In the wake of the season of hedonism, professional trickster Helgi Saldo muses about polyamory. "It’s a hot, wild summer. You look at your partner going about their day, thinking: things just aren’t the same anymore. You’re wondering whether you’re old enough to start fermenting your own kombucha. Should you quit your job? Perhaps open your relationship? Maybe it’s time for a baby…? At list with one idea, I’ll make it easier for you to deside how not to fuck up your life. Here are five signs that polyamory might not be for you."
YOU DON’T HAVE THE TIME.
In a world where everything comes at a cost, there are few things more misleading than the idea of “free love” — even if you believe love to be an infinite resource, your time on this planet is not. Take a good look at your calendar because devoting yourself to several relationships can be a time-consuming and demanding practice.
The more people you add to your life, the more commitments follow. While polyamory doesn’t have to feel like you’re running a non-profit packed with tight schedules, strenuous HR meetings, and pizza parties, you do need to understand that each relationship comes with its own set of needs, expectations, and challenges. And that takes time.
YOU’RE NOT INTERESTED IN OTHER PEOPLE.
Perhaps your time management skills are on point, or you’ve opted for an AI assistant to plan your life down to seconds. You might even be one of the lucky ones with all the necessary psychological and financial resources to be bored. Maybe you’re just unemployed. But ask yourself — do you even care about other people?
Polyamory is built on connection and genuine interest in others. People sometimes do not realize that juggling multiple relationships requires significant amounts of emotional labor, including communication, check-ins, and emotional processing. Does that sound exciting or exhausting to you? Are the people in your life just a means to an end, or do you actually want to be present and invest in their lives?
YOU LACK SELF-AWARENESS.
My favourite term from the “polyamory discourse” is compersion. It’s the very simple idea that you can feel joy when your partner is with another person. Quite antithetical to envy and jealousy, which are about not having something or losing something. While emotions are the same across humanity regardless of relationship styles, the kinds of relationships you have often act as a magnifying glass pointing toward who you are as a person.
You do not have to have everything figured out as you enter relationships; we all learn as we go along. But exploring relationships, polyamorous or otherwise, without self-awareness and an openness to growth might lead to a lot of heartbreak that could easily be avoided. Experimenting with relationship styles does not have to come at the expense of other people’s well-being or happiness.
YOU CAN’T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.
The world seems to be largely undecided on whether free will exists or not, but countless people can attest how owning up to both your strengths and weaknesses is a powerful way of living a more fulfilling life.
Like monogamy, polyamory is a relationship style, a way of being in the world, and it requires you to be able to take responsibility for yourself as well as the promises you’ve made to other people. Doesn’t matter if you’re an agent of chaos or a pedantic coward; we all fall short and make mistakes. However, there’s a difference between forgetting someone’s birthday and turning their life upside down beyond recognition. No one needs more pain and chaos in an already unrelenting world.
YOU’RE TRYING TO PROVE A POINT.
There are a lot of people giving monogamy a bad name. Not because they are unable to uphold its standards while claiming to be holier-than-thou, but because they make it sound so incredibly boring. Polyamory seems to have the opposite issue, with too many people sensationalising it with a sense of counter-cultural superiority, as if it's some kind of a cure for capitalism or the human condition.
Your relationships, both romantic or non-romantic, do not have to be ideological battlefields. Just as polyamory doesn’t make you a cooler person, monogamy isn’t inherently unfulfilling or somehow more moral. If you’re only doing this to prove a point to yourself or someone else, maybe you should not be in a relationship at all.
If you recognize any of these five signs in yourself, it may be worth reconsidering whether you need to be in any kind of relationship at this point in your life. It’s important to choose a relationship model that aligns with your personality, needs, and values, whether that means practicing polyamory, monogamy, or something else entirely.