Polyamory and the Shadow of Hierarchy

“Overnights don’t work with the boundaries I have set up with my wife. Let’s keep things casual, okay?”

My heart sank into my gut.

I realized I had a need that had nothing to do with the sex we’d been having.

I don’t feel like this side of the story gets told enough.
There’s plenty of discourse around open relationships that centers couples.
But the secondary partner perspective often feels like an accessory to those conversations.

I’ll say this as a once prolific “unicorn."

Most couples operate under an implicit standard:
Sex is welcome, but a certain level of emotional aftercare is not.
—Because it would dissolve the structural hierarchy.

These arrangements are appealing for valid reasons.
For the couple I mentioned, it was a rebellion from their religious upbringing.
It was a kink.
It was a reprieve from their marriage.

None of these things are wrong to want.
But all of them turned me into an object.

When I got quiet enough to listen, my body revealed I needed more emotional containment—especially in the context of what was going on in my life. There wasn’t a place to be met inside their dynamic, so I let go.

Having an open sexuality gained me proximity to intimacy.
Yet the expression was only sustainable in the absence of it.

I’ve lived the shadow side of what happens when the exchanges that make you feel desirable and free also require you to remain convenient.

Here’s another one:

“Polyamory is a way to get your needs met.”

Now, my reaction to this statement is colored by the context of the man who said it, (Different man than the first).

But even at face value, the potential implication of this statement has me challenging the difference between regarding people as resources versus regarding people as commodities.

Since we’re talking about polyamory, we’re talking about relationship exchange that goes beyond friendship and into sex and romance. That being the case introduces power dynamics that, in my experience, are most prolifically exploited by unconscious men and couples that include them.

There are plenty of red flags to look out for in dating, period. But if you’re a woman who dates men, it’s particularly important to be aware of the social conditioning which, when unexamined, causes men to objectify women and women to self-objectify.

There is a well-known facilitator within my community whose behavior has left a number of women, including myself, feeling used and manipulated sexually. He is also the person who said, “Polyamory is a way to get your needs met.”

My question is, with that kind of utilitarian approach toward polyamory— is it not inevitable that people become seen as tools? Especially when you practice from a hierarchy (primary vs. non-primary partnership) that determines which “needs” are being met?

This doesn’t necessarily have to be about gender, but I find that gender adds an important variable to the way we see human value and organize power around it.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be about polyamory either— people certainly get used in monogamous relationships.

I’m just genuinely asking:
How often does non-commitment green light a sense of, “I’m not responsible to you as a whole person, so I don’t have to treat you like one”?
—and when is that compounded to a dangerous degree by the gender imbalances that already exist in society?

In my more recent content, I talk about my journey through sex and love addiction.

In truth, my experiences with love addiction and open relationships didn’t continuously intersect.
So why then did I make hierarchical polyamory the spine of this story?

Because the dynamic mirrors larger systems that become extractive when we lose touch with our embodiment.
And because it magnified that very disconnect within me.

The zeitgeist seems to constantly ask what we’re willing to sacrifice for the parts of us that want more love.

These days, I’m asking something different:

What systems enable the body to function as currency?
And where do those systems live inside us?