Red Flags in Polyamorous Dating
By: Rachael Hope
Tags: Relationships Love Dating, Relationships, Polyamory, Culture, Dating

Photo by Mirko Toller

Any one of us could likely sit down and make a long list of red flags we’ve experienced in dating. As a polyamorous woman, there are a whole new set of warning signs to pay attention to when I’m getting to know a new potential partner.

Primary Relationships

You can practice polyamory in a million different ways, so when I’m getting to know a potential new partner, I always talk to them about what their polyamory looks like. An arrangement I come across often is people who have a “primary partner,” usually the person they live with, are married to, or have children with, and then date other people outside of that, sometimes called “secondary partners.”

I can’t even count the number of times someone has told me something along the lines of “Well, we were to the point of getting a divorce or seeing other people, so we are poly now.” Being polyamorous should be an intentional decision, not something that happens because you are lonely and your relationship is failing. I have sympathy for people who reach that point in a marriage or committed relationship- I’ve been there. Things were really bad, but I waited until I was single to do any exploring outside my marriage.

Anyone who asks me if I am able to “be discreet” is immediately suspect. This doesn’t just apply to polyamorous dating, but it seems to come up a lot, probably because of misconceptions about what open relationships mean.

“Discreet” is often code for cheating, and even when it’s not it can signify a “don’t ask, don’t tell” arrangement. I acknowledge that the DADT arrangement works for some folks, but for me it’s too high risk. Even when it’s not an excuse given by someone who is actually cheating, that type of arrangement is often borne out of unhealthy relationship patterns. Maybe their partner is insecure about being open, or maybe they’ve been given an ultimatum that it’s either open up or break up, and they agreed under duress. Whatever the reason, there’s just no way for me to know that I’m not participating in hurting someone very badly.

Any implication that there is no cheating in polyamory or that poly makes it impossible to cheat gives me a bad feeling as well. I won’t help someone cheat on an unknowing partner, and these attitudes seem to lead down that path. I prefer arrangements where even if I don’t spend time with or get to know their partner, I have the ability to check in and confirm the relationship status with that person.

Certain conversational patterns also give me pause. Anyone who comes into the conversation immediately telling me private details about having problems with their partner, especially sexual problems, gets a bit of scrutiny. I’ve found that the meaning behind that is often “We’re doing this to try to stay together without addressing the issues that we have with each other.”

Dating Couples

In some ways, dating couples can be twice the fun! Involving 3 people in a relationship also adds dimensions and considerations that aren’t there when you’re part of a couple. Anyone who’s done any talking or reading about polyamory knows that we all say the same thing- communication is the key to success!

The upside is that I generally communicate pretty heavily with someone to explore needs and desires before I ever enter a physical relationship with them. During that getting-to-know-you period, if I hear anything implying that the person’s other partner must be drunk to engage in a threesome with their partner, I get pretty uncomfortable. Anything that signifies that someone has agreed to an open relationship under duress or ultimatum is a sign to me that I don’t want to get involved.

Polyamorous couples have different ideas about how to manage rules and boundaries within their relationships. Sometimes, these rules can act as a big red flag. Requiring a secondary/new partner to be romantically or sexually involved with both people or break up entirely is a big show-stopper for me. If I hit it off with both people, great. I’m not okay with my relationships being contingent on having attraction to the person’s other partner, though. Rules like this put in place to “protect the couple” serve to make a new partner coming in feel like an unimportant outsider.

Hierarchy Expectations

When I first met my boyfriend, he told me that he didn’t really believe in the concept of hierarchical polyamory. He didn’t like the terms primary and secondary partner, mostly because there is an underlying implication that the primary partner is more important, and he believes that all the participants are important.

I agree in theory, but realistically, when you start to throw cohabitation and shared responsibility and children into the mix, a certain degree of hierarchy is inherent. For example, if my boyfriend, who I live and parent with, were out on a date and one of our sons broke his arm, I would absolutely call him and he would almost certainly end the date early. Our commitment to our kids comes before almost anything else.

Even for people who choose a hierarchical model for their polyamorous relationships, red flags can come up. For example, it doesn’t sit well with me if a couple expects a secondary to adapt to all their rules, preferences, and habits without letting that person have a voice in how the relationship goes. Even if someone agrees to be labeled as a secondary partner, they still deserve consideration, decency, and respect.

Communication

I’ve said it once, and I’ll probably say it 100 more times: good, honest communication is paramount to having a healthy polyamorous relationship. When someone seems unwilling or unable to communicate, when conversations about needs and wants feel like pulling teeth, that’s a huge warning sign for me that they may not be able to have harder conversations later on.

Early conversations where communication stumbles can lead to later ones where someone is angry about rules or boundaries that were never effectively communicated. I can’t try not to cross a line you never showed me, and I’ve found that people who communicate effectively about everyday things seem more able to communicate effectively about the big deal things.

Too much communication can be it’s own kind of red flag. If someone has a rule that everything I say, everything we do, or every conversation we have will be shared with their other partner(s), that makes me uneasy. It’s not about keeping secrets, but intimacy requires trust, and knowing someone is relaying every sentence, email, or text message doesn’t make me feel like I’m trusted.

Sex

Anyone who pushes for sex before I’m comfortable is shooting themselves in the foot. This isn’t just about polyamory, but every potential sexual relationship. Every time it gets brought up after I’ve said I wasn’t ready to talk about it pushes out the potential for it happening even further. People, especially those unfamiliar with polyamory, often make the assumption that being in an open relationship means I’m willing to jump into bed. That’s just not the case.

Potential partners who ascribe to an OPP (one penis policy/one pussy policy) by the other partners demand, or who demand that of their partner, also give me pause. It means they are okay with their partner being polyamorous, but only with members of the same sex, which is questionable at best. By saying “you can have sex with other people, but no other people with penises,” you’re taking away that person’s right to decide who they are with. I don’t think it’s fair to limit a partner’s choices based on other people’s genitals, and I’m not even going to get started on the gender conformity implications this brings up.

In the department of things that won’t halt a conversation, but that get added to a mental checklist labeled ‘questionable’ are repeated comments or jokes about exchanging things for sex/physical affection. If it happens once, sometimes it’s just a failed attempt at being funny. If the tone is wrong or it happens repeatedly, it makes me start to think that the person is “joking not joking” and their words are telling me something about how they think.

Making Comparisons

In the healthy polyamorous relationships I’ve been in, things always go best when we focus on everyone’s needs being met. We grow up with the concept of equality and fairness, and a lot of people have a really hard time getting their mind around the idea that this doesn’t mean an equal percentage split.

My boyfriend dated a woman who was prone to comparing time- she would get unhappy because I spent more hours in a week with him than she did. Hearing something like “Well you had private time with them for 43 minutes, but we only got 39 minutes of private time that night” is a real bummer. I prefer to focus on quality over quantity. In good relationships, everyone should be having their needs met, but that doesn’t mean you need a stopwatch to validate your worth.

Holier than Thou Personality Traits

I don’t ascribe to the idea that polyamorous people are enlightened or more evolved than anyone else. I believe that relationships exist on a spectrum, from not having any romantic relationships, to monogamy, to swinging, to being fully open, to relationship anarchy. When I hear a potential partner insist that all humans are naturally non-monogamous and sexual beings, that puts me on high alert.

When my kids were little, we taught them about “not yucking other people’s yums” and I think it’s wise to carry that concept into adulthood. I don’t ever want to be monogamous again, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for millions of other people. I’m not better than anyone else because I have the emotional capacity to be romantic with more than one person at a time. That’s reductionist and insulting to people who are devoted to one partner and work really hard to make those relationships work.

Anyone who thinks being polyamorous automatically means being more open minded or better at communicating brings up the same kinds of feelings in me. Choosing to be in a specific type of relationship doesn’t automatically make you wise. People can be very open about one thing and very closed about other things. You don’t get good at communicating with people just by declaring that you’re polyamorous, it’s something you have to pay attention to and work at.

If you practice polyamory, what red flags have you come across in your journey?

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