Obviously that means you’ll have to know what your ideal partner looks like. For fun – let’s do the exercise.

Get a paper or a notepad and write down all the things you’d expect of your perfect partner. Seriously, go all out, dream big.

Here’s an example list – a mix of attributes I scoured from /reddit.

• Making me laugh
• Loyal
• Responsible
• Taller than me
• Loves hiking
• Enjoys fine dining
• Intelligent
• Loves animals
• Patient
• Attractive
• Open minded

Now, most of these attributes are rather generic. The only one that’s objectively verifiable is height. The activity attributes (food, animals, hiking) are extremely broad, and whether someone is patient or open-minded always depends on the frame of reference.

For a professional match maker, this list is golden! There’s probably at least ten profiles in their database with people taller than you, who describe themselves as funny, loyal and open-minded. The rest is just storytelling.

So, how can you get more specific?

What do you want to be DOING with that perfect partner?

Netflix and chill, I get it. Or maybe you actually want to have a conversation over dinner. What kind of conversation, what kind of dinner? This is where you can get super specific. What are the things that you love doing, and which of those would you like to share.

Elaborating on the above list – you could come up with something like this:

• Watching life stand-up comedy at the local bar
• Planning the week together, knowing that you can trust the commitments
• Long term goals like buying a house together
• Hiking on Saturdays, or doing the St Jacobs way over Easter
• Going out for proper dinner at a fancy restaurant at least once a month
• Attending toast master or a discussion club so we can spar on intelligence and rhetoric
• Volunteering at the pet shelter
• Happy to listen to me talking about my sh*t at work for hours on end
• Looking good in a tuxedo or cocktail dress when attending fancy parties
• Officially getting out of our comfort zone regularly.

Now, this list is more concrete – yet it still does not really encapsulate what you want out of a partner. It’s likely that you don’t stop doing these things just because you do not have a partner. Do you stop watching stand-up comedy when you are single? Do you stop going for hikes when you are single? Do you resign yourself to never going to a restaurant again just because you are single?

Do you need a partner or do you need friends?

Even the “listening to me talking for hours” can probably be solved by having a close friend.

So, if you revise your list for things you want to do with one single person for the rest of your life (for lack of a more concrete time horizon – most of us do not plan for 5 or 7 year relationship cycles, even though that seems to be more realistic), what’s left?

Is it the savings of sharing a queen sized bed while discovering a new part of the world?

Is it the ease of knowing who your +1 will be at your best friend’s wedding?

Is it the comfort of never ever having anyone set you up for a blind date ever again?

Is it the knowledge that having a partner means no justifications ever again?

Is it the shared economy of buying a house together, raising kids together, hosting brunch together?

Maybe you are simply following a script fed to you by countless romantic movies, telenovelas, books, and series. Maybe there’s more to life than finding “the one”, “settling down” till death do us part.

I believe you can have a lot more fun than just waiting for you or your partner to die.

The post Finding the perfect partner appeared first on Polyadvisor.

Opening up an existing relationship can be scary. And yet, your best bet is focussing on what you aim to get out of opening up, sharing these expectations with your partner. 

Securing the status quo vs expanding your horizon

When you start discussing open relationships with your partners, you can choose where to put your attention. Interestingly, the resulting “rules” can look quite similar, with a very different emotional weight to it. 

For example, many couples decide that certain places are off-limits for any new relationship that might develop. The idea here is that sharing these locations and practices would make what we have less special. That idea in instead is already problematic, and more importantly: If you are opening up your relationship, your aim is most likely NOT to find a second person that is just like your current partner. You want to try something new, experience something different, try new things.

That means, your dates need to be different. The type of people you ask out, should be different. The activities you do together need to be different. If you want to remember that magical first date with your partner, reenact it with your partner. If you want to open up to open your horizon, have that first date at the museum for medieval torture (and maybe share what of that sounds sexy in a consensual setting) or reading your own poems with a glass of wine at the beach. 

Make it different, so different that you want to talk to your partner about it afterwards (and maybe do it again, with them). 

You need rules for your own insecurities

As humans, we are hard-wired to keep safe what we have. Talking to your partner about your desires, your needs, your crazy dreams can feel really – scary. Maybe, you don’t want to shatter the image your partner has of you. Maybe you are afraid they’ll be repelled, bored, shocked, condescending by what you are telling them. 

It’s much easier to hope for a dark beautiful stranger, who’s going to read your mind, instead of telling your partner you’d love him to dress up as a police officer and take you into forced custody. 

Maybe you aren’t that clear with what you want, and that’s fine, too. Still, it is much more honest to declare that you feel the need for some external input, instead of putting rules and prohibitions in place. 

The best predictor of whether a relationship will survive opening up, is the quality of communication with your partner. Why do you want to open up? Why do they want to open up? What do you expect to get out of this experience? What do they expect? Is this about trying out sexual phantasies? Is it about feeling the rush of “being in love” again? Is this about going partying on your own and having the liberty to kiss whomever you like? Do you want to have dates to discuss [insert topic your partner has no interest in whatsoever] with someone who LOVES that type of stuff? 

Focus on what the two of you stand to gain, instead of trying to cut prevent change. Remember, you want to enrich your relationship. You don’t want it to be stagnant, while everything else is in flux – that rarely works out positively. 

So – what do you hope to gain from opening up? 

The post Can a contract be helpful when opening up your relationship? appeared first on Polyadvisor.

Men, on the other side, seem to be less interested in enquiring about their metamours or facilitating connecting between their partners. Of course, these are generalizations, and the individual experience will vary. However, cultural gender norms do expect women to be carers and facilitators, while men see each other as competitors who need to prove their superiority. Even if you do not subscribe to these ideas, they can still influence how you relate to your metamours. Which bears the question: 

Should you care?

Your metamour is part of your partner’s family

If you consider your partner part of your family, then their partners are your extended family. If you do not believe in family and prefer to operate on a friendship based system, then your partner’s partners are comparable to their best friend. They don’t necessarily affect you directly, but your partner’s relationships definitely affect their mental health – and hence your relationship with them. 

The connection is obvious if your partner has ever felt NRE (New Relationship Energy) for someone other than you. Their infatuation with another person had an impact on your relationship, maybe because of shifting priorities, one perpetual monotopic, and changing availabilities. The same happens with any other emotion, or intense situation – both positive or negative.

Mostly, if your partner is worried about something, or happy about something, this will affect how they interact with you. Being aware of the background information makes it easier for you to understand their reactions. 

How’s your other partner doing?

You don’t even need to meet your metamour(s) – a basic awareness about what’s going on in their lives is usually enough. If your partner is talkative, they might share the information freely with you. Most women will do this if they feel safe, and don’t have to worry about creating competitiveness. If your partner doesn’t share the information on their own accord, you can ask from time to time. For the men reading this: make sure that your partner knows you aren’t investigating a competitor, but merely interested in what else is going in their lives. 

The post Why should I care about my metamour? appeared first on Polyadvisor.

It turns out that you both have a lot in common. Your sense of humor matches, you have similar interests. And suddenly, you want another date, a real one. You can see yourself in a relationship with your metamour, a romantic relationship. How would you handle that situation? 

Communicate with your current partner

Even (especially) if you are not sure whether you should share your feelings with your metamour, you might want to talk to your partner first. This doesn’t mean you are asking for permission. Instead, it’s a display of trust and connection. Maybe your partner is even enthusiastic about the idea, though it’s just as likely that they are confused or worried. 

How would you feel if your partner is suddenly interested in another partner of yours? Jealousy is a frequent scenario, as is being worried about time allocations and the general current balance of relationships. By sharing with your partner how you feel and listening actively to how they see the situation, you can prevent a lot of misunderstandings. 

Your metamour likes you – and is not interested

You have great chemistry, you connected over joint activities, and you even ended up kissing at last week’s poly picnic. However, when you tell your metamour that you are interested in developing an independent relationship with them, independent of your current partner, you get a polite “not interested”. They are just not that into you. 

And now what?

You are bound to run into them. After all, you both have a significant connection to the same person. How are you going to survive the heartbreak? How can you look them in the eyes the next time you see them? 

Again, sharing the situation with the partner you have in common is a great strategy. If the three of you are part of the same community, your partner can help to make sure you don’t meet your metamour every other weekend – at least initially. Other than that, the work is really on you: no one owes you a relationship, even if it felt so natural. 

Maybe your metamour never dates metamours. Maybe they are polysaturated, meaning they don’t want to make time or energy for another close relationship. Maybe they have other priorities. Or maybe they simply don’t feel the same attraction that you felt. All of these reasons are valid, though it can be interesting to analyze for yourself what feels easiest to accept. 

Your metamour is just as enthusiastic 

Or maybe your metamour feels something similar and is actually quite open to dating you. How would that work? How will this affect your relationship with your current partner? If you and your new partner are both full-blown in love, your joint partner can feel excluded quite quickly. 

Yet again, communicating with your original partner is a must-do in this new scenario. You’ll want to make sure they don’t feel replaced, while not putting your new partner into second place either (unless you are operating on a hierarchical level anyway). 

Some questions that you might want to tackle the three of you together: just because everyone is dating everyone in this triad, that does not mean that you’ll necessary date as a group. Try to establish ahead of important events whether two of you present as a couple, whether you present as a triad or whether you go each on your own. Then do the same for life in general: are you managing three two-way relationships, or also an additional three-way relationship (including joint dates and activities)? 

Communication is key, independently on how many people are involved and/or how committed you are to each other. 

The post I fell in love with my partner’s partner appeared first on Polyadvisor.

The choices are less than stellar: 

• Going alone means that I’ll most likely end up at the bachelor’s table with a random array of more or less desperate people I have little in common with. 
• Asking one of my lovers means another one might feel betrayed by not having been asked first. [This is where the whole idea of non-hierarchies meets its unceremonial end. Whom are you going to ask first? There you go, you’ve just established a hierarchy.]
• Presenting myself with more than one partner creates considerable stress for the organizers (apart from budget implications they might not have been ready for).

So how do you maintain your sanity, stay true to yourself without getting into unnecessary fights (or passive-aggressive sparring sessions) with the uninitiated? 

Is being polyamorous your only (interesting) identity trait?

Even if you out and proud as poly, with several current relationships, busy promoting ethical non-monogamy to the world – polyamory is most likely not your own interest. You are probably able to talk about your work, to discuss the latest Netflix series, or to explain how you met your best friend in college (as you were trying to steal the math exam results out of the teacher’s break room). 

If for one evening you would not talk about your work, would that be traumatic? If for one evening you decided not to mention Netflix, would that be the end of the world? Comparably, if for one evening you make a choice to not promote polyamory to everyone around you, would that be feasible? Sometimes, coming out as polyamorous is not worth the emotional upset it creates in others. It may just be easier to play along conventional lines of conversation and choose not to drag your poly-network along. 

You are not required to represent ethical non-monogamy at all times

It’s absolutely fine to stay undercover at work, with some friends and even with extended family. This does not mean that you are hiding your authentic self. It means you are doing the organizers of the event a favor, at least during the official reception. No bride wants her wedding to be remembered because you brought your three girlfriends. No grandmother wants her Thanksgiving table to be hijacked by one single topic only – especially if that topic kind of involves sex.

Does that mean you should cease to be poly at certain times of the year just to honor traditions? Yes and no. Out of kindness, look at the situation from the point of view of those who are in charge of the event/tradition at this point in time. How can you make their lives either? In parallel, how can you start to create your own traditions with your tribe? Every tradition started at some point – so why not start your own this year?

The post Family gatherings and traditions: how to be poly over Christmas appeared first on Polyadvisor.

Polyamorous discussions tend to focus on how to best organize this first meeting with a metamour, when to meet them, what to do on that first meta-date. There’s a previous question to be answered though:

Do you want to meet your metamour? Do you need to meet them? Is it actually feasible to meet them? 

Presenting fantasy with reality

The main reason why meeting a metamour can be helpful is to keep your fantasy in check. If those other relationships of your partner make you weary, jealous or insecure, meeting them in real life can be a great antidote. Most of the time, they end up being normal people, maybe even quite different from you, with different hobbies, topics, and ideas. This experience alone can turn the feeling of competition into something that feels less menacing. 

That said, there’s a time and a space for everything. There is no rule that defines you need to meet your metamours within the first 2 months – or ever, for that matter. You can decide to not go down that path today, and revise your decision half a year from now. Just make sure that you are not willfully ignoring the existence of that other person. 

Vintage metamours vs NRE infused confusion

They say that pre-existing metamours are “easier to accept”, because they are already part of the new person as you are getting to know them. This means, by definition, that any new relationship is more likely to generate fiction. New (potential) partners often come infused with NRE (New Relationship Energy), shifting time and energy around for everyone involved. 

That said, while you are starting a new relationship with that special person, you are the “difficult” metamour, the one upsetting the balance. This doesn’t make you responsible for how you relate, but it may help you to be kind if existing metamours aren’t thrilled to meet you right away. 

There is no rule when, how or if you should meet your metamours. It can help to reframe the situation though: you aren’t about to meet potential parents-in-law. The situation is more similar to meeting your partner’s best friend(s). It’s very likely you are going to run into them at parties or joint events anyway. You don’t need to be best buddies – but having a cordial relationship will put your joint partner much more at ease. 

The post Do you want to meet your metamours? appeared first on Polyadvisor.

Reality is a bit more complicated, especially once you start sharing space or responsibilities. Managing conflict is part of relationships. I would even argue it is one of the biggest growth opportunities, both for the individuals involved as well as for the relationship itself. 

Breaking up vs shifting vs mending a relationship

Sometimes, relationship break. Sometimes they shift. And sometimes shifting is just a gentler word for breaking, with the result being the same. The people involved in the relationship do not want to continue in the situation. Traditionally, you’d be required to leave, to divorce, to move on to something else. 

This is especially true if the reason for the break-up is dramatic: a fight, a sudden realization about priorities that can’t be aligned, the feeling of betrayal. Mending such a rift in an existing relationship is hard work, on all sides. It is often dismissed as too much trouble, or “it won’t ever be the same”. 

Both statements are true. 

Mending a broken relationship does take a lot of work. It requires patience, self-reflection, forgiveness, lots of communication, probably tears and a fair amount of exasperation. 

The relationship won’t ever be the same. If you go through the trouble to mend the relationship, you end up with a different relationship. But different does not mean worse. It mostly means “unique and more resistant”. 

It will never be the same. And that’s a good thing.

Reconstructing a broken relationship is comparable to the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with liquid gold (Kintsugi). This art form uses broken dishes and reassembles them in their original form, using gold as the glue. The pieces are seen as something unique, and the pattern is part of the history of the piece. It’s not so much about repairing, but about creating something new from the original that ceased to exist. 

When a relationship experiences a radical change, that could end up in a break-up, something triggered that change. Usually, there’s a build-up and then one specific event triggers the crisis. If the two (or many) of you manage to use this crisis as the start of something new, something different, that is a good sign. It means that your new relationship is stronger, more self-aware, and more resilient than it used to be. And that is a good thing. 

And maybe, just maybe, you manage to mitigate the next crisis before anything breaks completely. Both ourselves, and our relationships are work in progress after all. 

The post In defense of broken (and repaired) relationships appeared first on Polyadvisor.

While Kimchi Cuddles can visually explain how polyamoury works, your family often feels protective of both yourself and their own world views. They want you to be happy, and at the same time, they don’t want to question every single detail of their own lives. 

If you get push-back, it’s probably not about you. It’s about how your alternatives could potentially impact their own understanding of the world. 

What is “real love” anyway?

There is this recurring motive of “real love”. You don’t really love your partner, if you aren’t exclusive. Once you find “real love”, you’ll get back to monogamy. Hence, it’s just a phase. 

Especially if you are still new to non-monogamy, your first reflex will be to educate. Books, websites, research papers – anything goes to convince Aunt Rebecca that non-monogamy is a healthy option for you. While she insists on “the one and only” and “blood is thicker than water”, you talk about “consensual relationship networks”. 

Chances are that you both end up being frustrated. You are probably aware that none of you will convince the other party. The problem is that you are starting off from completely different definitions of love – and as long as you don’t discuss what love actually means in real life and in practice, you’ll just throw newspaper articles at each other (believe me, I’ve been there, too). 

What does non-monogamy mean for them?

At the end of the day, those closest do you aren’t worried about how your decision works for you. They are closely monitoring what it means for themselves and their relationships. If Aunt Laurie accepts that open relationships are a thing, does that mean she now has to tolerate her husband’s escapades when he’s traveling alone? If cousin Eva endorses your two partners, does that mean she now has to share her girlfriend? 

Non-monogamous relationships are, after all, relationships. It’s not about deciding once and for all that polyamoury (or whichever flavour you choose) is the right thing for you. Making it work includes a surprising amount of work for all those involved – something that doesn’t really come across in your coming-out story. 

Don’t make it your goal to convince anyone that you found the right answer. Live and breathe healthy relationships and they’ll start to appreciate your decisions because they work for you. And if they don’t, that is on them, not on you.

The post Not real love? My family refuses to accept that I am polyamorous appeared first on Polyadvisor.

A simple analogy for polyamory and why it’s not a phase

Imagine you have a child. You adore your child, you love it like nothing else. When your child is two or three years old, you decide to have another child. You explain it to your first child and she loves the idea. She’s looking forward to her little sister or brother. 

A couple of months later, your second child is born. You adore this child, too. You love it just as much as your first one. Truth to be told, you wouldn’t be able to choose one over the other, even if you had to. You love them both, even though one came before the other, even though they are super different. And no one is going to judge you for loving both of your children. 

Then, one day, your first child tells you that she can’t handle that second child. Yes, she thought that was a good idea initially, but she’d rather go back to being a single child, so could you please get rid of her sibling. 

As a sensible parent, you’d start investigating why your child feels that way. You’d look into improving the relationship between your kids. You’d maybe sign her up for counseling. It wouldn’t even cross your mind to send your second child away. 

Understanding vs accepting: understanding pushback from your loved ones

From an intellectual point of view, no one is going to debate maternal/paternal love with you. And yet, you might get pushback for your ideas on a much more emotional level. Accepting that you are non-monogamous (and happy!!!!) can be a threat to some people around you. It’s not about what they can understand, it’s what they want to understand because of what it means for them. 

• If you don’t make sacrifices for the one and only love, what does that mean for them? 
• If they accept your alternative lifestyle, how will they handle the same request from their own partner? 
• What would the neighbors say? 

As usual in life, people are more interested in themselves than anyone else. It’s not really about you. They are more concerned about “what does this mean for me and my relationships”. And this is something that you cannot influence. 

Maybe the challenge is not that your family doesn’t (want to) understand ethical non-monogamy. The real opportunity is learning to live with the knowledge that you cannot please everyone. This means that you don’t have to hide the fact that you are non-monogamous. But you don’t need to go into missionary mode either. Be yourself and let your contentment speak for itself. 

The post My family does not understand polyamory appeared first on Polyadvisor.

For those who start recognizing themselves as polyamorous later in life, the sudden lack of clear expectations is thrilling and intimidating at the same time. Suddenly, you can be yourself. You don’t have to live up to someone else’s (unwritten) expectations. You can organize your life exactly as you enjoy it.

There are no relationships without expectations

Humans are hardwired for social connections. We need other people for our well-being. Even as an introvert I need a certain amount of interactions with friends and family to avoid loneliness and depression. These social connections come with expectations, your own expectations and those of the people that surround you. 

Every relationship comes with expectations, some explicit, some implicit, some smallish, some substantial. I expect my neighbour to receive packages for me when I am not home. I expect my dad to pick me up from the train station when I travel with the kids. I expect my best friend to return my phone call. We never explicitly talked about these expectations, we all “just know”. 

Traditional romantic partnerships are very similar, they also operate with a lot of expectations. These expectations are often gendered. The wife is expected to take care of dinner plans unless you’ve defined something different. The husband is expected to take out the trash unless you’ve discussed the topic. Even though you can change all traditional expectations, they are still the default framework.

Whose expectations are you fulfilling

Expectations are a great shortcut to reduce stress in your life. Following societal expectations means less criticism, fewer discussions, and clear decisions. It means you can fly under the radar and avoid uncomfortable conversations at the Thanksgiving dinner table. And frankly, that’s not a bad idea. 

Your challenge will be to make sure you are following your own expectations. If you discovered ethical non-monogamy after a long-term monogamous relationship, inertia will push you towards a similar setup. Your habits and what you “know” about “how relationships work” will inevitably nudge you towards the relationship elevator. And suddenly you realize you are in a monogamous relationship with some non-monogamous labeling on top. 

If you are afraid to lose yourself (yet again) to what is expected from you, here are a couple of tips that can be helpful: 

• Create your own user manual and review/update it once a month. This allows you to define your own expectations and remember them regularly. 
• Once a month, make a list of the people that are most important in your life and compare it with the previous months. What has changed? Why? Was that intentional? Do you want to refocus your attention on those that have slipped on your importance scale? 
• Talk to your important people about the expectations that you have, and those that they have, especially when you feel like an expectation has been violated. Was the expectation misplaced? Did you interpret your relationship differently? 

If you don’t want to live on autopilot, you’ll have to start handling your own expectations. Why not start today? 

The post What’s expected in your relationship? appeared first on Polyadvisor.