Polyamory Mistakes. With grateful acknowledgement to Suzie, for her insight and contributions There is an excellent guide to screwing up poly relationships on the alt.polyamory site, which describes in some detail the petty, meanspirited, malicious things that you can do to help ensure that your relationship fails in the most dramatic, painful way possible.
This is not that page. This page is designed to describe some of the mistakes you can make in a non-monogamous relationship even if you are compassionate, honest, and well-intentioned. Sometimes, building a stable, happy non-monogamous relationship is not intuitive, and there are mistakes that can be made along the road no matter how well-intentioned you may be. Ideally, you should seek to learn from other people's mistakes rather than your own; it's a lot less trouble. Don't make assumptions about your partner or your relationship; talk about everything Don't ignore the consequences of your actions--even the unintended consequences This never works. Ten Tips to Great Poly Relationships. This is my top ten things you can do for great multiple relationships. 1.
Don’t try to be a “good” poly person. If you’ve been reading online material a lot, you may have developed an idea of what a good polyamorous person should be doing, and you may be trying to tie yourself into knots trying to do that. Stoppit. You’re allowed to work out between yourself and your loves what you all want your unique relationships to look like. 2. Sure you want the world to be about you. 3.
One of the biggest relationship monkey wrenches I ever encounter is the terrible habit of trying to interpret what a partner is thinking instead of paying attention to the actual words used. 4. Of course the flip side to #3 is that you need to say what you mean, too. 5. Many people have this idea that relationships are deadly serious. Miss Poly Manners. Etiquette: [noun] the code of polite behaviour in a society.
There are a lot of assumptions and implicit expectations about how people should behave in society, but, do the rules change in the polyamorous community? If so, how? Miss Poly Manners will look at a variety of situations and give advice and suggestions about how to navigate through the codes of polite behaviour in the poly community. Miss Poly Manners deals with situations involving polyamory, responsible non-monogamy, open-relationships, open marriages, and even social etiquette for mixed company (polyamorous and monogamous people socializing together!) Miss Poly Manners can be heard on the Poly Weekly Podcast, giving advice and suggestions about poly etiquette. On Loving More... Polyamory: The Practice of Jealousy Management.
Jealousy Management for Love and Profitor, how to fix a broken refrigerator Note: This essay is adapted from a two-part entry that originally appeared in my online journal, the first part of which appears here and the second part of which appears here.
Both parts have generated significant commentary, which you can read in my journal. Additional commentary is welcome. Throughout the course of this essay, I use the metaphor of a broken refrigerator as a shorthand for a broken romantic relationship. The reason for this is a comment left in my online journal by one of the readers, which says: "Not to sound flippant, I am reminded of a Letterman joke he told on the Tonight Show (with Carson), about guys that can do anything, and how aggravating they can seem to regular folk: "You're serious?
" This essay is an attempt to answer that question with respect to building a relationship without jealousy. Let's assume your relationship is a refrigerator. I'll get back to the fridge in a bit, though. Polyamory: How To F*** It Up. First Time For Everything: A Polyamorous Relationship. I really didn’t know what polyamory was until I fell into it at 27.
I was arguing one day with a couple I’d been sleeping with for about a month, when BAM! I ended up in a three-way relationship. I’ve always been open-minded as far as sexual relationships were concerned and was sleeping with a male/female couple. That day, Dan was being overly critical of Ellie. I told them the nit-picking was bothering me, but it really wasn’t my business how they treated each other, since, you know, it was their relationship. That’s when they looked at each other and asked me, “Well, aren’t you kind of… with us?” Hmm. Our situation felt totally customary to us, so much so that we often forgot that people didn’t expect to see a man out for Valentine’s Day dinner with two dates, or three people snuggling together on a plane. And just like that, we became a triad. On the negative front, our problems turned out to be really the same as anyone else’s. Luckily, my family was great from the very beginning. Dealing with Jealousy BDSM.