There’s a polyamory group on Face­book that I’m in. It’s about half memes and half requests for advice. I like about 5% of its posts ask­ing for advice or help. They are inter­est­ing ques­tions or seri­ous intro­spec­tion about what tools would be best to nav­i­gate some of the com­plex­i­ties that come up around non­monogamy in a monog­a­mous soci­ety. (Things like how to han­dle hol­i­days when your fam­i­ly does­n’t under­stand, or what tools are par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful when some­one’s going through banana­pants new-rela­tion­ship-ener­gy and you feel like the old shoe.) I’m going to be putting some of my own answers to anonymized ver­sions of those ques­tions here as part of a future series.

The oth­ers, like 95%—and I’m not even fuck­ing kidding—are posts by one in a cou­ple who have recent­ly opened up, usu­al­ly in ways that are eth­i­cal­ly… let’s say inex­pe­ri­enced for the ben­e­fit of the doubt… although “ques­tion­able” might be more accu­rate. These posts (regard­less of which mem­ber of the cou­ple is ask­ing) retread the same hand­ful of ques­tions over and over and over again. I wish I could blan­ket these posts with the fol­low­ing advice: 

Date sep­a­rate­ly. If you’ve recent­ly opened up, do this delib­er­ate­ly and for a long time before you even TRY to date as a cou­ple. Try­ing to date the same per­son when you haven’t even fig­ured out non­monogamy your­self is less eth­i­cal than you might think. It takes a lot of self-aware­ness and no small amount of expe­ri­ence to nav­i­gate a world that incul­tur­ates us into monogamy. Try­ing to onboard anoth­er per­son into a rela­tion­ship that isn’t absolute­ly nail­ing it with com­mu­ni­ca­tion, open hon­esty, and each indi­vid­u­al’s intro­spec­tion is a recipe for dis­as­ter and is going to hurt at least one per­son you care about.

Hey, this is most­ly for the dudes. Okay, so, what if you ARE dat­ing sep­a­rate­ly? First of all, good on you! But also… NO DATING APP IS GOING TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU. You won’t sign up and just… get atten­tion. Femme-read folks tend to get too much atten­tion. WAY too much—the vast major­i­ty of it crap­ful­ly crap­pi­er than the first half-dozen Strong Bad Emails. (Although they gen­er­al­ly have to be con­sid­ered con­ven­tion­al­ly attrac­tive to real­ly have their inbox explode.) Theirs is the curse of going through all the dross. Dudes, how­ev­er, get crick­ets. And tum­ble­weeds. And the old prospec­tor sit­ting on the porch of a burnt-out husk of a build­ing who slow­ly lights a pipe and says, “ain’t no one been here in… oh, I’d say… fifty years.” Theirs is the curse of silence. A momen­t’s thought about how our cul­ture does courtship, who has pow­er, and who expos­es them­selves to vio­lence every time they spend time with an unknown dude should make it obvi­ous why this is. But every­one is cursed to strug­gle for gen­uine con­nec­tion, and no app is going to be as easy as fill­ing out the infor­ma­tion and let­ting the sweet, sweet inter­est just roll in. That’s not how it works. Ever.

Okay, so you decid­ed not to date sep­a­rate­ly. I warned you in my best “Beware the groove” voice, but here we are. You’re look­ing to date togeth­er. And because of a num­ber of fac­tors almost always includ­ing the dude’s fan­tasies and the dude’s inse­cu­ri­ties, you’re look­ing to date a bisex­u­al woman with your part­ner. Yes, what you’re doing is uni­corn hunt­ing. No, it’s tech­ni­cal­ly not a prob­lem if every­one gives enthu­si­as­tic, informed consent—and might not even tech­ni­cal­ly be uni­corn “hunt­ing” per se. (Yakov Smirnoff voice: “In enthu­si­as­tic Rus­sia, uni­corn hunts YOU!”) But is that what’s hap­pen­ing? HAVE they giv­en informed, enthu­si­as­tic con­sent? Or are you miss­ing one or both of those ingre­di­ents? Usu­al­ly, what it’s lack­ing is the “informed” part, because this per­son is some fresh-faced, new-to-poly, doing-the-ani­me-blink nooba­li­cious rex who does­n’t under­stand what cou­ples’ priv­i­lege even looks like, nev­er mind how it will affect them when things come crash­ing down, or how to set up healthy bound­aries to avoid it. They have NO IDEA what they’re about to get into. And that’s not actu­al­ly informed. That’s predatory—on your part. Or maybe it isn’t actu­al­ly enthu­si­as­tic. Maybe some­one isn’t sure. Or maybe they’re along for the ride because they want to gain (or don’t want to lose) access to only ONE of you. Now you’ve cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion in which it is only a mat­ter of time before you detonate—not very eth­i­cal of the two of you.

And for fuu­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­uu (~deep breath~) uuu­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­u­uck­’s sake, the above does­n’t even con­sid­er pow­er dif­fer­en­tials. If some­one is mov­ing in because they’re home­less, join­ing a “fam­i­ly” because they’re being finan­cial­ly pin­ioned, don’t feel like they can say no to this rela­tion­ship with­out los­ing some­thing, are being social­ly manip­u­lat­ed, are being pres­sured, bad­gered, or guilt­ed, are oblig­ed by some kind of arrange­ment (that isn’t explic­it­ly sex for money—got noth­ing against sex work here!) or are oth­er­wise being cajoled into this dynam­ic, that is absolute­ly fuck­ing deplorable, and you need to stop inter­act­ing with any­one. For any rea­son. (Except maybe ther­a­py.) Until/unless you knock that shit off. 

If you real­ly care about stuff like ethics and con­sent and open, hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and about pre­serv­ing this rela­tion­ship that you claim to val­ue, you should be assim­i­lat­ing the advice of almost every­one who came before you, and hav­ing a lot of good con­ver­sa­tions. You should NOT be pre­tend­ing that the entire com­mu­ni­ty of vet­er­ans just col­lec­tive­ly woke up and decid­ed to make up a fan­ta­sy land of peg­gy­corns and rain­bow drag­ons about how prob­lem­at­ic these dynam­ics can be in order to harsh your very enti­tled squee. It is INCREDIBLY spe­cious of you to blow off as “kink­shamers” or “gate­keep­ers” lit­er­al­ly entire com­mu­ni­ties who have done—or seen done—this very thing over and over and over and over (and over and over) and watched it fail spec­tac­u­lar­ly in the same way every. sin­gle. time.  It WILL. be. harm­ful. to every­one involved. And if you don’t blow up every ves­tige of all four rela­tion­ships*, one of the three of you will very like­ly end up “left” by the oth­er two and have to mend a bro­ken heart. Then, if you haven’t sworn off non­monogamy alto­geth­er, you will be tomor­row’s eye-roller try­ing to con­vince the next gen­er­a­tion of uni­corn hunters that this is an advanced move for a noob, and they are not some­how spe­cial.

I love group sex. I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s about as much fun as you can have with­out break­ing the law—except in the states where it IS break­ing the law and where it’s tied with some… uh… OTHER stuff that… I absolute­ly nev­er do. And I’m includ­ing Dis­ney parks in that assess­ment. But you can bang it out (even reg­u­lar­ly) in an eth­i­cal way that does­n’t involve the dynam­ics of “try­ing to find a third to com­plete us” and all the deeply prob­lem­at­ic tropes that this type of search so, so, SO often falls into. 

Is that third you’re look­ing for an inde­pen­dent per­son? Do they get to date sep­a­rate­ly from the two of you? Do they get to bang either one of you while the oth­er isn’t there? Are they allowed to not like three­somes that much? Can they keep their own liv­ing arrange­ments? Will they be encour­aged to have their own activ­i­ties, inter­ests, income, and life out­side of your rela­tion­ship? If you’ve answered no to ANY of these ques­tions, this isn’t eth­i­cal, and some­one’s going to get hurt. Does one of you have veto if it does­n’t work—the abil­i­ty to slam the brakes on the whole thing and just go back to monogamy, dump­ing the third? Will you make big finan­cial and life deci­sions with­out them, like when to have kids or buy prop­er­ty? Are you going to keep right on telling fam­i­ly and friends and cowork­ers that you’re a cou­ple and keep them as your dirty lit­tle secret? If you’ve answered yes to ANY of these ques­tions, some­one’s going to get hurt. I’m not say­ing you can’t stay “in the clos­et” strate­gi­cal­ly, but this per­son is going to exist out­side of your bed­room, and it isn’t fair to them to act like they don’t.

Anoth­er one most­ly for the dudes. As a reformed whin­er about how hard it is to meet women/AFABs/femme folks, even in non­monog­a­mous cir­cles, please let me assure you that you won’t whine your way into any­one’s DMs. You. Will. Not. EVER. Do This. Self-con­fi­dence is hot, and this is what­ev­er the oppo­site of that is. They don’t owe you atten­tion. They don’t owe you a chance. They don’t owe you a date, sex… any­thing. Even if your search is not going well. I hear your com­plaints that some peo­ple are bet­ter at this. Some are hot­ter. Some are suaver. Some have the skib­bidy Ohio rizz, they are so sig­ma. You’re right. They are. They do. But don’t be l‑rizz about it. There will ALWAYS be some­one to com­pare your­self to unfa­vor­ably. If only you were a blis­ter­ing hot extro­vert, right? If only you could work a room. If only you had a six-pack and chis­eled pecs. Maybe, but what­ev­er. Stop whining—I absolute­ly promise you up one side and down the oth­er that your lack of con­fi­dence is lit­er­al­ly 90% of your prob­lem. The whin­ing isn’t doing you ANY favors. I’m an intro­vert too. I’m cute, but I’m not some unfath­omable smoke show. I don’t get mes­sages on dat­ing apps except to be imme­di­ate­ly benched. I have to meet peo­ple. I have to talk to peo­ple. I have to form rela­tion­ships, and then ONCE in a while… once in a great, awe­some ocean­ic-sized gulf of a while, cute peo­ple tell me that I’m just the nerd they’re look­ing for.

Dudes need to go do shit they enjoy and just… meet peo­ple. They need to stop think­ing there is some door in the non­monog­a­mous world they can walk through… some app they can down­load… some group they can be a part of… some par­ty… some place… SOMEWHERE where they don’t need to put them­selves out there and meet peo­ple and to get to know their poten­tial part­ners. Some­where where women and AFABs and femme folks will just walk up to them and say, “I am for you James Smith,” and then begin to dis­robe seduc­tive­ly with­out them ever hav­ing to be inter­est­ing or charm­ing or fun­ny or just… fuck­ing out­ra­geous­ly hot or SOMETHING. And ask­ing women to do the propo­si­tion­ing or ask “where should I go to meet…” isn’t real­ly going to change this answer. 

Date sep­a­rate­ly. Seri­ous­ly. Either date sep­a­rate­ly, go be swingers (got noth­ing against that if it’s your jam), or be ready for every­thing to fall apart after a cou­ple of encoun­ters. Group sex is fun. (No, seri­ous­ly, it’s a LOT of fun.) Cruise togeth­er. Invite the peo­ple you’re dat­ing sep­a­rate­ly to join both of you once in a while. Have fun with it. But fuck, lis­ten to me when I promise you to infin­i­ty and beyond that group RELATIONSHIP dynam­ics are basi­cal­ly impos­si­ble to try to engi­neer inten­tion­al­ly with such a spe­cif­ic result in mind. Add one per­son to a dyad, and you’ve added THREE addi­tion­al rela­tion­ship dynam­ics. If you can’t date sep­a­rate­ly, you’re def­i­nite­ly not ready for that.

[*That’s right. A tri­ad has four rela­tion­ships. Each per­son has their own unique dynam­ic with each of the oth­er two, and the three of you have a rela­tion­ship as a trio that has its own dynam­ic. Two of you might be hot and heavy sex­u­al­ly, while the oth­er two talk for hours, and the three of you may enjoy nei­ther of those things but love watch­ing Net­flix togeth­er. They’re EACH their own rela­tion­ship, and you can’t force ONE rela­tion­ship to be what you want it to be—never mind four. Each of those rela­tion­ships needs its own emo­tion­al avail­abil­i­ty, nur­tur­ing, and sup­port for this to work. No rela­tion­ship involv­ing more than one per­son is going to have every mem­ber lik­ing every oth­er mem­ber equal­ly. Ever. EVER. If some­one is going to be inse­cure about that when it hap­pens (and it will), the entire thing is going to explode. Every time. EVERY time.]

If you and your part­ner have inten­tion­al hier­ar­chy with veto, you have to under­stand that it will get used EXACTLY when you don’t want it to the most. Always. THE MOST. Your enthu­si­asm for what is hap­pen­ing is going to be a threat, and if they have the pow­er to stop it in its tracks, they will—even just to know you WOULD stop if they demand­ed it. And I’m going to tell you this as a 30-year vet­er­an. That point, 95% of the time, is when a woman who is bisex­u­al and in a het­ero­nor­ma­tive dyad—but dat­ing women—falls for anoth­er per­son with a penis.

Date sep­a­rate­ly. You’ll know when you’re ready to date togeth­er when some­thing organ­ic starts kind of just… hap­pen­ing, and trust me that it’ll STILL be incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate all those emo­tions and rela­tion­ships and logis­tics. But when you’re first start­ing… just… Okay, you know those video games that “let” you go any­where, but there are clear­ly ways that are WAY too hard until you’ve lev­eled up and have the gyro can­non pow­ered over 9000? There are like death scor­pi­ons and giant dinosaur things with razor claws as big as your head and fly­ing bugs that take fifty-sev­en hits to kill? This is like that. (Maybe few­er bugs, but pret­ty close.) Yeah, you CAN do it. Noth­ing is tech­ni­cal­ly STOPPING you… but… like… I promise you should­n’t. And you can’t just save before you attempt it. That’s going to be your implod­ing life for the next few months. Pinkie swear. 

The rea­son so many of the poly vets avoid folks with explic­it and inten­tion­al hier­ar­chy and veto is not that every sin­gle inde­pen­dent non­monog­a­mous com­mu­ni­ty has been struck by cultish groupthink…somehow simul­ta­ne­ous­ly… and all the same way. It’s because we’ve had our fuck­ing hearts bro­ken by peo­ple who we weren’t in rela­tion­ships with and did­n’t con­sent to give con­trol over our rela­tion­ships to. If some jeal­ous spouse is con­trol­ling when, what, where, and even IF we can have a rela­tion­ship, we’re going to be super extra wary and vig­i­lant. You fall in love and their part­ner gets inse­cure and vetoes you… that’s a stepped-on-Lego straight to the heart that you don’t want to go repeat­ing. 

So you’re dat­ing (hope­ful­ly sep­a­rate­ly), but now you have… rules. When and where and how and who and how often and… and… and… Okay, fine. Noobs tend to start with a lot of “Thou shalt nots” and evolve into talk­ing about what’s com­ing up in their feel­ings and what they need or want (as a pos­i­tive request) lat­er on. But hear me on this: One-penis poli­cies are gross. At the very very very least, they are assum­ing sex with a penis is some­how “real,” and two peo­ple with vul­vas get­ting togeth­er is not going to be a threat to that penis-haver or (worse) is there for some dude’s enjoy­ment. That’s some unmit­i­gat­ed het­ero­nor­ma­tive crap. And that’s the BEST-CASE sce­nario. When you actu­al­ly unpack that shit, you’re prob­a­bly going to find homo­pho­bia and trans­pho­bia dri­ving the fear of “cer­tain plumb­ing” before some­one has even fin­ished the first cou­ple of sen­tences, doing their best diplo­mat­ic effort to explain why the OPP is not wild­ly prob­lem­at­ic. They don’t want any man cooties get­ting on them, and they ALSO think what makes a man is a penis.

Okay, so you’re dat­ing. And she’s only “allowed” to date oth­er women, but says that’s okay because it’s all she wants. Is she REALLY not into oth­er guys, or is this rela­tion­ship at a resent­ment “sim­mer” already? Because that’s going to go okay until it does­n’t. Look, there are a few rea­sons the guy she opened up with might be the only dude in her life, but none of them is like­ly to be that she just mag­i­cal­ly desires ONLY the rela­tion­ship struc­ture that he finds least threat­en­ing. (If she’s real­ly most­ly gay, for exam­ple, but that’s like­ly to be obvi­ous and not about what makes him inse­cure.) Remem­ber what I said above about veto? In twen­ty-five years, what I’ve found far more like­ly is that the guy in this cou­ple is just being con­trol­ling and misog­y­nis­tic in a way that does not belong in ETHICAL non­monogamy. Either his behav­ior when she dates dudes is SOFA KING awful that it’s sim­ply not worth it (gross), or they explic­it­ly have some rule about her dat­ing oth­er dudes (extra gross), which, if any­one gave a momen­t’s thought, they would real­ize this cou­ple would­n’t actu­al­ly need (as a “rule”) if this was what every­one enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly want­ed any­way. I’ve seen too many weak smiles well away from the ten­der egos of hus­bands and boyfriends (along with the con­fes­sions of “well, that’s all he can han­dle right now, so I just have to deal with it”) not to be very, VERY skep­ti­cal. 

Watch­ing sap­ph­ic rela­tion­ships blow up het­ero­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships just as fast (or often faster) than their dude coun­ter­parts, or watch­ing women fall for guys even though they’re not “sup­posed” to want such a thing (~or~ the PARTICULARLY telling case where the rela­tion­ship involves some­one trans who has a penis [oh noes!], and then all kinds of prob­lem­at­ic shit hits over­drive where penis­es are mag­i­cal and vul­vas aren’t attached to “real” rela­tion­ships)… if there is one thing I have learned, it is that when a het­ero­nor­ma­tive dyad tries to con­vince every­one that their one-penis pol­i­cy is on the up and up by swear­ing that “oh yes, friends, absolute­ly every­one is enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly con­sent­ing,” some­body is—and usu­al­ly two some­bod­ies are— not being ful­ly hon­est. That shit has some real, “I’m GLAD you wished Pa into the corn­field” vibes. 

Have I men­tioned date sep­a­rate­ly?

Dudes, if you opened up a monog­a­mous, het­ero­sex­u­al dyad  for all the hot sex in the world you were sure you’d be get­ting just the MINUTE the ink dried on the agree­ment, and now she’s off hav­ing hot dates with peo­ple she cares about, and you can’t han­dle it, so you try to shut the whole thing down, under­stand that you are about to cre­ate a swirling vor­tex spew of your enti­tle­ment and her resent­ment, your rela­tion­ship has a bet­ter than aver­age chance of not mak­ing it through that, and every fourth or fifth damn post in ANY polyamory group is going to be about a per­son JUST. LIKE. YOU.

Fuck­ing date sep­a­rate­ly.