Who Gets a Say?
Content notes: polyamory, non-monogamy, relationships, infertility, pregnancy scares, breakups, grief
Yesterday, at a friend’s small gathering, I borrowed a deck called “Polyamory Conversation Cards.” My partner was there too. The deck is made by Odder Being, and it’s comprised of 55 cards, 49 questions across categories like Communication, Emotional Safety, and Practicalities. We’re planning to go through them together as we talk about relationship anarchy and what kind of partnership we want to build.
We haven’t started yet, but before I even borrowed the deck, I flipped through it. And the first card I pulled was this:
“Who gets a say in life decisions that influence multiple relationships (such as pregnancies or moving to a different country)?”
I laughed and internally groaned.
I’ve lived both of those examples. And arguably, I’m still living one of them.
I’m writing this while grieving. My last IUI attempt didn’t work. I’m not pregnant, again, and I’m sitting with that particular kind of loss: mourning something that never quite existed, and a future that keeps getting postponed. And in that raw, tender place, this card hit different.
A couple of years ago, I had a pregnancy scare. I wasn’t pregnant then either, but the scare was real, and the fear was real, and the way it was handled was... not great.
I wrote my partner at the time a letter. I titled it with love because I meant it with love, even as I was drawing a line in the sand:
“Whether or not I’m pregnant, I was deeply hurt that you felt that you had to keep important (imo) information insular between your partners. This is a brand of polyamory that I’m not comfortable with—and I want to validate that it is a valid brand of polyamory. It’s just not my style.”
I laid out everything: my vision for kitchen-table polyamory, my practice of relationship anarchy, and my need for open communication across the constellation. I named what I wanted. To be friends with my metamours (and I know that’s not always wanted or done in many polyamorous relationships!). To be open with my struggles and successes. To maybe raise children together or in collaborative ways (I was open to raising my child as my own, in a strictly parallel way… and for safety reasons, I may still do this). To build something that felt like community rather than parallel lives that occasionally intersected through one shared person.
I was advocating for myself in crisis mode, trying to articulate something I knew but couldn’t get them (or past partners) to see.
We broke up later that week, and I don’t regret it.
A year-ish later, in a different relationship, the topic of moving to another country came up (and this conversation led them to tell me we should break up anyway). I remember trying to have the conversation about what that would mean for the polycule, for all of us, and feeling like I was shouting into a void. We never got a chance to discuss it as a polycule, and I got the feeling that it wasn’t even considered a priority. My place in the polycule (let alone their desire to have me as a partner) wasn’t a priority.
That relationship ended, too (it’s the one that I’ve been processing the past year). I am thankfully in a better place about it now. But at the time, it was heartbreaking and crushing, even though we had only been dating for a couple of months.
The card assumes “multiple relationships” means romantic ones. Partners. Metamours. The polycule.
But I’m pursuing solo parenthood now, and I might leave my current city (whether I’d move to another country is still up in the air, but I’ve thought about moving ever since my divorce). I also don’t consider a “relationship” exclusive to just romantic entanglements.
I’m taking a break from actively trying (this current grieving period is part of that). Still, the life decision is made, and I’ve been preemptively telling everyone: my current partner, obviously. Any potential new dates or partners. Play partners. Friends.
The geometry of all of this is different this time. It’s my decision. I’m not negotiating with a co-parent or asking permission from a partner. I still want to be chosen and cared for. I still want relationships of many kinds. But the ripples of these decisions touch everyone in my life. A baby changes what I have the capacity for. It changes what kind of partner I can be, what kind of friend, and what kind of presence I can offer.
So who gets a say?
Not in whether I do it. That’s mine. But how do we navigate it together? What does our relationship look like on the other side? That’s a conversation. That’s many conversations. (Is this a dealbreaker? (And I suppose, what I’m trying to do these days is prevent abandonment by clearly stating all my intentions. I suppose that’s not as healthy, because I want to reassure the inner part of myself that’s prone to increased sensitivity to perceived abandonment.))
I’m probably going to go through these cards differently than I would have one, two, and three years ago.
Back then, I was in crisis. I was writing letters, trying to convince someone to understand my experience and support me in that experience. I also desperately craved (and, in many ways, I still do) a partner who wanted the same things I did. I was articulating my values in the desperate hope that if I just explained it clearly enough, we’d align.
Now, I want to be sitting with someone (like my current partner and any future partners) and asking: What do you want? What do I want? Where do those overlap? Where do they diverge? What do we do with the gaps?
I do not want to approach this as crisis management. I want to approach it as building a scaffolding for healthy relationships and community.
I don’t know yet what we’ll build. But I know that I am going to keep trying different ways to approach it intentionally, together, (and in this scenario, one card at a time).
If you’re reading this and navigating polyamory, relationship anarchy, or any flavor of ethical non-monogamy (whether you’re in crisis mode like I was two years ago, in grief like I am now, or in intentional-building mode), here are some resources that have helped me along the way:
Books:
The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy
More than Two by Eve Rickert
Polysecure by Jessica Fern
When Someone You Love is Polyamorous by Dr. Elisabeth Sheff
The Polyamory Breakup Book by Kathy Labriola (recommended even if you’re not breaking up!)
Polyamory in the 21st Century by Deborah Anapol
Relationship Anarchy: Occupy Intimacy! by Juan-Carlos Pérez-Cortés
Organizations & Directories:
Instagram content creators: polyphiliablog, lavitaloca34, decolonizing.love, itsangelahan, chillpolyamory, black_poly_nation, polyamorouswhileasian
And if you want conversation prompts for your own relationships, the Polyamory Conversation Cards by Odder Being are what sparked this whole post.