Standard Rules Of Polyamorous Dating

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-basic-standard-rules-of-dating-concerning-seeing-more-than-one-person-at-a-time-Is-it-acceptable/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What are some of the basic standard rules of dating, concerning seeing more than one person at a time? Is it acceptable?

A. There are no “basic standard rules of dating … more than one person at a time”. Everyone does it differently.

However, there are some basic standards of *ethics* and those apply regardless of how many people you’re dating.

1. Don’t treat people as things. Other people are autonomous, sentient beings with their own agency. They are not supporting characters in the story starring You. They do not exist for you and you are not entitled to them or anything that belongs to them. Even in the context of a relationship. They are people and they are their own person.


2. Be honest with them about your desires, boundaries, limitations, and expectations. And in order to do that, you will need to also be honest with yourself about these same things.


3. Give other people the information they need to give informed consent to anything they do with you, including enter into a relationship in the first place. This is related to #2 because giving this information with people requires you to be honest about what you can do, what you’re willing to do, what you want to do, and what you can’t / won’t / don’t want to do.
   
   This includes the type of relationship you hope to have, in this case - dating more than one person at a time. They need to know that this is the deal, have all the information necessary to make their own choices and decisions, be free of coercion to make said choices and decisions, and then to agree on a relationship structure with you. If they can’t say “no”, then a “yes” is meaningless. So they need to be able to freely say yes or no to everything, and for that, they need information.


4. Build relationships on empowerment for the people in the relationships. The people in the relationships should always be more important than the relationship itself. The relationship is not a sentient being, although sometimes it feels like our relationships can run away from us and they take on a life of their own.
   
   But they’re not. The relationships should exist to serve the people, the people should not exist to serve the relationship. So empower your partner(s) to have control over their own agency and to have an equal say in their own relationships with you.


5. If you do choose to see multiple people, you need to treat *every single one of them according to these standards of ethics*. It is not ethical to respect your partner’s agency, be honest with them, give them the info they need, allow them the space to consent, etc. while not doing all of these things with someone else. Always keep the locus of control over the relationship between the two people in the relationship.
   
   Yes, even if you have “a relationship” of 3 or more people. Because you don’t. If there are 3 people who are all relating to each other, you have 3 separate dyadic relationships and one 3-person relationship dynamic. Each dyad is its own relationship, so the two people in that relationship ought to be the only two people with the power to control the relationship that they’re in. Relationships can be *influenced* by other people, because everything is “influenced” by everything else. But where does the *control* lie? Who has the most control? If it’s not equally shared between the two people in that dyad, then it’s not ethical.
   
   Some people will try to give you a list of “rules”, such as safer sex rules, One Penis Policies, couple-centric attempts to “protect the primary” or “protect the existing relationship”. None of those are “standard”, they’re just common newbie attempts at managing emotions. The more experienced people who practice some kind of ethical non-monogamy tend to know better and tend to structure their relationships based on a foundation of ethics as I’ve started laying out above, rather than a list of rules dictating behaviour to make people “behave” in a relationship.

“The people in a relationship are more important than the relationship” and “don’t treat people as things” are the most important axioms in building ethical relationships. From these two principles, the other ethical standards follow - respecting people’s agency, relating with consent, be honest, empower your partners, treat all of your relationships ethically not just the one that started first, etc.

If we could make this the standard of *all* relationships, instead of seeing it as a fringe standard for a subgroup of relationship types, I think we’d have a whole lot more healthy and happy relationship partners than we do. Monogamous relationships benefit greatly from following standards like these, and polyamorous (and other ethical non-monogamous) relationships can’t be done without them.

But they’re really not specific to just being involved with multiple people. That’s why they’re *ethical* standards, not open relationship standards. But if you want your open relationships to be ethical, then follow the ethical standards.

If It Looks Like A Duck But In Miniature… aka When Lesser Evils Are Still Bad But Also Lesser Evils

What I find very ironic is that a lot of supposedly progressive types get up in arms over these clear and obvious abuses of power, and yet they themselves take up positions of authority in their companies or communities and also get involved with much younger women, but see it as somehow "different" because they're not *as* famous or they're not rich (because, honestly, who the fuck becomes rich as a community leader or speaker or writer or organizer?), and because she's technically of legal age already once they start.

It's not as simple as "him rich & legal, her illegal = morally wrong". The span of the age gap, which life stage each person is in, how much community standing the older person has, how the younger person views them ... these things all affect the impact that this power imbalance has.

When I was 15-17, I actively courted men who could legally vote. This is a fuzzy area. However:

1. I was not an up-and-comer in an industry and they were not people of power who could influence my career. They didn't hold any position of authority over me at all and had nothing to benefit me other than the fact that I wanted to sleep with them.


2. There is a huge difference between a 16 & 18 year old both still in high school and a 14 & 35 year old, and also a big difference between them and a 35 & 55 year old. The bigger the age gap and the more different the life stage (i.e. the younger the youngest one is), the bigger the impact is.


3. I had comprehensive sex ed and control over my reproductive choices, and I made my decisions knowingly and on my own because I wanted to have sex, not because some older man convinced me that he "loved" me.

That still doesn't make what the older men did *right*, I'm just acknowledging that there is some nuance in the discussion. I had control of my sexual agency when I was a teenager because of my specific life circumstances and my available options. But older men still should have known better.

And now, with men I know in their 30s, 40s, and 50s all vocally condemning these statutory rapes, yet some of them justifying getting involved with women not very long out of their teenage years because "she's an adult, if I don't have sex with her, I am robbing her of her sexual agency" ... while it's true that it's not the same thing as 40 year old rock stars marrying 13 year old children, it's also the same *excuse*, just moving the age of "agency".

I don't think all "crimes" ought to have the same penalties. The crime of copyright violation shouldn't carry the same sentence as mass murder. But as someone who has had my artwork stolen, I'm kinda sensitive to people justifying one "crime" while being opposed to others. Same thing with these kinds of things - yes, there is nuance in the discussion depending on the variables, but that doesn't make it *right* when something is less bad than something else.

I'm just saying that I have noticed a lot of people willing to hard-line condemn some people for obvious atrocities, but who then do things that are ... a little less clearly bad, using the same *excuses*.

And this is, IMO, why we should both a) switch away from the Scorched Earth Policy as a blanket policy in SJW circles and work on more nuanced forms of justice (where earth scorching and banning are still options but not the only tools, and in fact are the last resort), and b) be a little more introspective and careful with our own "minor" infractions so that we don't emulate these clear examples in our lesser offenses, which leave doors open for the big offenses.

As I've said in other contexts before - if you don't want other people thinking your relationship is abusive, perhaps you shouldn't be doing the same things that abusers do.

If you want to take a hard stance against rape cases like these, perhaps you shouldn't be having the kinds of relationships where your justifications for that relationship are the same ones that these rapists use for their relationships.

And while acknowledging the severity of the hard-edged cases, if you don't want to find yourself on the receiving end of the kind of "justice" you promote, perhaps also acknowledge that life is complex.  While striving to do better.