon, of course, awards custody to the second woman. In legal parlance, "splitting the baby" has come to refer to splitting the difference in negotiations. In the poly version of this story, "splitting the baby" might be a zero-sum relationship (discussed in chapter 16).

Mismatched desire

One of the advantages of polyamory we've talked about is not being dependent on one person to meet your sexual needs. In monogamous relationships, mismatched sexual desire is very common and can become an enormous source of stress; in polyamorous relationships, there's at least the option for a person with the high libido to seek multiple lovers and for the other to have some guilt-free peace.

However, mismatched sexual desire still creates problems in polyamory! Sexual desire is not always general; sometimes a person is drawn to one particular other more than the desire is reciprocated. This can create just as much tension in poly relationships as in monogamous ones. There's no easy solution. All healthy sexual relationships are consensual; we don't believe it's reasonable to expect someone to have sex more often than he wants to. Feelings of guilt or pressure around sex breed resentment, and resentment tends to depress sexual desire even more, creating a self-reinforcing cycle.

Sexual desire isn't necessarily something that can be summoned with the snap of the fingers. If your partner desires you more than you desire him, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with either you or the relationship. It happens. Gentleness with yourself and each other is likely to be much better for your relationship than guilt or blame.

Some positive steps may help rekindle desire. Taking time to be in touch with yourself and your partner without distractions or outside stressors can help set the mood. Spending time touching without an expectation of sex or orgasm at the end can also help. Some couples are happy to grow close by one masturbating while the other cuddles and squeezes. Laurie B. Mintz's book A Tired Woman's Guide to Passionate Sex has been found in a peer-reviewed study to help improve the sexual connection in long-term relationships.

But sometimes the only thing that can be done about mismatched desire is to accept that it is what it is, and that a relationship is more than an exchange of sexual gratification.

Bar-raisers

Bar-raisers are a specific kind of game changer, and they may just be the scariest monster hiding under the poly bed. No one wants to talk about them, yet many—if not all—of the rules and structures imposed on new relationships are designed, at least in part, to protect against them. But they happen, they hurt a lot, and like all game changers, they can't be prevented.

Poly people like to say that one of the advantages of polyamory is we don't have to give up an existing relationship when someone new comes along. That's true, but…sometimes we meet a new person who highlights the flaws in an existing relationship and teaches us that there's truly a better way to live. Or maybe your existing relationship was just fine, but the new partner may show you new things, make you happier, help you realize you can have something you never thought possible, help you see the world in a different light. They may lead you to want more, or they may help you to be more. After that you can't quite go home again.

Sometimes a bar-raiser can change what we want from all our relationships, or change what we look for in a partner. Sometimes they end up making our other relationships better—though often not until after a fair amount of strife. Sometimes we may decide that other relationships should end. Bar-raisers show us that things we had taken for granted aren't necessarily true. In doing that, they show us paths to happiness we didn't know existed. Suddenly, things we had always accepted don't look so acceptable anymore.

franklin's Story My relationship with Amber was a bar-raiser. Many of the compromises I had taken for granted as part of polyamory—giving up the freedom to choose my own partners, always having to keep others subordinate to my relationship with Celeste—became too painful to bear with Amber. But more than that, Amber showed me that a different approach was possible: I could have poly relationships without these compromises.

I have also been on the other side of this process. When I started dating my partner Vera, she had three other relationships. Two of those met some, but not all, of her relationship needs. Each offered something she wanted, but with strings and conditions: one was hierarchical, with Vera as a secondary partner, and the other was a good sexual fit but not a good partner fit. Her relationship with me threw the problems into sharp relief, altering those relationships. pinstripe

The bar-raiser is the worst fear of people in established relationships, because it shows us what's possible. It shows us we don't have to live with compromises we once thought were unavoidable. When your partner lands in a relationship that's at a whole new level of awesome, it can be difficult not to internalize feelings of shame, inadequacy or failure. But doing that can make the problem worse, because when we feel ashamed or inadequate, we're more likely to lash out or be controlling. Feelings of inadequacy create a climate hostile to compassion and understanding.

This is one of those times when compassion begins at home. None of us are perfect. Nobody is so good at relationships that we have nothing new to learn. Good relationships are a journey, not a destination. If someone shows us better ways to do things, that's okay. In fact, it's better than okay; it's marvelous! It can truly make our lives better.

Bar-raising relationships aren't exclusive to polyamory. When a person in a monogamous relationship meets someone who raises the bar, the results tend to be catastrophic. People in monogamous relationships are sometimes so fearful of bar-raisers that they don't permit their partners even to have opposite-sex friends. But preventing a poly partner from meeting someone who raises the bar is difficult or impossible. When bar-raisers do happen, they alter the landscape. Scary as it is, we think that's a good thing. Ideally, something great happening to us spurs us to improve all of our existing relationships, revisiting the parts that don't work and building something better in their place.

If you're in a relationship and meet someone who raises the bar for you, be graceful and compassionate. Don't compare your partners to each other. "Why can't you be more like Jordan?" is corrosive to a relationship. Don't rank. Don't blame. Instead, say "We had negotiated this particular arrangement, and it doesn't work for me now. Let's renegotiate. Let's build something stronger. Here are my ideas about how we can do this."

If your partner starts a relationship with someone who raises the bar, you are challenged to rise above your limitations and move with courage toward the best version of yourself. A relationship that raises the bar can, sometimes, be a blessing in disguise: it can show you how to make all your relationships that much better. But not always. Sometimes a new relationship reveals flaws in an existing relationship that can't be fixed. When that happens, there may be no easy way to handle it. The flawed relationship may end.

Abuse

Some relationships are actively destructive to the people in them, emotionally or physically. Contrary to stereotype, an abusive relationship is often complicated and not always obvious, especially to those inside it. When we think of problematic poly relationships, we tend to focus on the fear that a new partner will be destructive, but often, it's an existing partner that's the problem. After all, longer-lasting relationships have had more time for dysfunctional or toxic patterns to emerge and solidify.

When you're partnered with someone who's in a harmful relationship with someone else, it can be difficult to know what to do. Both of us have found ourselves connected through a partner to an abusive relationship. In Franklin's case, one of his partners started a new relationship that turned abusive. In Eve's case, she became involved with someone who was already in an abusive relationship. In both cases we felt helpless to protect our partners or intervene in the abusive dynamic.

Abuse often develops slowly, insidiously. It's dangerous to pin your hopes on your partner waking up one day and seeing how bad the situation is. It's more dangerous still to rely on your partner leaving the abusive relationship. Abuse is usually much more obvious to people outside the relationship than those who are in it. And people who do know they are in abusive situations often feel powerless to leave.

If you know or suspect that a partner is in an abusive situation, you may find there is little you can do directly—other than tell him your observations, express your concern, and let him know you're there to support him if and when he decides to try to leave. You cannot rescue your partner, and it can be dangerous to your own mental health to try. In the end, only your partner can rescue himself. Abuse hotlines can offer you more detailed advice—they get many calls from concerned friends and family.

Being in an intimate relationship with someone who is suffering abuse—especially if you fear for their physical safety—can cause you trauma. It's important to set good boundaries for yourself, care for yourself and avoid getting drawn into the abuse dynamic, either as a victim or as a rescuer. Consider talking to a qualified mental health practitioner—not to help you figure out how to save your partner, but for your own sake. In some cases, you may need to protect yourself by limiting your involvement in the relationship or withdrawing from it entirely.

One area where the waters can become very muddy is in hierarchical relationships. We talked more about these relationships in chapter 11. It can be extremely difficult to tease out the warning signs of abuse in hierarchies, because hierarchical relationships can mimic some of the structures of abusive monogamous relationships.

Many primers on abusive relationships list "cuts a person off from other sources of support" as a prime warning sign. Other classic markers include someone making decisions for a partner and expecting her to obey without question, requiring her to check in frequently and report what she is doing, sharing her private information without consent, dismissing or disregarding her feelings, or restricting her access to other people in general. These are ways an abuser creates control, helplessness and isolation.

Each of these red flags sometimes exists in hierarchical poly relationships. In polyamory, limiting a partner's sources of support can play out through restrictions on other relationships, especially rules that prevent a partner from seeing others unless the primary partner is present. Someone who tries to limit a partner's contact with others is not necessarily abusive, but this sure makes abuse easier.

One common element of many hierarchical relationships is that "secondary" partners are not expected—or permitted—to provide certain kinds of support to the "primary" partners. For instance, if a person is sick, there may be a rule that only that person's primary partner is allowed to be a caregiver; secondary partners are not. Other hierarchical relationships may place restrictions on the type of emotional support a secondary partner is permitted to offer, or ask of, a primary partner. Such restrictions too are signs of an unhealthy dynamic.

Many hierarchical structures require that a partner have sex with both members of a couple in order to continue in a relationship with one of them. We believe that requiring that someone have sex with you, and threatening to withhold access to support (such as an intimate relationship with another) if sex is refused, is always coercive and always abusive.

Relationship implosions

At some point, you are likely to find yourself involved with someone who has another relationship that's falling apart. This can put you in an extraordinarily difficult position. When your partner's other relationship is disintegrating, you have the difficult balancing act of being supportive without being sucked into the blast radius. It's easy to get emotionally involved when you see your partner hurting. That makes it easy to take sides, seeing the third party only through the lens of your partner's pain. At the same time, you may also become an easy scapegoat for the other relationship's problems.

There's no easy path through this swamp, at least not that we've found. As hard as it is to see someone you love in pain, often you can do little other than be a shoulder to cry on and a place of refuge if needed. This is one of the downsides to polyamory; the odds are good that, sooner or later, someone else will hurt somebody you love, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

One bit of advice we can give is: Do not underestimate how people will hold on to hope for a relationship long after it seems obvious to others that it's over. No matter how much a relationship is hurting your partner, don't assume that eventually he will see this and let go. Don't assume that if your partner is talking about ending it, he actually will. Human hearts have a phenomenal ability to hang on. Sometimes this serves us, but sometimes it doesn't. We often cling to things long after they have stopped bringing us joy.

So for your part, if your partner's harmful or imploding relationship is hurting you, don't hang on yourself in the hope that your partner will end it. Until it's over—and sometimes until long after—you're better off assuming that it will continue. Even if your partner says it won't. We've seen people go back to unhealthy relationships far too many times, even after leaving or promising to leave. If you know you cannot be in a relationship with your partner if he stays in his damaging relationship, then the best decision might be to leave now—before you, too, become too invested in (or damaged by) the situation to be able to leave.

Often you find that in your partner's story, and the story they spread to their social circle, you are cast as the villain—particularly if you are relatively new. When a relationship is in crisis, it's easy to blame an "outsider." Again, there's no easy way through this, but we can give you this important truth to help you get through it: It's not you. Even if you're advocating for your needs and that's upsetting your metamour, even if part of the strife in the other relationship is jealousy or fear related to you—it's not you. As long as you act with integrity and recognize your partner's right to make choices, without controlling or manipulating him, you are not responsible for your partner's relationship with his other partners. You are not to blame simply because you have added value to another person's life.

Mental health issues and polyamory

Mental health issues complicate all relationships. When you add things like anxiety disorders, depression or bipolar disorder to the mix, poly relationship challenges become a lot harder—and in some cases, intractable. A person with a serious psychiatric disorder may also lack the emotional, and in some cases the financial, means to support himself, which can cause him or his partner to feel trapped.

Fully disclosing your known mental health issues is an important part of ethical relationships, because withholding information from anyone about things that affect them erodes informed consent. If you have a mental health issue that is likely to affect those close to you, or if you are partnered with someone whose mental health issues affect your ability to interact with others (for example, if you are a caretaker for someone, or if a partner has a history of violence against herself or others), you are ethically obligated to disclose this information. Unfortunately, the stigma attached to mental health problems can discourage full disclosure. It's our responsibility to treat these disclosures with understanding and compassion, and to make it safe for our partners or potential partners to talk to us.

If you're partnered with someone who has a mental health issue, it can become difficult to treat new people ethically and responsibly. New relationships can be especially triggering to people with some kinds of psychiatric disorders. For example, bipolar disorder is associated with higher rates of divorce and increased substance abuse, and high rates of anxiety can make coping with jealousy or a partner's absences much more challenging. People who have suffered abuse or abandonment may experience uncontrolled anxiety or fear of loss when their partners become involved with other people. This is particularly true if the mental health issues are untreated.

If you're involved with someone who has a partner with mental health issues, and a dysfunctional dynamic exists between your partner and her partner, it can sometimes be difficult to keep yourself from being drawn into that dynamic. It's important to keep a clear distinction between being a partner and being a therapist. Few people are qualified to act as therapists. Even if we are trained for it, therapy usually requires emotional distance—the exact opposite of what we need to nurture romantic relationships.

If you have a mental health issue that affects your ability to engage in ethical relationships, it's also important to take whatever steps you can to mitigate these effects. This might mean therapy, treatment, and making sure you get enough exercise and sleep.

One problem that can arise with some mental health issues is unwillingness to seek treatment, because the issue has become a way to avoid dealing with other problems in a relationship. For example, if you're afraid of your partner spending time with another partner, and you know you can use your mental health issue to require your partner's attention, it can be easy to fall into a pattern where you find you need your partner's support whenever she is about to go on a date.

Similarly, the standard poly advice to "Only add new partners that enhance existing relationships" can, in practice, end up being used to tiptoe around mental health issues. If this policy results in only adding new partners who are okay with a dysfunctional relationship dynamic, or who help enable a person with mental health issues to avoid treatment, we would argue that the policy is not helping anyone.

There are no hard and fast guidelines for relationships involving mental health problems, though setting and communicating clear boundaries is a vital tool. The best advice we can offer is to make choices about what level of involvement is or isn't appropriate for you, and to set your boundaries accordingly.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Not all problems have solutions. When troubles come up that defy answers, you may find no path out that doesn't involve pain. When that happens, the best you can do is try to reach for the best, kindest, most courageous version of yourself. These questions may help when you're faced with the inevitable poly puzzles: