Six Lessons in Ethical Non-Monogamy/Polyamory

Like anything worth doing, practicing Polyamory comes with a lot of challenges. Working through unanticipated challenges is often the greatest teacher. Some of these lessons can be learned in a monogamous context, while some would be more difficult to learn under monogamous constraints. The good news is that the knowledge generated from these lessons can benefit you in any relationship format.

The six lessons outlined below are from my personal experience of self-discovery. Your experience may differ from mine; keep the parts that are useful to you in your understanding and discard the parts that do not inform your story. 

Lessons Learned While Practicing ENM/Polyamory

One. Humans aren't inherently monogamous.

There are many unspoken social narratives in our culture because we haven't considered that challenging them is an option. One is that humans are inherently monogamous; monogamy is “built into our genes and we are biologically programmed to pair up for life”. The book Sex at Dawn goes a long way to describe that monogamy hasn't been our only format for relationships historically. In fact, it's a relatively recent social agreement. 

My point here isn't to demonize monogamy. I think monogamy is appropriate for most people. The disservice to me was that for decades of my life, I was led to believe there was only one acceptable way to have a relationship. If that was challenging to me then I had failed as a relational being. If I wanted to have relationships differently I was gross, or taboo, or divergent. 

What it comes down to is choice. Polyamory offers a choice to have relationships in the way that works best for the people involved. And since the people involved get to choose their involvement and everyone has agency, the stigma around it exists only because we haven't been exposed to other options. I hadn't anyway.

Two. We have the agency to design relationships in the way that works best for the people involved. 

There isn't one way to have a relationship. This may be an insight or it may be obvious to you. When I think about almost everything in a relationship being variable and negotiable, it opens up a world of possibility. So many societal ideas and ideals are just made up. Actually, they all are. Many of them are valuable and keep society running smoothly, but some that were useful at one time are now outdated, and we haven't considered the idea that we get to question them to find what works best for us. 

This takes a lot of self-investigation. Many times I think, “Because I am me, I know what I want and need.” When I ask myself if this or that belief serves me, sometimes I find that the belief itself didn't originate in me. It came from my family of origin, my culture, or society's acceptance of these ideas, and understanding these can help develop your own framework for recognizing red and green flags.

Society isn't evil either; its beliefs aren't evil. Society as a whole would benefit from the individual investigation of personal values. From this space of understanding, I get to hear my own voice and from that clarity, I get to choose how important each item of investigation is to me. Maybe this doesn't align with me, but it's not such a big deal that I would want to change anything. OR Maybe this doesn't align with me and this was a huge insight! An insight that grants me the opportunity to decrease my anxiety or stress if I make certain changes. 

When I was in college, I had a literature professor who had a long and healthy relationship with his wife. One student asked what he attributed to the longevity of his relationship and he responded “separate bedrooms”. WHAT? Until that point, I had never considered that you get to negotiate that! It was just a given that when you are in a long-term partnership you sleep in the same room, in the same bed. This isn't something I practice, but it was an early realization that social ideas are much more flexible than they may at first seem. What other “givens” in my life might I question that may make my life that much easier?

Three. Love is not zero-sum.

When I first waded into ethical non-monogamy, there were many things I was unsure about. I was interested in learning lessons and gaining some assurance through experience, even if discomfort was part of that recipe. I had a question in my head I wanted to test: If I love someone and I meet someone else who I experience feelings of love for, what effect does that have on how I feel about the person who I already have love for?

The answer I found from my experience was that loving someone else doesn't change the love I have for the other person. I don't have a well that is filled with 100 pieces of love to delve out. When I love someone they get 100 percent of my love. When I develop feelings of love for someone else, I don't take 40 pieces of love from someone else I love and give it to this new person. 

My experience is that my love isn't finite. My feelings for one partner haven't been changed by my feelings for a second partner. The only finite part of the formula is how much time I have to spend with each person I may have feelings for. 

Four. Relation is a spectrum.

People tend to draw hard categorical lines around different types of relationships. For example: Friendship, Family, Romantic Partner, etc. Polyamory has softened the lines of how I see relationships. When we have to define relationships to rigid categories we bend the way we understand our relationships to fit the categories instead of gauging the relationship first and then being able to categorize it. 

When I was younger, friends were in the category that didn't have any romantic association with them. Therefore “love” wasn't something I considered when thinking about my friends because it might be confused as romantic. After discovering polyamory and dating people with the intent to get to know them and negotiate what we might want from each other, people ended up all over the relationship spectrum for me. Some people I would like to date decided that they weren't interested in romance with me and instead of having to throw out the whole relationship because we weren't completely aligned, I got to look at what we were aligned on. I want to have friendship, too. So that's where we land sometimes. 

I learned to consider being flexible. Instead of needing the relationship to be a certain way, I looked at what was in front of me. This created space for me to have wonderful deep friendships even though I had feelings that were different from my counterpart. This flexibility came from a diversification of my needs being met—where I didn't “need” this relationship to look any particular way. When I need a relationship to look a certain way and it doesn’t, a desperation arises that doesn't allow me to see what parts are still available and I throw the baby out with the bathwater. A friendship is possible where romance is not reciprocated because relationships are on a spectrum. It doesn't require my friend to share those feelings. Needs are still met based on the agreed-upon boundaries we decided are appropriate. 

Five. Relationships can change form.

Breakups don't mean the same thing they used to when I was monogamous. Having a looser categorical way of seeing relationships, relationships are free to change shape. When we “break up” we don't have to burn the bridges and never speak again. This isn't to say you can't be friends with exes in monogamy, or that there aren't polyamory partners that split and never talk again. Having a negotiable framework for how you have relationships also lets you renegotiate and change agreements when romance fades.  Building strong communication between you and your partners can help with these changes.

Six. Cheating in ENM vs monogamy

Cheating is the same in ENM/poly as it is in monogamy. Cheating is a broken agreement. 

In monogamy, a lot of times those agreements are assumed from societal narratives of what a relationship should be. From our families of origin, we all have slightly different ideas about what those agreements are, but we assume we are all talking about the same thing. 

Is having an emotional connection with someone outside of your relationship cheating? Is checking out someone walking by because you are naturally attracted to what you see a reason to be offended? 

In polyamory, there is still cheating because we have to define what our agreements are. If someone breaks an agreement this is cheating. Sometimes it comes up that we didn't realize that something bothered us till our partner puts their arm around a coworker and jealousy springs up. This is an opportunity for self-reflection followed by a conversation about the feelings of jealousy. What can I ask for that would make me feel better the next time something like this happens? What agreements can we make or modify to feel connected even in discomfort?

In Conclusion

Monogamy is a format of relationship just like polyamory, or ethical non-monogamy. One is inherently better than another. But all benefit from questioning the assumptions in the format to see what works better for you and who you're in relationship with. 

Polyamory and ENM Coaching can help you clarify what is important to you so you can have the best relationships for you. Schedule a free session with me today!