Partners are not Possessions

What I find in a lot of monogamous and heteronormative style relationships is this attitude that people own or possess their partners.  This is something that I find incredibly disturbing. This is an unspoken belief that so many people in our society just assume is the way that "relationships should work", they don't even think about it.  They talk in a way that reinforces this, statements that include "allow my" or "make my" partner/spouse are simply disgusting and harken back to the days of women and children being chattel of their spouses or fathers.  This is horrific, it leads to behaviors that are controlling, manipulative, coercive and abusive.  If you own something, you can ignore it, break it, or discard it without a thought.  If a partner is a possession, then they are not allowed to be full people.  Possessions cannot have freedom of choice, independent thought or the ability to pursue happiness.  I have yet to meet someone who is mentally or physically abusive to their partners who doesn't believe that their assumption of control and possession of this other person is reasonable and expected, it's their god given right to abuse this other person because they gave them a ring or spoke some vows or agreed to this relationship.  

To me this is also part of the pervasive idea where someone is not a complete person until they have found the "one", this idea promotes all kinds of dependency and codependency that are just frightening.  The thought process goes something along the lines of this other person being absorbed into them, making the two of them into some kind of amalgamated being, is the thing that will make them (and their lives) whole and meaningful.  As though people are not worthy unless they have been assimilated into coupledom.  If someone is incomplete without their partner, somehow that justifies behaving like their partner is a possession or an extension of themselves.  I find this entire idea and the thought processes that go along with it painfully damaging to human beings of any sort, and especially damaging in polyamorous relationships.  I think that a lot of fear and envy and jealousy come from these base assumptions about relationships making people possessions or extensions of another.  What happens if the assimilated partner is going to do something that doesn't include them, or that isn't directly about them, or that may remind the assimilated partner that they have a life and value as an individual?  They can't do that, they can't allow that, they can live with that.  This is the essence of loosing control of their partner, taking something away from them or damaging to them, and so out of fear comes this grappling with the autonomy of another person. You cannot be without them because they cannot be without you, you can't be whole alone and if they are whole beings then they don't "need" you.  

This is where I see the seeds of a lot of the issues I struggle with in poly communities, the hierarchies and one-penis-policies and couple privilege stuff seems to me to link back in whole or in part to these basic assumptions. If  you can't be whole without completely consuming or controlling your partner, but your partner has other partners then you can't have all of them all the time and therefore you cannot be whole.  It's saddening and annoying and heartbreaking and infuriating to run into these same things over and over again, and its exhausting to try and work through them with people you care for. 

I do not want to be anyone's other half. I do not want fuse myself into another person. I am not interested in defining the whole of who I am by my relationship to a particular person. When someone behaves as though this is "how relationships work", it's incredibly disturbing to me.  Relationships, to me, are about wanting to be there and choosing to build a connection between people.  A partner is someone who chooses to take your desires and needs and feelings into consideration when making their decisions, not someone who is incapable of doing anything without your say so.  If I cannot be whole without another, then no other person can make me whole.  If I cannot find value in myself then no one will truly value me.  The things I choose to do and have in my life and the people I choose to share it with add to my life, but they are not my whole life.  When I refer to someone as "my" partner/lover/friend/family member that is clarifying our connection to each other, it is not a flag denoting my possession of them.

Some thoughts on hierarchies...

A friend recently asked me some questions about hierarchical relationships, so I thought I would share some of my thoughts here.
First things first, I want to make sure that I state clearly from the beginning of this that I greatly (GREATLY) dislike even just the idea of hierarchical relationships. Personal experience has introduced me to people who have structured their hierarchical relationships in ways that I find unethical and downright distasteful. My experience has led me to the believe that strict hierarchies simply will not work for me in any position. Anyone who thinks they can force a structure on my emotional relationships by giving them a title like "primary" or "secondary" is not someone I want to be involved with. Anyone who expects a relationship to be prioritized by start date should probably steer clear of me. And anyone who thinks they get to tell me what I am and where I will fit, will not fit in my life at all.

So, with all of that said, I am no expert on hierarchy and it would likely be smart of anyone to take the following with a grain of salt and be sure to get perspectives from people with experience in long term hierarchical poly relationships (long term meaning more than two people have been involved in that structure for years, not "the two of us" have been doing this for X years, its a shame that none of our other partners have stayed with us). I don't believe I have any such resources to point you to.

I'm believe that hierarchical relationships are inherently problematic. I also think that getting involved in hierarchical relationships is a choice. All relationships are choices, and how you choose to structure your relationships is strictly between you and your partners. I do think there are lots of unhealthy and unethical behaviors that are much more common in relationships that are structured to be hierarchical, and people who choose to get involved in hierarchical poly relationships are likely to have more issues and will need to be extra careful.
If you're choosing to have a hierarchical relationship you should really have investigated this idea and broken down what it means to you (and your partners if you have any currently) and be able to explain up-front what that means, how you expect that to work, and what your existing agreements are to any new person that you may become involved with. Just because you (and your "primary" partner) think you understand what you are expecting doesn't mean you can actually verbalize or explain it. If you think that just saying "My primary will always come first" is sufficient, you need to work on your communication skills. To me that sort of statement is not an explanation, it's sad convenient poly-speak and indicative of lazy communication. 

Plus, if you have never actually discussed the structure and mechanics of your expected hierarchical "primary relationship" with your "primary" partner, there is a painfully high likelihood that the two of you have expectations that are out of alignment (sometimes they aren't even in the same hemisphere).
I have had so many experiences with people who think that they have discussed how things will work in advance, only to find they created one single ideal hypothetical scenario and discussed how they think they will react to it. The problem with these hypotheticals is that when real life comes down it almost never matches that scenario. Remember the hypothetical "new partner" will be a real person with feelings and and wants and needs and history and opinions, they will not fit neatly into the cookie cutter space laid out for them.
If you have bought into ideas about the virtues of hierarchical relationships, but you haven't ever considered what your position on hierarchy means and how it could and/or would not work... then perhaps you weren't paying attention. People who think that they can just overlay polyamory on top of their societal default expectations of normative monogamous relationships and everything will be hunky-dory and easy as pie, are going to hurt a lot of people, possibly including themselves.
Please, take some time to think about what you are looking for in poly relationships, and if you have existing partners make sure you are discussing all of the options, ideas and plans for your poly lives with them. Think, and ask yourself (and your partners) some tough questions, and then be prepared to be forthcoming with information about the structure, expectations, and limits you define for your hierarchy at the forefront of conversations with any potential new partner/playmate/paramour. No one should be expected to accept "secondary" status without being given clear understanding about the demands and limits they will be expected to live under, because no one enjoys slamming their head, or their heart, against a glass ceiling.
Here are some questions you might want to start considering if you think that what you really want is a hierarchical poly relationship structure. This is not a comprehensive list, its just a beginning, and I would expect there to be lots of processing and discussion coming out of the answers to these questions. Also, be aware that whatever you do discuss is likely to change over time and with experience and with the input of any prospective or new partners, so you will want to have these conversations over again periodically. (Also, some of these questions are not specific to hierarchies and it wouldn't hurt for everyone who wants to be in poly relationships to consider them):

What sort of relationship(s) is a "primary" relationship?
How is that different than a "secondary" relationship?

If you are (or plan to be married), how do you envision new partners fitting into your existing life?
Are you expecting to prevent new relationships from changing your "primary" relationship and how?

How are you planning to keep your "secondary" relationships at the agreed upon limit of emotional investment and connection? 

Are you expecting that you and your "primary" are only going to date people together?
Are you expecting to have a closed poly-fidelity relationship where the three (or more) of you are only involved with each other?
If that is the case, why would you expect anyone to want to be in an exclusive relationship with the two of you while always being treated as a lesser partner?

Are you and your "primary" going to have other relationships individually? 

Are you expecting to date only people who are currently in a "primary" type of relationship with someone else? 

If so, what happens if their primary relationship ends for whatever reason?

Time is a limited commodity, how do you expect to divide your time?
Are you going to have a set maximum of time allowed to spend with other partners?
If so, what are those limits?
Are these limits per day, per week, per month?
Are your time limits per partner or a total divided among all of your non-primary partners?
How will you handle things like scheduling time with various partners?
Will there be a limit to how long relationships with your non-primary partners are allowed to continue (6 months, a year, 2)?

What do you do if your partners can't get along?

Will you and your "primary" have veto power over each others relationships?
Is there a time frame for invoking this veto?
Is there a requirement to have a reason for or discussion prior to invoking veto power?

I'm pretty sure I could add more than a dozen questions to this list, but since I have no interest in structuring this sort of relationship, or getting involved with someone who has, I'm going to leave it up to the hierarchy people to figure the rest of it out.
Beware and good luck.

My Real Life

In my real life, I am a woman with two long term partners. I am out about being poly, to all my friends and family and anyone else that wants to talk about it. (I'm also out about pretty much everything else I am in this life: kinky, pagan, pansexual, artist, rabble-rouser, hedonist, dancer, etc.).
My partners are both married, they live with their spouses while I live alone, in an apartment in Portland with two cats. I occasionally date others, but mostly in the last two years I've been rather focused on my existing relationships and my outside social/sexual/dating activities have been limited to a very few close friends and special people. I love my partners deeply, and I honestly expect them both to be part of my life going forward. I don't know for certain what my future holds but my desire is that they both be there to share whatever it is that happens.
I work at having open, stable relationships with my partners and my metamours and, as an extension of that, I try to keep in touch with the others that are connected to this polycule around me. The friends, companions and playmates of my partners and metamours matter to me. These people make up a lot of my world, some are close connections and others are more distant but they are all linked into my life in important ways. In addition to this network, I have my birth family and my own collection of friends, these are people who are vitally important to me.  Most of them live hundreds or thousands of miles away from where I am currently so I don't get to see or talk with them as often as I might like. They don't know my poly peoples all that well, because they haven't really had the opportunity to meet face to face and get to know one another, but they know them by name and by relationship to me. The things that go on in their lives profoundly affect me, if a friend on the other end of the country is sick or hurt it matters to me, if a family member 1400 miles south of here is doing something awesome I celebrate, if a friend on the opposite end of town (or the state, or the country) is in need, I'm there as soon as I possibly can be (if I can be). Its a big part of who I am, my connections and commitment to people I care about, and that is a big part of how I do poly. This is my web, and like any web what shakes one strand will reverberate throughout the web.

I find that many folks can’t fathom egalitarian relationships. Relationships  have history and unplanned turns and I know that I cannot tell my heart how to feel evenly for everyone.  Each relationship is unique and touches me in a different way, and that does play out in my planning and prioritizing. Egalitarian relationships are about giving each relationship the space to grow and be whatever it is that the people involved in that relationship want it to be, they are not about keeping score or giving exactly the same thing to everyone, and they are most certainly not about an outside person determining what can or cannot happen within a relationship that they are not directly involved in.
I despise hierarchical language, and more often than not I think people are just lazy when they think relationships are simple enough to be defined in these ways.  Being referred to as a "secondary" makes me want to hiss and scratch and bite, not in a good way. If someone wants to have a relationship with me that has set limitations, I expect them to be honest with me about that from the beginning.  Though I will admit, the likelihood of my wanting to start a emotional/romantic/sexual relationship with someone who says, we can't ever spend holidays together, or weekends are off limits, or overnights are not an option, is slim to none. On the other hand, if I find out later that this is the case and they were not honest enough to tell me about it or they haven't actually made the effort to think or talk out any of this until now, I'm unlikely to stick around.  So, yeah, if you and your "other" have a yearning for strict hierarchies, I'm probably not interested in letting you into my heart or my inner circle.
In my real life, I am a mass of chaos and confusion, nothing is simple or plain (and if it was, I'd likely get bored).  So yeah, polyamory.  Because I require connection and independence.  I think that there is space enough in the world and in my heart for more than one person, more than one friend, more than one lover, more than one anything.  I believe in soulmates, they are the people in this world that just belong in your life, there can be lots of them for different times and places and reasons.  But I don't believe that a good relationship means I am "part" of another person, or that I am incomplete without any particular relationship. I want to love whole people who choose to love me. Because I choose this life, every moment of every day.