I have been in a wonderful relationship for six years. We are polyamorous and recently we have been thinking about marrying and starting a family. I think this shift should include stricter boundaries and safeguards, as carrying a child will be disproportionately taxing for me and I expect I won’t want to feel vulnerable or jealous. I also think children necessarily bring about changes in lifestyle, and I would be happy to put the promiscuity on pause. At the very least, I’d like him to steer clear of romantic connections; I’m much more open about him simply having sexual liaisons or flirting.
He will not commit to this, on philosophical grounds. He says I am his soulmate, but also that there can be many soulmates and that “nobody can promise anything for ever”. When I suggest this means we should not be primary partners so that I may pursue those milestones with someone who can give me the reassurances I need, he disagrees very strongly and asks me not to decide on the fate of our relationship without him.
He says it kills him when I express doubts on the strength of our partnership, and that I am being avoidant by choosing not to work on my insecurity. He thinks this request for boundaries is simply a blip in confidence.
I don’t know whether it is a blip, but I do know I am experiencing pain right now when I see him go through the thrill and intimacy of new relationships while we are supposed to be focusing on our future. What’s difficult is that I agree with him: I know loving multiple people is possible. We both believe that to love someone means, among other things, not to get in the way of their ambitions, of what makes them feel good, as long as it’s not harmful. I want him to have exactly the life he desires.
Yet I feel suddenly conservative when I project myself into the future and imagine how vulnerable I will be. He tells me he loves me, and I am confident he does, but if he’s putting philosophy ahead of my comfort to this extent, I doubt he will make a very good husband and co-parent.
He says he would help raise the children 50/50 regardless, but that feels like a pretty meagre deal to me. Should I work on myself so I can accept and embrace the philosophy in practice as well as principle, or should I trust how bad my whole body feels when I think of this?
Eleanor says: There’s the part of promising that’s making a commitment, and the part that’s making a prediction. It sounds like you ask for the commitment, and he answers that it’s impossible to make the prediction: “Nobody can promise anything for ever.” This makes requesting the promise humiliating, while valorising the person who (apparently sagely) declines to give it. It’s philosophy at its most annoying: sophistry, a street magic show that leaves you wondering when the guy got close enough to lift your wallet.
Of course everybody already knows we can’t predict with certainty that we’ll do what we promise. It’s not like everyone else who’s ever made a promise is too thick to notice that sometimes things change. They made their promises because they – like you – are treating their future as an object of decision. Commitments don’t mean, “I know I’ll do it.” They mean, “I’ve resolved to.” This is what you are asking for, and what he’s declining.
But if it’s philosophy he wants, let’s do some philosophy. The first requirement of reason is coherence. He thinks honesty demands that he can’t promise to be with you for ever. So why does it “kill him” when you express doubts? I thought nobody can promise anything – why is he forbidden certainty, if you’re forbidden doubt?
Another philosophical concept: free riding. He would benefit from the costs and vulnerabilities you bear for the sake of your relationship: having the child, declining the possible primary relationships he’s asking you to forgo. What costs does he bear? Or does he reap the benefits of yours without contributing any in return? Does he decline the assurances that make it rational to bank on someone, and then expect you to bank on him?
We can all spin premises on the head of a pin and call it philosophy, but until he’s open to the possibility that he’s wrong, he’s not doing anything worthy of the name. Nobody denies that you can love two people at once. That’s not the interesting question. The interesting question is whether that settles things – whether one can, or should, forgo the value of loving several people in order to secure other valuable things.
Polyamory is supposed to be about abundance. It’s supposed to be a way of showing that love and sexual connection don’t need to be zero sum: more of it for them is not less of it for you, and vice versa. But responding to your partner’s fear or discomfort by pointing out that it’s unreasonable risks making things zero sum all over again. It means pursuing your own fun, even when more of it for you means less of it for them.
I think you know whether you want to get married and have kids under this arrangement. If it comes to it, six years of a wonderful, horizon-expanding relationship would not be easy to let go of. But you shouldn’t embark on these milestones with someone because you feel somehow blocked from articulating the legitimacy of your own “no”.
Marriage and children are substantial legal arrangements with permanent consequences. You can write some of those away, but not all: if a court thought it looked bad for the child’s welfare to give him 50%, it won’t give him 50%. If he reneges on sharing the workload, his promise won’t give you the ability to enforce it. If you incur joint obligations to creditors, he can’t release you from them, even if he wants to.
You are not in a situation of his reasons versus your feelings. You have wheelbarrows full of reasons on your side, too. It’s totally fine for him to refuse to say you can bank on him. The result is, you won’t bank on him.
The reader’s letter has been edited.
