Managing an Anchor Partner You Don’t Live With

How (do you) navigate having an anchor partner you don't live with?

Ultimately this comes down to what you define as an "anchor partner".

To be honest, I don't tend to like these types of terms. Polyamorous communities generally like to come down hard on judging hierarchy and that leads to people attempting to twist what is really hierarchy into something that looks more socially acceptable, but really I think that the biggest problem with hierarchy is the miscommunication people have around it.

Most people rarely practice emotional hierarchy. Unless something has gone terribly wrong in our lives, we don't actually look at the people we care about and say "I love this person more than I love this other person". We don't rank people in terms of emotional hierarchy in such an obvious and stark way.

While society does encourage us to value romantic partnerships over other partnerships, we don't tend to think about this literally. I believe when a lot of people who have primary partners or who are opening their relationship read all of the things about hierarchy and interpret this as emotional hierarchy and so when they say "We have no hierarchy" or "I am non-hierarchical", they mean that they don't emotionally feel stronger for one person than another person.

And that's all well and good. I don't think that anyone actually does that. But what people need to accept is that they only have 24 hours in a day. How you divide your time in your day is not necessarily a reflection of how much you care about someone. As much as people want everything to be "equal" in their relationships, you actually are not the worst person in the world if you decide to devote more time in your life to some relationships more so than others – especially if those people need more of your time.

Hierarchy is not inherently bad. In fact, if you have a child, I would expect you to have a hierarchy where your child is at the top. Some of your relationships and connections may need more of your time or you may want to devote more of your time – and that's okay.

Where people get hurt is when people are too worried about not seeming "egalitarian" and they purely think of hierarchy in an emotional sense and never figure out how to properly divide their time between partners. Especially when people start off as a couple and especially if they live together, they will often end up with the same routines and the same behaviours as they did before they opened and not think to consciously change it.

Then what is communicated to anyone they date is "I will give you an equal amount of time as I give to the partner I live with" but what they actually mean is, "I will not care for you less than my current partner" and people get confused, time is not made or discussed, and people get hurt. To avoid this, one needs to actually be honest about what time they have for a new partner. And I think, to bring this back to the question, using words like "anchor partner" sometimes has people avoiding the real conversations.

So what does an "anchor partner" mean for you if you do not live with them? How do you define that? How you navigate a hierarchy is admitting you have one and being straightforward with any new partner you have about how much time you have for them so they can decide if that is enough time for them or not.

There may be people who don't want to date hierarchical people... that's fine. Ultimately, I think that as long as you own your own choices of how you spend your time, whether a partner is an "anchor" or not or whether or not you decide to have a hierarchy, it doesn't really matter. Just don't confuse emotional hierarchy for time hierarchy and you'll be fine.

I hope this helps and good luck!