The information presented here assumes that you are in a traditional, monogamous relationship, and your partner has just told you that he or she is polyamorous. It's also possible that you may be a monogamous person considering starting a new relationship with someone who's poly--and already in a relationship. I'm working on a resource to cover that situation as well, which you will find here. My lover just told me he or she wants other lovers. Now what??! For starters, it's not what you think. It's not necessarily the "We should see other people" speech, and it doesn't necessarily mean the end of your relationship. If your partner says that he or she wants other partners, your first impulse may be to feel attacked or rejected, and if the time comes when your partner does take another partner, you may feel that person is attacking you simply by existing. Take a deep breath, relax, and try to let go of it. You're partner is not attacking you, and your partner's other partner is not attacking you; it's important not to respond angrily, but to try to make a relationship that works for all of you. Having said that: Any relationship in which the people involved have different goals and expectations will not be an easy relationship. Making any relationship work requires a dedication of time and effort, and there are never any guarantees; a relationship in which one partner is monogamous by nature and the other partner is not is particularly difficult, and fraught with peril. This doesn't mean it can't be done. But it won't always be easy. Compromises will be required from everyone involved. This may especially be true of the monogamous partner, who will have to learn and adapt to a completely new way to approach romantic relationships that may seem at first to fly in the face of everything you understand about the way love is supposed to work. There may be times when you will feel insecure, jealous, and hurt; this does not mean that your relationship is failing, and it is not wrong, bad, or irrational for you to feel this way. It simply means that your partner will have to take the time to pay special attention to your needs and your feelings, that's all. It also means, though, that your own ideas about relationship, your own fears and insecurities, and your own doubts will probably be brought to the surface, and you'll likely be asked to confront those ideas and doubts and insecurities. If you can find a way to confront and defeat them, then your relationship will definitely be improved. It's no picnic for the polyamorous member of the relationship, either. As the poly person, it is up to you to do everything in your power to help your partner feel safe and secure. This may mean you must move more slowly in new relationships than you want to. It may mean that you must give up relationships that your partner finds threatening. It may mean that you must negotiate boundaries that are narrower than what you might otherwise want. The place where it gets tricky, though, is in doing these things while still being compassionate and respectful to any new person who may join your relationship. Often, the temptation exists to create rules and set boundaries that will protect the existing relationship even at the expense of any other member of the relationship, particularly when it's all theoretical and there is nobody else involved yet. This ability to compromise, and to negotiate a set of boundaries that both people can function in, is absolutely critical if you are to make this work. Equally critical is a commitment to follow through on the things you say that you will do, and abide by the negotiated boundaries in your relationship completely and without fail. A relationship where the people involved have different expectations is already under stress; even seemingly trivial infractions can easily be magnified to the point where they jeopardize everything you wish to build together. Remember, though, when you're building these rules: any new person joining the relationship is a human being, too. A new person joining your relationship is going to bring needs and desires of his own, and it's wise to respect them. Consider the needs of everyone involved! It may not seem obvious why this is necessary, but it is, not only for the sake of that person but for your own as well. Actions can be regulated, but feelings and emotions are a bit trickier, and can't be controlled or dictated arbitrarily; if you agree to let your partner explore a new relationship, there's a very real chance that your partner will become emotionally involved with a new partner, and at that point, asking your partner to change or end that relationship is likely to hurt your partner. Think carefully before you do this, and understand that hurting your partner may have consequences in your relationship. And relax. It does get easier over time. Security is learned. As your relationship progresses, you will find it easier and easier to feel safe with your partner, and to build a foundation that can make both of you happy. There are, however, some mental roadblocks you'll need to get past before you can be happy this way. The first and biggest is in thinking your lover's polyamory has something to do with you--that you are insufficient, or you are not "enough." But why? I don't get it. Why am I not enough? If you are wired for monogamy, that can be a very difficult question to answer in any way that makes sense. It's helpful to keep in mind that it really may not have anything to do with you, directly, at all. It's not because you don't have enough to offer. It's not because you don't meet your lover's needs. It's not because your partner doesn't love you, or because your partner is selfish, or because you don't satisfy your partner, or because you aren't good enough. Many people seem to be naturally inclined, whether by learning or by hard wiring, to need only one person in their life. Such people experience a drive to seek out romantic companionship, but once they have found that romantic companionship, that drive disappears. It's as if the need to seek out intimacy is switched off; the drive is satisfied, and the person is content to settle down with his or her partner. For other people, this is not the case. People who are poly by nature experience the same drive, the same need to seek out intimacy and romantic relationships, but once such a person has found a partner, that drive is not switched off. A poly person is still driven to seek out intimate romantic relationships. This is what many poly folk mean when they say "Having one lover does not meet all my needs." It's not a way of saying that a poly person expects to have every need, no matter how trivial or transient, satisfied at once; rather, it's a way of saying that the need which is completely satisfied when a monogamous person finds a lover is not satisfied when a polyamorous person finds a partner. Put simply: Monogamous people can be happy sharing their lives with one and only one other person. Polyamorous people can not. It's not necessarily a choice. I don't believe polyamorous people choose to be poly any more than monogamous people choose to be monogamous. I know that I did not make this decision; it's simply part of who I am, and for better or for worse I cannot be happy with only one person in my romantic life. My wife can be. Neither of us is right or wrong; we are simply different, and we must acknowledge and accommodate those differences in order to be successful together. If your partner is polyamorous by nature, then your partner's desire to have additional romantic partners is not your fault, nor is it his or her fault. It does not mean he or she does not love you. It just means you have different drives and different needs. If my partner is poly? Yes. It's important to realize that not everybody who claims to be polyamorous is polyamorous. The world is not composed entirely of fair, ethical, and honest people. There are people who are selfish, and who see in the word "polyamory" a way to justify sleeping with anyone they choose without consequence. Such people can usually be spotted fairly easily. For example: They cheat. A person who has cheated on you in the past and then, when caught, offers up the excuse "But honey, I'm polyamorous!" probably isn't. Cheating and polyamory are not the same. A successful polyamorous relationship rests on a bedrock of trust, compassion, and love. People who are prone to betraying their lovers don't generally make good poly people. They lie. Again, a successful poly relationship requires a commitment to trust and integrity. Security comes from the knowledge that your partner loves you and respects you, and can be counted on to treat your needs and your feelings with deference and compassion. You cannot feel secure if you cannot trust your partner to keep his or her word. They do not remain within negotiated boundaries. It is important that anyone in any relationship, traditional or no, do this; a person who violates the rules of a relationship does not make a good relationship partner. Any relationship, even casual relationships, exist within a framework of parameters that allow the people involved to feel that they can know what to expect. It is especially true of romantic relationships, and absolutely critical of romantic relationships between someone who is poly and someone who is monogamous. I cannot stress this enough. A relationship between someone who is monogamous and someone who is polyamorous requires compromises on both sides. You absolutely, positively must be willing to remain within the parameters you negotiate, and follow through on the things you say you will do. Without, this, the fundamental trust that is a prerequisite to the success of the relationship is broken. They do not consider your needs. The monogamous partner in a polyamorous relationship faces a considerable challenge. It is vital, vital that the poly person do everything possible to reassure the monogamous person of his or her love, support, and understanding. It is natural and reasonable to expect someone in this person to feel insecure and frightened from time to time. These feelings are completely reasonable. Your need for comfort and for understanding is very important. I can handle the physical stuff as long as my partner loves me the most...how do I do that? You can't; in fact, you may do tremendous damage to your relationship if you try. Okay, so I think I can give this a try... There is no "trying" a poly relationship; if you wait until your lover's heart is on the line, then change your mind, you run a very real risk of losing your partner! "Trying" a poly relationship assumes that if the relationship doesn't work out, you can go back to the way things used to be. But relationships are fluid, dynamic things; there is no way, once you have introduced any significant change in a relationship, to make things be the way they were before. Even if you do close your relationship and become monogamous again, it won't be the same; you and your partner will have had experiences that will almost certainly change the way you relate to one another forever. In fact, just by having the discussion about polyamory, you may change your relationship, even if you remain monogamously for no other reason than you may learn things about your partner that you didn't know before. Change doesn't have to be scary; often, these changes can be healthy and positive. But there's no denying that if you decide to begin a polyamorous relationship with your lover, things aren't going to be the same again; you will not be able to press a button and erase everything that happens from that point on. My partner has cheated on me. Can we make a poly relationship work? Is it possible? Yes, though it requires a lot of work. Human beings are highly adaptable, and there's no way to predict what might act as a catalyst for growth. If someone is polyamorous by nature but doesn't know that he's polyamorous, he may cheat because he simply lacks any kind of frame of reference for ethical non-monogamy, and may not even be aware that such a possibility exists. But people cheat for a wide variety of reasons, most of them having little to do with being polyamorous. People may cheat because they like the excitement of an illicit thrill, for example; or because they want to be able to experience multiple sexual relationships but can't stand the thought of their partners having the same experiences. It's often easier to justify violating the principles of something you have always believed than it is to challenge those beliefs and question whether or not they are valid at all. Many people who cheat do not really question the value of monogamy; they may find ways to rationalize or justify their own behavior, but they will still believe that monogamy is "right." Sometimes, people will even blame their partners for their cheating; "Well, if my partner was more [x], then I wouldn't need to cheat." Such people still hold to the ideal of monogamy--and more important, they still want their partners to be faithful. Such a person is not likely to make the leap from cheating to polyamory. Like many things, it all comes down to the reasons why someone cheats. A cheater who cheats because he feels compelled to seek out or maintain multiple romantic, loving relationships quite possibly can make the leap to polyamory, if he can learn honesty and unlearn the structures of monogamy, and if he can learn to treat his partners with compassion and respect. The advantage that cheating offers which polyamory does is that you do not have to consider the feelings of your partner when you cheat. In a poly relationship, there may be circumstances where you don't get what you want. Making the transition from cheating to polyamory requires a lot of work. You have to deconstruct the ideas you were raised to believe and build a new set of structures that allows you to have outside relationships while still preserving honesty and trust--and you have to do this from a foundation of broken trust to begin with. All in all, it's not the easiest way to construct a polyamorous relationship. Can it be done? Sure, provided all the people involved--including the partner who was cheated on--choose to make it work, and are willing to invest the effort it will take to do so. Is it easy? No