Why Aren't You Being Fair?

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 like they and their partner don't go on date nights, maybe their partner doesn't court them or woo them so much, they've just kind of accepted that. And 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, huge

upswilling of the whole backlog of unfairness. It's tricky because in that case I want to validate, yeah sometimes that's what you need to realize, no 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. And so on the one hand I'm like yeah I think that's probably a good flag that's indicating, ooh something in the relationship maybe needs 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. Welcome to making polyamory work. Hi, I'm Libby Sinback and I want to thank you for joining me today. I'm a queer polyamorous mom and an integrated relationship guide. I help people who live and love outside the status quo have extraordinary relationships because I believe relationships are the core of our well-being as humans.

I think love is why we're here and how we heal. So today is actually not an episode of making polyamory work. Instead the amazing team over at the multi-amory podcast is taking over my feed. And their episode that they're sharing is about fairness in relationships and particularly zeroing in on an idea called aggressive fairness.

Maybe you've seen this before like if you're in a relationship with someone and they're always wanting to have everything be 50-50 and they're always kind of measuring who's getting what. And again this can show up in monogamy and non-monogamy. There's this kind of score keeping behavior that can happen. And so one thing I really love about the multi-amory folks is just how thoughtful and thorough and researched their episodes are and this one is really no different.

So I just I'm so excited to share this with y'all. If you're missing making polyamory work you can actually hop over to the multi-amory podcast where I'm taking over their feed this week with an episode about unmet needs in polyamory. So without further ado I'm going to let the multi-amory folks take it away. On this episode of the multi-amory podcast we're 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? And 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 multi-amory 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 multi-amory.com slash book or wherever find books are sold alternatively the first nine episodes of this podcast also cover some of our most widely used and shared communication tools.

I really was interested initially and going back to kind of our roots and talking about like 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 is fair or equal as possible and 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.

So if we are going to call any of the above it's going to make fairness and equality more or less attainable what are you to think? That's an interesting question because I I want to say yes and no I want to agree and disagree that the part that I agree with is that yeah I think to the letter 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 it going.

And so I think that if you are not aware of the situation or keeping it 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 so 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.

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 and it's something that you find the 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 but what do you think Jace let me fairly toss the ball to you.

Yeah 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 kind of mathematical or concrete fairness to things that are not able to be quantified in that way so you know 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 it

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 like household labor support or some other thing does that equal and I think that's where we we really get off the mark because there's just not an exchange rate that actually works there and that applies to everyone and all of those things.

I heard the statistic tossed out and I I think this is 100% in armchair statistic because I just saw it on a real that a comedian posted so that's my source.

But he was talking about I think life lessons that he learned from going through a divorce and 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 proceed that the other person is contributing 20% less than they actually are so 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 and also we tend to maybe over value what it is that we are

contributing to a relationship and under value what the other person is again he didn't say any studies on that he could have just been pulling that out of his butt for all I know it feels true.

Do you all like what do you think about that 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 it begs the question everything is so subjective and what actually is fairness in relationship like what counts as fair to one person may not count as

fair to another person and 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 old and day view of how people would contribute to relationships but it is that question it's like well who is actually doing more work and is that quantifiable like I don't know if it is and it's

not that I'm not that active I have no idea that's why I was so fascinated to talk to the two of you about this today 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 so an example of that would be let's say dead occur and I were moving and we had a bunch of moving boxes and some of them were much heavier than others

and in order to be fair about it we decided to weigh them all and make sure that dead occur and I both picked up an equal amount of weight of boxes ignoring the fact that I way of significant amount more than that occur and can lift more not because I've worked out any harder actually that that works out a lot harder than I

do recently but that's just I just happen to be built that way compared to her and so if we went for this kind of fair by the numbers that's absurd and I think most people would look at that and go well yeah 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

and I think even that's something that we can really concretely quantify the amount of weight of each of those boxes but it's still absurd and so now to apply this to other things that we can't even quantify just the absurdity compounds on itself there yeah 100% and that's why I think those types of arguments sometimes I just 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 while I'm contributing this much and so you need to be contributing more or contributing something that to me equals the same amount and 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 on more dates or more people may be interested in them at a time on their non monogamous journey than the other partner or you know 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 to and that aggressive fairness and polyamory which is a term that I found from discovering polyamory dot com that I really wanted to get into because I I had never heard of that before and I thought that that was a really interesting term

should we get into a few definitions here before we continue on with this discussion already 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 so this is from join one love dot 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

and equality 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 and this definition actually is from the ethical slut shout out to that wonderful book

and 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 okay and then finally aggressive fairness which is from this discovering polyamory dot 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 other

or others must receive exactly the same so 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

yeah here's what I think is interesting just to start off with these that definition of equality and the definition of fairness both came from you know websites or books that are talking about relationships and I think that those definitions are like what was baked into them was this idea that it's not about finding some kind of one to one equality

ironically since that's the word that's used there but not about finding a one to one but 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 I think it's one of these cases where we can get in our heads that certain concept or certain idea is good we've talked about this before with boundaries we get it in our head of boundaries good so if I can make something sound like a boundary it's therefore good

even if it's not really right we get caught up in doesn't meet a definition of it and I think with these sorts of concepts people could go and say will equality means equal and like equals in math means exactly equal where if I'm doing accounting spreadsheets or something and balancing accounts those are equal one to one in a very quantitative sort of way

and so then they try to apply that to relationships and I think it's 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 and 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 absolutely well I feel like I want to get this out of the way first because yeah I think the aggressive fairness thing I've certainly experienced it on both the giving and receiving and in relationship and it's something that comes up a lot with certain clients that I work with and so if I ever notice that that's happening I immediately want to dive into what's underneath that urge for aggressive fairness to repeat and I think that's not going to be a good way to do that

to repeat I think a common theme on this show it's not just oh this person is just like bad or inherently wrong or something's wrong with them and that's why they're doing this there just be in a dick or whatever I'm like no there's there's something deriving this urge for fairness that is feeling high stakes enough that it requires the certain amount of aggressive energy I really have to fight for this and so 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 this particular relationship is 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 like they in their partner don't go on date nights

maybe their partner doesn't court them or who them so much maybe their partner stops in the romantic songs maybe their partner stopped showing and putting themselves together before dates or whatever maybe they've just kind of accepted that and 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 upswelling of the whole backlog of unfairness it's tricky because in that case like a one of validate yeah sometimes that's what you need to realize

now 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 and so on the one hand I'm like yeah I think that's probably a good flag that's indicating something in the relationship maybe needs 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 yeah 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 you know what's 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 it and 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 kind of 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 and 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 and I think again yeah comes from a good place but it's kind of 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 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

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 and we talked about some of them it always makes me think of higher or go 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

and that often can be done just because they're worried about repercussions they are not quite sure how it's going to go they don't want to hurt each other 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 diet 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're 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 an equal amount so that nobody gets hurt or nobody feels left out have you to see things like that happen

I think I've seen that outside of even very particular hierarchical couples are seen that outside of people who are transitioning out of monogamy I just think that sometimes as I said earlier I think there is this very human in eight sense of looking out for when we might be getting a raw deal as it were but 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 like really needing to fight for things to be super equal

you like the 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 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

I've ever witnessed anything like that either with yourself or with witnessing others 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 so what I mean by that is with a couple who have opened up their relationship that there can be that sense of well yeah we can open up our relationship but I want to be sure that I stay important

because we've had this established relationship already and so 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 kind of an intentional unfairness and 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

well that's not enough there must be something else what what else could it be oh maybe it's a amount of money you spend on dates with me compared to other people maybe that that needs to be more or maybe it's number of times we have sex each week or number of presence that you give me versus them or it's it's kind of this like you were saying

that's not 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 it's just if I just found the right thing that I need to have enough of then I would feel better and that tends to not I don't think I've ever actually seen that workout when that's what people focus on that reminds me of thinking about fairness not in terms of sort of multiple people in a relationship but maybe a couple feeling like we

have to keep up with this idea that we're 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 and I think that that's totally understandable and in some cases

absolutely true it's just that's an interesting dynamic to that like that becomes the thing that is fair because I've been with this person for the longest time so that means that the fair thing is that my relationship with this person would be kind of at the forefront of our lives and not anyone else kind of thing I think right there you've hit on something interesting which is the fair thing is intentionally not being fair yeah like the fair thing is not

I'm the number one because that's fair to me and I need to keep my fairness in the situation the fairness needs to go in my direction right or maybe you could justify it of like well I put in all this work into this relationship yeah it's fair that I should get X Y or Z for it and 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 like aggressively unfair fairness as a way to fix a problem that's not really addressing the heart of the problem and what's really 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 so whether your 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 try to square those accounts somehow I'm curious to hear from the two of you places where you've seen this show up well money one is is an obvious one right I think that that affects everybody it's unfortunately really difficult to escape from the influence of money and money being tied in equality 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 other maybe let's say other people in the polycule have more financial solvency or financial independence than maybe you do so maybe it's like okay my partner and my metamorph both make more money that I do and so they're much more able to go on getaways or

vacations or on really fancy dates more so that I have the budget for and it's like how do we find fairness there when that's just always going to be a particular reality yeah and 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 and I think that often begs the question of what is fair is it fair because maybe your 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

and that is fair because you know 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 and what do you look at in terms of what is equal and fairer in those scenarios as well

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 cousins friend knew someone at this company and you got this great job or you just happen to have a good opportunity or have you been unlucky in certain ways and that 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 well

with it and that that might change through our lives right we might be on one side of that spectrum at one point in our lives and on another side at another point but I feel like the way I see this one show up in a really sneaky way is in going out kind of this insistence that we should split everything 50 50 regardless of any of those other factors right about how much money or debt or anything stability either of us has this idea that

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 and 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 and it's a tricky thing especially because we're all so uncomfortable talking about money in this culture 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 like you know 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 just be assuming like oh well if they're having a hard time maybe they'll they'll tell me oh whether 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 giggling and maybe not have as stable of income that sometimes for some people it can be feast or famine and so their behavior during one period of time may not reflect an accurate overall financial picture so I'm just trying to say just talk about money y'all talk about it often talk about it early get like practice stretch that muscle to get comfortable talking about money in very frank

terms I know it's uncomfortable but it's a rough one becomes more comfortable if you talk about it more yeah 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 quote unquote 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 right that it's fair I guess you had an equal chance but also there's this luck and probability that goes into it and just kind of 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

and so that's where we can get into situations like I know debtor stocked 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 kind of escalation of the relationship or some sort of emotional labor or household labor or something that is kind of 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 so kind of 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 but 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 and one of the ways that we do that is by having some ads on our show.

So please take a moment check those out if any are interesting to you go use our promo codes that does really directly help support our show and keep us doing this as well as doing things like supporting the show directly at multi-amory.com slash join.

We wanted to continue discussing aggressive fairness fairness in general in relationships and what some of the consequences can be when that fairness is sort of 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 to 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 Jace you've talked about feeling restriction from another partner from like a metamorphor instance really can weigh on a person and and has weight on you in the past and been really difficult for you in the past and that totally makes sense. These just kind of arbitrary restrictions in the name of fairness for example.

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 not monogamous relationships or it's almost kind of like thinking about an overly elaborate mathematical formula that everything's put in.

So is it okay so 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 do we have a good time no we didn't have a good time so I think that adds a modifier that makes you going on this trip of another partner even more unfair so we need to account for that but also I don't really want to talk about this particular aspect of your plan and also you need to clean the entire house and make sure that like your other partners.

I don't want to hear didn't get left behind on the couch otherwise a bit of freak out about it and again I don't want to row 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 let's pull it by its roots and just look at what's going on but but I think that that's maybe another not as obvious consequence of seeking this aggressive fairness thing is that I think it starts to add again to this like 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 maybe the unintentional desired outcome is to make it more difficult for my partner to have a good time with somebody else you know sometimes that can be a part of I think a weird subconscious feeling of like this is how it's going to be fair sure.

Yeah and I don't think most of us would admit that to ourselves but yeah I think you really hit something there that idea that yeah 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 yeah subconsciously there is something there sometimes I mean that idea that that if a partner is having a really rough time in a relationship and feeling like it's unfair that you're.

Other partner is having a great time in their relationship and that there can be like 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 to. And 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 and 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.

Yeah so I think there's even more underneath that I'm so glad that you brought that up so this makes me think of the mother's curse and what I mean by the mother's curse is like 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.

So I lumped this under the general category of I wish that you could suffer in the same way that I am suffering and I think that sometimes we can stop at thinking like that's going to help this feel fair.

But what's actually underneath it I think at least for myself anytime I've noticed myself having that weird sort of resentful like yeah I wish this person could go through what I'm going through because then they would see like really what's underneath that it's like I want I really wish this other person could see me and understand me like I think that's really what it is like when we're kind of wishing or maybe even artificially manipulating a situation or to make it so that the other person is having a rough time like I think that's one piece of it.

I wish you could truly see how hard this is for me whatever quote unquote 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. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense that that desire to be understood makes a lot of sense and I think also to go back to something you mentioned before.

Were you talking about your rub Goldberg machine or actually like the analogy of an equation that so often we talk on this show about how people want some kind of clear answer I want to know that if these things are true that I'm doing it right. And so 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 you know this adding set of rules that as long as we follow these then we're doing it right and 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.

And so you know 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 and so 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 and 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 so maybe that is one we could revisit but 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 like we don't treat people the same we can strive to treat them fairly but we don't treat them exactly the same and so I think we can get caught up in that ideal and then be really disappointed when it doesn't work out that way.

Or if one person wants to continue that relationship with this third person and the other one doesn't is another problem and all that is not even getting into the issues of okay we're so concerned about our fairness with each other and so that's why we're only dating together and at no point if we considered the fairness to that other person.

Yeah in terms of how much agency 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 so yeah 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 right but that 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.

I see this so often with friends or even listening to podcasts there are a little bit more on the monogamous maybe stepping slightly into the idea of non monogamy or being monogamy that it really really is about the couple we need to figure out ground rules beforehand to be very specific on them and 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 I'm going to be able to do that.

Feelings will get hurt between that main couple and so yeah I find that to be still sort of the prevailing idea around having things like three sums or having a third or a unicorn or whatever that really especially newcomers so often will look at war the most important thing in this equation and the other person is kind of just there for our fun sex toy for any of them.

And that you know kind of 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 at the amount of people that I hear really not even taking that other person into account very much and having a be all about the relationship.

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 like 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 I'm just going to go off on a spontaneous week long trip and not tell anybody or if you can I don't know I guess it kind of depends on the policy.

I think it's not like you're in the group of people but but I do think this 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 that can definitely kill a certain amount of spontaneity which I think is less important in thinking about the consequence of oh I 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 like a longer.

I think that I think that spontaneity is something that helps just with the relationship growth you know that we don't always have the ability to completely plan out every single milestone of a relationship and so I do think that when you when you take away even the opportunity for some spontaneity that you're also maybe stifling some of that as well.

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 okay but 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 so now and we've talked about this in the past actually is that I think that I think that I'm going to be a little bit more of a way to do that.

So the second thing 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 well my partner doing that is just them meeting the bare minimum requirements of following the rules and that it can kind of rob that specialness or spontaneousness from those actions even if it's the same actions.

So they did it because they had to so they've just barely broken even this was not a special thing it's just they're following the rules and that's a bummer that kind of 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 does that.

I'm going to discover in polyamory dot 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 well maybe I just won't do that in the first place for for anyone because it's just going to you know make everyone upset or make certain people feel upset in different ways.

I think he realized that that feeling of continuing to need to be fair to everyone it was like you said just sort of overwriting 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 and 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 white board like all of the nice things that we're all doing for each other so that it's all fair.

That's a great point something just worth bringing up here to is that to go back to the equation idea of keeping things fair is that we know we've heard people give advice on podcasts of things to do to help ensure that your relationships fair or write about these in books or whatever.

And this includes things like Emily was mentioning with three sums 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 or something like that because that's going to help your relationship and it's just kind of 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 kind of 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 so that's a little more fun so you only get half points for that and then I had to do it once on a weekend where I had to do it.

And so I get more points for that and 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 to setting up a system that's really really easy to even unintentionally manipulate or kind of game the system in order to either be able to complain more about how unfair this is to you or to get more for you to get more.

I don't know what but it's just it's something that I feel like 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 the point where I'm going to be able to do it.

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 well but speaking of great advice though I guess my favorite book fair play the one that I reference on this show all the freaking time and fair plays all specifically about domestic labor that she really iterates that we need to let go of like really trying to harshly make it 50 50 to a T

and make it really more about like what makes sense and how do people feel at the end of the day with this particular mix of responsibilities or or you could extend it to dates or time spent together quality time presence money things like that because getting it to that 50 50 to a T

first of all I think that there is the problem of human bias in 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 do like keep very very deep like you know like Godman Institute level research into your relationship and how much time you spend in the quality of that time in the different factors and and even then like that measuring stick is still going to be kind of biased and so depending what they're measuring right you are not going to be able to do that.

Yeah, and so you can have things end up being like on paper 50 50 and no one's happy about it. So it is I don't know it is sort of 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 you know 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's not going to be a good thing.

To let go of that but I think that maybe it helps us to pay attention more to like the wiggly parts of this that are harder to quantify and paying more attention like how people feel at the end of the day as opposed to how it looks on paper.

Absolutely and 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 is possible and that that's the only reason why we're doing anything nice for them.

I just 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 world.

So 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 dediker said it is just so subjective nobody really knows and we're all bringing like 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 discovering polyamory dot 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.

And it did say that over and over again here growing up in a monogamous world we are given the expectation that our romantic slash 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 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 you know 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 OK yeah great let's put some things in place to try to have more of the time.

Or you know something can come up of saying ham 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 and 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 that you get to be creative in a team and regularly check in because these things change over time.

And you know 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

and your energy smorgas board 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 are in the midst of this right now as in maybe you are in your relationship 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 old flag a big

little alarm bell that goes off to indicate to you I need to pay attention to this the like if it's you who is experiencing a sense of I feel like this isn't fair right now like really pay attention to that and go deeper and if your partner is complaining about fairness like pay attention to that and go deeper and get curious because like under complaints there is usually some kind of desire and longing so I guess is the kind of thing where for as much as we're saying that you can't

necessarily control or manipulate or dictate or expect it that it 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 like what's actually going on here and 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 time frame to bear in mind that you may get through a weekend that feels really unfair you know because it could be yeah my partner went off on a little get away over the weekend and then I had to catch up on work and 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 that may suck for the weekend but if you can examine the pattern over time you may feel like no there's a pretty much equal amount of give and take in the relationship and and turn about ends up being fair play between the two of us and like that's great or if you zoom out and look at patterns over time and realize no I'm constantly feeling this way that

something to examine ideally this would be something that you talk about and do realize hey this isn't so bad or you know 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 but also to realize that this might just not be a healthy situation and that 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 or 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 multi-amory episode but 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 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

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 are spending on each of those relationships that's very separate and specific to the relationship itself so as

that said using things like relationship and arki smorgas board or discussing expectations or wants and needs all of those things on a regular basis are really important to get specific into what is that that we're doing here in each relationship

and you know 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 and that's totally okay because our relationships take up different moments different needs fulfill different things within our lives and it's okay to have them look a little bit different from one another as well so we have a question for our Instagram followers and this week's question

is what does it mean for a relationship to be fair and should we strive for fairness in our relationships the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our discord server or you can post in our private Facebook group you can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to multi-amory.com slash join in addition you can share with us publicly on Facebook, Instagram, X and

threads. Multi-amory is created and produced by Jace Lindgren, Dedek or Winston and me Emily Matlack. Our production assistants are Rachel Shenowork and Carson Collins. Our theme song is forms I know I did by Josh and on and from the fractal cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episodes page on multi-amory.com. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you have any thoughts about what I've said today or a question for the show I'd love to hear from you.

You can find me on Instagram as that Poly-am mom or you can go to the shows website making polyamory work.com and submit a question there. I'll also say that if you're loving my podcasts but you are looking for more support I do this for a living. I am an integrative relationship guide. So I help individuals couples and groups have amazing relationships. You can find out more about my offerings on my website.

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Making Poly-amory work is created by me Libby Sinback. It is edited by Finn of the Normalizing Non-Minogamy Podcast and hosted on the Spotify Podcasts platform. Vandalion manages the website and posts the transcripts. Thank you everyone and see you next time.