More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (16 page)

Passive communication is the norm in many families, and indeed in many cultures. Every now and then some pop-psych article will surface that compares passive with direct communication and says that neither is inherently "better," and all you need to do is learn which style someone is using and adapt to it.

In polyamorous relationships, though, passive communication will fuck you right up—and your partners, and their partners. It's true that some cultures—the Middle Eastern culture that Kira grew up in, for example—do use very subtle, nuanced passive communication, and there's nothing wrong with that in its own cultural context. However, in cultures where passive communication is the norm, the paratext—the subtle verbal and nonverbal cues that tell you the hidden meaning—are shared and understood. We wrote this book for readers in the Western context, where it's almost certain that you, your partners and their partners will have grown up with different family and cultural backgrounds, and thus different assumptions about what subtle cues convey what unspoken meanings. Looking for hidden meanings in such a situation leads to a very high chance that you'll be quite simply wrong.

When passive communication includes implied threats or demands, it can tip over into manipulation. This can happen in many ways: concealing our real motivations by couching them in pleasant-sounding but leading language, for instance. "We wouldn't want anything unpleasant to happen now, would we?" Or by waiting for a partner to misinterpret our coded language and then springing something like "You never listen to me!"

EVE'S STORY
I don't remember the exact circumstances under which I shared my Google calendar with Kira, or why. I remember asking her about it first, but she remembers it differently. I do remember that she had never shared a calendar before, and I wanted to show her how it worked. For me, sharing calendars was no big thing—at the time, many of my friends and people I worked with had access to both my personal and work calendars. If I wanted to keep information private, I would make a "private event."

We didn't discuss boundaries around the calendar or specific expectations about what sharing it meant. As it turned out, she had very different expectations than I did—but I didn't learn that until too late.

Because Kira was accustomed to passive communication, she understood my sharing my calendar with her to carry an implicit expectation that she would share hers, although this hadn't occurred to me—and I was quite surprised when she did. After sharing her calendar with me, she felt unacceptably exposed, as though I had full knowledge of her whereabouts at all times; in fact, I only viewed her calendar once during our relationship.

Ultimately the calendar was, to Kira, a symbol of the relationship escalator. Her fears about becoming bound by expectations or commitment became tied to it. The unfortunate part was, we never discussed any of this. She told me only when our relationship was at an end and any possibility of genuine communication had already been cut off.

A very common problem with passive communication is that people accustomed to it tend to see all communication as passive. They can't switch between passive and direct communication. No matter how direct you are, the passive communicator is certain there's a hidden message, an unstated request or a secret criticism buried somewhere deep in your words. Often a passive communicator will come up with interpretations that seem plain bizarre, even paranoid. But this just comes from their cultural expectations of how much meaning other people hide in their words.

The most effective way we've found for building good communication with a passive communicator is with patience, compassion and directness. Respond only to the surface words, without trying to divine or decode the hidden meaning. If the passive communicator becomes frustrated at your inability to see the actual message—and he will—reiterate that direct communication is the only way you know to make sure the message gets through.

Demonstrate clear, direct communication yourself. If your partner misinterprets something you've said, or extracts a meaning you didn't intend, be patient and forthright. State your intended meaning plainly. Reassure him that your words carry no hidden intent. Make it clear that you genuinely want to understand. Respond to vague statements with clear, direct questions. Ask for clarification when he says something ambiguous. And above all keep at it, and don't expect quick change. Passive communication takes a long time to learn, and just as long to unlearn.

STORYTELLING

Humans are storytelling animals. We tell stories to ourselves, dozens of times a day, without even being aware of it. We use these stories to make sense of the world and to understand the actions of the people around us. Many of these stories relate to other people's motives. We know that people's actions aren't random. We build models in our heads that help us understand others. And because we don't come from the factory equipped with magical mind-reading rubies in our foreheads, these models are flawed. They're made up of observation, guesswork, projection and empathy.

Unfortunately, it's natural to react as though our models are perfect. We don't usually say to ourselves, "I'm convinced to about 65 percent accuracy that he is trying to replace me in my lover's affections, but there's considerable room for error." Rather, we say, "That bastard is trying to get rid of me!" The motives we ascribe to other people's behavior are colored by our own fears and insecurities; if we're worried about being supplanted, we tend to read signs in everything.

Worse, we are predisposed to view all other people's motives less charitably than our own. Research has shown that we tend to explain our own behavior in terms of the situation we're in, while we believe the behavior of others goes directly to their character. When asked why we cut someone else off in traffic, we might say, "I was looking the other way and didn't see him," but when asked why someone else cut us off in traffic, we are more likely to say, "She's obviously a reckless driver who doesn't care about anyone else on the road." (Sociologists often refer to this as the "fundamental attribution error.")

In polyamorous relationships, as you might imagine, this behavior can get pretty ugly. When we tell ourselves stories about other people, we tend to run with those stories, rather than what the other people say about the matter. Of course so-and-so says he isn't trying to separate me from my partner; that's exactly what he wants me to believe!

We propose a radical strategy to deal with what people say: In the absence of concrete evidence to the contrary, believe them.

TRIANGULAR COMMUNICATION

If we were to set out axioms of good communication (as we try to do in the next chapter), one of them would be that communication about any issue ideally involves the people directly affected. This sounds simple, but it's surprisingly hard to implement. It starts from an early age. Most of us who grew up with siblings can remember at least one time when we said, "Mom, Danny's poking me!" or "Hey, Dad, Miranda won't stay on her side of the seat!" And thus the seed is sown for some of the most tenacious communication problems we will ever face.

Triangular communication happens when one person has a problem, concern or question for another person, but instead of bringing it up directly with that person, instead goes to someone else. It happens when a child has a problem with her brother's behavior and petitions a parent to settle it. It happens online when one person has a problem with somebody else and goes to the faceless masses of the Internet to seek validation. It happens when someone at a company has a problem with another person's performance and approaches a coworker about it. And it happens
all the time
in polyamorous relationships.

Triangular communication can also happen when one person wants to control the flow of information between the partners. Most of us don't like conflict, and controlling the flow of information can seem like a way to avoid or reduce conflict. It can sometimes be a means of minimizing tensions or disagreements; if your partners aren't getting along, you can be tempted to try to interpret one person's words for the other, in a way that shows the message in its most favorable light. It can also happen when you don't trust what your partners might say to each other.

In practice, triangular communication leads to diffusion of responsibility. It becomes easy to tell one partner, "I can't do what you want me to do because Suzie might not like it," rather than "I am choosing not to do what you want me to, because I think Suzie might not like it." (Veto is arguably an extreme example of this diffusion of responsibility.
More on this
.)

EVE'S STORY
Ray and his wife, Danielle, had a hierarchical relationship. Very early on, his wife stressed that I needed to remember she was primary. This was my first polyamorous relationship, I was head over heels for Ray, and Peter and I had assumed we would be using hierarchy as well, so at the time, it seemed entirely reasonable to agree to this. I was naively unaware of what it would actually mean—especially years in.

Danielle practiced what a friend of mine called "line-item veto." Ray and I were in a long-distance relationship, but if I came to visit him, I was expected to alternate nights with her, sometimes at a ratio of two nights hers and one night mine (in the case of a long weekend, for example). If we had plans together and she needed something from him, even if she'd just had a bad day, he had to cancel our plans so he could be with her—even if we weren't going to see each other again for weeks.

I tried negotiating directly with Danielle, which got even worse results—for example, I was going to be in town for a weekend, and she proposed that I share a meal with the two of them, as the only time I would see Ray. Over months, my frustration grew. I blamed Danielle: for being selfish, inconsiderate, demanding, needy. I was seeing a poly-specialist therapist at the time and was working with her through some of this frustration. She asked me why I was blaming Danielle for Ray's decisions. I didn't have a good answer.

I realized then that regardless of his reasons, it was Ray who was canceling dates. Ray who wasn't giving me the time or attention I wanted. Ray who I needed to talk to about what I needed in the relationship, and Ray who could agree whether or not to provide it. This was an epiphany for me, and one that turned around my relationship with Ray. It simply hadn't occurred to me before to see Ray as the copilot of our relationship.

Eve's discovery was painful. It's much easier to blame a third party, casting you and your beloved as helpless victims, than to face the fact that your partner is choosing not to invest in your relationship. It can be hard to direct your anger and frustration at the person who is actually hurting you when he's someone you are intimately involved with. And for the pivot person in a vee relationship? It's a lot harder to do the gritty work of negotiating solutions among competing needs and deciding how to share your time and resources than it is to stand back and pretend that those solutions are something your partners need to work out between themselves.

Metamours are not children, and as a pivot partner you are not Halloween candy to divide up. Negotiating resource investments in relationships is not like deciding who gets how many Snickers bars and who is stuck with the malted milk balls. Three-way communication is useful to build trust and get a clear understanding of needs and capabilities, but ultimately the pivot partner is the master of her own decisions and resources. If someone isn't getting what he needs from her, that's something he needs to take up with her,
his partner.
And she needs to take responsibility.

The solution to triangular communication is simple in theory—don't do it—but difficult in practice, because it's easier to talk about things that bother us with anyone but the person whose behavior is at issue. And because when we feel wronged, it's natural to seek allies. In practical terms, you can't make other people communicate directly with each other. The best you can do is to limit your own participation in triangular communication. Just back out and tell the people they need to talk to each other. And
you
should address anything that bothers you directly with the person involved.