Relationship Agreements: How to Find Balance and Accommodations in Polyamory

If you are in a polyamorous relationship and have an established relationship agreement with your partner(s), there’s a chance that, at some point, that agreement has or could potentially hurt others in the relationship. While this can be unintentional, I understand how it can be painful and feel unfair if you are the one in the relationship who is limited and impacted by agreements. This is especially true if you had no voice or opportunity for input when the agreements were made. It sucks, and trust me, I’ve been there.

I’ll give an example. Let’s say my partner asks that I don’t jump into bed with someone that I’ve just met. If I meet someone I want to have sex with, I wait until I can tell her about it, then plan another date with that person for possible sex. In this example, my partner is not asking for decision-making power. She’s not looking for a veto. She’s just wanting to know in advance so she can emotionally prepare. My point is that assuming I agree to this, how do I know if this is a healthy agreement for both our relationship and me as an individual? What if this is an unhealthy one?

For this to be healthy, first, my partner has to acknowledge that I have the right to full bodily and sexual autonomy. I have the right to say “No” to this request. And, if I agree to limit one of my rights, which is what I’m doing if I agree to this accommodation, it is considered a gift. This gift of accommodation should be recognized and appreciated by her. It also needs to be based on honest, clear, timely communication from her. In this case, it might mean being honest about her feelings, reasons, or motives as to why she wants it. If I agree to it, it should not be due to internal negative pressures such as guilt, shame, or fear. It also shouldn’t be due to negative external pressures such as displays of anger, manipulation, emotional meltdowns, or guilt-tripping.

My agreement also needs to consider who I am and what I want. If I’m a person who really enjoys having sex with someone I just met, I wouldn’t likely agree to this accommodation request. But if I’m a person who prefers not to do that, then I could see myself more easily agreeing to this request.

Then we can move on to the final bit of consideration, the third person who is stuck in the middle of all this. How do I consider the feelings of someone who might meet me at a bar who feels unfairly constrained by my agreement with my partner? Well, in all honesty, that’s tough. While I understand that it can feel unfair to them, I also think it’s important that they understand that I have a right to say no to them. I think the key should be not allowing your response to someone in this scenario to be interpreted as dismissive of their feelings or this very important ethical dilemma.

I feel it important also to mention that in situations like this, it’s important that we don’t unintentionally throw our partners under the bus. You don’t want to tell a person, “Hey, I’d love to have sex with you right now, but I can’t because I agreed with my partner not to do that.” I think the temptation to speak it in this way might be stronger when a person has agreed to something they really don’t want, which suggests they succumbed to internal or external pressures.

There could be other times when you are tempted to speak this way because you are being a coward and you just don’t want this third person to feel rejected. You want the third person to know how much you desire them, and in an attempt to improve your chances of a second date, you’ll bring up your partner as an excuse during this first encounter. This is not okay! Don’t be a coward. Own it. Just be open and honest about it and say, “Hey, I would love to have sex with you on our second date, but I have chosen not to have sex with anyone on the first date for reasons of my own.” Those reasons may be that you just don’t want to. Or, it may be that you love your partner, and you know your partner needs time to prepare emotionally, and that means more to you than the pleasure you’d get from jumping into bed right now with someone.

It is important to consider the importance of creating a healthy, secure attachment in a relationship and how partners should strive to create that. Secure attachments are built on trust. A big part of that is each person taking responsibility for their own feelings and not introducing coercion into their relationships. 

Let’s say you meet a person for the first time, and there is a relationship agreement existing before having met this 3rd person. That is a very different situation than when you are already involved with a 3rd person and a nesting partner. Once a 3rd person is in your life and they are impacted by your relationship agreements, there needs to be open communication with them about all relationship agreements that impact them. However, it’s important to recognize that the 3rd person doesn’t have a dictator or veto power any more than the nesting partner would.

Just like a two-person relationship agreement, a healthy relationship agreement involving 3 or more people needs to take each person’s feelings into account. It needs to be based on honest, clear, timely information that must be agreed to freely and not as a response to internal or external negative pressures. If someone is giving up one of their personal rights, it needs to be recognized and appreciated as a gift.

Unfortunately, there will be times when the honest answer is that a person is willing to accommodate one person more than another. Sometimes, this will be due to the degree of investment in one relationship over another or the depth of feelings for one person over another. Sometimes, it will be based on the perceived strengths and/or weaknesses of one person versus another, and there will be times when this does not feel fair.

For example, If my only night off a week is Friday, and if my partner’s wife Carol wants to have a special date with our shared partner Julie on a Friday night because of a one-time special event that night, they should include me in the conversation. Canceling my weekly Friday date would directly affect me, especially when I have no other nights off. I don’t have to agree for Julie to cancel my date, but she’d prefer to have my agreement on it and know that our relationship is not damaged by this change of plans. So, if Julie and/or Carol contact me and explain the situation, I will more than likely be willing to try to accommodate them.

There’s a chance I may have feelings about this and experience an emotional struggle to go two weeks without seeing my lover. If that’s the case, I may ask for accommodation in return. I may say, “Let me see if I can get two nights off next week and have Julie stay with me two nights.” Or, I could ask for a couple of lunch dates during those two weeks or extra phone calls. As long as Julie and Carol still care about my feelings, they should be more than willing to try and accommodate me, just like if I care about their feelings, I will try to accommodate them.

When one person feels shorted despite their clear attempts to ask for and negotiate what they need, remember to use this as a learning experience and a reality check. If, in the example above, my partner contacts me and after we have all discussed the Friday night date change of plans, they have heard my feelings, I’ve accommodated them by agreeing to give up my Friday night date, etc., but they are still unwilling to accommodate me by giving me anything to make my struggle easier, then this indicates either they think I should do more accommodating than them, or they are not as concerned about my feelings as I seem to be about theirs. If the latter feels true, I have the right to point this out to them and express that I feel this is unfair. Or I can express how this contradicts my idea of what “having a partner” means to me. Perhaps I should call her a part-time girlfriend and adjust my expectations accordingly. Or, I can express that maybe I need to accept that this relationship is not, in practice, what I thought it was.

People also set up false “either/or” competitions between relationships. They can fall into the false belief that a primary way of showing loyalty to one relationship is to show callousness to another in the relationship. Theoretically, that is much like complementing one person by putting down someone else. It’s just ugly and unnecessary. Don’t do it!

It’s also important to acknowledge that despite having open communication, negotiations, accommodation, etc, there will still be times when one or more people can be unhappy. Maybe the two metamours have opposite interests. If you are the person in the middle, remember to ask yourself what you truly want. This will be a challenge if you are always trying to accommodate others and put their needs before your own.

In this situation, it may help to ask yourself, “If I knew that no one would feel hurt or angry, if everyone would be happy with my decision, what would I decide based only on what I want?” After you know what you want, then add what others want into the equation. Try to keep the focus on what each person does want, not on what they don’t want. If your group is working toward taking each person’s feelings into account and you are running into resistance that seems difficult to understand, listen to the language being used. If you hear, “I don’t want to lose a date night with you.” or “I don’t want to go two weeks without seeing you.” The *don’t want* language is a clue. Ask what they do want and why.

In couples counseling, I see that people are more willing to accommodate others when they feel their needs are being met. Once a couple has communicated their expectations and feelings about an issue, agreements have been made, and the aggrieved party feels they’ll meet their needs, they are suddenly apologetic with metamours and generous with their partner’s time and attention. Just like when people are more likely to share food or water when they feel we have more than they need, partners seem almost magically to become more generous when they feel heard, and they feel their needs are being met.

So, if you are getting resistance from someone, ask if they feel their needs are being met. Then, seek to find out what they feel they need. When their needs are met, watch and see how much more generous and flexible they are!