Am I Doing Polyamory The “Wrong” Way?

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Hey Dr. NerdLove,

Long-time reader, first-time writer. Here’s the situation: I’m in my late 20s, nonbinary and polyamorous. I started off as non-monogamous and preferring relationships without an expectation of sexual exclusivity, and have done so for a good chunk of my adult life, but over time I came to realize that I’m poly, not just ENM. It took time to figure out that I was having fully loving relationships with multiple people, not just FWBs and once I could accept that, my love life got much better.

Unfortunately, this is where things took a bit of a turn. While I wholeheartedly believe in what polyamory is all about, the particular style I prefer seems to be a rarity in the community. Many folks I meet or date seem to gravitate towards a more interconnected form of polyamory (the kitchen table style), where there’s an expectation (or at least a hope) of forming relationships, or at least friendships, with their partner’s other partners. While I respect and understand that choice, it’s not quite my jam. I prefer a style where my relationships are more individualized. In other words, while I’m more than okay with my partners dating others (that’s the whole point, right?), I don’t necessarily want to form relationships or deep connections with my metamours.

This preference isn’t about jealousy or being territorial; it’s just what feels right and authentic to me. But trying to find like-minded individuals has been a challenge, especially in the poly community in my town and online. In fact, for a while it seemed that every time the topic came up, I was being told that I was doing polyamory wrong for not wanting a kitchen-table style commune or not necessarily wanting to have a close relationship with my metas. If I mentioned that I prefer keeping those sides separate, I’m told that I’m being selfish or not truly poly or having a mono ideology and shouldn’t be dating until I’m over it. This has made it hard for me to feel like I can date. I meet wonderful people who I connect with, but I end up getting stressed because I’m expecting to be lectured about how I’m Doing It Wrong again.

I’m getting incredibly tired of how often this happens, but I also know I’m not able to date like I’m monogamous. How do I navigate the poly community and find partners who share or at least respect my style of polyamory? And, when I do meet potential poly partners, how can I effectively communicate my preferences without coming off like I’m getting judgmental about their model?

Looking forward to your guidance,

Poly with a Twist

: A quick question before we get into the meat of your answer, PWAT: are you encountering this pushback in person, or is it more part of the online communities you’re participating in?

I ask, in part because this may come down to where you’re meeting people and where you’re spending your time online. In online communities (in general, not just polyamorous ones), there’s often a tendency for people to cluster in specific communities that all more or less agree with one another. That’s not terribly surprising; despite what Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat told us, opposites don’t attract. We tend to be drawn to people who are similar to us, and that frequently includes things like how we conduct our relationships.

One thing that often comes up in online communities is that there’s a tendency for the loudest or most vehement voices to set the tone, especially if there aren’t significant efforts at moderation. It’s all too easy to fall into a pattern of just letting the loudest have their say in part because they’re the most willing to cause headaches for everyone else.

This often ends up leading to a pattern of divisiveness and reinforcement. There often ends up being cycle after cycle of incidents or arguments that encourage people to stake out increasingly inflexible and extreme positions – whether to signal in-group membership, position themselves as being more “virtuous” or true to the ideal or just to try to establish themselves in the social pecking order. Members find themselves being encouraged to divide themselves into camps, with the loudest and most divisive segments dominating all discussion and dictating the tone of the group. This, in turn, means that the more moderate crowd or the folks who may disagree but don’t care enough to fight about it tend to leave (possibly even dropping out of the community entirely) and the community itself becomes more and more strident until either there’s a schism or it falls apart under the weight of the internecine warfare.

And this is before one gets into the question of just how many people take it that seriously or just get incredibly spun up online, how many have actually lived their declared values or just have very strong opinions about How It All Should Be Done and so on.

To steal a line from academia: the fighting is the fiercest because the stakes are so incredibly low.

I bring all of this up in part because… well, there’s a difference in how much impact a lot of spun-up strangers in a Discord server or Facebook group will actually have on your dating life versus in-person communities. However the advice on how to handle it is more or less the same: leave ‘em behind and go find a better community that isn’t so focused on being The One True Way. While the number of non-monogamous or poly people overall is relatively small in terms of overall demographics, if you’re in a sizable city, the odds that these groups are the sum total of the people you might be able to date is pretty low. It’s easy to mistake volume for numbers, especially in a closed community.

With that out of the way, what you’re dealing with is the difference between poly models. There’re about as many different ways to have a poly relationship as there are people in them, but a few tend to be the most common. You’re running into people who prefer what’s colloquially known as “kitchen table” polyamory, when you’re more interested in a “garden party” style of relationship. You’re not interested in one big communal living group or being expected to have a tight relationship with your metamours (your partner’s other partners), and that’s fine! That’s not definitional with being polyamorous. It’s just a lifestyle choice. What you seem to be interested in are a series of parallel relationships. You have your partners, your partners may have partners of their own besides you and the two rarely overlap. That’s also an entirely legitimate way to conduct polyamory. You aren’t required to be BFFs with everyone your partner dates or sleeps with, any more than they’re required to be besties with yours. It’s nice if it can work that way but to my mind, it starts running headlong into Geek Social Fallacy #4: all friendships are transitory. Just because you and Person 1 are both dating Person 2 doesn’t mean that you and Person 1 are going to get along. It takes more in common than sleeping with the same person to make a friendship happen.

What I’d recommend is that you make it clear that your preferred style of poly is parallel or “garden party”, whether you’re meeting people in person or online. Having the phrase “garden party poly” in your dating profile, for example, will help folks understand what you prefer. Ideally, the folks who are hoping for a kitchen-table style community will see this, recognize the incompatibility and move on. The ones who don’t and choose instead to lecture you on how You’re Doing Poly Wrong, however, are showing you that they’re emphatically not right for you and rude besides. You can feel free to ignore them or block them as you see fit.

In person, you should prioritize groups that don’t have the One-True-Way philosophy and not linger in the communities that insist that theirs is the only way to do it correctly. Even if they’re also of the garden party style, the more stringent they are about how one can “do” polyamory, the more likely it is that you will fail some other purity test and be badgered and criticized for your supposed moral failings. 

Now, I want to give a caveat to this: there’s a difference between “to be truly poly, you have to follow this long list of rules” and then there’s “being polyamorous or ENM doesn’t mean that you get to go around doing whatever the fuck you want without regard for your partners’ feelings”. If you’re being called out for being a shithead to your partner(s)… well that is probably some time for some self-reflection. But if the complaints are that you’re conducting your relationships by According to Hoyle rules… well, it’s worth seeing if those rules even actually apply to your relationships, but you may just not be a good fit with that group.

The other thing I would suggest is that you don’t necessarily need to date within the organized poly community. It’s easier to meet people who’ve self-labeled like that, yes. But even when it feels like they’re the sum total of poly people in your city, I can promise you: there are more options out there than you realize. There’re are more people who are willing to try poly or ethical non-monogamy than you’d think. They may not be part of the organized community, they may not use the label or may not have realized that this was an option for them… but I promise you, there’re more of them out there than you’d think. It may mean that you need to look harder for longer, or possibly guide someone through the initial steps, but that’s still a much better option than trying to fit into a community that insists you conform to exactly one relationship model or else.

Good luck.

Hi Doc, how can I do a better job at finding poly dates/partners who AREN’T into D&D and heavy gaming?

First off, nothing against those on their own, as every different interest is valid, etc. But I had some pretty negative experiences with a living arrangement involving pretty obsessive D&D players who both wouldn’t shut up about it and were very unhygienic, almost like caring about cleanliness is beneath them. Yes I know not every fan is like that, and I shouldn’t stereotype, but those experiences really don’t seem to want to leave my memory. So when I am looking for dates and such, everyone on the apps or social meet up pages or whatever in my area involves conversations about D&D and I just can’t relate. My brain shuts off and immediately becomes annoyed. I’m into other nerdy stuff like films, other arts and music, but can’t seem to find poly folks in those areas. Also I found there tends to be lots of heteronormativity in them as well.

I’ve also encountered lots of poly folks who seem to be hyper focused on kitchen table poly dynamics, wanting everyone in the circle to get along and love each other, and etc. which just isn’t the reality of all human dynamics. In the past, metamors or meta’s metas didn’t like the fact that there were people in the circle that I personally didn’t like and preferred not to be around, which is HUMAN and I shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about. I myself am a more introverted person but still like to hang out in small groups, and have my preferences for folks who take up less space and are less annoying. I also see that the majority of those folks on apps who take things such as astrology and myers-briggs tests too seriously. I’m a very science-minded person and have little tolerance for pseudoscience or things explained by the barnum effect.

I don’t know maybe I’m venting and I’m a square? Or missing something about better search strategies?

Sincerely,

Which Table Do I Sit At?

Y’know, right off the bat, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. Much like the kink community, the poly community is stuffed full of nerds. You’re going to find the quasi-libertarians who found Stranger in A Strange Land  before they got on their Ayn Rand kick, the anime nerds who’s answer to the harem-problem is “yes, and”, varying flavors of queer geeks who long stopped giving a shit about society’s “rules” for sex and relationships after they came out and of course, the D&D nerds. 

Hell, some polycules come together because it’s the only way to guarantee your full party shows up at the table on a weekly basis. 

So if you absolutely hate D&D and the people who play it… oh buddy, you really backed the wrong lifestyle choice. 

I kid, I kid. But not by much.

OK getting serious now.

 The first thing I’d suggest, WTDSA, is that you go read my reply to Poly With A Twist about finding people who aren’t necessarily into kitchen table polyamory; the advice I gave them is going to apply to you, too.

Now as for the rest… ok, I can understand that you’ve had some bad experiences before, and I can sympathize. But from what you’ve said and what I’m getting from your letter seems to me that you haven’t actually met these people in person, just seen their profiles on the apps. Am I wrong? Because if so… well, honestly, that seem to be more of a you problem than a them problem.

Let’s start with the nerd aspect, shall we? The “I hate D&D” thing is easy enough. Don’t like Dungeons and Dragons? Cool… so don’t play. You don’t have to take part in the game, you don’t have to watch Critical Role, download Baldur’s Gate 3 or whatever; you’re free to do your own thing while they do theirs. You’re dating, not being soul-bound into a Dragonlance campaign.

But it seems that this is a self-imposed issue, since your letter gives the impression that you haven’t actually had this problem in your relationships, just that it’s a theoretical dilemma based around your former roommates’ behavior and overall lack of hygiene. Which was gross, sure, but it doesn’t seem like this has played out anywhere else.

If the issue really is that you’re seeing dating app profiles from folks who play D&D and you’re reacting to that, rather than how they are in person… well, that’s the definition of a “you” problem. You’re making the sort of snap judgment about someone that you complain about other people having about you… except in this case, you haven’t actually met them yet. You’re annoyed at them for something they haven’t done, because it reminds you of your former roommates. Well… I mean, again, I sympathize. But you’re still getting upset at strangers on a dating app for things that other people did. That’s not healthy and honestly, that’s really something you should be dealing with on your own.

(And God I hope you’re not someone who messages people you don’t actually want to match with to complain about something in their profile. I see that way too often these days; swipe left and move on, people!)

Getting upset that other people also like the thing that people you don’t like were into isn’t great for your mental health or your chances of finding a relationship. Mostly it just ends up isolating you further and further, because even the people who might agree that X or Y is dumb tend to get tired of all the discourse and just go grumble elsewhere. 

And this continues to be a theme in your letter. You get very judgmental and upset at people for… apparently not giving you the consideration that you’re not giving them. You are acting as closed minded as the people you’re upset at, looking down on them for not believing as you do or being into things that you think are stupid.

Y’know… like not wanting to do kitchen table poly. Or not being besties with your metas. Or taking up “too much space” and being “annoying”.

I mean, I roll my eyes at a lot of woo, and I think Meyers-Briggs is dumb. But I also know a lot of the stuff I believe in or try to live my life by are things that other folks think is dumb or hokum, and so I do my best to have a “ok, you do you” attitude. It doesn’t always work, but I do my best to grumble my grumbles elsewhere, especially if it’s not going to harm anyone. To paraphrase the sage, it’s best not to sit in judgment because you can’t be sure where you’ll be sitting.

If someone is going to make being an INTJ an important part of their lifestyle, it may be annoying to you (and to me) but it’s not actually hurting anyone, so who the fuck cares? And if someone you’re dating believes or is into stuff you don’t like, but they’re not pushing you to believe or blowing the money that should be going to rent on Goop (or NFTs or Jordan Peterson lectures or crypto or…), then it’s really no skin off your nose. You’re free to continue not believing and not participating… or not dating them, for that matter.   

But once again: this seems to be a theoretical problem, not an actual one. You’re getting your nose out of joint over people you haven’t met, haven’t dated or had any real contact with. While I’m sure it’s frustrating that it feels like the online communities you’re hanging out in aren’t reflecting your beliefs and preferences, that’s more about where you’re hanging out.

As I said to PWT, find the communities that’re more conducive to your worldview. Lead with what you’re looking for, what your preferred relationship model is and work from there. And if the right people for you aren’t on the apps you’re using… well, one answer would be to try different apps. If the communities you’re part of seem to be exactly one way, then it’s time to find a different community. I know it can feel like the only poly people out there are the ones you’ve seen on the apps, but I can promise you: there’re more than you’ve been seeing.

And the answer may well be “get off the apps”. You may have to try to meet them in person – including meeting people who might not be poly and letting them know that you are – but there are options.

However, if you want folks to give you a chance, you’re going to have to be willing to give them a chance in return. Relationships are very much about compromise and consideration for one another. If you’re going to hope for accommodation for your preferences, you have to be willing to give some for theirs as well. Even if it means not rolling your eyes around them if they bring up being Scorpio with Sagittarius rising or whatever.