Polyamory Didn’t End Us — Dishonesty Did

Jan 19

Cheating can and does happen in polyamorous relationships. But what is cheating? Essentially, cheating breaks your relationship agreement-and notably, this does not automatically involve sexual acts. From the many conversations I’ve had with other polyamorous folks, cheating in polyamory often involves a lack of transparency. This raises an important question: What does transparency mean?

Honesty vs Transparency

While honesty and transparency are often used interchangeably, transparency is paramount in successful polyamorous relationships. Honesty is responding truthfully when asked a question. It’s something we expect from children, and when dealing with adults, it is the bare minimum.

Transparency, on the other hand, is proactive. It is informing your partner of your plans before they happen. It can look like:

“Hey love, just keeping you in the loop—I have dinner plans tomorrow with so-and-so and will be home later than usual, so don’t wait up.”

Transparency is an act of care. It communicates the message: you matter to me, and I want to reduce unnecessary uncertainty where I can. While transparency can’t prevent all insecurity or nervous system activation, the effort itself signals respect and both emotional availability and attunement.

Emotional Maturity

Poly content creator Leanne Yau argues that cheating while in a polyamorous relationship can feel more painful than in monogamous relationships. In polyamory, you have this beautiful opportunity to negotiate boundaries, desires and all other agreements. When cheating occurs, all of that hard emotional work gets dismissed, leaving behind feelings of sadness, betrayal, distrust and insecurity.

Admittedly, cheating is not as straightforward in polyamorous relationships. Most of us grow up with social downloads that relationships are meant to be exclusive, at least sexually. However, in polyamory, we are comfortable with the idea that our partners have other sexual or romantic partners. We actively work on jealousy, while hoping for compersion. Lies and betrayal are not fun no matter the container they exist in, so behaving this way while practicing polyamory is wildly unnecessary, deeply hurtful and selfish. The choice to keep things away from your partner is always an active choice against connectivity. Transparency keeps everyone safe, both emotionally and physically.

Polyamory requires courage and the willingness to engage in conversations many people actively avoid—about attraction, sexual activity, STI status, and emotional capacity. Having regular conversations allows everyone involved to operate from a shared understanding whilst also preserving their autonomy. After all, your boundaries should be honored and respected in all of your relationships. Franki Cookney of VICE, wrote an article on cheating and polyamory that says, “Even though the rules may look very different, they are breakable, and breaking them has equally painful consequences.” As someone who has nearly 20 years of practicing polyamory, I have only recently felt the sting of betrayal, and it was disorienting and incredibly painful.

Story Time

I identify as a married demisexual woman in a cis-heteronormative-presenting relationship, which is a fancy way of saying, I married a man. I have been open about my sexual orientation since day one of meeting my now husband. For over a decade, I maintained a self-imposed one-penis policy—not because it was required, but because I felt I had reached my emotional limit with dating men. When others assumed this rule was imposed on me, I’d often say I was looking for my future wife. “Every wife deserves a wife” is still a sentiment I hold close to my poly heart.

Life, however, is funny.

I developed a crush on a man which challenged my internal narrative. I shared this news with my husband, bracing myself for resistance or some kind of pushback. Instead, he paused and calmly asked me if this was something I wanted to explore. I said yes. That moment—being met with curiosity and care—released a tremendous amount of anxiety, guilt, and shame. It’s the kind of response I wish for anyone navigating difficult conversations with their partner(s).

This man was married, had children, and had no prior experience with polyamory. There was a lot of education involved. With hindsight, I know I will not again engage romantically with someone who hasn’t done some basic foundational work—reading, listening, or therapy—but at the time, I accepted the learning curve (apparently your girl likes a challenge).

Years later, another woman entered the picture. Her presence wasn’t the issue. The issue was that he had explicitly told me he was not interested in her and would never be, in soo many words. Then, there was a day when I thought him and I had plans to see each other; We certainly had discussed our availability for that specific weekend. The weekend comes, and he blows me off without saying a word, to go on a date with her, which is something I learned through a third party in our very small, shared community. When I asked him directly, he answered honestly. Yes, he had gone on a date. Yes, it was with her.

What hurt me the most was not the date itself, but the blatant betrayal, the rupture of trust, and all the lies. I intentionally was kept in the dark about something he assured me would never happen. I thanked him for his honesty and added that his lack of transparency hurt. I ended our relationship that day.

Whether they kissed or slept together is irrelevant. Those things might have happened and inherently aren’t even an issue. The harm done was because of secrecy, not sexuality. If anyone understands that things can change, it’s me. Mine certainly did and when that happened, I chose transparency despite it feeling terrifying. I much prefer to navigate discomfort openly than to discover and deal with betrayal after the fact.

The transparency within my marriage has only strengthened the bond and trust my husband and I share. Having his support as I navigated betrayal, grief, and loss was sometimes awkward albeit extremely tender, and deeply grounding. It provided a soft place to land as I processed the end of a relationship that mattered to me.

References

https://medium.com/@Amelwrite/honesty-vs-transparency-do-you-understand-the-difference-b0edef473562

https://www.polyphilia.blog/blog/polyamory-is-not-cheating

https://www.polyfor.us/articles/cheating-when-poly

https://www.vice.com/en/article/polyamorous-relationship-rules-cheating/