This series is titled “Electrons, Suitcases, and Mixing Boards: New Tools To Get The Relationships You Want.” It’s co-written by Aida Manduley and Anna Stern. This is part 1 of 4.

The Power of Language

Humans are deeply complex creatures. We don’t generally relish being reduced to less than the sum of our parts. Yet the language we have to describe our relationships is full of assumptions and limitations.

We deserve better.

In definitions and labels, we can find community and solidarity, but we can also find arguments and division. We can access resources and care, but we can also be kept out of spaces we need and denied these things. We can name our pain and find pathways to heal it, but we can also swim in a sea that is simultaneously too vast and too small to accurately describe our feelings.

Wherever we go, individual and systemic assumptions about who and what we are shape us. When, how, and whether we get to state the terms that define us—or have terms imposed on us—continually shapes our experience.  The less our identities overlap with society’s assumptions and expectations, the more we probably feel this tension. And we don’t just feel it as individuals —many communities have been stripped of the power to name themselves. Reclaiming this power can be an act of defiance, courage, and survival.

We wrote this series of articles in hopes of providing language and frameworks for people to better craft and negotiate their relationships. Our goal isn’t to offer new words for particular relationship structures, but instead help people figure out the CONTENT of their relationships—the pieces that make them up. This may include things like emotional intimacy, physical touch, sharing hobbies, financial entanglement, and more.

The Relationship Suitcase Analogy

Think of it like this: you are going on a trip. There are two suitcases in front of you. One is empty and you’d have to fill it yourself. You’re not necessarily sure you like the shape or size of it, but it might work out for what you need. The other suitcase is full and you don’t know what’s in it, but the person who packed it said it has “everything you’ll need where you’re going.”

What do you do? Pack the empty suitcase, knowing it will take more time but might have more of what you specifically need? Lug the bulky one, appreciating someone else did the work of figuring out what was needed, but knowing you are likely carrying a lot of things you will not use? Or perhaps you decide to ignore those two suitcases entirely—making a list of what you need for the trip first, and then getting something to carry them in, which may end up not being a suitcase at all.

Much has been written about what to call the suitcase you are carrying—commitment, friendship, platonic life partnership, polyamory, marriage, non-monogamy, love, the list goes on. In this article, rather than telling you what to call your “relationship suitcase,” we are going to help you get curious and intentional about what you pack inside it, how much of each item you want, and how to discuss that with the other person(s) involved. When figuring out what each trip (read: each relationship) needs, you may realize you:

1. need the same suitcase for every trip, packed with the same contents in the same amounts always and forever
2. want to use the same suitcase with the same contents for every trip, but the amount of each thing you pack will shift (e.g. a big bottle of shampoo for a long trip versus a small bottle of shampoo for a short trip)
3. like the suitcase you were given but want to pack it differently for each trip
4. prefer an entirely different suitcase or bag for each trip, or have a few sets of suitcases for different “types” of trips
5. dislike suitcases and just want to use bags and other carrying devices altogether, and figure things out as you go along
6. don’t like traveling and just want to find a single place to go to and be done moving
7. get excited at the idea of traveling a lot, and maybe even taking overlapping or nested trips
8. aren’t sure what you want right now at all, actually
9. feel like some other combination or style not mentioned above

Wherever you end up, and however this changes or doesn’t across time, the idea is to have options and the skills to support those options. (Part 3 and 4 of this series go into greater depth about the specific tools we’ve developed for this.)

Why We Need New Tools & Frameworks

I am a queer, polyamorous, nonbinary person.

I am a straight, married, cisgender woman.

We might read these sentences and think we know a lot about these two people. But we actually know very little about how they define themselves and their relationships, or what these words mean to them in their specific contexts. We don’t know how many relationships they’re in or what those relationships bring into their lives. We have a valuable starting point, nothing more… and sometimes that’s enough. But when we are trying to build connections with others and see how we can make those mutually fulfilling, we need to go into more detail.

What do our labels look like in practice? How do our labels translate to lived experiences?

If the label “monogamous” comes with the expectation that a monogamous partner be our sole confidante, lover, financial partner, and best friend, we might turn away from other important relationships. We might even think there’s something wrong with us if we can’t find all those things in one person. If we are new to consensual non-monogamy, we may feel pulled to have sex with more partners and/or date more and more people regardless of our capacity to handle it, believing this will prove our identity is “real” or that we’re “doing it right.” The more our relationships are discussed and defined by systems outside of us, the less we may feel empowered to create relationship models that really work for us.

The “Monogamy Expansion Pack”

On the surface, with more and more coverage of non-monogamy in American media (beyond infidelity and swinging), it may seem that we have expanded our understanding of relationship possibilities and that those understandings have spread to the mainstream. When we look deeper, though, many media portrayals of non-monogamy amount to something more like a “monogamy expansion pack.”

Polyamory—one flavor of non-monogamy that’s been getting more coverage—in mainstream understanding centers formerly monogamous, typically heterosexual couples. These people have agreed to date outside their monogamous bond—often to “fix a problem” like infidelity or “spice up their marriage.” Reporters look for “polyamorous couples,” with the baked-in assumption of a dyad. When pictured, these folks are generally White, cisgender,  able-bodied, and conventionally attractive. Their relationship is defined in hierarchical terms, centering the previously monogamous “primary” partners, and adding “secondary” or possibly “tertiary” partners to the mix.

Sometimes, for a twist, we’ll see the “couple with a unicorn.” This unit is made up of two women and one man, and the framing often drips with messaging about “greedy bisexuals” or “every man’s fantasy come true.” If the media wants to demonize the arrangement or make them seem odd, they may present a less conventionally attractive set of people or include snide comments from reporters and writers. And sometimes, with a nod to the 60’s and mentions of free love, media will bring up rural communes as a bizarre relic from a different time.

Either way, these portrayals are extremely narrow and don’t usually meaningfully diverge from monogamy’s rules and expectations… there are just a few more people involved in fulfilling the same general scripts.

Challenging the Status Quo

Andrea Zanin critiques these portrayals of polyamory as monogamy with a non-monogamous candy coating, dubbing this “polynormativity.” She writes “the most fundamental element of polyamory—that of rejecting the monogamous standard, and radically rethinking how you understand, make meaning of and practice love, sex, relationships, commitment, communication, and so forth—is lost.” Thus, non-monogamy’s revolutionary potential gets watered down. It’s made into something that challenges the status quo enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to upend the social order or provide meaningful tension.

So with this in mind, how could our relationships and our social worlds shift if we asked more transformational, liberatory questions? If we had tools to answer with enough specificity to reflect the true parameters of our relationships, the values that shape them (and us), and our individual needs far more clearly?

For more on these questions and their value, stay tuned for Part 2 of this series—where we discuss in greater depth the revolutionary potential of new tools and questions to understand our relationships.