Are We Just Hedging Our Bets? A Critique of Polyamory Worth Sitting With

When multiple relationships become an escape hatch

One of the great things about polyamory is recognizing that no single person has to be everything to another person. Different relationships can offer different kinds of intimacy and connection. We can reject the idea that every romantic relationship has to climb the same relationship escalator toward cohabitation, marriage, shared finances, children, and happily-ever-after.

But there's a difference between saying 'No single relationship has to meet all of my needs' and saying 'When one of my relationships requires work, I can simply invest somewhere easier.' Those are not the same thing.

Relationships require maintenance. They require communication. Sometimes they require uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes someone needs more from us than we're able or willing to provide. And sometimes the completely ethical answer is simply: 'I can't give you that.' Nobody has to be the bad guy.

The problem comes when we refuse to have that conversation at all.

Instead, we withdraw. We stop calling. We stop showing up.

We make promises about doing better and don't follow through.

The other person starts trying to figure out what's wrong. They initiate the conversations.

They adjust their expectations. They give us space. They check on us. They try again.

Eventually they get tired of maintaining a relationship we're no longer participating in and end it themselves. And conveniently, we never had to. That's a kind of hedging too.

Someone is still doing the work

This is where Peller's argument about care labor started hitting differently for me. Because when we talk about emotional labor in relationships, we aren't only talking about comforting someone when they're sad.

In my experience, a whole fucking lot of that someone is still women.

Polyamory didn't invent the invisible mental load women have historically carried in heterosexual relationships.

But why would we assume becoming polyamorous magically makes us immune to it? In fact, having more relationships can mean there is more relationship labor to perform.

More calendars. More conversations. More potential conflicts. More agreements.

More people's needs, boundaries, expectations, schedules, health, families, and lives to consider.

If one person has multiple relationships but the people around them are doing most of the work required to maintain those relationships, that person hasn't necessarily become especially skilled at polyamory. They may have simply become very good at getting other people to do polyamory for them.

• Someone remembers birthdays.
• Someone manages calendars.
• Someone notices when communication has dropped off.
• Someone initiates difficult conversations.
• Someone checks in after conflict.
• Someone remembers what agreements were made.
• Someone thinks about how a decision in one relationship may affect another.
• Someone maintains connections within the larger polycule.
• Someone keeps track of sexual health conversations and risk changes.
• Someone notices that something is wrong and asks about it.
• Someone eventually says, 'This isn't working anymore.'

"My wife won't let me"

There's another version of this pattern I've seen over and over again, and it drives me absolutely bonkers.

'My wife won't let me.'

'My husband doesn't allow overnights.'

'My partner says I can't do that.'

Sometimes people really are in controlling relationships, and that shouldn't be dismissed. But very often what we're actually talking about is an agreement the speaker voluntarily made.

There is a meaningful difference between rules, boundaries, and expectations.

Expectations can be spoken or unspoken. The more clearly we communicate them, and the more willing we are to accept that sometimes people simply won't meet our expectations, the less likely they are to create unnecessary drama. Someone not being able to give us what we want doesn't automatically mean anyone did something wrong.

Rules are agreements people negotiate between themselves and voluntarily enter into. Boundaries are hard limits. You either respect someone's boundary or you don't. Personally, by the time you're issuing an ultimatum, I generally think you've already missed the important communication window. An ultimatum is often just a boundary being restated after it has already been crossed.

But if I voluntarily make an agreement with my partner, I own that agreement.

So instead of: 'My wife won't let me spend the night with you,' try: 'I have agreed that I won't have overnights, so that's not something I can offer you.'

Same outcome. Completely different ownership of the decision. And that distinction matters.

Because when someone says, 'My wife won't let me,' they quietly turn themselves into the powerless person caught in the middle. Their wife becomes controlling. Their other partner becomes the disappointed person who may now resent the wife.

Two metamours who might otherwise have no problem with each other have suddenly been positioned as competitors.

Meanwhile, the hinge gets to remain sympathetic to both. That's not taking responsibility for your relationships. That's offloading accountability onto your partners.

Autonomy doesn't mean you never owe anyone anything

I think polyamorous communities sometimes get ourselves twisted into knots over the word 'obligation.' We correctly reject a lot of compulsory relationship obligations.

You don't owe someone sex because you're dating them. You don't owe someone exclusivity because you love them. You don't have to marry someone because you've been together long enough. You don't have to cohabitate. You don't have to combine finances. You don't have to ride the relationship escalator at all.

But somewhere along the way, 'relationships shouldn't contain compulsory obligations' can mutate into: 'Nobody is allowed to expect anything from me.' That's bullshit.

Relationships absolutely can create obligations. The important distinction is that healthy obligations are voluntarily assumed.

If I promise I'll call you, I've created an obligation to call you or communicate that I can't.

If I agree to a safer-sex practice, I've taken responsibility for honoring that agreement until we renegotiate it.

If I tell you that we're partners, we should have some mutual understanding of what being partners actually means.

If I make commitments to one partner that limit what I can offer another, those are my commitments. I don't get to blame the person I made them with when someone else doesn't like them.

And if I don't want an obligation anymore? Then I have to do the uncomfortable thing. I have to say so. That's autonomy too.

Sometimes we just fuck it up

None of this means ethical relationships are relationships where nobody ever gets hurt. That's impossible. Sometimes we just fuck it up. I've done it. You've probably done it. Anyone who has maintained complicated human relationships for long enough has eventually misunderstood themselves, communicated poorly, overpromised, missed something important, hurt someone they cared about, or realized too late that they couldn't provide what they thought they could.

Ethics isn't perfection. A huge part of ethics is what happens when we realize we've fucked something up.

Can we say:

• 'I did that.'
• 'I made that decision.'
• 'I agreed to that.'
• 'I didn't communicate clearly.'
• 'I hurt you.'
• 'I can't undo what happened, but I can take responsibility for my part in it.'

Or do we immediately start distributing responsibility elsewhere?

• My wife wouldn't let me.
• My girlfriend was needy.
• My metamour caused drama.
• They knew I was poly.
• They decided to leave.
• I never technically promised anything.

Who is carrying your agency?

This may be the question I keep coming back to after reading Peller.

• Who is carrying your agency?
• Who initiates the conversations you're avoiding?
• Who maintains your relationships when you withdraw?
• Who remembers the agreements?
• Who communicates with the polycule?
• Who handles the emotional fallout?
• Who explains your behavior?
• Who makes excuses for you?
• Who finally says the relationship isn't working?
• Who takes responsibility for the choices you've made?

Because someone can become remarkably good at getting other people to carry those things for them without consciously deciding that's what they're doing. And multiple relationships can make that avoidance surprisingly sustainable.

• One partner maintains the household.
• Another provides emotional intimacy.
• Another provides novelty.
• Someone manages the calendar.
• Someone keeps everyone connected.
• Someone smooths over conflict.
• Someone checks in when you've disappeared.
• Someone finally gets fed up and breaks up with you.
• Then another relationship becomes difficult, and the cycle starts again.

And yes, we need to talk about gender

Peller's essay specifically examines heterosexual relationships and argues that polyamory can reproduce patriarchal arrangements in which men receive care, sex, attention, and emotional labor from multiple women without providing equivalent labor in return.

That's a limited lens. It doesn't account particularly well for queer polycules, relationship structures that don't center men, or the enormous variety of ways people actually practice non-monogamy. And obviously, men aren't the only people capable of avoiding accountability or exploiting other people's emotional labor.

But I'm also not willing to wave away the gendered part of this conversation just because it doesn't apply universally. I've been around polyamorous communities long enough to watch women do an extraordinary amount of invisible relationship maintenance.

And there's another uncomfortable wrinkle here: experience. People who have been doing this for a long time often become much harder to convince that asking for communication is 'clingy,' that expecting someone to honor an agreement is 'controlling,' or that autonomy means accepting whatever another person happens to offer without complaint.

That experience sometimes correlates with age. It certainly isn't universal. A 24-year-old can have phenomenal boundaries while someone twice her age tolerates absolute nonsense. But experience can teach people what they don't have to tolerate.

And that raises another uncomfortable question: What happens when someone who doesn't particularly enjoy accountability discovers that relationships are easier with people who haven't yet learned to demand it? That is worth examining too.

Polyamory isn't an ethics certificate

Maybe this is ultimately the part I want us to sit with.

Calling what we practice ethical non-monogamy doesn't make us ethical. It's an aspiration, not a certification. You can disclose that you're polyamorous and still lie. You can have consensual relationships and still manipulate people. You can talk endlessly about autonomy while refusing to take responsibility for your choices. You can reject hierarchy while expecting other people to organize their lives around you. You can memorize every piece of poly terminology available and still treat your partners terribly. And you can hurt someone without being a terrible person.

The question is what you do about it.

Polyamory gives us an opportunity to examine assumptions about relationships that most people never have reason to question. That's one of the things I love about it. But questioning traditional relationship structures doesn't automatically mean we've dismantled the unhealthy behaviors that developed inside them. Sometimes we've just given them newer vocabulary.

So I don't read Peller's essay as an argument against polyamory. I read it as a challenge. If we believe we're building something more intentional than the relationship structures we inherited, then we should be willing to look critically at the labor required to maintain what we're building.

Who is doing that labor? Who benefits from it? Who gets exhausted by it? Who gets blamed when things go wrong? And when our relationships become difficult, are we actually doing the work? Or are we just hedging our bets?

Further reading: 'Polyamory as a Reserve Army of Care Labor,' Barucha Peller, in Relationship Explorations