Three common problems in the poly world
And how to address them
I got tired of reading all these Reddit threads that talk about the same problems over and over again. I find these scenarios to be very understandable but also completely unnecessary. So let’s get these problems addressed once and for all.
One person in the relationship (usually the guy, in a heteronormative relationship) wants to be the only one open.
Meaning, he wants to be the only one meeting other people while his wife does not meet anybody.
This is very understandable because we have been conditioned to believe that possession is power.
As much as we don’t want to believe it, when we attempt to decide for our partners what they should and should not do with their bodies, that is control.
Control is an attempt to exercise the illusion that we are entitled to have power over anybody else’s agency.
Even if we have agreed to enter into a monogamous relationship where the terms of the relationship are that we are committed to sleeping only with each other, our desires, preferences, and capacity change with time and new information.
Today, I might feel totally committed to you based on all the information I have about you and about myself. Tomorrow, the information I have might change, and that may update my desires around how I want to orient myself to you.
When we force loyalty because it’s the “right” thing to do, we are evaluating the validity of a human being’s actions based on what they wanted before the present moment. To evaluate the validity of a human being because of the evolution of their desires is unjust.
To tell a human being that they are being inhumane because of their humanity is a contradiction and a falsehood.
So the only thing left to do is this:
Make yourself known in what you desire, and have no expectations around how the other person is going to be a resource for that desire.
In conversation, it may look like something like this:
“Right now, my desire is that you do not meet other people, but the way I want to practice love and care is that I honor whatever decision you make with your own mind and body. If that ends up hurting me, I trust myself to be able to take care of my own human experience. There may be a point where I come check with you to see if you are available to be a resource for me and hold me while I grapple with my own humanity. But in the end, I have no requirements.”
Here, we make two things clear: (1) Your desire for your partner to not see other people is not wrong. (2) But we do not make our desires anybody else’s responsibility. We do not get to evaluate others’ desires based on our own. That is putting your own desires on a pedestal above others’.
We all get to have desires and ask for support in those desires without any expectations.
That is real power.
You trusting yourself to experience your own humanity without needing anybody to be different.
You creating space to love more deeply the human being in front of you because you don’t require anything from them.
You becoming maximally self-sufficient and maximally interdependent because you know how to honor your own agency as much as you honor others’ agency.
So the question is, what kind of power do you want: the kind that relies on other people’s decisions, or the kind that relies on each of our unlimited capacity for love?
The person who opened up the relationship ends up having less of a great experience after opening it up.
So many stories like these: “I opened up the relationship, but my partner ended up having more fun than I did.”
We have been conditioned so deeply to believe that when someone has something we don’t have, that means we are not good enough.
This is quite an entertaining story, but we don’t have to be available for it.
A more handy story is that their experience signifies possibility.
Which is why I start taking notes when someone is experiencing something I want to experience.
Like in my marriage, even though I opened up the marriage, Dan fell in love first.
So I took out my notes and asked him what that was like. How he got there. How he sustains his experience of love.
And then I peruse those notes and lift whatever information feels most suitable and applicable for me, and go from there.
It’s like, wow, I can learn from Dan’s experiences so that I can craft an even more discerning experience of my own love story.
When you think about it, we have the power to turn every instance of fear into possibility.
People in poly relationships have difficult relationships with their metamours.
Metamours are your partner’s partner. So Dan’s other partner would my metamour.
Having a difficult relationship with a meta is also a common experience. Here are some bits from my approach:
I have no judgments around whether a meta is good or bad. There isn’t anything interesting there for me. Especially when I could be spending that time and energy going after what I want for myself. Though, of course, we can always pass judgments because it’s entertaining. But I always remind myself that those judgments are information about me, and not the other person.
If I am going to have a judgment about the meta, the most fun thing to do is to have a positive judgment about them. For example, I love to look at how sexy and amazing my metas are because that only reinforces that Dan has great taste. Same for my other partners. If their partners are awesome, I only take that to mean that I am also awesome because we don’t deviate from high standards. Especially if we have found people who meet those high standards.
I trust Dan. I am in partnership with Dan because I trust him in a lot of things, which is why we work together on a lot of things like childcare, household management, and emotional support for each other. So when it comes to metas, I trust that he is able to find partners that he would love to have around his own family, and I trust that he is capable of experiencing any hurt or fallout from his relationships.
If ever a meta and I have a disagreement, I trust my ability to relate through our differences. I know how to listen. I know how to witness. I know how to practice drawing boundaries. In the end, in maintaining relationships, the basic skill we need is know how to relate. We often find ourselves incompetent in this because we have so many requirements of the other people without examining how we want to actually see them as human beings.
So there we go. Three common issues we find in opening up the relationship.
But let’s not operate under any illusion that this one article is going to completely rewire our brains. We can’t just turns off generations and centuries of conditioning that we are not good enough no matter what.
This is why, when we learn new information and unlearn old information, we give ourselves grace first and foremost.
Learning and unlearning is not a violent affair.
We make the kind of progress we want by honoring the pace of our own bodies.
That means that if we feel like shit, we don’t need to judge that feeling by telling it to go away or saying that it’s a bad thing. It’s not.
It’s human.
So if you find this piece helpful, collect the parts that are helpful and apply them as you so desire. As I like to say, nothing is required.
Your wholeness is the only thing I advocate for, so we operate in service to your wholeness.
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Giving yourself grace is much easier when practiced in community. Which is why I created The Opener.
The Opener is where we learn how to have open conversations with open hearts so that we can open up our relationship on our own terms.
This space is for you if:
You are trying to open up the relationship and have no idea where to start.
You don’t know if you want to open up the relationship but want to know how to have open conversations nonetheless through the recurring conflicts that arise in your relationships.
You have tried to open up the relationship but you keep running into the same problems.
The Opener is a virtual speakeasy hosted through a Discord server where I share private transmissions on skillful and open relating, offer coaching on the unique wrinkles that you’re experiencing in your relationships, and host calls to walk through these experiences in real time.
Not because you need any fixing or healing. But because part of the way we love is by practicing community care.
When you are in here, you are changing the course of how the world gets to love more expansively.
Because having more expansive and skillful love in the world begins with each one of us.
Join here: angela-han.com/opener