Yes, that’s a Dune reference and a Fleetwood Mac song title. I never said I was cool.

So, I feel like this is going to be something of an admission, but I’m going to put it out there.

I feel jealousy.

I imagine I feel it with the same intensity as anyone else. In the early days of exploring polyamory, I knew plenty of people who would remark “I never feel jealousy! When I see my partner with another I instead feel compersion.”

Well, I’m very fucking happy for you, but the idea of never feeling jealousy in any level is anathema to me. I’m not saying that I’m constantly mere minutes from enacting violent retribution on all of my metamours (no, really, guys … we cool), but my jealousy is a heckler in a crowded room.

Some days he’s quiet and surly at the back of the room and you barely notice him. Sometimes he’s a loud mouth drunk and raving in the front row and so much harder to ignore. But every time he’s there in some capacity. I do feel this “compersion” that people speak of, but on some level I will more or less always have a jealous reaction too. Sometimes it’s a fragile eidolon of an emotion barely there long enough to be perceived. Sometimes it’s a fist of ice around my heart.

Sounds pretty unpleasant, doesn’t it? So why do I put myself through it? Why choose to put myself in a position that will result in some level of suffering?

My answer is, “because it doesn’t matter! Not a whit!” I don’t act out of anger, I don’t act out of lethargy, I don’t act out of hunger, I don’t act out of pain. Our bodies, over the centuries, have developed a million complicated senses and that’s why we survived. They’re defences. We tell hot and cold when we touch objects that make us more hot or cold. The more it’s going to do that, the less we enjoy the feeling. When something is damaging the meat of our bodies, our bodies give us pain to drive us away from the source of the trauma.

Jealousy is just another signal my brain produces, and I decided a long time ago that I don’t need it. I consider it a vestigial emotion and I imagine it as a throwback to the stereotype of the violent caveman: “Your hold on this woman is challenged! Cave in his skull or he may take her from you! And then how will your seed continue?!”

But I don’t need this useless emotion. Like the coccyx, the appendix, or the wisdom teeth, it’s an atavism, a leftover drive from a darker time, where violence was an everyday tool of survival and civilization was a concept that couldn’t be expressed with the languages of the time.

But it’s there, and it isn’t comfortable.

I’m not meaning to sound like I conquered it; I just decided that I don’t want jealousy to motivate my decisions. That isn’t the kind of fight you win — you just win each round, knowing you’ll have to put your fists up again later. But it certainly gets easier the more you do it.

I have my wife M. and I love her dearly. When we first started dating we were polyamorous, and some days my jealousy could be palpable, but I was always knew it was my problem to deal with and not hers. We’ve been married a year and a half today, and our love is strong as can be. The heckler is a tiny voice drowned out in a sea of well wishers… but he’s there.

Doe lives 200 miles away, we rarely get to interact without the Internet as our medium, and she likes to post evocative pictures of herself to the Internet  and some days the complimentary posts from faceless boys on the Internet can annoy me on some base competitive level. But she means as much to me as I do to her, and I’d never restrain her.

Jane and I have only been involved for 2 months, but it’s been intense. We’re using words like love, and meaning it. Jane has several partners and one very serious one that isn’t me, but meeting my metamours in this branch hasn’t been a challenge, as Jane has impeccable taste. And when she’s visiting a partner in another state and tells me she’s jumping offline to go make a boy very lucky, I’ll tell her to give him a high five from me when they’re done, and I’ll mean it… but he’s there, that heckler, in the back of that auditorium somewhere. He’ll never completely shut up.

I don’t want it to sound like my life is a constant struggle to keep myself from anger or black moods, my life is (to borrow a term) blessed. I have multiple women who love me, and I love them right back.

This is the life I chose and I regret not a damn thing.

From the desk of Jane

Like our intrepid author, I often hear a number of statements about polyamory that are utter tripe. The difference, though, is that I often hear them from people in or espousing traditional monogamous relationships who have one or more of the following problems:

a) they don’t understand polyamory;
b) they feel threatened by polyamorous relationship models;
or
c) they find some moral quandary within it or around it that precludes them from taking a rational stance on the matter.

Here, in the spirit of Jamie and Adam, ye busters of myths, I’ll lay out both how these statements are untrue and also how not to be a dick to your poly friends. You don’t have to grok it, but it is incumbent on you not to be a weenie about it.

#1 – “You’re just greedy!” / “You just want to steal someone’s boyfriend!”

I generally hear this from people who feel threatened about the fact that I have a few partners and am fairly open to more. (Amusingly, I’ve heard this same statement for a different reason from someone who was, ah, less than understanding about my pansexuality.)

I’m going to break this one down into two parts:
1. Polyamorous people — assuming they adhere to some model of ethical nonmonogamy — actually typically have a few more steps to go through when acquiring a partner. I, for instance, would need to give a heads-up to no less than three people, and probably more if we incorporate infrequent or casual partners. We would have to talk about it if it came around to being a serious thing, we’d have to talk if a metamour got upset, we’d have to talk about consent and condoms and coitus and all of the other bits and bobs that go with negotiating a sexual-possibly-romantic relationship.

Half the time, a serious relationship with someone would be impossible due to lacking enough time to devote to them, even if I want to.

2. I probably don’t want your boyfriend, and even if I did, fucking around in someone else’s relationship isn’t how I roll. It’s largely not how others in the poly community roll either. I mean, sure, we have our share of douchebags, but you get that anywhere and it’s best not to let them colour your opinion of the rest of us.

Besides, I’ve been in a relationship where my partner was a monogamous sort and I was polyamorous. I can say confidently that 99% of the time, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

#2 – “Aren’t you just cheating?”

Everyone knows about it and is, for the most part, okay with it, barring the few foibles that every relationship goes through. Here’s a pretty open secret: It’s really hard to cheat in poly relationships.

It is not impossible. Breaking the terms of your relationship agreement constitutes cheating — it just so happens that monogamous relationships, by definition, have a clause regarding sexual exclusivity. You are expected to direct your sexual attentions only to the person you are in a relationship with. Polyamorous relationships don’t have that, but I would most definitely be cheating if I neglected to use a condom with somebody without telling the boyfriend I’m currently not using condoms with.

In other words, we might not be exclusive, but we sure as shit have ground rules. You’d be hard-pressed to find a poly couple or group that has an anything-goes mindset — feelings getting hurt and inadequately dealt with is the number one reason that a poly relationship will fail.

#3 – “Isn’t polygamy illegal?”

Well, yes, but first off, polygamy is one man with multiple wives, and while that’s a similar relationship model, there are a lot of differences. More importantly, that’s a reeeeeally loaded word, and it’s not what we’re doing.

Polyamory is just what its roots say it is — “poly”, from Ancient Greek “polus” — ‘many, much’, + “amor”, from Latin ‘love’. “Many loves”. (Though it does indeed mix Greek and Latin roots. Shameful.) Ain’t nobody told me I can’t love whomever and however many I want — they just said I can’t marry them.

Given that I lack faith in the institution of marriage for myself, this isn’t much of a problem unless I want a partner to be on my insurance or some other practical conundrum that would be solved by being legally wed. In that case it would probably be a marriage of convenience, and further given that adultery and bigamy laws are not enforced (because then half of Congress would be in prison), I’m not particularly concerned and I’ll cross that bridge if I ever come to it.

So no — what I’m doing is aboveboard both in the eyes of the law and the eyes of my partners.

#4 – “You probably have an STI.”

In light of how I and our intrepid author just explained that protection is a must, this is a silly question.

Consider: there are monogamous people not currently in relationships who have a lot more sex with a lot less protection than I do. I use protection with all but one partner, get tested every six months for the full gamut of STIs, and have come back negative for everything in every test I’ve had. I also don’t do casual sex. Many do, but you’ll find that a lot of those same people in the poly community find protection pretty important and get tested on the regular.

While an STI isn’t something to be ashamed of, rather a preventable medical issue that should be discussed with your doctor, assuming that those who are fairly promiscuous but adhere to safer sex practices must have them is lashing out for no reason.

#5 – “Oh, you’ll settle down and commit to someone someday.”

“Oh, you’ll be straight someday.”
“Oh, you’ll be white someday.”
“Oh, you’ll be cis someday.”
“Oh, you’ll be upper-class someday.”

Just to establish how completely fucking absurd that sounds.

Also – I am committed to my partners. If I’m with them all for the rest of my life, would that not be commitment of the highest caliber? You can commit to more than one friend or family member – why not more than one lover?

—

I think that covers the bulk of the things I hear from monogamous people or couples about polyamory. I’m not going to touch on the moral quandary parts as they’re contentious, prescriptive, and often beneath contempt.

Our intrepid author has graciously agreed to allow me to vent my spleen more than once, so you’ll be seeing more of my howling and yowling.

‘Til next time.

So I’ve mentioned (at some length) that poly is not a simple way to live your life. It is, in fact, fucking complicated. As soon as you open your relationship to the idea of multiple partners, it can snowball in complexity and without serious conversations and serious rules you can really quickly find that one of you has run roughshod over the emotional needs of the other. During a recent conversation with my girlfriend, I came up with a hard and fast set of tenets for how I feel good polyamory should be set up.
These are not rules, they are the precursors, the ideas upon which you choose to set your rules, and they are as follows:

 

1. Keep me in the loop.
2. Be respectful.
3. Use protection.
4. Never stop talking.

They’re fairly hard and fast, and they’re certainly not complete and they certainly weren’t handed down on a stone tablet by Moses, so let me expand upon them a little and explain what I mean here.

 

Keep me in the loop

“Keep me in the loop” can mean as little or as much as you and your partner decide.

So our relationship is set up in such a way that we’re able to have relationships with other people, awesome!

But I need to know about the other relationships.

Now, the two of you need to figure out what level of communication you need. Do I tell you when a relationship ends & when a new one starts & we leave it there? Do I tell you every time I go on dates, but skimp on the details? Do I sit down with you after a date and regale you with tales of fine foods, good drinks & cunnilingus?

You choose the level of communication.

I would take special note here to say that yes, there are people who operate on something of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis of communication in their relationships, “I know you sleep with other people, but I never want to know more than that”. I pass no judgment (if it works for you, great!); but in the case of these relationships, “keep me in the loop” still matters, if purely in the sense that your partner cannot be operating under the assumption that they are your only partner. They may choose to insulate themselves from any further information, like how many or how serious those other relationships are. But if they think they’re in a monogamous relationship, and they’re not, then I’m sorry but you’re cheating.

 

Be respectful

This could also be labelled “Always keep me in mind”.

This basically comes down to the fact that when you’re making decisions about other relationships, you’re no longer just considering the impact for you and your partner. All the metamours are in the picture too. No, you don’t need to consult everyone when deciding what’s going to be “our song”, but if you and a partner do something like consider forgoing condoms, then there may be other people you need to have a conversation with. This neatly leads into… 

Use protection

Again this one is heavily customizable, running from “While we sleep with other people we don’t come into contact with other people’s fluids — dental dams, condoms, and gloves every time for every act” all the way to “it’s cool if you trust them and don’t have a condom at the time”.

I’m not going to get into a discussion about what levels of protection you should stick to — that’s for you and your partners — but once those standards are set, they need to be adhered to. Otherwise, you’re risking the sexual health of many more than just you.

 

Never stop talking

So we’ve set boundaries and guidelines for how our relationship is going forward.

Awesome! Go us!

But we’re people, and people change, and new relationships make us change faster. There are going to come points when our rules need to shift, or new rules need to appear, or old rules need to go away.
Never stop talking, never stop asking “Are we ok?”, never stop asking “Are you happy?”, and always remember that you’re following the spirit of the law and not the letter. You’re going to have conflicts in spite of your rules. If you have a rule, and it’s worth enforcing, then it’s worth discussing.

Following these guidelines will not automatically shield you and your relationship from strife. There will always be times when there is flux or conflict, and sometimes these guidelines will need to be scrapped completely and a new set drafted. But they’re a good framework for how you treat your partners & how you consider their needs.