Four Healthy Relationship Tips from Non-monogamists

This summer, as part of my Master’s of Education in Human Sexuality, I’m taking a grad school class on non-monogamy, and it got me thinking about healthy relationships.

I teach about healthy relationships to young people all the time and never thought about the really important lessons that non-monogamy can offer about open communication, love, feelings, and trust.

In this post, I want to explore non-monogamy a bit with you and share some lessons that can be helpful for all of us who strive for healthy, happy relationships.

You might have a lot of stereotypes against folks who don’t commit to monogamy. I get it. Our culture firmly situates monogamy as the only right way to have a romantic or sexual relationship. I ask that you read this post with an open mind.

Let’s start with a definition.

What exactly is non-monogamy?

Non-monogamy is a relationship style in which a person has sexual, romantic, or emotional connections with more than one person. There are many different types of non-monogamy--swinging, open relationships, triads, polygamy, threesomes, etc. I’ve often wondered what would happen if we taught healthy relationships using a chart like this (below), to show the infinite possibilities out there and to value all types of relationships. Even if you’re super not sure about non-monogamy, there are lot of other relationship styles that we don’t often think about:

Non-monogamy isn’t new.

What might first come to mind in our country is the Mormon practice of polygyny, in which husbands would have multiple wives. But non-monogamy was also common and expected in many ancient cultures. As Dr. Michael Price of Psychology Today said: “Most ancestral men aspired to polygyny (even though most weren’t impressive enough to attract more than one wife), and some ancestral women preferred to be the co-wife of a really impressive man than the sole wife of a second-rate one.” 

Theories explaining the shift to monogamy often point to the control of off-spring and resources and to Christianity. It became expected, presumed, and desirable to find your Mr. Right--your one and only for the rest of your lives. Many communities over the years fought to practice ethical non-monogamy, such as the New York Oneida community in the 1800s and the San Francisco Kerista commune in the 1960s until 1990s, yet we branded them as lustful sinners and crazy hippies. And today, we still live, dream, watch, read, and breathe monogamy. We’ve become pretty mono-normative.

What’s mono-normativity?

It’s the assumption that everyone is monogamous and wants a monogamous relationship. It’s also the fact that our systems are built for and around monogamy. This means that monogamous people have certain privileges in our society that non-monogamous folks don’t, despite the fact that an estimated half a million families in the U.S. are openly living in relationships between multiple consenting partners.

Think about it: single people, especially once they reach their late twenties, are often pestered about when they’re going to “settle down.” Marriage in the US is only legal between two people. Health insurance, taxes, and forms only cater to couples. Those of us raised on Disney princess movies dreamed of the straight, married, monogamous couple we would one day be a part of. People have lost jobs and children when the wrong folks discover their non-monogamy. This country’s institutions and social expectations are rooted in mono-normativity.

This week I stumbled across a pop culture example of mono-normativity that will hit home with the Outlander fans out there: I just finished reading a part in book six (I will purposefully be vague to avoid spoilers) in which a character is discovered to be sleeping with two twin brothers, both of whom she loves dearly. She gets pregnant from one of the brothers, and because the brothers are twins, she is unsure which one is the father. Upon her revealing the pregnancy, her father forces her to pick one brother, marries the two of them, and sends the other brother away. But the depth of their love for each other is touching: “[She] knelt on the floor, still clinging to the boys, the three heads drawn together like the lobes of a clover leaf as they murmured to one another. ‘Are you hurt?’ she was saying, and ‘Are you alright?’ they were asking, an absolute tangle of hands and arms meanwhile searching, patting, stroking, and embracing.”

Yet, evidenced in the forced marriage between only two of them to avoid scandal in their community, this triad clearly experienced the stigma of their time that non-monogamists still often experience today. A 2012 study found that many people still have negative stereotypes about people in non-monogamous relationships, believing them to be more sexually risky, less morally acceptable, and having less trusting and less meaningful relationships. The same study showed that people even thought that non-monogamists don’t floss their teeth as often or pay their taxes on time at the same rate as monogamous people, which is absolute nonsense.

In fact, researchers found that folks in ethically non-monogamous relationships are just as satisfied, committed, and passionately in love as folks in monogamous marriages. So while the stigma is real, the data show something different.

Regardless of your opinion on non-monogamy, however, knowing how to build healthy relationships is an important life skill for all of us.

And believe it or not, non-monogamists have some relationship tips that may be helpful for EVERYONE. Below are 4 tips that I hope can be useful for anyone wanting to grow and strengthen the meaningful relationships in their lives:

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate!

Folks engaged in ethical non-monogamy tend to be stellar communicators. Opening up a relationship requires intentional communication about boundaries, trust, hard emotions, and needs/wants. Those things are important in monogamous relationships, too! A lot of times, especially because of the state of sexuality education in this country, we’re not very practiced at having tough conversations with our romantic or sexual partners when things aren’t going exactly how we hoped or when something our partner did or said rubbed us the wrong way. We convince ourselves that maybe it’s not important enough to bring up--”I’m probably being irrational”--or we go straight towards laying blame on our partner(s) and fueling anger and bitterness. Making the time for intentional conversation with your partner(s), learning to confidently and respectfully communicate your needs and wants, and being vulnerable about your feelings with someone else can all help a relationship grow stronger and more loving.

2. Dare to feel. 

Anger, grief, loss, sadness, fear… these can be really tough emotions to feel, especially when someone else caused us to feel that way. A tendency many of us have in our romantic or sexual relationships is to jump straight to the feeling of jealousy, rather than experiencing the harder emotions underneath it all. For example, am I really jealous that my boyfriend is hanging out with a good female friend or am I perhaps feeling lonely? Could my “jealousy” be alleviated if I reached out to some old friends to reconnect? Or might I feel better if we had a date night soon to celebrate us, since we haven’t had special together time in a while? Being curious about our emotions and digging into them, even the tough ones, can be really hard but also really important to maintaining healthy boundaries and contentment within relationships. Dare to feel the things. Be curious and dig deeper.

3. Rely on trust, not rules.

Any relationship, even if it’s friends with benefits or a random hook-up, requires a certain degree of trust. You have to trust that the other person is going to respect if you say “no” or “stop.” You have to trust that your emotions will be valued. You have to trust that your partner is not going to break agreements you made together. 

A lot of us, even folks engaging in non-monogamy, often create a lot of rules around our relationships rather than relying on trust. Come home for family dinner or else. You’re allowed to kiss her but don’t have sex with her. You can’t talk to your ex. And the number one for monogamists: don’t cheat. What if these issues opened up a conversation rather than creating a hard and fast rule? What if the rules became questions: how can we adjust schedules so that family dinner works for all of us? Is there a reason that’s keeping you away from home so much? Why am I feeling jealous? And for the ultimate “don’t cheat” rule, what if we asked earlier enough: what’s missing for you and how can we work on that? Of course, not all relationships are healthy and can stay together. By relying on trust and conversation, you’ll find that there could be room to grow together or that you need to part ways. But either way, trust is maintained.

4. Be generous with your love.

Monogamists operate under the assumption that our love is finite. We can only love one person and for the rest of our lives. However, we know that not to be true: we love our kids. We love our family. We love our favorite barista. We love our friends. We love our favorite band. We love our communities. We know that there are so many different types of love, and the love doesn’t run out. Even if we’re stressed or sad and might be in a need of a little self love, deep down we still love others. Especially during this time when our black friends and community members are struggling against our unjust system, when our communities are being ravished by covid-19, and when our politicians are sowing hatred and fear against our fellow Americans and asylum seekers--this is the perfect time for us to realize that we must be generous with our love. Love is unbounded. 

Regardless of whether you’re coupled, thrupled, or more, I hope these tips prove useful in helping promote even stronger relationships. You all deserve it.

To learn more about non-monogamy, check out the Multiamory podcast and the books Opening Up by Tristan Taormino and The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy.