Won't polyamory harm your children?

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts will be found at www.polymeansmany.com from tomorrow. This month, our topic is "misconceptions and judgements"

Very little gets to me as much as the insinuation that I'm a bad or negligent parent. Here's an example: Dr Karen Ruskin (a "Marriage and Family Therapist") writes from an empassioned and entirely speculative position about the perceived risks to children of a polyamorous household. Chief of these is the risk that a breakup of one of the parent's relationships will cause lasting and serious emotional damage. Here are some choice snippets:

As children age and these significant adult figures in their life come and go (due to adult break ups with one’s polyamorous partner/partners), children don’t feel so loved, they no longer feel stable nor at peace. What do they feel? They feel abandoned! They feel rejected! Children who feel abandoned and rejected are emotionally wounded, hurt, and in turn feel unworthy of love...

Love pulled out from under the rug, any day any time is not a healthy way for a child to live. Thus, when their parent argues with one of their lovers, the child may fear the end is near, never knowing when this person they love and loves them will no longer exist in their life.

Read that extract again, but this time, imagine that it was written about single parents. Would Dr Ruskin advise single parents (whether parenting alone, or co-parenting whilst single) to just avoid dating entirely, and stay entirely single until their kids move out, in case their child developed an attachment to a partner that didn't work out? Of course not. I can imagine that she might advise caution, which is sensible. But would she warn them that their children might "become hardened and not open to love"? That dating and ending a relationship might cause their children to "wonder if they too someday will be dumped and that they are disposable too"?

If single parents aren't being subjected to this level of scaremongering about the damage they are causing their children, it's either because people think that being single is so awful that it's worth harming your children to avoid (problematic) or it's because children love their parents' partners more deeply when there is the possibility of several of them (nonsensical). Or maybe, just maybe, it's just because it hasn't been properly thought through.

This makes it one of those "polyamory is not that special" situations, because parents who date is not that new. Which is useful, because it means when I was concerned with much of the same things that Dr Karen froths at the mouth about, I actually had real lives and real parents to compare myself to. They weren't polyamorous (as far as I knew) but they were doing pretty much the same thing that I was.

To tackle the other side of dating, we were once told that we were raising our daughter in a "sexualised" environment. That one was pretty unpleasant. And here is the thing: most children grow up in houses where sex happens. Whether your parents were monogamously married, living separately, single or dating, parents have sex, they probably had some sex. It is not unusual. For the most part, children move seamlessly from being totally unaware of their parents' sex lives, to cheerfully pretending they know nothing about it. And then they move out. We don't anticipate our family being any different.

Which is another way of saying, again, that when it comes to parenting, we're not that different. I can understand the curiosity, and in the interest of combating misconceptions I'm happy to answer questions. But please, hold back on the "what about the children?" bullshit, because there is nothing you can judge us for without also throwing millions of other non-polyamorous families under the bus.

Stars, planets and people I love

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts will be found at www.polymeansmany.com from tomorrow. This month, our topic is "What being poly has taught me"

I was driving home from a weekend away with my husband next to me and our daughter in the back of the car. Unusually, we'd spent most of the weekend apart - she with family, and the two of us with various respective friends. At two and a half, her independence surprises and impresses me; we both missed her far more than she missed us.

I drove north along the motorway, back home to the house we share, and we listened to Poetry Please on the car radio. The last poem was Stars and Planets, by Norman Maccaig, and I listened to the line describing our Earth as 'This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters' and was struck even harder by how precious these two people are to me. How precious and unlikely this family, bundled up together in my little car, is. I love them so much that sometimes I can barely think of anything else.

Polyamory has taught me that as precious and surprising as this love is, there is room for more. I may live with my daughter and my husband, but my boyfriend, no matter what, will always have a seat at our table. My three great loves, and me, 'Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters'. Maybe one day there will be five, or more of us. I like thinking about that.

I would not pretend that polyamory has always made our lives better. People are not always what they seem, and the world is unpredictable. Those who say they love you can do hurtful things because you let them get so close. All of us have been burned in one way or another by opening ourselves up.

We let people in more carefully these days, but we still let people in.

Stars and Planets, by Norman MacCaig

Trees are cages for them: water holds its breath
To balance them without smudging on its delicate meniscus.
Children watch them playing in their heavenly playground;
Men use them to lug ships across oceans, through firths.

They seem so twinkle-still, but they never cease
Inventing new spaces and huge explosions
And migrating in mathematical tribes over
The steppes of space at their outrageous ease.

It's hard to think that the earth is one –
This poor sad bearer of wars and disasters
Rolls-Roycing round the sun with its load of gangsters,
Attended only by the loveless moon.

From The Poems of Norman McCaig

Other people's decisions

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts will be found at www.polymeansmany.com from tomorrow. This month, our topic is "Decisions"

The more people you date, and the more people they date, and the more complicated your wider relationship network gets, the more likely it is that a decision you make will resonate somewhere down the line and affect someone who had no input into it at all.

You could take a new shift pattern at work, which means you can no longer keep a scheduled date night with a partner, which means you need to reschedule, which could mean that your metamour has to alter plans to fit in with the new status quo. Or you could get a totally new job, so you and your partner decide to move to another city, which could mean that their partners find themselves living closer or further away. Or you could decide to have a child with one of your partners, which will totally change the structure of all your other relationships, and radically alter the time and space you have available.

And this gets more complicated when you're factoring in caring for children. It is almost impossible for my husband or me to make a decision about how we spend our time without it affecting the other. I can't go away for the weekend without either taking my daughter, taking my husband and my daughter, or leaving her with him, none of which can be done without his agreement, and none of which can be done without affecting how he spends his weekend. And how the two of us resolve this might then affect the time and space left for his other relationships. Complicated.

Two important things make this easier:

The first is kindness. I am grateful for the reassuring confidence I have that none of us will make any of these decisions without at least trying to be kind to each other, and to those other people in our network who could end up affected by our decisions. The secondary nature of my relationship with my boyfriend does mean that sometimes we make unilateral decisions about our lives that affect the other (I got pregnant, he's spent a few big chunks of time abroad) but being kind and understanding from both directions has made this as gentle as possible. If my husband wants to invite a girlfriend over for the weekend, he doesn't do this without being sure that I'm happy to spend that time with her too, which means that she will know that she is welcome, and I will feel more comfortable asking for him to agree to some of my plans another time. And, because he is kind, he's often offering to put himself out before I've even asked.

But equally important to kindness is the ability to stand up for ourselves if something is happening that we don't like. We check in with each other often, but this would be no good if we couldn't rely on each other to be honest about unhappiness or discomfort. This might mean asking for more or less time alone, or more or less time with a metamour. It might even mean ending a relationship (or even asking your partner to end a relationship) because decisions have been made that you just can't be happy with. Being kind and generous to your partners and metamours is no good if you aren't being kind and generous to yourself.

What I'm really arguing for is a balance between the two: thinking of your own needs, and thinking of other people's. Don't make decisions without considering the consequences for other people, but don't go along with anything that hurts you just to avoid conflict or keep other people happy. Everyone is important. When making decisions that affect other people's lives, think of how it will affect you, think of how it will affect other people. Check-in often to make sure that everyone is happy, and answer honestly and kindly when people check-in with you. Be kind to each other, and kind to yourself.

Flexible festivities

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts will be found at www.polymeansmany.com from tomorrow. This month, our topic is "Happy Holidays!"

I think Christmas is a bit like monogamy - it feels non-optional, fixed and traditional, but it's ubiquitousness is really just a result of social conventions that can be taken to pieces and reconstructed any way you like. For some, the day has religious significance, and for some it's more about raucous drinking and indulgent eating. And for some it is both, of course. You don't have to set a Christmas pudding on fire, spend hundreds of pounds on presents or festoon your house in tinsel any more than you have to stick to one partner at a time. These things are all negotiable, even though society does its best to convince us that they are not.

But good God does society do its best to make you feel that you are missing out when you do. I've been told that I can't really love my husband if I want to see my boyfriend as well. I've been told that my daughter will grow up resentful and confused by the lack of a monogamous bond between her parents. People who don't have big, happy families are made to feel lonely because they are constantly being told how much they are missing out on. And people I know who've decided to break with their families' traditions and do something different over the holiday period have been made to feel that they've let people down. One of my siblings suggested off-handedly to our mum that her partner and children might like to go abroad for Christmas, but the resulting wave of guilt soon persuaded her to stick to the status quo. (And to be honest, I was glad, because I didn't want them to go either.) And, of course, polyamory creates yet further complications that can make doing what you want even harder. The more entangled we are in other people's lives and other people's wishes, the more complicated and fraught it can be to do our own thing.

If you've run into, or are likely to run into any of this, I obviously can't tell you how to fix it. The only general advice I have is to stay flexible. Remember that the whole holiday season is arbitrary, and so find places where you can bend to make things easier. Perhaps getting everyone you want together for December 25th is impossible, but you can treat it as a movable feast, and organise it for another day. Perhaps you could go for something close to our solution, which is to use Christmas Day as a biological family get together, and New Year's Eve for the other important people in our lives.

Things can be complicated. In previous years, our Christmas/New Year's plans have become very complicated indeed. But as this is traditionally the season for giving thanks, I do try to be thankful for these complications. Without them, I wouldn't be spending this season surrounded by people I love.

Your future needs.

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts will be found at www.polymeansmany.com from tomorrow. This month, our topic is "meeting your needs".

I've always been pretty certain that I wanted to have children, and luckily for me, so has my husband. It was one of the things we checked out about each other in the very early days, when we were giddy with the possibility of love.

What if he'd told me he never wanted to have children? If he didn't even like children? I'm pretty sure I would have walked away. Even if I'd managed to find another partner with whom I could co-parent whilst still being involved with him, the idea of having a passionate relationship with someone who doesn't want to be a part of my family life sounds painful, let alone unsustainable. And I don't think that I could have coped with keeping the distance between us necessary for me to be able to find that co-parent. Back then, I didn't love him, but I could see that I would fall for him, hard, if we kept seeing each other. Far better to break it off straight away, to prevent serious heartbreak.

I asked my husband what he'd have done had I told him that I never wanted to be a parent. He said he'd have kept our relationship going anyway, hoping that either he could change my mind or become satisfied without children, and it would have ended badly.

Which is honest.

In situations like this, it isn't one partner's needs vs. another's, it's your needs vs. your needs. It's about what you want *now* vs. what you will want later. Which is probably harder than my needs vs. your needs, because you can't have a conversation with your future self, and any compromises you make will only hurt you later on.

But now, I think that the stability of my marriage gives us an enormous privilege in making these kinds of decisions. We wouldn't pursue a relationship with anyone who didn't like children (and our child in particular), for example, but the fact that we both have our needs met by each other gives us the strength to say "no" to things that won't work for our family. If you're lonely, or in need of support, or just going through some tough times, I can see that it isn't so easy to turn down someone who can give you what you need right now because they will get in the way of what you need at some point in the future.

And sometimes the situation is reversed - when Small was tiny, my relationship with my boyfriend changed dramatically, and he had to cope with not getting some of the things he wanted from me for quite a while. I'm pretty sure I wasn't meeting his needs, or giving him anything like the attention he wanted from me (unless that attention was to talk about my baby and how tired I was, and to ask for food - he got plenty of that). His choice was to walk away because I wasn't meeting his needs, or to put his own needs aside for a while because he wanted our relationship to exist in the long term. And luckily for me, my boyfriend was in a position where he was happy and strong enough (not to mention happy to be a part of my daughter's life, and delighted to see me so happy) to wait for his needs to be met.

So I'm not saying that my answer to the hypothetical question above is the "right" one, because the position I was in at the time was pretty strong: I had a stable job, good health, and the emotional strength to take the a longer-term view. Plus, it's only a hypothetical, so I can't be sure that the real me would have been quite so pragmatic. Saying "no" to something that will hurt you down the line is hard, as is saying "yes" to something that is hurting you now. But whoever you are, you deserve to be happy, so if you can, don't give up on what you want. You future self will thank you.

National Poetry Day

A Wish for My Children, by Evangeline Paterson

On this doorstep I stand,
year after year
and watch you going

and think: May you not
skin your knees; May you
not catch your fingers
in car doors. May
your hearts not break.

May tide and weather
wait for your coming.

and may you grow strong
to break
all webs of my weaving.

From New Life, edited by Sally Emerson

More about National Poetry Day.

Quality time

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at www.polymeansmany.com. This month, our topic is "time".

I've written before about how precious my time with my boyfriend is. Things are different with my husband. We don't lack for time together, but having a child really doesn't leave much space for the sort of "couple time" we used to be able to have almost any time we wanted - the sort of quality time my boyfriend and I have scheduled into our calendar every week. It's fairly easy for my husband and I to get alone time with other people (he stays in, I go out for a date with my boyfriend; another night, and I'm the one at home) but together is not so easy.

Once we've all had dinner, and Small is asleep, there isn't much time left before one or both of us is ready for bed ourselves, and sometimes one of us has to use that time to work. Sitting down for a relaxed meal, just the two of us, is rare. Watching a film means staying up late and losing out on precious sleep. Going out alone together to find requires planning, and use of our extra-nuclear family as babysitters.

I notice similar differences in my daughter's relationships. She and I spend so much time together, most of it is pretty mundane: shopping, cooking, her playing beside me as I get housework or work emails done, bath-time. When she gets the chance to spend time with other adults, or her older cousins, she revels in the intensity of these short bursts of dedicated attention, and the novelty of the connection. After spending the whole day with her, I couldn't keep that up.

My boyfriend and I always have huge amounts to catch up on when we see each other. We keep making plans to watch a film, or even just an episode of something, but we usually have too much to talk about. We sit, eat a meal, hold hands over the table. It's quality time, and as we don't share a home or a domestic life, we're able to make that pretty much all we have.

But I sort of resist the idea that this more intense, focused time is somehow of better quality than the drip drip of domesticity. Just as I can't keep up the energy to play at full-intensity with my daughter all the time, as my boyfriend or other family does with her, they don't get to walk to the shops each time with a fun little girl who joins in when I sing a familiar song, who wants to point out the colours of the cars and who thinks that seeing a passing dog is as exciting as a trip to the zoo. They might miss the particular moment when she experiments with new words and sentences, and her language suddenly takes a leap forward. They don't get naptime snuggles, or rushing out to look for snails after the rain. These lovely, mundane moments are paid for by the weight of time we spend together. The quantity creates this particular quality.

My husband and I spend so much time together that there is rarely much build up of things we want to say. Although we talk all the time, our conversation is more relaxed, less urgent, maybe even optional. Sometimes, once Small is asleep, we find ourselves hitting a familiar rhythm without much negotiation: putting away the toys, loading up the washing machine, pyjamas, takeaway, slumping against each other on the sofa, watching another episode of something. It takes a lot of time together to create quality time like that.

But what about the children?

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at www.polymeansmany.com. This month, our topic is "assumptions".

I've been subjected to more insults because I am non-monogamous than because I am bisexual. I even found more acceptance and understanding when I was a woman exclusively dating other women. This is clearly not because the UK is somehow more polyphobic than it is homophobic, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that I'm now a parent, and becoming a parent unlocks a whole new level of public scrutiny. The belief that children need one mother and one father was, after all, key to recent debates surrounding marriage equality, and a study of attitudes towards consensually non-monogamous romantic relationships unsurprisingly found that most people associate monogamy with better parenting and a more stable family life.

The assumption is that although it may be one thing to be non-monogamous without children, if you decide to start a family, it's really time to put all that aside and just be normal, for the sake of the children.

With that in mind, my theory about the spectrum of acceptance of alternative lifestyles runs broadly along these lines:

1. Your way of life is immoral and you disgust me (no acceptance).
2. What consenting adults do behind closed doors is okay, but don't rub my nose in it in public.
3. I have no problem with you or your way of life, but I think that all children need one mother and one father, so you shouldn't ever have children.
4. How you live, who you are or what you have chosen may or may not be for me, but it shouldn't prevent you from the same range of possible participation in society that everyone else has (full acceptance).

So when I was more visibly not heterosexual, the people around me might have only been at "level 3" acceptance, but I wouldn't have noticed. But it's harder to avoid now, because everyone has an opinion about how to parent children.

This all means that damaging assumptions about any lifestyle outside of the heteromonoganormative mould becomes much more obvious when parenting is thrown into the mix. People who will have found you simply misguided, or maybe even fascinatingly non-conformist, will flip into judging you as immoral, cruel or negligent.

Elizabeth Sheff has conducted some of the most extensive research into polyamorous parenting so far, and one of her interesting findings is that far from being confused or by their non-traditional families, children aged 5-8 with three or more parents barely seem to even notice. Children are pretty self-centred, and so how the adults in their life relate to each other isn't particularly important to them. "A 6-year-old may not think of someone as mommy's girlfriend, but think of that person as 'the one who brings Legos' or 'the one who takes me out to ice cream," Sheff explains. To think about it another way, if you had close relationships as a child with non-parental members of your biological family, how much thought did you give to the fact that your uncle was your mother's brother, or your grandmother was your father's mother? I'm willing to bet that that was far less important and interesting than the time the two of you spent together, and the bond that was personal to you. It doesn't matter if the significant adults in my daughter's life are my blood relatives, my close friends, or my romantic partners, it's going to be a while before she cares about anything other than what those people have to offer her.

The older children Sheff spoke to who were aware that their families were "different", were grateful for "having multiple adults from which to draw upon for help with math homework or to provide transportation". Again, nothing to do with how those multiple adults related to each other. You can imagine a child with a live-in grandparent, or a close family friend living next door saying the same thing. Whether or not we are monogamous is pretty unimportant to our children - it's just a flashpoint that reveals the depth of prejudice against us.

This matters whether or not you have children and whether or not you ever intend to. If people are only accepting of you and your lifestyle because you're not a parent, that basically means that they think you should be denied access to certain types of family life. They think you're a lost cause, but they want to protect the next generation from making your mistake. They want to cut you off from full participation in society. That should bother you, whether you want to access that part of family life or not, because you're not fully accepted - you're just being shielded from their bigotry. Which is why, if you'll forgive me, we should be thinking about what they think about the children.

What Polyamory can learn from Polygamy

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at www.polymeansmany.com. This month, our topic is "types of non-monogamy".

(For this post, I will be discussing polygamy, even though it would be more semantically accurate to say 'polygyny'. I know that etymology is against me, but I'm going to stick with cultural usage.)

It would be very easy for me to write about why I think polyamory is a better model for relationships than polygamy. I find the 'one penis policy' to be on shaky moral ground even when the women subjected to it are allowed to be involved with other women. Polygamy generally brings along with it judgemental attitude to sex outside of marriage, and regressive, restrictive gender roles. But there is a lot of criticism fired at polygamists that the polyamorists are attacked with too. And when you come down to it, we have a lot in common.

Yes, I know that polygamy has been used to oppress women, but so has monogamy, and I don't have a problem with people choosing that. In a patriarchal world where the men hold much of the power, just about anything can be used to oppress women (including polyandry, from what little I know of it). When it comes down to it, a polygamous marriage is just a relationship between one man and several women, and there are many polyamorists in that position.

Christine Brown, whose polygamous marriage was the centre of the reality TV show Sister Wives desired a husband with multiple wives so much that she actively sought the role of third wife. She wanted, what polyamorists can probably understand pretty well, to fall in love with a family, not just one person. Vicki Darger, when suffering from debilitating postnatal depression, found that being in a polygamous marriage meant that she had not just her husband, but her 'sister wives' to support her, and help with her other children. Speaking as a woman with two male partners, I'm obviously not going to want a relationship structure like Brown's or Darger's, but I can relate to the reasoning behind their choices.

Have you watched Big Love? I'm surprised at how many polyamorists haven't, and who assume that what polygamists do is very different to us. One scene in the first episode involves the three wives sitting down to organise their calendars, planning which night their shared husband will be spending with which wife and reorganising for birthdays. If you're polyamorous, you might be surprised at how much of their lives you recognise.

I was surprised at how much of it I actually envied. More than two parents for the children, regular family meals around an enormous dining table, shared finances, a communal back garden, and the ability to plan face to face, rather than just through Google Calendar. My husband and I talked about how although we were basically happy as a twosome, maybe someone or some people might come along that changed that. Maybe we'll have the chance to live more communally with secondary partner(s), or maybe one or both of us will find someone who wants to commit to our family as we have committed to each other. And despite being vocal about how my husband and I do practice hierarchical polyamory, it's been watching and reading about polygamy that's given me a less hierarchical model that I think would work for us.

Karaite Jews (for whom polygamy is rare, but permitted), some fundamentalist Mormons and Pakistani law all allow men to take a second wife, but only with the consent of the first wife. This effectively gives the first wife veto power, but not indiscriminately: you can demand that your husband breaks off his courtship of a potential new wife, but you can't demand that he break up with her once they are married. The characters in Big Love vote on whether or not to include a new wife. Although my husband and I have never felt the need to officially grant the other veto power, I would need him to consent if I wanted to bring anyone else into our family as a permanent spouse. A clear difference between our views and polygamous views on relationships is that we don't need marriage or co-primacy with our other relationships to consider them sucecssful, and we're not going to end them just because they aren't heading that way. But if our one of our other relationships did head that way, then that would be the end of hierarchy between the three of us. As Darger says about Val, the third wife in her family, once she was married to their husband, 'she instantly became a full and equal partner.' Equality between the wives is a common requirement in polygamous doctrines.

Perhaps this post doesn't make it sound this way, but I really am blissfully happy with one husband and one boyfriend, and so I'm not looking for either my husband or I to marry again, as much as I am attracted to larger family models. Even if I actively wanted it, it seems unlikely, considering how little space we have left for anyone new. But putting aside my feminist disapproval of polygamy to find out about those who actively chose it has been enlightening for me. I may be happy in my own form of non-monogamy, but other people's choices have a lot to teach me too.

The space that's left

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at polymeansmany.com. This month, our topic is "the bad stuff".

I was pregnant only a few months after meeting my boyfriend. And if you know me, or have read any of this blog before, you'll know he is not the father. I'd been living with the father, my husband, for 5 years at that point, and we owned property together, not to mention cats and a lifetime of plans for our future.

When I met my husband, I was single, living alone in a rented flat, starting my first professional job, and had no fixed plans beyond the next 12 months. Neither of us had put down roots. The only things restricting our relationship were our desires, and once we were clear that they aligned, we headed pretty quickly towards the things we both wanted out of life and love: cohabitation, marriage, mortgage, cats and children. There was very little in our way.

When I think about the "bad stuff" in polyamory, it's hard for me to pin it down, because I'm really very happy with my lot. I have all the important things that I ever wanted, and plenty that I didn't think I could have. But I think that the more entangled we become, through living our lives, falling in love, putting down roots, making commitments and plans, the less space there is for these new connections that we've opened our hearts to.

Love isn't enough to sustain a relationship. We all know relationships that ended despite the love, not because of the lack of it. To grow, develop and thrive, a relationship needs space.

So not only was the space in my life pretty inflexible when I met my boyfriend, but it was about to become a lot more rigid, as I began to devote my energies to my daughter, even before she was born. The space available for our relationship to grow into was shrinking, and if that hadn't been enough for either of us, that would have been it. And once she was born, he found me retreating from him even further, as my time, energy and focus went into parenting.

These big life decisions - starting a family, moving house, settling down or shaking up your life-plans completely - are more of a risk and a limitation to polyamorous relationships than they are to the monogamous. What happens if one of your partners doesn't want to have children with you, but another one does? What happens if you and your partner plan to move across the country (or the world), but then you fall in love with someone new? What if you want to live with your partner, but the house they own with their other partner isn't big enough? What if you fall in love, but the person you fall in love with really doesn't have the time, or emotional energy, to make the connection with you that you're yearning for? If you have more than one relationship, these life decisions, both past and future, are more likely to come up, and love isn't going to be enough to fix them.

Luckily for me, he waited, and I came back to him and found our bond stronger than ever. Eventually, the space that my boyfriend and I had for each other turned out to be just right for the relationship that suits us. But I can imagine that if he hadn't seen the long-term view of wanting to be a part of my family, or hadn't loved children as much as he does, or hadn't enjoyed seeing how my life was developing, or hadn't been willing to support me when I had nothing to give back, or hadn't generally been as patient and understanding as he is, I might not be writing this blog from such a happy position.

So if I fall in love again, good luck to whomever that is. If they don't fit into my family, my two existing relationships, and aren't happy for our relationship to grow into the left over gaps and spaces that the rest of my life hasn't eaten up, it's probably not going to work out. But at the moment, problems caused by me having everything that I want don't seem too bad. I'll take the bad stuff when it leads to all this happiness.

"Trust your instincts"

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at polymeansmany.com. This month, our topic is "finding what works for you".

Trust yourself.

You know more than you think you do.... what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.

- Benjamin Spock, Baby and Child Care, 1946

When it comes to natural human behaviours, like parenting, sex and relationships, we're often told to trust our gut. We are animals, after all, and animal instincts have been honed by evolution over millions of years. Other animals don't worry about how to raise their young, they just do it. They don't worry about what form their relationship should take, or write blogs about it, or read advice columns. They follow their instincts.

Parenting, as one of the most basic and essential behaviours in any species, should be instinctive, as Dr Spock wrote, but what I think he is missing is that we are not an instinctive species. Like other primates (more so than other primates) whilst evolving our capacity to learn, our basic instincts have been eroded and overwritten.

Harriet J. Smith is a clinical psychologist who adopted several tamarind monkeys when they were no longer needed for research. When they started to breed, she realised that the monkeys that she had raised herself had no idea what to do next. The parents didn't understand why they had these tiny, baby monkeys clinging to their backs and would try to bite them, or flick them away. The only adult monkey who showed an interest in caring for the babies was one that had been captured from the wild, and who wasn't even a parent. In other words, it wasn't enough for these monkeys to trust their innate instincts. Successful parenting has to be taught.

This explains why something as natural as breastfeeding feels so unnatural to most mothers when they try it, and also why at 6 months, only 1 in 4 babies are breastfed at all, only 1% are breastfed exclusively. Of all things, lactation should come easily to mammals, but we're not the only species that can struggle. Maki, a chimpanzee born in captivity, was unable to breastfeed her baby, despite the baby being able to latch on and feed when her mother was unconscious. A gorilla in a zoo, who hadn't managed to breastfeed her first child cracked it with her second, after the local La Lache league fed their babies in her sight during her pregnancy. When you consider how rare (and stigmatised) breastfeeding is, and how much rarer it is that we actually see it, it shouldn't be a surprise that human women struggle as well.

If something as natural and necessary to the survival of our species as caring and feeding our young doesn't actually come naturally, how can we expect our relationships to work if we just "follow our gut"?

Like these other primates, we don't know instinctively what is going to work and what isn't. What feels like trusting our instincts is really trusting what we've learnt from our environment and upbringing, and this can lead us into relationship models that just don't suit us. This is why monogamy is our romantic ideal - it isn't because monogamy is natural or best for us as a species, it's just because that's the model we see around us. It's the same reason why we feel that feeding a baby with a bottle is more natural than with a breast, or why transporting our babies in prams and buggies, rather than carrying them (like every other primate), feels like the right thing to do.

Smith turned her research into a book called Primate Parenting, where she attempts to take the parenting techniques of our closest relatives in the wild and use them to guide "civilised" humans. I don't believe that natural is always best, but I do think it's often a good starting place. As Smith explains in her book, there are good reasons why keeping in physical contact with our babies, breastfeeding them on demand, and sleeping with them close by, as other primates do, are both natural and desirable behaviours, and working from that point is a good way to figure out what works best for your individual relationship with your unique child. Unfortunately, what comes most naturally to human relationships is less easy to piece together, and anthropologists are far from a consensus. And while there are many similarities between the ways that primates parent, there are wild differences in how they organise their sex lives, making it far harder to extrapolate from them to us. (Our two closest relatives, chimps and bonobos, are almost polar opposites when it comes to sex and relationships.)

Finding what works for me has been a long process of picking this learning apart. When making predictions about what is going to work well for me, how much of my thinking comes from what I've inadvertently learnt from society, and how much of it comes from my own, rational thinking?

The only way for me to work it out has been to give it a go. I wouldn't have thought that I had the capacity to love more than one person at a time before meeting my boyfriend, and I would have assumed that I'd be tormented with jealousy if my husband had sex with someone else before he actually did it. These beliefs were so ingrained they needed to be demonstrated to be untrue for me to discard them. Similarly, I hated the idea of co-sleeping when I was pregnant, and insisted on having a moses basket by my bed. It became a laundry basket three days after Small was born, and she is still sleeping next to me nearly two years later. I'm not suggesting that polyamory and co-sleeping are going to work for you, but I do think some of these decisions have to be tested in the field before locking down your options. Especially if you're making plans for relationships before you've met the people you'll be having these relationships with (before they even exist if you're talking about parenting.)

I'm pretty sure, based on the available evidence, that monogamy isn't natural, but it's unlikely that the pair-bonding-based polyamory that I've settled myself into is natural either. So if we don't know what is natural or what is a "best-fit" for our species to use as a starting place, we have a lot more work to do in making these decisions. But also, I expect, a lot more freedom.

(N.B. I don't mean to come down quite so hard on Dr Spock. Despite my criticism of his basic argument, he really did challenge the rigid norms of parenting at the time, empowered parents, and was the catalyst for a lot of positive change.)

Why you should lie to your partners

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at polymeansmany.com

Captain Bluntschli: You said youd told only two lies in your whole life. Dear young lady: isnt that rather a short allowance? I'm quite a straightforward man myself; but it wouldnt last me a whole morning. - Act III, Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw

If you're reading any "how to" guide to polyamory, you're going to be told (in a variety of words and ways) time and time again that you should talk honestly about everything. I broadly agree, but I think this zeal for being honest and communicating about everything can be taken too far. In fact, one of the key skills in communication is knowing when not to communicate and when not to be honest.

All good parents lie to their children sometimes. Unless there are people out there who are genuinely never bored by reading the same, sodding five page cardboard book a dozen times in succession, or who really enjoy standing around in the cold to push their child on swing for twenty minutes, we all do it. We all want our children to feel that their parents love spending time with them, and that their feelings and interests are important to us. So we read the book again (doing the voices, of course), and we laugh and smile and sing and play, even when we'd rather not. Even when we're bored, frustrated or even on the edge of losing our tempers.

Usually, these lies are really just moments when we push aside misleading or counter-productive thoughts and feelings, and choose to act out of love instead. Losing my temper, or denying my daughter my company might feel satisfying in the moment, but once that moment has passed, I'd not only feel guilty, but I'd have hurt someone I love. When I'm able (and I'm not always able) to push aside these destructive thoughts and force myself to act out of love, even when I don't feel it, I feel better about myself than if I'd succumbed to cheap honesty.

Dr Laura Markham, who writes the amazing Aha! Parenting describes this process as mindfulness. She says that "Being mindful means that you pay attention to what you're feeling, rather than just acting on it," and so taking a pause, allowing the emotion to pass through you, and not acting until you are more in control. It's a key skill in parenting, she believes, not least because it's a skill we should all want our children to have. It's a myth that you should express your anger expressing anger actually makes you more angry. So if you express your anger to someone you love, whether that is a child or a partner, not only might you have thought of a better way of dealing with it if you'd just waited a moment, but you've made yourself more angry, and probably upset or riled the other person up as well. Honesty - not always useful.

On rare occasions, the best way to communicate is to lie. Or at least, to keep the truth to yourself for now. Suppose your partner is about to go out on a date, which you have had plenty of notice for and have happily agreed to, but just before they go, you have a pang of jealousy. You're not okay. You don't want your partner to fall for this new person. You don't want them to kiss or hold hands. Do you call them up to say this? Or perhaps you hear your partner and their other lover's sex noises, and although you said it was fine for them to stay over, you feel left out and lonely, and just want them to stop. Do you interrupt?

If you pause and allow the emotion to pass through you, you might find that dealing with the feeling yourself is the best way of handling it. Do you really want your partner to go on their date thinking that you are unhappy? Will you be glad tomorrow if they've cancelled the date on your behalf? Do you want your metamour to feel awkward and unwanted in your house? How would you want them to behave if the situation was reversed? It might be better to generously lie and say that you hope they have a lovely night, or to distract yourself with a hobby and play music loudly. You might find that once the emotion has passed, you really do want them to have a good time, and you're glad you didn't spoil it for them. Or maybe you talk about it later, when your emotions have cooled, and you are better placed to rationally consider what you want them to do differently next time, if anything. You don't need to bury your feelings, just find a better time and way to deal with them.

Analysing your own thoughts and feelings in this way is hard. That's why toddlers can't do it: they are relentlessly honest with their emotions, screaming with rage, hitting people who annoy them, throwing things they don't want and weeping at temporary separations from the people they love. I don't expect my daughter to be able to manage these difficult feelings based on how they might make me feel yet, but I do think it's fair to expect adults to be at least try to do this for each other. So when I find myself tempted to say something hurtful or selfish, my goal is to push that aside and to think, instead of being honest, can I act out of love instead?

New Relationship Energy

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at polymeansmany.com. This month, our topic is "NRE"

"New Relationship Energy" is a term that polyamorous people use to define a feeling that is familiar to most people - the rush of desire and excitement that kick starts a new romantic relationship. When you become infatuated with someone, neuro-transmitters such as dopamine and serotonin can result in the other person being almost an addiction - with all the pleasures and torments that suggests. Sometimes, once all this has burned away, there isn't anything left, but sometimes it ignites a long and loving relationship.

For monogamous people, feeling this way about someone other than their partner is a problem - it either means that the new feelings must be ignored or suppressed, or it means the end of the existing relationship. One or the other must go. But for those of us in non-monogamous relationships, these complicated, often delicious feelings are an unavoidable complication of starting new relationships when others are also on the go.

The excellent blogger The Goddess of Java, who blogs at The Polyamorous Misanthrope wrote about how having a baby might affect a poly relationship , describing the feeling of becoming a parent as that "like being in NRE up to eleven". It's a great article, but I think that the analogy leaves a lot to be desired. Although the new feelings of parenthood are also hormonally driven, I don't think the feelings are at all similar. Unlike the mellowing of infatuation into love, nothing about that early passion I had for my daughter has diminished. The biggest difference between my feelings now and then is that I'm no longer in shock. (I'm sure it was prolactin and oxytocin that caused me to fixate on caring for her, because my brain definitely wasn't working that well.) The analogy suggests that there will come a time when the parent will stop placing their child at the centre of their universe and stop thinking that their child is something supernaturally precious. They won't. The only thing that will change is the practical demands the child places on them.

And the key difference between the new relationship between parent and child and the thrill of a new romantic contact is the uncertainty of it all. Let alone from her birth, from the moment of taking that pregnancy test, I knew how our relationship would turn out - I was going to love her for the rest of my life. And those feelings of love (more crucially, unconditional love) were there within a few days of her birth, and have neither grown or abated.

NRE isn't like that. When I started falling for my husband, I didn't know what our relationship would become. I could see that we were likely to fall in love, and I hoped that marriage and children were in our future, but I couldn't know for sure. To be honest, I didn't like it. I hated the uncertainty. The possibility of not only heartbreak but having the future with him that I wanted taken away made enjoying our NRE difficult for me. I wanted him too much.

So it's possible that the NRE I had with my boyfriend is the first time I've felt free to really enjoy it. I was already married, and already planning a family. I didn't have a preconceived role that I was hoping he'd take up, or a schema I wanted our relationship to grow into. I hadn't expected to ever fall in love again, and so it was nothing more than a delight to find out that there was more happiness to be had. Perhaps the lack of danger made it less exciting, but I was far more free to enjoy it, and let it be whatever it wanted to be.

It's possible that I'll never feel that thrill again. Maybe that's a shame, as I've only recently learned how to enjoy it, but I'd be okay with that. I know from how I feel about all three of them that love is far more valuable.

There's no way out...

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, Delightfully Queer, More Than Nuclear, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "commitment"

One criticism of my open marriage that I've come up against time and time again is that a relationship without monogamy is a relationship without commitment. Just as we're often told that your partner can't really love you if they've fallen in love with someone else, if you claim to be committed to more than one person, you are, de facto, committed to neither, and if you claim to be committed but not exclusive, you are kidding yourself. I've even been asked (several times) why my husband and I even bothered to get married if we didn't want to commit to each other. Exclusivity is seen as synonymous with commitment, rather than being one possible commitment out of many.

I can accept that if my marriage was exactly the same as it is now but with the addition of us being sexually and romantically exclusive, we would be more committed than we are now. But that means very little to me, because that commitment is not something that we value. Similarly, I consider cohabitation a significant and important commitment, but if other people see living with their partner as something undesirable, or maybe just a trivial as matter as having a housemate, then this won't be a commitment that benefits their relationship.

Commitments aren't about what we want or how we feel, though that might be why we make them. If monogamy was easy, and it was unlikely that your partner would ever be tempted to stray, then committing to exclusivity wouldn't be considered so significant. Monogamy is a commitment because it involves resisting temptation if it arises, and talking openly about your girl/boyfriend, partner or spouse is one of the ways that monogamous people make this commitment clear to other people. When we make a commitment to someone, we don't mean we'll do it because we want to, we mean we'll do it whether we want to or not. It's more than just a promise, it's an obligation. A commitment is a promise we make that would be hard to break.

This is one of the reasons why, even without exclusivity, marriage is still a significant commitment to me. My husband and I didn't just promise to be together for the rest of our lives, we did so publicly, in front of our friends and family, and we continue to do so when we make our relationship status clear to people. Even without the legal and financial entanglements that were the result of our ceremony, the open, public nature of the promise we made makes it very difficult to back out. There are others, but marriage is a pretty effective commitment device.

Living together, owning property, paying bills together, integrating our social and familial lives, and raising a child would make separating our lives from one another difficult and traumatic. By voluntarily putting ourselves in that position, we have committed to the survival of our relationship, even if it becomes hard, and even if we change our minds.

In some ways, my relationship with my boyfriend is more romantic, as it lacks the prosaic, legal structure of my marriage. Our relationship does have its promises, but we have made few of the commitments that either of us would require from a primary, "marriage-type" relationship. We are able to choose to be together every day, and are confident that the reason we still have a significant and cherished place in each other's lives is because it is what we both want. My prediction is that this will continue indefinitely, but there is very little that would force us together should one of us change our minds.

Commitments don't have much to do with emotion. You can stay committed to an unhappy relationship, or, like my boyfriend and I, be happily in love without obligations holding you together. The latter is wonderful, but would not be enough for me to plan my life around. The fixed, secure nature of my husband's commitment to me was necessary for me to even consider him as the potential father of my child.

And then, despite the value I place on my marriage, all the commitments I have ever made shrink to nothing compared to the commitment I made by purposefully becoming a parent. A human being exists because of the decision my husband and I made together, and we are totally responsible for every aspect of her life so far.

Unlike my husband, our daughter had no part in negotiating our commitment to her. She is completely dependent on us honouring this commitment, through no choice or action of her own. Thinking about it in this way, I am struck with what a precarious position children are in when they are forced to trust their parents, despite having no control over that relationship. And aside from the very basics, little of what a parent should do for their child is explicit or public enough to make it a significant commitment.

So, as an effort to correct that, here is my attempt to draft my own, public commitment to her (beyond my legal requirement not to neglect her), with you as its first witnesses:

• As long as she is dependent on me, I will make her interests and happiness my primary concern. I will always consider carefully how my actions will affect her. I will be mindful of my control over her life, and her dependency on me.
• I will always treat her with kindness. If I ever need to deny her something that she wants, restrict her actions, or correct her mistakes, I will always do so kindly, respectfully and without shaming or intimidating her.
• I will try to make her childhood fun, and I will prioritise playfulness every day.
• Most importantly, I will make sure that she knows that my love for her is unconditional and constant. Nothing she does, neither her successes nor her failures, will alter how much I love her. She will never need to earn my affection or my attention.
• If I ever fail at any of these points (which I'm sure I will), I will apologise to her, and try to do better next time.

There is more, of course, but this is what I'm working on now. And fulfilling all this, whether I want to or not, is not easy. There are days when I enjoy parenting more than others, and some days when I would really like to ditch the responsibility entirely, but the commitment I made to her means that I can't back out. She needs this stability, just as I, to a lesser degree, need the commitments that my husband made to me. None of us want a way out of this.

Hierarchy

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "labels and hierarchy" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

A long time ago, I read something macabre that stuck with me: a new mother held her new baby and realised that although her child's father was the love of her life, she would gladly stand on his head to keep her baby from drowning. I love my husband, but yes. I can relate.

We fit the model of primary partners (shared finances, future plans, lifelong commitment etc) but for both of us, she comes first. Her needs are greater, her demands more vociferous and urgent, and our responsibility to her trumps everything else. It isn't that I love her more than him - I don't think I could assess which of them I loved more, when loving one of them just feeds straight back into loving the other.

I know that some polyamorous people are uncomfortable with the term 'secondary' and the concept of hierarchy in relationships. They feel that labelling their relationship as secondary to another makes them feel less important and maybe even disposable. I understand why someone might feel this way. I just hope these people never date anyone with young children.

We can't can't give everyone equal time, energy or affection. Hierarchy is present in nearly all human relationship, whether we give it labels or not. You know which of your friends are your best friends, and which are just casual acquaintances, even if you don't say so. There is a hierarchy implied by family relationships as well, so much so that when this hierarchy diverges from the norm, we point it out by saying something like "my grandmother was like a mother to me" or "she's my favourite aunt". Even monogamous people do it to some extent, by using terms to make the significance of their relationship clear, whether that is "just friends", "dating", "boyfriend/girlfriend", "partner" or "husband/wife".

It's understandable, however, that people are uncomfortable with this hierarchy being overt in their romantic relationships. Not only do we grow up expecting just one 'significant other' but we don't have a model for having more than one when we do. In our other relationships, a hierarchy is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it's there, but in love, its existence glares at us.

The fact that I prioritise my child over my husband, or my husband over my boyfriend, doesn't make either of them unimportant or disposable to me. My daughter needs me just to survive, and my husband's life is so intertwined with mine that all of my decisions affect him. What makes me prioritise others over my boyfriend (and therefore makes our relationship a secondary one) isn't a lack of affection; it's just that as much as I love him, his life is conducted largely separately from mine. My secondary status in his life (and his in mine) isn't a restrictive cage we've imposed on ourselves, it's just a fact. "Secondary" still marks our relationship as one of the most valued and important in both of our lives.

But I think it's also important to remember that some of these things can change. Previously only children might have to share their parents' attention with an even needier newborn. Long distance relationships can relocate. "Just good friends" can become lovers, and more. Secondary partners might stay that way because of circumstance or design, or they might develop into co-primary relationships.

And even my daughter's dominance over my life will change. My husband and I have made a commitment to stay together for a lifetime, but my daughter will rely on us less and less, and one day she'll grow up and leave home. Having been woken up by her kisses, I'm conflicted about that, but I know I'll let her go. The shape and structure of our relationships isn't always within our control.

Choosing to miss out

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "loss" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

I don't like making decisions. I'm haunted by the choices I could have made and the options I've closed off, so often stall making them. I find some comfort in the freedom before choosing, as if by postponing the decision I am also avoiding the loss of the option I'll reject. Silly, I know, but every decision, no matter how positive, carries with it some loss. No matter what you choose, you'll miss out on something.

I miss out on a lot since becoming a parent. I have less sleep, less time and less freedom. These aren't trivial losses to me. I expect the fear of missing out is a large part of what causes people to pause when deciding whether or not to start a family, and may be enough to put them off altogether. I agonised over the decision to have a child for years, worrying that the price would be too high.

I wonder if this fear of missing out is what prevents some people from shifting from monogamy to non-monogamy. Monogamy provides a way to protect us from jealousy, an expectation of focus and time from our partner, and acceptance and support from society at large. Losing these benefits could be undesirable or even frightening to many.

Just as becoming a parent isn't a good choice for everyone, giving up the benefits of monogamy might be too high a price for many. Change means loss, even when that change is embracing the possibility of loving more than one partner, or deciding to expand your family by giving your love to a child.

Although I think about what I've lost quite often, I have no regrets. I'm on the right path, despite what I've had to leave behind. My daughter has started calling me 'mummy' and just that makes everything seem worthwhile, let alone the rest of the fun she has added into my life. The decision to give up monogamy was far easier. I've lost very little that I valued, and gained the love of a wonderful man that has enriched not only my life, but my marriage and family.

Whatever you decide, you miss out. That sounds terribly negative, but I'm starting to find it reassuring. Embrace your loss. Missing out is the price you pay for getting what you want.

(If you want a more eloquent take on the difficulty of accepting loss, try this.)

The risks of "chosen family"

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Non-lovers" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

From Stalin Ate My Homework, by Alexei Sayle:

'One year one of the members [of the Communist party] told me he would make me a toy fort for Christmas... It took a long time to arrive but finally, wearily, right on Christmas Eve he deposited it at our house - and it was magnificent. It had all the things I had specified: a drawbridge you could wind up and a working portcullis and a little light bulb that worked off a battery. Then he stopped coming to the meetings and I never saw him again. That was one problem with having a family that wasn't based on blood ties - people often inexplicably vanished and you weren't supposed to miss them.'.

I'm expecting to read a few posts about how polyamory can build a "chosen family" and about close emotional ties with metamours this month. I'll enjoy reading them, but that's not what I'm going to write about. Partly because I think the other bloggers will pretty much say what I’d say anyway, partly because I've written it already but mostly because there is something else on my mind, which is how all this will affect my daughter. Because although I am sold on the benefits of chosen family, the polyamorous tribe and the added love that she will experience because of our extra lovers and metamours, the above passage from Alexei Sayle’s autobiography gives me pause. So too, does the onetime blogger PolyMom who believes strongly that polyamorous parents should stop dating when they have children because those children “deserve to grow up with minimal changes to their family configurations.” I don’t agree that the only way to provide stability is to stick to a rigid set up, but she does have a point.

Friends and lovers have drifted in and out of our lives. Some good friends moved overseas, some just stopped calling, and since having a baby, we’ve built a new social circle of other parents who understand and share our experiences. I expect that as time goes on, we’ll see some friends more often, others less. Not all of these people will be considered part of our tribe or family, but of those that do, not all will remain so. When you choose your tribe, it isn’t stable. And, as Alexei Sayle found out, when your parents choose it, the people who you might consider family aren’t there because of you. Chosen family is risky.

Despite the title of my previous blogpost on the topic, real tribes aren’t chosen. A tribe is based on kinship, not friendship. Teresa Pitman wrote a guide for those interested in building a tribe in the style of the Continuum Concept and advises people not to be too picky: “People who actually live in tribes are born into them”, she says. “And I suspect that if we lived in tribes there would be people who we would get along with easily and those with whom we wouldn't mesh quite as well.” When we choose our family, the reasons that caused us to choose them might change. The success of tribal living is perhaps the lack of that choice.

I don’t want to sound defeatist, because I really am sure that Small will benefit hugely from the love that both my boyfriend and my husband’s girlfriend have shown and will continue to show her. Not to mention my boyfriend’s girlfriend, my husband’s other long-term lover and several other wonderful metamours, friends and lovers. These people who enjoy her company as well as ours will bring nothing but good things into her life. I don’t think that cutting any of them out would benefit her or improve the stability of our family. But these people, no matter how much they love her, are there primarily because of us, not her. Her grandparents, on the other hand, would still be her grandparents no matter what. If we fall out with our parents, they would still want a relationship with her. If we lose touch with one of our lovers and Small is especially close to them, what then?

While I think PolyMom does have a point, I don’t think that polyfiedilty or monogamy solves the problem or necessarily creates any more stability. After all, Alexei Sayle’s parents were monogamous. But it is still something I think about, and I haven’t decided what, if anything, we should do about it.

She is still very young, of course, and the only adults she shows clear signs of bonding with are those she sees at least once a week. So even our biological family aren't really family to her yet, no matter how much they love her. So at the moment, this isn't something I worry about. But it won't be long before she'll start asking about people she's met, learning to recognise names and faces, and enjoying the company of some of the people we love. Maybe by then, I'll know what to do.

Until then, if anyone has an answer, I'm all ears.

Reflected love

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub's Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Love" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

My husband and I thought that having a baby would mean that some of our friends would drift away. Babies aren't everyone's cup of tea, and so we thought that some people might lose interest in us now that our lives revolved around one.

In fact, the opposite happened. It turns out, some of our friends were so interested in Small that they wanted to spend more time with us. Both of us have made new connections since Small was born, and those people seem to enjoy spending time with her as well as well. So we were wrong: having a baby seems to have made spending time with us more desirable, not less. We're surprised and lucky to have such an amazing, loving, child-friendly community around us.

And I love that people love her. I love nothing more than seeing people enjoying her company, not to mention investing time and effort into connecting with her. I love her so much that any kindness shown to her warms me as much as kindnesses offered to me directly.

Other parents will recognise how it feels to bask in this reflected love, but so will the polyamorous, I think.

I love my husband so much, that I warm to those that love him. When someone is enchanted by him, as I am, and wants to be in his company, that makes me happy. Monogamous people are sometimes baffled by this. They don't understand how my husband and I can not only put up with the fact that we love other people, but be delighted by it.

I don't know if I can explain it, because I find it hard to imagine being any other way. For me, love is, I think, fuel for more love.

5 tips for supporting your partner when they have a baby (and it isn't yours)

If you're visiting a new baby, this article at Offbeat Mama is a good starting point. But if one of the parents is your partner, it's probably not enough. You're not just visiting a baby, you're meeting an important new member of your family, and the worries about overstaying your welcome, or intruding at an emotionally vulnerable time probably don't apply. So, what should you do, and what can you expect?

After attending PolyDay for the second time, I'm aware that this might be an increasingly common situation in my community. You might be years off starting a family of your own, still looking for your perfect co-parent(s) or even be resolutely child-free, but the more relationships we have, the greater the chance is that one of our partners is at a different stage of life, or makes different decisions to us.

So you might not be ready to have children, or even want them at all, but now you have them, by proxy at least.

Either you are supportive of your partner's choice, and try to be involved with their new family member, or you risk drifting apart. Evolution gives new parents a one-track mind, so unless you're part of this, there's a good chance that they just won't have time for you.

So, if you decide you want to be a source of support, and a part of your partner's new family, how should you do it? You're in a better position than most of their friends, as not only do you probably know them better, but the intimacy that you have means that they may be more comfortable accepting your help and falling apart in front of you. My husband advises new parents to have no one around for long unless you would be comfortable crying in front of them, but you probably fall into that bracket, right?

1. Offer to help with nappies
If you've had a baby, you'll understand why I'm saying this. If you haven't, you'll probably be scared of the yuck and of doing it wrong. But most new parents haven't had a great deal of experience with this skill either, and now they have to do it 6-10 times a day. It's terrifying. So, if you're confident, offer to change a nappy, perhaps asking for supervision. If you're unsure, offer to help or ask to watch, so you can do it on your own next time. Even with poo, it's not that bad, I promise, and once you've done it (and the baby's parents can see you can do it), you'll feel much more comfortable with the idea of baby care, and become a much more useful source of support.

The parents might turn down your offers of help. Maybe they're uncomfortable having other people care for their new child, or maybe they're trying to be polite. They will definitely appreciate the offer. There won't be many people who feel comfortable or willing enough to offer, so it shows your commitment to both your partner, and keeping involved in this new person's life.

As time goes on, the parents will become more confident, and nappies will become less of an issue. But your early involvement will be a sound investment in keeping your bond with your partner and their child.

2. Feed the parents.
If you're visiting the new baby in hospital, after the birth, bring food. The mother and her birth partner(s) will be starving, and struggling to survive on hospital rations. Giving birth is hard work, even for the people who are just there for support, and it's likely none of them had a chance to eat much (or sleep at all) during labour. If you don't get a chance to ask them what to bring, cake and biscuits are usually safe. This is not the time for salad.

If you're visiting at home, bring food. New parents struggle to find time to eat, let alone prepare food. It can be hard to accept care from friends or even family, but you're probably used to caring for your partner, so they will probably be grateful of a cooked meal, or even a sandwich. Recovering from birth and beginning breastfeeding takes a tremendous number of calories just to keep on an even keel, so I guarantee that help in this area will be welcome, whether your partner is the mother, or just the co-parent who is trying to care for her. I had people bringing me plates of food, snacks and hunks of cake continuously for the first four weeks, and dear God it was amazing.

You know your partner better than most, so you'll know what sort of food they'll appreciate. Just make sure it takes little or no preparation, and if possible, can be eaten with one hand.

Oh, and if you ever see someone breastfeeding, offer her a drink.

3. Help around the house.
New parents might still feel like they have to 'host', but hopefully, you'll be close enough to both of them to be able to pitch in without them becoming uncomfortable. Someone did our washing up without asking when Small was two weeks old, and I'm still grateful. If you see any little jobs that need doing, just do them, and if you have the time to do anything more, ask if you could run a hoover around, or hang the washing out. Again, this is the sort of help that would make most people uncomfortable, but it's much easier to accept from someone you love.

4. Get comfortable with your new family member.
Get comfortable cuddling them, making faces, singing songs, patting and rocking them to sleep. Cuddling them as you dance around works with most newborns. The more confident you get with these new skills (and calming and keeping babies happy is definitely a skill!) the easier you'll find it both to support your partner, and stay an intrinsic part of their family.

Personally, in the first few months, I was usually desperate for a break from the dratted child (sorry, Small...) so was much happier when someone offered to hold her so I could throw on some washing, than if they had offered to help with the housework. Sometimes, what I really wanted was to have a bath with the bathroom door closed, so it might feel that just holding the baby isn't enough of a help, but your partner might be both grateful of the break, and happy that you want to spend time with their child.

5. Be aware that the ground has shifted
If your partner has just given birth, you'll know not to expect sex for a while, but even if your partner is the mother's co-partner, you might not be sharing a bed. The baby is the parents' priority, and newborns need parenting 24 hours a day. Everything is different now, and the space the two of you had before has gone. It will take time to work out how things have changed for you both.

It's not easy to predict how the recovery will affect the intimacy between you and your partner, even if your partner isn't the one recovering from the birth. The first few weeks are overwhelming, but it will get easier. There is a reason everyone tells you that they grow up so fast. It's a cliché, but they really do. It may seem almost impossible for you to find space to be with your partner now, but things will change incredibly quickly. The two of you can find a way to reconnect, but you'll need to be patient and gentle with the parents, and don't push it.

There is also no exaggeration to the cliché that your life is never the same again after having children, so you can't expect your partner to give you what they used to. But don't see this as a bad thing. Supporting your partner as they settle into parenthood will bring you closer in a new way, and when they're able, they will be even more delighted to support you with your life changes, whatever those will be.

Being a part of a person's life right from the very beginning is a peculiar and rare privilege, and so even as things between you and your partner are changing, new opportunities for love are blossoming. Enjoy it. They grow up so fast.

Where do you find the time?

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub's Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Daily Life" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

"Where do you find the time?" This is the question I'm most often asked when I tell other mothers about my relationships. I don't always manage, I tell them, but this is why it is worth it

There are several different ways and places that we spend time together. Tonight, it works something like this.

My boyfriend and I have a date. Before I became a parent, this would mean I would go to his place, he would cook dinner, we'd have sex, plan to watch a film, talk too much, realise it was too late, cuddle up, and go to sleep. We rarely went out together. Now, it works differently. I check with my husband, (as me going out means he must stay in), and I put the date into our calendar.

Before my husband and I were married, when we lived more than 50 miles apart, I would plan our time together carefully in advance. I would think about food, drink, clothes, hair and makeup, daydreaming about that first touch, that first kiss. We took care to show each other our best faces, and tried to make our limited time perfect. After many years of living together, we still plan our time together in this way, but only rarely. We see each other every day, and so our days are filled with little, unplanned moments of intimacy that make planning ahead less of a necessity. In some ways, my relationship with Jemmy is locked into the old model: even though we have been together longer than any of my other relationships barring my marriage, the structure doesn't change much. Our time together is always precious, rarely casual. The terminology the polyamorous use to pin down these differences rarely seems satisfactory, but whether you call it primary and secondary, domestic and non-domestic, live-in and not, the two are just different. With my husband, there is always tomorrow, but with Jemmy, there rarely is.

And like I used to when my husband lived far away, I daydream about our time together. I imagine how he will smile when I open his front door, how it will feel when I touch him and take him into my arms. My husband and I rarely embrace the way he and I do any more, which might sound sad, but it's not. It's bittersweet to see your lover after a separation, even if it's just a few days, and so this fervency makes up for lost time that I don't lose with my husband. With him, there is no bitterness to make up for.

If Jemmy and I are going to have dinner together, this means my husband has to handle both dinner time and bed time for our daughter. There's a strange pull of freedom and guilt to that. In any case, the last thing I do before leaving the house is feed Small, and I do so, praying that she will go to sleep easily without me. She's usually had her dinner by this point, and might even be in her pyjamas ready for bed, depending on when I leave. I say goodbye to them both, and my husband sends Jemmy his love.

I still don't leave my daughter often, or for long. Evenings at home are not the same; even without considering the knife-edge of awareness that she is asleep upstairs and could wake up at any time, there are always things I need to do. At his house, I'm off duty, but still at home. He cooks me dinner, he fetches me a drink, and I can't spend the time with the housework of parenting, preparing for the next day. There is no baby upstairs. We would like to spend more time all four of us together, as a family, but sometimes, I need this. It's worth making the time for.

The evening probably passes much as you imagine it would, with the subtle differences that make all relationships unique. At some point, I start to become more aware of the time. There are consequences to staying out late. My daughter might need help to sleep; my husband has work in the morning, and I don't want him to be tired, or to feel that my time with Jemmy creates a burden on him; and I rarely get more than a couple of hours sleep at a time, so feel an urgent pull to bed as the evening wears on. And I won't be sleeping at this house.

As we say goodnight, he tells me he wishes that I could stay, and we talk about the indeterminate future, when the demands of parenting will have lessened enough for this to be possible. We remember waking up together, lazing around his house over breakfast before getting dressed. But not tonight. It's a wrench to leave him after so few hours, but I'm running out of time.

Back at home, my husband is waiting up for me, and I think how incredibly lucky I am to be loved by these two men. Our daughter is asleep beside him, and I climb into bed between them, taking care not to wake her. Without any conscious thought we find ourselves in each other's arms, the high-pitched sounds of her breathing behind me. It's strange and beautiful to leave them both and come back with fresh eyes. Although just a moment ago I was wishing to be elsewhere, now, I wouldn't be anywhere else.