443 - Why Aren't You Being Fair? Exploring Aggressive Fairness in Polyamory
We all want equity
It’s normal to want a fair and equitable relationship with your partners, but what does that realistically look like when you’re non-monogamous? Sometimes aggressive fairness makes an appearance in non-monogamous relationships out of a desire to ensure everything is equitable.
Aggressive fairness occurs when one or more partners in a polyamorous relationship insist that if one partner gets something, the other(s) must receive exactly the same.
Fairness does not mean perfectly equal. Fairness means we care about how each person feels and make agreements to help all of us feel as good as possible.
Equality in a relationship means that each person’s interests and desires are respected and met to a reasonable degree as opposed to just one partner’s needs dominating the relationship. Inequality in a relationship refers to an imbalance of power between partners.
You may think, what’s the trouble with aggressive fairness? Fairness is supposed to be a good thing! The trouble with aggressive fairness is it can lead to some unhappy consequences, like:
Meaningful connections may never get to form and mature because the couple has strict guidelines on when and who the other person can date.
A whole host of issues can arise from choosing to only date “together.” Issues like OPP or OVP can come up, treating the unicorn or third poorly, favoring the couple’s needs over the needs of the third, etc.
The ability to be spontaneous about when dates occur, or opportunities to go on trips or have novel experiences may be stifled by aggressive fairness.
Feelings of guilt may override the desire to be romantic or affectionate in certain ways with a specific partner.
Overall feelings of doing something only because you are your partner are expecting something in return.
Aggressive Fairness is a Polyamory Red Flag that comes up when our monogamous conditioning leaks into our polyamorous life. Growing up in a monogamous world, we are given the expectation that our romantic/sexual partner will always put us first, no matter what. But in polyamory, that simply isn't possible. Each relationship you might be in is a separate entity. Yes, all your partners deserve you doing nice things for them, but they should not be connected. You make romantic gestures because you want to, not because you're obliged to.
So what can we do about this? Consider these points if you’re worried about exhibiting aggressive fairness or trying to be less rigid about being fair and equitable in your relationships:
What expectations do you have for each relationship and what expectations does your partner have? Generally there should be some compromise and communication about how to best fulfill each other’s needs.
Use things like the Relationship Anarchy smorgasbord to help each of you lay out your desires and expectations.
Realize that in healthy non-monogamy, each relationship is going to be separate and individual and you can’t and shouldn’t try to control your partner’s relationships.
Realize that time is a finite resource and we simply aren’t going to be able to spend all of our free time with every individual. Decide together how much time each relationship needs and allow for some personal space and time as well.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we are discussing aggressive fairness in non-monogamy. We all want our relationships to be fair and equitable, but is that an achievable goal in a relationship style as fluid as non-monogamy? What about in monogamy? How does fairness show up there?
Today we're going to discuss what aggressive fairness is. Debate a little bit about what is fair or not when it comes to relationship, and how this can play out across many different types of relationships, including non-monogamy, polyamory, monogamy, and explore helpful solutions to the questions of equality and fairness.
If you're interested in learning about some of our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever fine books are sold. Alternatively, the first nine episodes of this podcast also cover some of our most widely used and shared communication tools.
Emily: I really was interested initially in going back to our roots in talking about a very polyamory, non-monogamy-specific topic. However, fairness is still a thing that happens and comes up in all types of relationships. I think so often we as humans have this capacity to get really upset and angry if we feel like something isn't fair and that we have to call it out, and that we have to try to make everything as fair or equal as possible.
Sometimes in relationships, regardless of what type they are, that's just simply not going to happen. It's just not like, 50-50 sounds great and all, but I think depending on our circumstance, on our life choices, on what it is that we're doing in our jobs or who we are as people, any of the above, it's going to make fairness and equality more or less attainable. What do you two think?
Dedeker: That's an interesting question because I want to say yes and no. I want to agree and disagree. The part that I agree with is that, yes, I think to the latter, fairness that is sustainable in all moments, all the time, in any given relationship is probably impossible without either highly manipulating the situation or keeping extremely close track of every interaction that's happening in the relationship and all of your histories and various privileges or lack of privilege or things like that. Yes, I do agree with that.
However, I don't think that means that fairness is not something that we should strive for in relationship. I do think that we evolved to have a strong sense of justice and fairness. I think that having a very strong instinctual sense of justice and fairness is probably what helped us to survive among groups of other people and having to interact with other people for so many years of our evolution as a species.
It's something that you find in other primates also. We're not the only mammals that can perceive a sense of fairness. Although it's not a perfect goal, I feel like in maybe a contradictory sense, I think it should still be a goal in relationship. What do you think, Jase, let me fairly toss the ball to you.
Jase: Yes, I think that where it tends to go wrong, or at least where I most often have seen it go wrong in my own relationships as well as other people's relationships, is when we try to apply a mathematical or concrete fairness to things that are not able to be quantified in that way. If we're talking about amount of emotional labor or affection or--
I think where it really goes wrong is when we try to come up with-- well, how does an amount of value in terms of maybe how much emotional support I provide, how much does that equal in terms of how much financial support or household labor support or some other thing does that equal? I think that's where we really get off the mark because there's just not an exchange rate that actually works there and that applies to everyone and in all of those things.
Dedeker: I heard the statistic tossed out and I think this is 100% an Armchair statistic because I just saw it on a reel that a comedian posted, so that's my source. He was talking about, I think, life lessons that he learned from going through a divorce. He said that in relationship, we're always going to perceive that we're contributing 20% more than we actually are, and we tend to perceive that the other person is contributing 20% less than they actually are.
Just kind of pointing out that we have this imperfect biased brain that has actually a hard time weighing those things up as it is. Also, we tend to maybe overvalue what it is that we are contributing to a relationship and undervalue what the other person is. Again, he didn't cite any studies on that. He could have just been pulling that out of his butt for all I know. It feels true. What do you think about that?
Emily: I suppose that probably is true, especially at times in my relationship when I'm like, "Well, look at how much I'm contributing," or my partner may say, "Look at how much I'm contributing." I guess, it begs the question. Everything is so subjective and what actually is fairness in a relationship? What counts as fair to one person may not count as fair to another person.
Somebody may feel like, "Okay, you're doing all the domestic labor, but I am contributing so much financially and have to go to work every day." That's more of like a very olden debut of how people would contribute to relationships. It is that question, it's like, "Well, who is actually doing more work, and is that quantifiable?" I don't know if it is and it's subjective. I have no idea. That's why I was so fascinated to talk to the two of you about this today.
Jase: If you think about it, even in things that we can quantify, if you went fair by the numbers, you're not actually ending up with something that's fair. An example of that would be, let's say Dedeker and I were moving and we had a bunch of moving boxes and some of them were much heavier than others.
In order to be fair about it, we decided to weigh them all and make sure that Dedeker and I both picked up an equal amount of weight of boxes, ignoring the fact that I weigh a significant amount more than Dedeker and can lift more, not because I've worked out any harder. I actually think Dedeker works out a lot harder than I do recently. I just happened to be built that way compared to her.
If we went for this kind of fair by the numbers, that's absurd. I think most people would look at that and go, "Well, yes." Obviously, that doesn't make sense that you should both pick up an equal amount of weight. That's a stupid way to go about making your moving fair. Even that's something that we can really concretely quantify the amount of weight of each of those boxes, but it's still absurd. Now to apply this to other things that we can't even quantify, just the absurdity compounds on itself there.
Emily: Yes, 100%, and that's why I think those types of arguments sometimes, they don't hold a lot of weight for me or I don't really understand them in the way that maybe other people want that to be a really specific thing. Well, I'm contributing this much, and so you need to be contributing more or contributing something that to me equals the same amount.
In terms of non-monogamy, for instance, especially when people are opening up for the first time, I feel like they often, and I know that I really wanted things to feel fair in that way, but somebody may just do way better than their partner in terms of being able to go on more dates or more people may be interested in them at a time on their non-monogamous journey than the other partner.
Or if they go out and try to unicorn hunt, for example, somebody may not want to date both of them. Things like that, that's a really tough one too. That aggressive fairness in polyamory, which is a term that I found from discovering polyamory.com that I really wanted to get into because I had never heard of that before and I thought that that was a really interesting term.
Jase: Should we get into a few definitions here before we continue on with this discussion?
Emily: All righty, let's get into some definitions. The first definition is just equality. I wanted to look up what people said about equality and what a definition of that was. This is from join one love.org, and they say that equality in a relationship means that each person's interests and desires are respected and met to a reasonable degree, as opposed to just one partner's needs dominating the relationship. Inequality in a relationship refers to an imbalance of power between partners.
The next definition is fairness because sometimes I feel like equality and fairness they're not quite the same thing and I wanted to look up what people said about fairness. This definition actually is from The Ethical Slut, shout out to that wonderful book. They said, "Fairness does not mean perfectly equal, fairness means we care about how each person feels and make agreements to help all of us feel as good as possible." Interesting.
Then, finally, aggressive fairness, which is from this discovering polyamory.com blog is, "Aggressive fairness occurs when one or more partners in a polyamorous relationship insist that if one partner gets something, the other or others must receive exactly the same." Again that might be like time, for instance. That's what I found as an example, that okay, if one partner gets one date night a week, then every other partner must receive one date night a week as well, for example.
Jase: Yes. Here's what I think is interesting just to start off with these, that the definition of equality and the definition of fairness both came from websites or books that are talking about relationships. I think that those definitions are, so like what was baked into them was this idea that it's not about finding some one-to-one equality, ironically, since that's the word that's used there, but not about finding a one-to-one. It's more about finding this balance of meeting needs, and of power, and of how each person feels and makes agreements with each other.
It's one of these cases where we can get in our heads that a certain concept or a certain idea is good. We've talked about this before with boundaries. We get it in our head of boundary is good. If I can make something sound like a boundary, it's therefore good, even if it's not really. We get caught up in, does it meet a definition of it.
I think with these sorts of concepts, people could go and say, well, equality means equal, and equals in math means exactly equal. Or if I'm doing accounting spreadsheets or something and balancing accounts, those are equal one-to-one in a very quantitative way, and so then they try to apply that to relationships.
I think it's just worth pointing out that in these sources that are talking about relationships, they very clearly emphasize, this is not about it being one-to-one, this is not about it doing that. Then, of course, aggressive fairness coming up as this kind of counter-example of, hey, this is not a very good way to do this, and it is trying to do that tit-for-tat one-to-one balancing.
Emily: Absolutely.
Dedeker: Well, I feel like I want to get this out of the way first because yes, I think the aggressive fairness thing, I've certainly experienced it on both the giving and receiving end in relationship, and it's something that comes up a lot with certain clients that I work with. If I ever notice that that's happening, I immediately want to dive into well what's underneath that urge for aggressive fairness to repeat.
I think a common theme on this show is not just, oh, this person is just bad or inherently wrong or something's wrong with them and that's why they're doing this. They're just being a dick or whatever. I'm like, "No, there's something driving this urge for fairness, that is feeling high stakes enough that it requires a certain amount of aggressive energy. I really have to fight for this.
For me that brings up a couple of questions. One of them being, how does equality and fairness feel in the relationship in general maybe even before opening up the relationship, if that's the trajectory that this particular relationship is on. The thing that I think all of us have seen six billion times with people who first open up a relationship is person A, maybe long ago, they got used to the fact that they and their partner don't go on date nights.
Maybe their partner doesn't court them or woo them so much, maybe their partner stops sending them romantic songs. Maybe their partner stopped showering and putting themselves together before dates or whatever, and maybe they've just accepted that. Then when they see their partner suddenly doing all that for someone who's new and shiny, it can bring up, I think, this huge, huge up swelling of the whole backlog of unfairness.
It's tricky because in that case, I want to validate, yes, sometimes that's what you need to realize, you know what, I've been wanting that for my partner for years now. I've been wanting to still be wooed and pursued and treated as precious. On the one hand, I'm like, yes, I think that's probably a good flag that's indicating, ooh, something in the relationship maybe need to change, or maybe this person needs to be asking more for what they want from their partner and making sure that they're getting it, but I do think it can sometimes transmute into this more aggressive version.
Jase: Yes, and I love that you brought that up. That the idea of fairness isn't the problem. It's I think the way that some people try to execute it that can get them into trouble. I do think that's a really great point to say, okay, if I'm feeling this urge to say, this doesn't feel fair, what's there? What's underneath that? What is it that you're actually wanting? Is it really about fairness or is it just, hey, I want this thing and I'm not getting at?
We've talked about this before when we talked about the difference between wants and needs, where sometimes we can feel like if I'm asking for something that I want, I'm being selfish maybe or I could be afraid to ask for it, but if I can phrase it as a need, then it's well I need this. I'm not being selfish or greedy to want this from you because it's a need that we can actually end up selling ourselves short a little bit and selling our partners short with the idea that, well, they wouldn't give it to me if I didn't need it. If I just want it, my partner's not going to give me these things.
I think that's very much a mental story that we can end up telling ourselves that to me is very similar here. This idea that, well, I want those things but what I'm going to focus on is I'm upset this feels unfair so I'm going to approach it from a, well, for fairness sake, we need to put these things in place.
I think, again, yes, comes from a good place, but it's skipping over the actual issue, which is I really want my partner to treat me this way, or I really want to feel special, or even, I'm just feeling down right now about the way my own dating life is going and I'm frustrated about it. There's lots of different things that could actually be underneath this.
Emily: I was interested in discussing some of the ways in which aggressive fairness or just fairness, in general, plays out in things like non-monogamy and even monogamy. We talked about some of them. It always makes me think of the hierarchical couple that has a primary relationship and they're opening up maybe for the first time, for instance, and they want very much to be fair in the way that they approach non-monogamy.
That often can be done just because they're worried about repercussions, they're not quite sure how it's going to go. They don't want to hurt each other or set each other up for being heard in the relationship, and so rules will be created right off the bat for, okay, we're just going to maybe just date somebody together or find a third in some way and that equals fairness or that equals both of us getting our needs met in a relationship because we're both getting to date someone outside of just the initial dyad.
I feel like I see some of those things more at the beginning of a non-monogamous relationship, but then later on, for instance, there may be questions of, okay, if you are in committed relationships with multiple people in order for everyone to feel equal and taken care of, we have to give things like gifts or dinner dates, or social media presence, or things like that. All in equal amount so that nobody gets hurt or nobody feels left out. Have you two seen things like that happen?
Dedeker: Oh sure. I think I've seen that outside of even very particular hierarchical couples or seen that outside of people who are transitioning out of monogamy. I just think that sometimes, as I said earlier, there is this very human innate sense of looking out for when we might be getting a raw deal, as it were. I do think that all of us have some individual factors that can make that feel more intense for some of us more so than others. I do think that, again, the same thing of like, if you're in a relationship where there's already some resentment or you already feel like there's been some unfair treatment, sometimes we can be more predisposed to seeing things as being unfair when they're not and feel more predisposed to really needing to fight for things to be super equal.
Like their very specific about gifts or amount of money spent or dinner dates. I have worked with some people and I think I've also had to do some of this work on my own, that sometimes you can so aggressively fight for fairness only to realize that this might be a little bit of a bottomless pit and making things look one-to-one may not be the actual issue underneath that. Have you ever witnessed anything like that, either with yourself or with witnessing others?
Jase: The way I feel like I see this one show up is, honestly, more often I see this not about trying to be fair but trying to intentionally be not fair. What I mean by that is with a couple who have opened up their relationship that there can be that sense of, well, we can open up our relationship but I want to be sure that I stay important because we've had this established relationship already. People will put things in place like, well, you always need to have one more date night with me than you have with anyone else, or something like that, like an intentional unfairness.
I think the same thing can show up in both, which is, okay, fine, we're going to do that. You get that but then it still feels like, Oh, that's not enough.
There must be something else. What else could it be? Oh, maybe it's the amount of money you spend on dates with me compared to other people, maybe that needs to be more. Maybe it's the number of times we have sex each week or number of presents that you give me versus them.
Like you were saying, Dedeker, it's like this never-ending bottomless pit of, I keep thinking, Oh, well, if it was just this because I'm feeling uncomfortable, I'm feeling threatened, I'm feeling not special enough. Oh, if I just found the right thing that I need to have enough of, then I would feel better. I don't think I've ever actually seen that work out when that's what people focus on.
Emily: That reminds me of thinking about fairness, not in terms of multiple people in a relationship but maybe a couple feeling like we have to keep up this idea that we are number one, that this relationship is number one because it has been established and that I hear people talking about that sometimes in relation to, well, I should get precedent over this other person because I'm the one who lives with my husband or whatever, or we have kids together so I come first in some way.
I think that that's totally understandable, and in some cases, absolutely true. That's an interesting dynamic too. That becomes the thing that is fair because I've been with this person for the longest time. That means that the fair thing is that my relationship with this person would be at the forefront of our lives and not anyone else, kind of thing.
Jase: I think right there you've hit on something interesting, which is the fair thing is intentionally not being fair.
Emily: Yes. The fair thing is, oh, I am the number one because that's fair to me and I need to keep my fairness in this situation. The fairness needs to go in my direction.
Jase: Right. Maybe you could justify it like, well, I put in all this work into this relationship, so it's fair that I should get X, Y, or Z for it. Again, I do want to emphasize that we're not saying that that feeling is wrong or that that desire is necessarily wrong, but that we will often seek this aggressive fairness or I would even say aggressively unfair fairness as a way to fix a problem that's not really addressing the heart of the problem and what really the desire is underneath it.
One more direction that I think is worth looking at before we move on in this episode is how fairness can show up outside of just on monogamy. Whether you are monogamous or not, fairness can show up or this concern over fairness can show up in other ways. Like I mentioned my silly story earlier about moving boxes and making sure we carry the same number of pounds worth of boxes, something like that.
That example was silly but I think we see more concrete examples of that when it comes to money or when it comes to household chores, various things like that where there can feel like there's an imbalance one way or another, and that we tried to square those accounts somehow. I'm curious to hear from the two of you, places where you've seen this show up.
Dedeker: Well, the money one is an obvious one. I think that that affects everybody. It's unfortunately really difficult to escape from the influence of money and money being tied to inequality as well. I know we've mentioned this on previous episodes. The one that I always think of specifically that I see show up in non-monogamy is how to deal when, maybe let's say other people in the polycule have more financial solvency or financial independence than maybe you do.
Maybe it's like, okay, my partner and my metamour both make more money than I do, and so they're much more able to go on getaways or vacations or on really fancy dates more so than I have the budget for. It's like how do we find fairness there when that's just always going to be a particular reality?
Emily: Similarly in monogamous relationships, the expectation for one partner to perhaps be the one to pay all the time maybe or take a partner out and pick up the bill or pick up the cost of a trip, or if they're going to live together, does that mean that this person pays more of the rent or things along those lines?
I think that often begs the question of, what is fair? Is it fair because maybe you're a member of a racial minority, for instance, and you don't get paid as much as somebody who is white and a dude, for example? Does that mean that they are going to be able to pay more? That is fair because they've been offered those opportunities that you haven't. I guess there's so many granular reasons why somebody may or may not make more money. What do you look at in terms of what is equal and fair in those scenarios as well?
Jase: I don't even think it has to just have to do with race and gender, even though that does tend to favor certain people but there's also a lot of luck, and also what are the particular skills and interests you have as a person. Some people's interests just happen to line up with making more money than other people's, and some people's skills line up with making more money, and then there's also a ton of luck.
Did you just luck into joining a company right before it blew up? Did you luck into getting hired somewhere because your cousin's friend knew someone at this company and you got this great job or you just happened to have a good opportunity or have you been unlucky in certain ways? Regardless of the reason for it, it does mean that not all of us have equal access to money and the power and comfort that goes with it, and that that might change through our lives. We might be on one side of that spectrum at one point in our lives, and on another side at another point.
I feel like the way I see this one show up in a really sneaky way is in going out, this insistence that we should split everything 50/50 regardless of any of those other factors about how much money or debt or anything stability either of us has, this idea that, oh, but if we're not paying equally, we're somehow doing it wrong.
I think that's one that I've seen show up where then the person who has less money can end up really overextending themselves and actually keeping their situation from improving because they feel like, oh gosh, to be able to go on these dates or these dinners or do these things with my partner or go on these trips, I need to be sure I'm paying for exactly half of it, even though that's a bigger stretch for that person than the other. That's another area where I see this show-up, again, not the other person even insisting that they pay half but that we can insist that of ourselves feeling like, well, it would be unfair otherwise. It's a tricky thing, especially because we're all so uncomfortable talking about money in this culture.
Dedeker: I'm glad you brought up that point about how it's so hard for us to talk about money because I think that, again, this can happen when everyone has the best of intentions. It doesn't have to be the one person making more money insisting, "I don't care if you make less than me, you need to pay 50%." That it can't just be assuming like, oh, well, if they're having a hard time, maybe they'll tell me. Oh, well, they're still whipping out their credit card to split the bill, so it must be fine when it may not be fine.
Sometimes we need to be the one to open up these conversations and check in on a regular basis about these things. Is why we included the money section in the agenda for doing a radar is that financial situations do change quite a bit. I think especially with more people of our generation, we're more likely to be gigging and maybe not have as stable of income that sometimes for some people, it can be feast or famine. Their behavior during one period of time may not reflect an accurate overall financial picture. I'm just trying to say, just talk about money you all, just talk about it often, talk about it early. practice, stretch that muscle to get comfortable talking about money in very frank terms. I know it's uncomfortable, but-
Jase: It's a rough one.
Dedeker: - it becomes more comfortable if you talk about it more.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. Being more comfortable talking about it and also accepting that there's always going to be an inherent unfairness in the money that anyone makes. Like I said, regardless of just being based on gender or race, that just even two people who otherwise would seem like they're in the same demographic, there's nothing "fair" I would say, except in the way that a coin flip is fair, I suppose, but you can still win or lose a coin flip.
It's fair, I guess you had an equal chance, but also there's this luck and probability that goes into it.
Just realizing that you can't just assume that the amount of effort and the amount of mental state that goes into how much money someone makes equals the actual money that they get out of it. That's where we can get into situations like I know Dedeker's talked about on this show quite a while ago now, how she would struggle with, if she's dating a man, specifically, letting him pay for too much stuff because then there comes later him feeling entitled to something.
Whether that's some escalation of the relationship or some sort of emotional labor or household labor or something that is this expectation of, "Oh, well I paid more for this stuff so I need to get paid back in some other way or I need to get paid back in some way in the future where now you have to pay more bills in the future or something like that. Which again is based on this erroneous assumption that we can weigh those things against each other and also that everyone had equal access to all of those things.
It goes back to my example of carrying the boxes where to make that be fair by weight would actually make it very unfair in terms of the amount of difficulty and effort that that would take, and that was not due to either of our choices, even in that case, it was just how we were born and what our bodies are like.
We're going to move on to talking a little bit about some of the consequences of aggressive fairness and also what we can do about it. First, we want to take a quick break to talk about how you can help support this show. If this is content that you value, we love being able to put this show out to all of you in the world for free every week.
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Emily: We wanted to continue discussing aggressive fairness, fairness in general in relationships, and what some of the consequences can be when that fairness is put to a use that isn't beneficial or perhaps even harmful to the relationship. I think in terms of non-monogamy, often if we are making a decision that the only way two people can date is if each of them are going on the same number of dates, maybe even at the same time so that no one ever feels left out or that certain connections can only be made together, for instance, there's always the possibility of those relationships to really flourish and people to really connect and things to mature and evolve.
That's not really going to get to happen if a couple has really strict guidelines on when and who the other person or each other can date. I think that's one of the things that I know, Jase, you've talked about feeling restriction from another partner, from a metamour, for instance, really can weigh on a person and has weight on you in the past and been really difficult for you in the past. That totally makes sense. These just arbitrary restrictions in the name of fairness, for example.
Dedeker: Sometimes aggressive fairness to me is just one cog in what I like to describe as essentially elaborate emotional Rube Goldberg machines that sometimes people build around their relationships, not just non-monogamous relationships, but often non-monogamous relationships. It's almost like thinking about an overly elaborate mathematical formula that everything's put into.
Is it, okay, if you're going to go on this particular trip with a partner, how long has it been since our last trip, and then in our last trip, did we have a good time? No, we didn't have a good time. I think that adds a modifier that makes you going on this trip with another partner even more unfair. We need to account for that, but also, I don't really want to talk about this particular aspect of your plan. Also, you need to clean the entire house and make sure that your other partner's hair didn't get left behind on the couch, or otherwise, they're going to freak out about it.
Again, I don't want to throw these behaviors completely under the bus because my brain of working with clients is, I'm like, "Let's dive it. What's underneath it? Let's pull it up by its roots and just look at what's going on." I think that that's maybe another, not as obvious consequence of seeking this aggressive fairness thing.
I think it starts to add again to this Rube Goldberg machine where it becomes increasingly more difficult and complex in order for us to feel like we're having a good time going on dates with other people. Sometimes that may be the unintentional desired outcome is to make it more difficult for my partner to have a good time with somebody else. Sometimes that can be a part of, I think a weird subconscious feeling of, this is how it's going to be fair.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: Yes, and I don't think most of us would admit that to ourselves, but yes, I think you really hit something there of that idea that it'd be fair if you also had just as miserable and stressful a time as we did last time or something like that. I know that sounds terrible to say out loud, but subconsciously, there is something there sometimes.
Emily: That idea that if a partner is having a really rough time in a relationship and feeling like it's unfair that your other partner is having a great time in their relationship, and that there can be an internal struggle happening because you don't want them to have a shitty time, but you feel like it's unfair and you feel like you should be having a good time too.
If you're not, then somehow your partner needs to be punished for that. Not necessarily like you're absolutely going out of your way to do so, but just that it's a little unfair. If only they knew how tough this was right now and if only they could see how shitty a time I'm having and what I'm going through, then maybe I would feel like the situation were more fair.
Dedeker: Yes, I think there's even more underneath that. I'm so glad that you brought that up. This makes me think of the mother's curse. What I mean by the mother's curse is when a frustrated mom turns to her child and says, "I hope that when you have children of your own, they act the same way that you act." I lumped this under the general category of "I wish that you could suffer in the same way that I am suffering." I think that sometimes we can stop at thinking like, that's going to help this feel fair.
What's actually underneath it, I think, or at least for myself, anytime I've noticed myself having that weird resentful like, "I wish this person could go through what I'm going through because then they would see, really what's underneath it is I really wish this other person could see me and understand me.
I think that's really what it is. When we're wishing or maybe even artificially manipulating a situation in order to make it so that the other person is having a rough time. I think that's one piece of it can be, "I wish you could truly see how hard this is for me, whatever "this" is. Whatever it is that I'm sitting with right now, I really wish you could see and understand and maybe help comfort, empathize, I don't know what it is necessarily that may change depending on the context, but I think that's a part of this as well.
Jase: Yes, I think that makes a lot of sense that that desire to be understood makes a lot of sense. I think also to go back to something you mentioned before where you're talking about your Rube Goldberg machine or I actually like the analogy of an equation that so often we talk on this show about how people want some clear answer. I want to know that if these things are true, that I'm doing it right.
That's how we can end up in those situations where we have these complex equations essentially of, oh, well,if you're doing this, then I need to do this other thing, and then we need to do that, and trying to come up with this adding set of rules that as long as we follow these, then we're doing it right. Unfortunately, that's just not how life and human interactions work.
To move on to our second point that we have on our list here of some consequences of aggressive fairness that can show up in the sense that we always need to date together. This is the thing that often is called unicorn hunting. This idea that, well, we want to open up our relationship, but we have some fear about it disturbing our relationship or feeling unfair for the two of us. The solution is we'll just only date together. We'll find someone that wants to date both of us and we'll have sex with them together. We'll date them
together, all those things. This could probably be its own episode on its own. In fact, we've done an episode on that before, quite a while back, actually. Maybe that is one we could revisit. It's one of those things that sounds good in theory except that none of that is how humans work. That even if you are doing that together, the way that each of you interacts with that third person is going to be different. That's just how people are. We don't connect with any two people in exactly the same way, even if those are our children or our parents or any of those things. We don't treat people the same. We can strive to treat them fairly, but we don't treat them exactly the same. I think we can get caught up in that ideal and then be really disappointed when it doesn't work out that way. If one person wants to continue that relationship with this third person and the other one doesn't, is another problem. All that is not even getting into the issues of, we're so concerned about our fairness with each other so that's why we're only dating together. At no point have we considered the fairness to that other person in terms of how much urgency we give them and how much choice we feel like they should have in this relationship, or how we treat them as a princess that we've trapped in a tower.
We've given her all these nice things, but also maybe she's a little trapped, or maybe she loves that or he loves that, or whatever. Often when we go into it from this effort of keeping our relationship fair, we're not looking at the fairness of that other person.
Emily: I see this so often with friends or even listening to podcasts that are a little bit more on the monogamous, maybe stepping slightly into the idea of non-monogamy, or being monoga-mish, that it really, really is about the couple we need to figure out ground rules beforehand to be very specific on them. If that doesn't happen, then everyone's going to lose their shit and we're not going to be able to function well and feelings will get hurt between that main couple.
I find that to be still the prevailing idea around having things like threesomes or having a third or a unicorn or whatever, that really, especially newcomers so often will look at were the most important thing in this equation, and the other person is just there for a fun sex toy for anything. That can rub me the wrong way unless that person really, really wants that and we've talked about that and that's great if that is what you want, but I'm still shocked to the amount of people that I hear really not even taking that other person into account very much, and having it be all about the relationship.
Dedeker: Another consequence of aggressive fairness is, I think it does kill spontaneity. Now, I'll be honest that I think that when you're in a polycule, the more people you add, I think personally the less you're able to be spontaneous because I think there's more communication like calendar managing and time management. That means that maybe you can't necessarily just decide, "Oh, I'm just going to go off on a spontaneous weeklong trip and not tell anybody," or maybe you can. I don't know. I guess it depends on the polycule and the group of people.
I do think if you know that everything is going to have to be accounted for or you're going to have to ask permission or get something signed off on, that can definitely kill a certain amount of spontaneity, which I think is less important than thinking about the consequence of, "Oh, my partner is passing through my neighborhood. They texted me, and I'm not able to go out on a spontaneous date with them because of X, Y, and Z reasons that I've set up in my existing relationship." I think about it more on a longer time scale, I suppose, because I think that spontaneity is something that helps just with the relationship growth.
That we don't always have the ability to completely plan out every single milestone of a relationship. I do think that when you take away even the opportunity for some spontaneity, that you're also maybe stifling some of that as well.
Jase: Certainly, I think we can also see that show up where, say I did do something spontaneous and fun with one partner and then I feel like, "Oh, well, we've got this set up, so I need to be sure I do that for the other person," that then either myself, I might feel like, "The second one wasn't as spontaneous," or that second partner might think, "Oh, okay, cool, they just did that to make sure it was fair."
We've talked about this in the past, actually, is that idea of, by having a lot of very specific rules about behaviors that need to be done in the relationship, it can make it feel like, "My partner doing that is just them meeting the bare minimum requirements of following the rules," and it can rob that specialness or spontaneousness from those actions, even if it's the same actions. It's like, "They did it because they had to. They've just barely broken even. This was not a special thing. It's just they're following the rules." That's a bummer.
Emily: That goes along with the fourth point, which is that you might feel guilty if you do do something really romantic and nice for one partner. You may feel like, "Oh, shit, I have to do that for the other partner or else they're going to be upset or resentful or something." That came up when I was reading the discoveringpolyamory.com article on this, that the writer of the article was speaking about the fact that he had a partner who felt really bad when he delivered flowers to another partner, and that guilt made him be like, "Maybe I just won't do that in the first place for anyone because it's just going to make everyone upset or make certain people feel upset in different ways."
He realized that that feeling of continuing to need to be fair to everyone, it was, like you said, Jase, overiding this idea that I'm doing this and being in this relationship because I want to be and because I care about this person and I want to do something spontaneous and fun for them because that's how I'm showing affection. It shouldn't be about, "Oh, well, I did it for one person so I have to do it for another and let's tally on the big whiteboard all of the nice things that we're all doing for each other so that it's all fair."
Jase: That's a great point. Something just worth bringing up here too, is that to go back to the equation idea of keeping things fair, is that we've heard people give advice on podcasts, of things to do to help ensure that your relationship's fair, or write about these in books or whatever, and this includes things like Emily was mentioning with threesomes, of saying, "Oh, well, to be fair to each other, be sure that you kick this other person out and make sure that you don't want to check in with them or ever talk to them again," or something like that, because that's going to help your relationship, and it's just ignoring that other person.
Or it can go on the side of every single moment that you spend doing something, or every dollar that you spend toward the relationship that's not just on yourself, tally that up in a spreadsheet, and that somehow that's going to help you be more fair in your relationship or the amount of time you spend caring for your children or doing housework, or trying to find these ways to quantify, and then it gradually gets more and more complicated because then it's, "Oh, well, you did that while you were with another partner. That's a little more fun, so you only get half points for that. I had to do it once on a weekend where I had to do some extra work, so I get more points for that."
You can just get into this situation where you're, one, putting a lot more effort into trying to be fair than actually enjoying your relationship, and two, setting up a system that's really, really easy to even unintentionally manipulate or game the system in order to either be able to complain more about how unfair this is to you, or to get more free time, or to get your partner to do more things for you, or I don't know what, but it's something that I feel even people who otherwise give some decent advice, can really steer people wrong in this direction.
I just think that's worth acknowledging here, that a better system for being fair is not necessarily the way to make this better. It's not about. "Oh, we just need a more complicated, more fleshed out system for keeping things fair," but it's going back to what are really the values that are important here. What are the things that we actually want to feel fulfilled in our lives and in our relationships?
Dedeker: Speaking of great advice though, my favorite book, Fair Play, the one that I reference on this show all the freaking time, and Fair Play is all specifically about domestic labor that she really iterates that we need to let go of really trying to harshly make it 50/50 to a tee, and make it really more about what makes sense and how do people feel at the end of the day with this particular mix of responsibilities.
You could extend it to dates or time spent together, quality time, presents, money, things like that, because getting it to that 50/50 to a tee, first of all I think that there is the problem of human bias and the fact that whatever measuring stick we use, is not going to be an objective measuring stick unless you're inviting in a researcher into your house to log all of your movements and to keep very, very det-- level research into your relationship and how much time you spend and the quality of that time and the different factors and even then that measuring stick is still going to be biased.
Jase: Depending what they're measuring, right?
Dedeker: Yes. You can have things end up being on paper 50/50, and no one's happy about it. I don't know, it is a weird thing. I think it's scary. It's scary for me to even say and even suggest letting go of the harsh 50/50 because I think that's so baked into our sense of justice, and especially in a two-person relationship where we're sharing the labor of a house or of child-rearing, or of managing other relationships or things like that. It's really scary for me to say, to let go of that, but I think that maybe it helps us to pay attention more to the wiggly parts of this that are harder to quantify, and paying more attention to how people feel at the end of the day, as opposed to how it looks on paper.
Emily: Absolutely. Just as we said before, we don't want to feel like we're only doing something because it's expected of us, or we have decided together that we need to be as fair and 50/50 as possible, and that's the only reason why we're doing anything nice for them.
I don't want that to be the case in our relationships. I want there to be I think overall a sense of, "I'm in this relationship because I want to be, and because I want to help my partner in whatever way I possibly can so that both of our lives are better." Just like some of the stuff that they said in the ethical slide that we talked about in our definitions at the beginning, that both partners feel like we are getting something really meaningful and great out of this relationship. That segues nicely into what can we do about all of this. What is there to be done about this question of fairness, because, as Dedeker said, it is just so subjective.
Nobody really knows and we're all bringing our internal biases to the table when it comes to questions of fairness, and also just our own lived experience of this is the way that I've lived my life and that's why I feel like fairness is really important to me, or I feel like it's something that is perhaps not as important to other people, but when we're talking about aggressive fairness, this was something from discoveringpolyamory.com again, which we referenced a number of times.
They said, "Aggressive fairness is a polyamory red flag that comes up when our monogamous conditioning leaks into our polyamorous life." We did say that over and over again here. "Growing up in a monogamous world, we are given the expectation that our romantic/sexual partner will always put us first no matter what, but in polyamory that simply isn't possible. Each relationship you might be in is a separate entity. Yes, all your partners deserve you doing nice things for them, but they should not be connected. You make romantic gestures because you want to, not because you're obliged to."
Jase: As for a way to put this into practice, one thing that we'd recommend is having a regular check-in. We really like our radar framework because it makes sure you're going to cover a lot of these topics that we've already been discussing like money and quality time, and sex, and travel, and family and all of that, but the important part is the regular check-in so that rather than trying to come up with the right set of rules, or the right equation, or spreadsheet that you need in order for your relationship to be fair, to instead know that we're going to check in with each other regularly, like every month with each of my partners, or just the one, if I have the one, and see how we're feeling.
Revisit these topics and check on it and say, "Gosh I haven't been feeling like I've had as much quality time with you this last month. I'd like to have more of that," and then you can focus on, "Okay, yes, great. Let's put some things in place to try to have more of that." Or something can come up of saying, "Hey, I'm struggling more with money this month, so could we go on some cheaper dates, or figure out something there because that's causing some stress for me? Rather than go on fewer dates with you, I'd rather we just found some ways to have fun making dinner with Top Ramen at home or something like that." Right? You get to be creative in a team and regularly check in because these things change over time.
Dedeker: Part of that can also be regular conversations with each other about what expectations you have for your relationship together for the relationships that you're having with other people for how you want to show up in all of your relationships. Using things like the Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord as a tool is great to help everyone lay out what their desires and expectations are.
I think an important takeaway that I want people to have from this episode is, if you're in the midst of this right now, as in, maybe you are in your feels because you feel like things are really unfair in your relationship in some way or you have a partner who is complaining to you about fairness, I really just want that to be a big ol-flag, a big ol-alarm bell that goes off to indicate to you, "I need to pay attention to this." If it's you who's experiencing a sense of, "Oh, I feel like this isn't fair right now," really pay attention to that and go deeper.
If your partner is complaining about fairness, pay attention to that, and go deeper and get curious because, under complaints, there's usually some desire and longing. I guess this is the thing where for as much as we're saying that you can't necessarily control or manipulate or dictate or expect to always be this 50/50 or one-to-one, that doesn't mean go out and completely dismiss your partner if they feel like things are not fair, or dismiss yourself, if you feel like things are not fair. I think just use it as a cue to look a little bit deeper and get to the bottom of what's actually going on here. I do think that part of that and sometimes having a regular radar, regular check-in, can be a part of this.
I think it's also really important to pay attention to patterns over a long enough timeframe to bear in mind that you may get through a weekend, it feels really unfair because it could be, "Yes, my partner went off on a little getaway over the weekend and then I had to catch up on work. I was sick, and I just had like a real bummer of a weekend, and it didn't feel very fair because they had a really great time, and I had a really crummy time." That may suck for the weekend, but if you can examine the pattern over time, you may feel like, "No, there's pretty much an equal amount of give and take in the relationship, and turnabout ends up being fair play between the two of us and that's great." Or if you zoom out and look at patterns over time and realize, "No, I'm constantly feeling this way," that's something to examine.
Jase: Ideally, this would be something that you talk about and do realize, "Hey, this isn't so bad, or I've gained some new perspective here, this is really helpful," but it's also worth keeping in mind that if you feel like you're in a situation where your partner is using fairness against you, in a way that doesn't make you feel cared about or doesn't make you feel valued or doesn't make you feel like they want to be contributing to your happiness that rather they're trying to figure out what they can get from you or what you owe them, the place to start is having conversations about it in something like a radar and looking at the Smorgasbord, and also to realize that this might just not be a healthy situation.
Whether that's meaning that you need to end that relationship or just that you need to put your foot down more clearly and say, "No, I know that you think that getting these things will be fair, but it's not, and I'm not going to give you that because that's not actually fair." Whether that's about, "Oh, well, I paid for you for the first 20 years of our relationships, and now you've got to pay for me." Or whether it's, "Well, I make more money than you, so you need to do more household work, disregarding the fact that you work just as many hours as I do." Or that it's "These are my kids from a previous relationship, so I'm the one who's done so much work for them that now you have to make up for that by doing other things in our relationship."
There's so many different ways this can look, but just to realize that you might, unfortunately, be in that situation where you just have to say, "No." Maybe go listen to this Multiamory episode, but if that doesn't help, then you might have to realize, "Okay, this is not healthy," and that even though it's being put forth as fairness, doesn't mean that it's coming from a place of love and caring that's good for our relationship." Even if it really truly is what they think they want, that doesn't necessarily mean it's right just because they can point to a way to say it's fair.
Emily: In terms of non-monogamy I feel as though the healthiest forms of non-monogamy that I've seen are when everyone involved realizes that each other's relationship is separate unless of course, you're in a triad but that they are separate relationships, that what is happening in terms of the time spent, the amount of resources or whatever it is that we're spending on each of those relationships, that's very separate and specific to the relationship itself.
As Dedeker said, using things like Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord, or discussing expectations or wants and needs, all of those things on a regular basis are really important to get specific into what is it that we're doing here in each relationship and decide how much time and space we're going to be spending together and realize that that's probably not going to be the exact same for everyone. That's totally okay because our relationships take up different moments, different needs fulfilling different things within our lives and it's okay to have them look a little bit different from one another as well. We have a question for our Instagram followers and this week's question is, what does it mean for a relationship to be fair? Should we strive for fairness in our relationships?