More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory QUOTES

1 " You'll need courage because polyamorous relationships can be scary. Loving other people without a script is scary. Allowing the people you love to make their own choices without controlling them is scary. The kind of courage we're talking about involves being willing to let go of guarantees - and love and trust your partners anyway. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

2 " Practicing security means continually turning towards the best version of yourself. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

3 " Almost always, jealousy is rooted in some sort of fear: of abandonment, of being replaced, of losing the attention of someone you love, of being alone. Jealousy isn't really about the person you feel jealous of. It's about you: your feeling that you might lose something precious. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

4 " Be flexible. Be compassionate. Rules can never cure insecurity. Integrity matters. Never try to script what your relationships will look like. Love is abundant. Compatibility matters. You cannot sacrifice your happiness for that of another. Own your own shit. Admit when you fuck up. Forgive when others fuck up. Don't try to find people to stuff into the empty spaces in your life; instead, make spaces for the people in your life. If you need a relationship to complete you, get a dog. It is almost impossible to be loving or compassionate when all you feel is fear of loss. Trust that your partners want to be with you, and that if given the freedom to do anything they please, they will choose to cherish and support you. Most relationship problems can be avoided by good partner selection. Nobody can give you security or self-esteem; you have to build that yourself. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

5 " Polyamory can feel threatening because it upsets our fairy-tale assumption that the right partner will keep us safe from change. Polyamory introduces the prospect of chaos and uncertainty into what's supposed to be a straightforward progression to bliss. But a healthy relationship must first of all be resilient, able to respond to the changes and complexity life brings. Nor is happiness actually a state of being. It is a process, a side effect of doing other things. The fairy tale tells us that with the right partner, happiness just happens. But happiness is something we re-create every day. And it comes more from our outlook than from the things around us. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

6 " So we have two choices: embrace and love what we have and feel joy as deeply and fully as we can, and eventually lose everything—or shield ourselves, be miserable…and eventually lose everything. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

7 " We propose a different metric for the success of a relationship. Relationships that make us the best versions of ourselves are successes. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

8 " Things will go wrong. You and your partners will make mistakes. People will get hurt. To paraphrase Voltaire, we are all born of frailty and error. What happens afterward depends on how capable we are to forgive one another for our errors, handle the consequences with grace and dignity, and learn from our mistakes. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

9 " The difference between "boundaries we set for ourselves" and "rules we place on someone else" might just seem like one of semantics, but it is profound. Rules tend to come from the idea that it's acceptable, or even desirable, for you to control someone else's behavior, or for someone else to control yours. Boundaries derive from the idea that the only person you really control is yourself. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

10 " is critical for that relationship to be consensual. You must give your partner the opportunity to make an informed decision to be in a relationship with you. If you lie or withhold critical information, you remove your partner's ability to consent to be in the relationship. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

11 " We know we're expecting a great deal of courage by suggesting that you start exploring polyamory without relying on rules to feel safe. It does seem that the secret to healthy, dynamic relationships keeps coming back to courage. Forget training wheels. Forget trying to figure the right rules that will keep you safe forever ; there is no safe forever. Instead, go into the world seeking to threat others with compassion whenever you touch them. Try to leave people better than when you found them. Communicate your needs. Understand and advocate for you boundaries. And look for other people who will do the same. Trust them when they say they love you; where communication and compassion exist, you don't need rules to keep you safe. We don't learn how to be compassionate by disenfranchising other people; we learn how to be compassionate by practicing compassion. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

12 " It's possible to be single and poly. It's possible to have only one partner and be poly. If your intention is to remain open to the possibility of multiple romantic relationships, you are polyamorous regardless of your current relationship status. Indeed, if polyamory is part of your identity (for some people, it is; for others, it isn't), you might be in a monogamous relationship and still be poly. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

13 " Marcia Baczynski has put it, "If you're afraid to say it, that means you need to say it." When we are feeling most raw, most vulnerable, most scared of opening up, those are the times we most need to open up. We can't expect others to respect our boundaries and limits if we don't talk about them or, worse, pretend they don't exist. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

14 " There are many toxic myths about love, but perhaps the worst is that "love conquers all." This myth hurts us in all kinds of ways -- such as the untold zillions of hours and wasted tears spent by people trying to heal, reform or otherwise change a partner. Especially pernicious is the idea that we're supposed to "give until it hurts" -- in fact, for some of us, that the measure of our worth is our ability to give, right down to the last drop of ourselves. That is wrong. Love isn't supposed to hurt, and we should not and do not need to sacrifice our selves for good relationships. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

15 " Above all else, trust that you don't have to control your partner, because your partner, given the freedom to do anything, will want to cherish and support you. And always, always move in the direction of greatest courage, toward the best possible version of yourself. Strong, "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

16 " Jealous feelings come from a sense of loss, or a fear of it. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

17 " Having a brilliant life means going outside your comfort zone. And sometimes discomfort shows us ways we can improve. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

18 " If the idea of dating someone doesn't prompt an enthusiastic "Fuck yes!" then the answer is no. Ambivalence has little place in romance. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

19 " There's nothing wrong with asking your partner to take time to show you why you're valued. "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory

20 " STARTING THE JOURNEY The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON "

― Franklin Veaux , More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory