Rules? What rules? You want to sleep with someone else, you do, right?
It doesn't work that way.
There are, of course, as many different varieties of polyamory as there are people; there's no one right way to create a polyamorous relationship, though ethicalpolyamorous relationships do involve honesty, respect,and compassoin. But being polyamorous does not give you license to make like a bunny in heat.
A polyamorous relationship isn't about sex; it's about building a romantic relationship with more than one person at a time
And yes, there are rules.
Yeah? Like what kind of rules?
Depends on the relationship.
Some poly relationships, called "polyfidelity" relationships, have rules not much different from a traditional monogamous relationship, only there are more then two people involved. A polyfidelitous triad, for example, may have three people involved, with one person sexually active with the other two, or even with all three people sexually involved with one another. However, nobody in the relationship may take an "outside" lover, just as neither partner in a monogamous relstionship is allowed to have an outside lover; if you do, it's cheating. Cheating, if anything, is a more serious offense in a polyfidelity relationship than in a monogamous relationship--because if you cheat,you are betraying more than one person's trust.
Other polyamorous relationship may permit the people involved to have "outside" lovers under certain circumstances--often, for example, only if the outside lover is approved beforehand by everyone involved, and only if the outside lover knows the nature of the relationship.
The individual relationship within a polyamorous group may be very complex, as well. In many cases, there may be one "primary" couple--a husband and wife, for example. Either or both of those people may have outside lovers, but those relationship are "secondary" in the sense that they involve less involvement in the partners' day-to-day lives than, say, a marriage does.
Note: This does not mean that these relationships are of secondary importance, or that the people involved in such "secondary" relationships contribute less or are less valued! It simply means that these relationships have different goals or parameters t han the "primary" relationship.
Or, the polyamorous relationship may be a "true" triad, or quad, or whatever; each individual relationship is as important as all the others, and no single couple is "primary"
Uh-huh. Says who? Who makes these rules, anyway?
Everyone involved.
Polyamory is not about "I want to go shag that person over there, and if you don't like it, it though."
It's reasonable for everyone involved to expect to have some kind of input on the relationships that go on. It's reasonable to want to set limits, and it's necesary and reasonable to want to establish a framework that protects both your feelings and the feelings of everyone else involved in the relationships, directly or indirectly.
You do this by negotiating a clear, explicit, and unambiguous set of conditions that guides the manner in wich your relationships form, and establishes that framework that helps to make ssure everyone's needs are being met and nobody's feelings are disregarded.
it is also important to understand that any breach of these terms is a very, very serious matter--just as serious as cheating in a conventional monogamous relationship! This framework, and the willingness of everyone involved to abide by terms you set together, are what creates the foundation of trust that a polyamorous relationship requires. Without that trust, it's reasonable to expect that you or someone you careabout will end up miserable.
