That’s what’s on this week’s episode of Non-Monogamy Help.

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Podcast Transcript

I've recently started out on a non monogamy journey, it started out as my long term nesting partner and I exploring being open and playing with other people but we have since met someone and fallen for them and are trying to develop a relationship as a triad.

A lot of the advice online talks about how important it is to deconstruct monogamy and the assumptions behind that but there is very little practical advice on how to do that, what would you recommend?

Response

So I don't believe in deconstructing monogamy. What does that even mean? I know what they mean, right? I know what people actually mean, but it really bugs me when people act like monogamy is this thing that we're infected with that you have to purge your body of, or whatever. I know that's not what they—you don't have to deconstruct monogamy. Okay?

What they actually mean is that if you've started your relationship as monogamous—it doesn't say that you did. It says that you started out with a long-term nesting partner. And generally speaking, this is like, I'd say, seven times out of 10, most people start off in a monogamous relationship. They decide they want to open the relationship. People don't tend to start off as being an independent polyamorous person— independent, single polyamorous person. Sometimes they do—I did—but seven times out of 10, and this is a total statistic I pull from my ass, it's basically what I hear from.

It may be that actually way more people start off as independent polyam people, and it's just that I hear from the people who come to me for help, who have been in a couple and opened, right? But I'd say either way, what tends to happen when somebody is in a long-term relationship, usually heterosexual, but not necessarily always, and they decide that they want to open their relationship, a lot of times they decide that the safest way to do this is to find a "third."

There are a lot of problems with this, because the expectation seems to be that this magical third person—which is called unicorn hunting for a reason—this magical third person will come into their relationship. Usually it's a bisexual woman, and usually it's a heterosexual couple, but not always. But this person will come into their relationship and they'll fit perfectly, and they'll love both people in the couple and everyone will get along, and usually they want a closed triad—they don't want the other people dating other people. And it's just this magical experience that will be perfect and wonderful. It's very unrealistic for lots of reasons.

Now, you may have been in a situation where you managed to find a person who does get along with you both. It can happen. It's not impossible. It can happen, and you both kind of gel with them and you want to have a triad. There's nothing really wrong with this. And I don't like the idea that triads are like “advanced level polyamory”, and you need to be advanced level in order to—I don't believe that.

I do think that a lot of times people refuse to acknowledge the very real hierarchies that are in place. And these aren't necessarily hierarchies that you've put in place knowingly. There's lots of things going on. I have really bi g problems with the way that the word "couples privilege" is used throughout the polyamory community. And I have written before that I don't think it exists in the way that people use it. I'm not going to get into the weeds of that debate right now.

But what I will say is that if you were to have a best friend and you lived in a town all your life, and this is somebody who you grew up with from adolescence, you've been playing together, and somebody new moved into your town and you wanted to be their friend. It's not to say that you care more about the best friend that you've spent your entire childhood with more than you care about this new person, but you have a whole history with that person that this new relationship is very different to. And you can't really—it's not a competition, but you can't really compete with that in a way.

And I think that we have these ideas of hierarchy and love hierarchy in the sense of how much you feel or care about somebody isn't something that most people practice, even monogamous people. Even though we have a society that encourages us to believe that romantic relationships are the most important and monogamous people are actively encouraged to only have this deep, intimate romantic relationship with their one romantic partner, I don't think that people actively sit there and go, "I care more about my romantic partner than all my friends or all my family," right? I don't think people actively think that way.

And the only reason why we're ever put in a situation where we have to choose between our friendships and our romantic relationships or our family are really traumatic, horrible situations. I don't believe that we actively sit there and measure the amounts of love we have for different people in our lives and who we care about more. I don't think that actually happens.

And I think the confusing aspect about this, when people go from being in a couple to opening up and dating other people, is that they're operating on an understandable assumption, which is, "Well, of course, I'm not going to love my partner more than I love anybody else. Yeah, I have been with my partner for years. But that doesn't mean that I don't love—" it's the same exact thing when you have—I'm not a parent, but I will say, you have one child, you don't have another child because you don't love that one enough. You don't love one child more than you love the other child, unless you're a very bad person. We don't think that way.

And where people get confused is that they think that this love hierarchy, or love non-hierarchy, translates into time spent, and they never actually address it, because it's not about deconstructing monogamy. It's about—you have a script in monogamy that you can follow, a cultural script which has been encouraged and reinforced, a script which actually doesn't even fit all monogamous people. And you might be following that without even realising it.

You opened your relationship. But have you really discussed how much time you want to spend with each other versus other people? Because there's all different types of ways to practice polyamory. But the one thing that is super common, and that is a big difference between polyamory and monogamy, is that you will not get as much time with your partner in polyamory as you would typically get in monogamy, although there are some monogamous relationships where people have time-intensive hobbies or careers where they don't see their partner that often. And for some people, that's not a monogamous relationship they want to enter into, even if they're interested in monogamy.

So what you need to do, rather than deconstructing monogamy, is you need to think about: All right, what does it mean to be in a triad? Why do you want to be in a triad? What happens if this other person—Person C, I'm going to say rather than "the third," because I think that's reinforcing a lot of problematic shit—what if Person C decides that they don't want to have a relationship with you anymore, but they still want to have a relationship with your partner?

A lot of people conceive of triads as—you have the relationship that you have with your partner, you have the relationship you have with C, there's the relationship that C has with your partner, and then there's the relationship you have together as a triad. And all of those relationships need watering and nurturing and growing. You don't have to be a triad. You can both date the same person without necessarily being a triad. So why “triad”? What does that mean functionally in your relationship?

Are you looking to have a third person join you in your house? Can you acknowledge the fact that C is new to this situation, and the relationships that you build with C and the relationships your partner builds with C may be meaningful and may be wonderful, but you and your partner have had all of this time together already, and you're nesting, so that means you have a shared living space.

Even if that doesn't necessarily mean you have quality time together, because a lot of people who live together think that just being in the same physical place is quality time, and it's not—you still have easier access to each other than C has with either of you. So there is an inequity.

Is there a desire to move C in? How do you want to live? Because you and your partner and C can all be polyamorous, and you can all be wildly incompatible in terms of how you want to live your life. If C is an independent person, and let's say C is solo polyam—maybe C has never had any interest, and never will have any interest in living with you all. Are you okay with that?

What if your work schedule gets super busy and super hectic, but your partner's work schedule isn't, so C ends up seeing your partner more than they see you? There's a lot of stuff going on here. And what people mean by deconstructing monogamy, which I don't think any of this is inherent to monogamy—I think this is just about actually realising that there is a hierarchy here, and not just falling into the scripts that you're given and behaving as though you're basically a monogamous couple with a side chick, who you both like. You know what I mean—I said side chick, but I don't know the gender of this person, but this is what I mean.

Don't automatically fall into those scripts. Really talk with your partner about your individual goals for polyamory. Talk with C if you really want to be a triad. Make it a group conversation about each of your individual goals. Do you want to date outside of this triad? Are you all looking for a closed triad? What is the goal there? What happens if one of you break up? What happens if the triad ends but C is still interested in dating one of you? What happens?

Don't just think it won't happen because you've—what happens if that happens? Is there children involved? Is there property purchasing involved? All of these things are really important things to consider, rather than just following a cultural script where you and your partner are basically having fun times with another person, and the second it gets difficult, you're going to chuck C out like a defunct warp core and just save the couple over this third person. Are you really going to do that? Are you going to really prioritise the relationship you have with your partner?

If there's a really bad situation, is that what you're going to do? If you and your partner start having arguments about C, how are you all going to come together and talk about it? So there's a lot of stuff that's involved that you should think about.
And the problem is that when a lot of people decide that they want to open their relationship—and it doesn't sound like you guys went out to find “a third”, it just sounds like you were kind of open, and you were doing maybe kind of a swingery thing, and you've both met someone, and you've both individually fallen for them, and that's fine—but I think you guys have to really think about why the triad?

Why not parallel relationships, where you date that person and your partner dates that person? Is there a specific reason for being in a triad? Is it—could you start off in a more parallel relationship, where you get to know C more, and your partner gets to know C more, and then you both hang out all three together at times, and see how that goes, and see if it develops into something that is more triad-like? Because I really think that if you put pressure on the situation to be a “triad”, I don't know if that will necessarily be helpful.

So I think—yeah, I have a visceral reaction to the concept of deconstructing monogamy, which is not your fault. It's just me getting tired, because I just think that monogamy doesn't necessarily mean that all people follow—there is a cultural script of monocentrism, and maybe I'm just being pedantic, but it's different, and you don't necessarily have to follow that script. But I think you should be aware of it, because a lot of people end up following that script without realising it, because there is no, as you said, practical advice on how to do a lot of this stuff. There's no real cultural examples of how it's been done.

The only kind of cultural and media examples—I'm not an expert on the media examples of polyamory, because I don't tend to watch a lot of romance, so I don't tend to watch things that would be more likely to have polyamory in them. I would definitely go to Genevieve King for that at Chill Polyamory, for better understandings of media representations of polyamory.

But there is a lack of information about this, and what that often means is that people who start off in couples that have been monogamous, which you don't explicitly say, but it sounds like it was, they end up kind of following the cultural script anyways. They kind of end up treating the third person, even if they call it a triad, as fun, disposable arm candy that they can just throw out the second that things get hard, and they don't really consider the relationship that they have with this third person to be as valuable or as worth saving as the relationship they have with each other.

And a lot of times, this isn't necessarily spoken out loud, and I don't think that it's wildly inappropriate to want to save a relationship that you've been in longer over a relationship you've been in for less time. I don't always think that that application or that thought process is about not valuing the third person involved, but I think you just have to be really real about it and acknowledge it and be aware of its influence, just like the best friend example that I gave.

It's not that you care less about this new person, but you have this whole history with this other person. And you know, this new best friend that you have, you can still have a close relationship. That relationship can still be meaningful to you, that relationship can still matter. And it's not as if you're being—if you're being forced to pick between two best friends, you're always going to pick the one that you've known the longest. That's not the case, but to pretend as though you haven't had this long history with this one person that you don't have with a new person, it's kind of washing over the situation.

Because there might be things, situations that come up and feelings that come up that you can't actually acknowledge, if you're just sort of pulling the wool over your own eyes and going, "Yeah, it's fine. It's because I care about them equally, and it doesn't matter." It does matter. Context does matter, and especially if you're nesting partners, especially if you live together, that does add a power differential, which, again, is not necessarily wrong. You don't have to live with all of your partners to be egalitarian in your approach of how you do this, but it absolutely does create a power differential.

And I'm the first one who can say that living with someone, living with a partner, being a nesting partner, doesn't necessarily mean you get prioritised. Doesn't necessarily mean that you get—it very easily can turn into a situation where you feel like furniture. You feel like you get all the negative aspects of being in a relationship, and all of the people who don't have to live with them get all the fun parts of being in a relationship without all the downsides. It can very, very much feel like that.

So I'm also very, very hesitant to make the assumption that the grass is greener on the side of the nesting partners, and that everything is always copacetic, and that person is always prioritised, and that person always feels special and valued just because they live in the same house with their partner. Because that is not the case.

So yeah, to sum up, I don't believe in deconstructing monogamy. I don't think that's what's at stake here. The real problem here is that you need to acknowledge these hierarchies. You need to be aware of whether or not you're following these cultural scripts. Speak with your partner about your personal preferences for polyamory. Speak with this new person about their personal preferences. Ask yourself, why a triad? Is there a reason to go directly into a triad? Can you not just date individually, maybe spend some time together as a triad, and see how it goes and not put pressure on immediately going into a triad? Maybe see if it develops that way, and don't put any pressure on it to develop that way.

Think about what will happen if this person doesn't want to date you but wants to date your partner, or doesn't want to date your partner but wants to date you. Think about those situations and how you might feel about them, and talk about them, instead of just thinking that everything will be copacetic and assuming—are you assuming that you're going to just chuck this person out if things get difficult? What is going to be the situation if things get difficult?

Thinking about all these things is really, really important, and that's what people actually mean by deconstructing monogamy. I hope that helps, and good luck.