Whenever I start getting closer to a new person, I tend to give them a series of spiels about me and how I operate that is different from our cultural norm. One of them is that I encourage them to cancel on me when they need to. In turn, I ask for the same freedom for myself.

I do this because I want to be able to trust completely that when someone shows up for me, it’s because they want to be there. Not because it’s on the calendar. Not because they feel guilty about backing out. But because being with me is something they still very much want to do. :)

That kind of trust isn’t standard. A big reason for that is that we live in a culture that tends to treat cancelled plans as a personal slight.

This pressure can drive us to do dishonest things when we’re the canceller. For example… Have you ever told your friends you were staying home because you were sick, when in reality you were just tired and did not feel like going out anymore? Or… have you ever secretly hoped to get sick, just so that you would have a “valid” excuse to stay home?

I can remember a specific example where I woke up not feeling well the morning I was supposed to leave for a big weekend trip. My immediate, overwhelming feeling was relief. I was relieved because I had been feeling stressed about unrelated things and I had a desire to stay home and chill. Being sick gave me a socially bulletproof reason to do just that. That reaction is a symptom of a system where it’s normal to make our friends feel guilty or bad for canceling on us.

What if we flipped that script entirely? What if we actively encouraged the people we love to cancel on us?

If we care about someone, we should want them to do the thing that is best for them. Sometimes that means staying home for a night of rest. Other times, it means seizing a rare opportunity.

Real-world example: The introvert adjustment

The desire to see the people we care about should not supersede their need for rest.

I’d like to tell you a story about me and a former partner and still a very important person in my life. I will call him Kev.

Kev is a fairly introverted person and prefers to have a significant amount of alone time. There are times where he does not have the energy to be around other people. (I think this is actually true of all of us; it just happens more with some.) There was one specific evening when we were partnered where we had plans to hang out. As the night went on, it was more and more clear that he lacked the social bandwidth for the evening. He was mostly internal facing. He got quieter, his answers got shorter, and he seemed not fully bought into being there. It started to feel as though he would have preferred to not be there.

When I brought this up with him later, I learned that he honored our plan mostly because it was on the calendar.

That evening stuck with me. I kept turning it over afterward, and I realized the thing that bothered me wasn’t that he’d needed rest; it was that he didn’t feel like he had permission to take it. I realized I never wanted Kev to feel forced to show up for me or spend time out of obligation.

So, I came up with a suggestion.

I gave him full, explicit permission to cancel on me at any time. If he realized he did not have the capacity to be around people, I wanted to know that, and I wanted him to take the alone time he needed. I assured him this would be a completely okay and safe thing to do.

A few weeks later, he canceled on me at the last minute because he realized he lacked the bandwidth. I told him it was no problem. I made other plans, I had a great night doing something different, and he got the rest he needed. It was incredibly freeing.

He still cancelled pretty infrequently. He didn’t use it as a pass to make plans carelessly, but rather a safety valve for when his bandwidth did not match his calendar. Going forward without this obligation to show up because a plan exists, the time we spent together was intentional and wanted. <3

The opportunity cancel

Sometimes a cancellation has nothing to do with low bandwidth. Someone might get invited to something they’re really excited about, but that happens to conflict with a standing plan. There’s a whole different layer of fear wrapped around this kind of cancellation.

The cultural default seems to be for people to hide this desire. Or in some cases, change plans anyways, but lie about why. This often comes from a place of fear. A fear that the receiver of the cancellation will feel bad and/or react badly. A fear that they will feel hurt or like a second-place option.

If we want the people we love to get to seize the opportunities that light them up, they will be more likely to do this if we make it explicitly safe to tell us about them.

If you’re the one who might want to cancel for something else

Now I’m going to flip to the person who is cancelling in this situation. I find that in situations that are hard to articulate well, it can be helpful to have a script!

Assuming the event is something that you’d also be up for the person coming along with, you could say something like:

“Hey, there’s this cool event I’d like to go to. Do you want to come? If not, I’d love to still go and raincheck our plans. I’m still excited to hang out with you! What do you think?”

This is honest, includes an offer of inclusion, and gives assurance that there is still excitement to spend time with the other person. It sends the signal that the connection isn’t being deprioritized. The evening is.

And if it’s an opportunity you can’t or don’t want to extend, that’s ok, too! You can still be transparent without offering an invitation

“Hey, something came up that I’d really like to do instead of our upcoming plans. Can we raincheck? I’m still excited to see you!! Would x or y day work instead? Let me know!”

The point is about keeping things honest.

Back to the receiver

Your reaction is what makes honesty feel safe. Or not. The easier you make it to tell you the truth, the less likely they are to quietly resent the plan or hide future opportunities from you instead.

This doesn’t necessarily mean not having feelings about it. One can have feelings and support the other person in their decisions. (See Gremlin Thoughts: when you feel bad and nobody did anything wrong.)

Capacity vs disrespect

Giving people explicit permission to cancel is powerful, and it also comes with a vulnerability. It can easily be weaponized by avoidant people as a free pass to disrespect your time and evade commitment.

I once dated someone who routinely made plans seemingly knowing they would be unlikely to follow through. They regularly waited until just before we were supposed to meet to cancel rather than reaching out earlier in the week when they realized it wouldn’t work for them. And they did this over and over again.

That is less about someone honoring their capacity, and more about them failing to manage their own schedule and/or failing to communicate honestly.

That said, in my experience, this has been rare. The people in my life often find it reassuring to know the option to cancel is there should they want to exercise it, but most don’t feel the need to reach for it all that often.

This kind of flexibility works best when it’s rooted in direct and honest communication, and when there is a mutual respect for the other’s time and energy. And if someone doesn’t hold up their end of that, I like to see it as information I’ve learned about them, and about how they show up.

If someone consistently cancels on you like this, you get to decide what to do with that information. If spending time with this person still feels like a net positive to me, I’ll often keep planning with them, but treat the plans as tentative and go in expecting the plan is likely to get cancelled. Other times, I’ll stop being the one to suggest plans, and see if they ever do.

An alternative: planning tentatively during times of low bandwidth

One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that it becomes incredibly difficult for me to estimate my future energy and capacity during periods of time where I’m stretched thin and have less capacity in general. This makes planning feel difficult, and often quite stressful.

When I start noticing planning feels stressful to me, I take it as a sign that I would benefit from letting my friends know this, and asking that our plans be tentative during this period of time.

I might say something like:

I’m noticing I’m pretty low bandwidth at the moment and planning currently feels stressful to me. Until things clear up, I’m only making tentative plans with people. My ask would be that we plan to check in the day before or that day and confirm. If this works for you, then I’m still excited to plan something! :)

This is the opposite of the approach mentioned directly above. Instead of quietly making plans I have lower-than-average confidence in, I’m naming the uncertainty upfront and letting the other person decide if that works for them. This keeps things honest and clear and makes it possible for me to make plans during a time where planning is otherwise quite difficult.

It also signals that this is a personal bandwidth issue, and not about them. If the person is uninterested in tentative plans, that’s also ok. The point is it signals clearly what I’m able to give, and allows others to opt in or not.

What is the alternative?

It is easy to feel a pang of rejection when someone cancels. And it is worth considering the alternative.

If a “no” is not safe, the alternative is that the person will sometimes keep their plans purely out of obligation. They show up and give their time despite it not being what they want to do. And in some cases, despite them being fully out of energy and bandwidth.

This forces a very blunt question. Do we want the people we love and care about to spend time with us when they do not want to be there?

Expecting someone to prioritize my scheduled desire for their company over their own well-being treats the people I love into need-meeting machines. It demands that they show up to manage my insecurities.

When I give people explicit permission to cancel, I am honoring my core desire to support the people I care about in doing the thing that feels best for them.

And the reward for this is absolute trust. When a “no” is an explicitly safe option, I can trust that a “yes” means they genuinely have the energy and desire to be there.

A “please cancel on me when you need to!” script

Do you want to start encouraging your friends to cancel on you? Here’s a helpful script you can follow! Or, you could even just send them a link to this section and tell them this is how you feel. 🤗

Dear friend,

I would like to encourage you to cancel on me when it’s what you’d like to do. This could be because you need rest and alone time, or it could be because an exciting opportunity arose that you’d like to do instead. I want you to show up to spend time with me not out of obligation, but because you want to be there. If you ever want to adjust our plans, please tell me!

The main thing I’m asking for here is honesty. If canceling starts happening because something about our plans or dynamic isn’t working for you, I’d like to know that too, so we can talk about it.

I want this to go both ways. If I ever need to cancel on you, I hope you’ll extend me the same grace.

I’m curious to hear how y’all would personalize this for you. Post in the comments! 💜

Gift of the cancel

And all of this is about more than just calendars and planning.

Creating a dynamic where cancellations are explicitly safe is a way of honoring someone’s autonomy. It helps to remove the anxiety one might feel about cancelling, along with the need for anyone to show up when their social battery is empty. People are less likely to show up out of guilt.

I want the people in my life to be fully themselves around me. I want to encourage them to show up with me when it feels good, rest when they need to, and chase exciting opportunities. The goal is not to secure someone’s time. It is to find where our wants genuinely overlap, and let go of the rest.

Part of getting there is learning to receive a cancellation as a gift, not a loss. It means someone is doing what’s genuinely best for them. And when people feel safe to cancel, the time we do spend together is more likely to be a fuck yes, from both of us. <3

Before you go

How do you handle this?

Do you already have a version of this in your relationships, whether that’s a spiel, a standing agreement, or just an unspoken understanding? Or is this something you’re going to try out for the first time?

Tell me in the comments, or send me a message!

Art in this post made by Adora.

I received a comment on my first post about how commitment can feel hard to define in the context of relationship anarchy. As I thought about it, I realized I felt like I understood what it meant to me, but was struggling to put it into actual words. This post is my attempt to do that. What am I committing to, if I’m not promising forever?

(New here? I think of Relationship anarchy as being about building each connection out of the organic overlap between two people, without being bound by societal scripts. I wrote about the underlying ideas in Love without entitlement.)

Commitment, at least as most of us learned it, is a promise about the future. It’s often a promise to stick around and love each other until either you or the other person dies. We build ceremonies around it. We make the promise once, and then we expect ourselves and others to follow through, regardless of how things may change.

I understand the appeal. A promise about the future, especially a promise for a future that sounds really good to you at this moment, can feel really comforting. It can make things feel solid, and as if you now have one less thing in life that needs to be figured out.

Unfortunately, this is emotional security theater.

A promise about the future can make one feel secure, but it doesn’t necessarily come with actual security. It describes a structure built around a relationship, but it says nothing about the connection or how either person in the connection is doing as time goes on.

And unfortunately, it can do something worse than simply failing to work. A promise creates a mold. And if people or dynamics change, it’s common for people to start hiding the ways they no longer fit into that mold. And as time goes on, the promise stays technically intact, but becomes less true every year as a gap between what you promised and what you want grows bigger and continues to go unacknowledged. Sometimes things have to drift quite far before anyone is willing to name it.

Rather than thinking of commitment as a promised outcome, I like to think of it as a behavior.

A partner of mine got me thinking about this recently. Why is romance the only type of close relationship we treat like a contract? We typically don’t vow anything to our friends. Parents and children don’t exchange promises, and I don’t think anyone would argue the bond is weaker for that reason.

A parent might well promise to be there for them, and that’s a lovely thing to say. But it isn’t what the kid ends up knowing. The kid knows whether the parent shows up or not. A child can go their whole childhood without ever hearing a promise and be completely certain they’re loved and supported. Another can hear the promise every single year and learn exactly what it’s worth when the parent fails to show up when it’s important. The commitment is all about the behavior.

So, if I say I’m committed to someone… what am I saying yes to?

When I think about what I commit to, it splits into two kinds. Most of it is behavioral: how I show up, what I’ll tell you, what I do when things get hard. This is what I’ll start with. Then I’ll talk about committing to a particular circumstance for a particular stretch of time.

What am I committing to?

When you take away the promise about the future, what takes its place?

Kindness, care, and respect

Hopefully I don’t need to convince anyone that kindness should be part of any loving relationship. It matters most when things are difficult, which is also when it’s hardest.

Similarly with respect. It means treating someone as a whole person, with their own life and their own reasons for what they do, rather than as someone whose function is to fill a role for me. And it means respecting their choices, even when they decide something I wouldn’t have chosen for them.

And this doesn’t stop applying if a relationship ends. I’m always surprised when people break up with someone and then immediately banish the ex into a list of enemies. I want to carry the kindness and respect through a breakup, whether or not we end up as friends. (Though I’d love that too, if possible!)

Collaboration

These are about how we handle things together: approaching problems as a team, owning my part when I get it wrong, and supporting each other’s lives even when they diverge.

Being on the same team

When something goes wrong between us, I don’t want to try to win. I’m trying to look at the problem alongside you so that we can work together to understand what happened, sort it out, and handle it better next time.

How a relationship friction is approached can be the difference between a massive blowup and a difficult conversation. If I come in with an attack, it’s natural that I would be met with defense, and things will likely escalate. If we are collaborators, we are able to look at the situation together and we end the conversation understanding each other better.

If both parties are willing to approach conflict collaboratively, it can be a very connecting experience. It works best if both people are willing and able to look at their own part in things, which is the next piece.

In practice: During a friction, I try to keep checking that we’re still looking at the problem together rather than at each other. With all partners I’ve had in the last few years, we also debrief once we’ve had some time or space for things to settle. We go back over what happened, not to continue the fight, but to understand it. What set it off, what each of us was reacting to, what we’d want to do differently.

[future topic: frictions vs fights]

Personal accountability (aka owning my shit)

We all get reactive sometimes, and we all have blind spots. I think it’s important to be aware of that and to be open to other people pointing them out.

This of course requires a particular kind of emotional intelligence. Catching yourself mid-reaction. Hearing something hard and being willing to look at yourself to see if you can see the truth in it. Pretty much everyone will always have more work they could do in this area. The first step is just wanting to notice. (Note: this doesn’t mean the other person is always right. I’m not trying to encourage you to accept gaslighting, for example. What I’m talking about here is the willingness to be curious about it and think about it.)

If a partner tells me something came out rude, or that I’m being defensive, I’m committing to checking rather than reaching for the reason they’re wrong. When they’re right, saying so. And doing the work to do better next time.

In practice: part of the debrief described above is each of us doing our best to examine our own part in the friction. What did I do to contribute to it or make reconnecting more difficult?

[future topic: owning your shit]

Supporting each other’s lives

I want the people I love to be building lives they actually want. (And I aim to be close to people who want the same for me!) I don’t want either of us to shrink our lives or sacrifice something really important to us for the sake of the relationship.

More Than Two (my fav poly book) puts this as an ethical axiom: “The people in a relationship are more important than the relationship.” I’ve always thought this says it really well. The relationship serves the people in it, not the other way around.

Sometimes the overlap between us (what we want and what we’re able to give) will shrink. What I’m committing to is supporting this change when that happens. To be clear, this doesn’t mean not having feelings about it. It’s possible to find something difficult and work to support it anyways. What I will strive to not do is treat the change as a problem that must be solved by one of us needing to give up something important.

This kind of change can look like a lot of things. A move. A job that eats your time. A new relationship that changes how much of you I see. Or even a new hobby that changes your availability. Whatever it is, I want to be someone who supports you in living a life that best serves you, and I want that for me, too! It’s worth acknowledging that if a connection keeps adjusting such that the overlap becomes less and less, it is natural to adjust how much one wants to show up in response.

In practice: Years ago I was leaving Chicago for an opportunity elsewhere, and I asked my partner at the time if he wanted to come with me. He said no. He was supportive of the move, and Chicago was where he wanted to be.

And that was genuinely it. What was best for him was to stay, what was best for me was to go, and we both landed there with a lot of love for each other. Nobody made a case. Nobody treated it as a test of how much we cared. We stayed connected with phone calls and occasional visits and kept loving each other from a distance.

[future topic: readjusting to a new dynamic]

Communication

These are the ones about information. What I tell you, what I do with what you tell me, and whether my behavior matches. And making sure the picture between us stays current so as to minimize surprises.

Keeping the picture accurate

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Without a baseline of honesty, we cannot be truly close to someone.

The thing that most shapes a relationship is the overlap between what two people genuinely want and can give. Finding this overlap requires us to communicate our needs and boundaries honestly, including updating the other when something changes that may affect that overlap. If this doesn’t happen, then someone ends up with a false understanding of the relationship.

You can think about this in terms of informed consent. Withholding information that would potentially change the relationship leaves the other person unable to make an informed decision about how they want to show up in return. It essentially makes the decision for them. Not cool.

Concretely, this means keeping people accurately informed about where I stand with them. What I want, what I have capacity for, how I’m feeling about us, what’s shifted if anything. It also means being an honest person generally.

In practice: Early on in dating one of my current partners, I noticed I was getting a lot of mixed signals from him and it was difficult to get a clear read on what he wanted. This made it hard to know how to relate. It became clear it was not intentional on his part. He had some baggage he was working through and hadn’t fully sorted out yet. I told him clearly what I was interested in and asked him to think about it and do the same in return. I wasn’t asking him to relate in a particular way. I mostly just wanted accurate information so that I could update my best understanding of our overlap and update how I wanted to relate if needed.

Receiving honesty

In addition to being honest, I also want to receive your honesty in return.

If every time you tell me something that is difficult to hear I get defensive or angry, then I’m making it really difficult for you to be honest in the future. And if I receive your honesty and come to the conclusion you didn’t mean it, then I’m relating to a projected image rather than reality. Both aren’t great.

So the other half of the commitment is meeting hard information with curiosity instead of defense, and then updating my picture of you. What we’re aiming for is both people holding an accurate picture of the other.

This doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything I hear. Sometimes I take something in, sit with it, and still think it’s off. In that case, it’s worth having an additional conversation rather than quietly disregarding what I’ve heard.

In practice: I wrote about a version of this in the gremlin thoughts post. During a stretch when a partner’s new connection was bringing up hard feelings for me, what I wanted from him was full transparency, not a softened version designed to spare me. Keeping my picture of things accurate mattered more to me than avoiding pangs.

Being honest in word and action

If I’ve told you I want to be there for you in certain ways, then commitment means actually being there. And telling you if that changes.

The caveat is that I’m committing to this to the best of my ability, and ability ebbs and flows. We all have more capacity some days than others. When I have less, I’ll say so. What I won’t do is let you believe I’m available when I’m not.

In practice: During a stretch when I was badly burned out, I told the people close to me that I had a lot less bandwidth than usual. Nobody had to wonder why I was less available than normal, and they knew to adjust what they expected from me while it lasted. They were understanding about it, which helped a lot!

Minimizing surprises

Things change. I fully expect them to, and I wouldn’t promise otherwise. What I will commit to is that nobody gets blindsided by the change. If I follow through on the above honesty commitments, this should happen naturally.

If we’re both saying where we are as we go, then shifts happen gradually and together.

Imagine instead a couple where one person drifts over the span of many months, and the other finds out about this growing gap all at once at the end. It’s not the change itself that is troubling, but that it feels like an ambush. And it implies truth was withheld for a long time, which adds an extra sting.

I recently said to a partner: I’d be very surprised if you told me tomorrow that you didn’t want to be together anymore. Not because either of us promised otherwise, but because there’s nothing hidden between us that could suddenly change things from one day to the next. That feeling is what I want in all my close partnerships.

[future topic: Talking about the far-out future without promising the future]

Commitment to something outside the relationship

The above is about how I commit to relating to the other person in the relationship. There is also an additional kind of commitment, which is a commitment to tend to something outside of that relationship. These sit on a spectrum. Some are short and lightly held, some run for decades. What they share is that the commitment is to the endeavor itself, not to the relationship staying a particular shape.

If I sign a lease with someone, or buy property with them, I’m committing to making that arrangement work. Not to the relationship staying as it is, but to being a good person to live with for the term of the agreement, and to working with them on a respectful and dignified exit option should that become necessary.

The same logic can also apply to raising a child. Two people raising a child are committing to raising that child and providing that child with love and care. That commitment holds regardless of what happens to the romantic relationship between them. I think people often default to feeling that a co-parent must then be a primary partner. I don’t feel this is necessary. There are a lot of shapes a co-parenting relationship can take with the child still firmly at the center.

This can also apply to a particular stretch of someone’s life. This could include things like committing to see someone through a surgery recovery, finishing a PhD, a move or a job change ,or a period where things are just unusually hard. The commitment is to helping them through that thing, and it can hold even if the connection between the two people changes along the way.

When the picture stops being accurate

If nobody promised to stay forever, then what does breaking commitment look like?

Any of the commitments above can be broken. I’m going to focus on the commitments around honesty and maintaining a clear picture of the relationship because these are the commitments that are doing most of the work that a forever promise is intended to do.

Ask most people what breaking a commitment looks like in a monogamous relationship and they’ll probably say cheating. This, of course, isn’t a violation of the forever promise, but a violation of the promise of exclusivity. (A poly version of this might be violating safe sex agreements.)

But it’s worth asking what does the damage there. For most people it isn’t just about the sex. It’s also the discovery that they’ve been lied to for weeks, months, or years. They’ve been in a relationship that they didn’t have an accurate view of. Every decision they made during that stretch was made on bad information.

Notice that this doesn’t require anyone to break a standard “rule”. A person can be entirely faithful and uphold all agreements in a relationship and still let their partner spend a year believing things are fine while they’ve quietly checked out. Even if nothing is violated, the damage is still substantial.

What both of those have in common isn’t a broken rule. It’s the gap between what’s true and what the other person thinks is true.

What isn’t a breach of commitment

I’ve once come to understand that a particular partner wasn’t able to give me a certain kind of emotional support when I was having a hard time. That was disappointing to learn, but it wasn’t a breach. I adjusted my understanding of our overlap, including what I wanted to offer.

Someone’s capacity changing, someone’s feelings changing, someone’s life pulling them elsewhere These things are not failures. This is what happens when we live life. The commitment was not that things would never change. It was that I’d hear about it along the way and have space to adjust.

Where the security comes from

A track record and consistency

As you continue to have experiences with another person, you have more data, and a fuller picture of who they are and how they show up.

My partner Franz and I have hit frictions and come out the other side feeling closer, with a better understanding of each other. This has happened so consistently, and over a long enough stretch, that I have a huge sense of security that I can realistically expect this to continue to happen. Not because we agreed to, but because we’ve both shown up for each other and tackled issues collaboratively time and time again.

What’s consistent isn’t the shape of our relationship; that has changed plenty and will certainly change again. It’s what happens when something feels off.

Building a track record is something that can’t be rushed, and it’s why I think structural promises are so appealing. Consistency is only visible in retrospect. Nobody can provide this to you at the start. And there’s no way to skip ahead to it.

This works in reverse, too. As I’ve written before, we can’t force others to behave in certain ways. What we get to do is decide how close we want to be to people based on how they show up. A track record of frictions that don’t resolve, or of raising something making it worse, is still helpful data about that person. It just tells us something different.

Not having to guess

Probably the biggest source of security for me is when I don’t have to wonder.

Because we approach frictions as a team, raising something isn’t a risk to the relationship. Because I can trust a partner to take in a piece of unflattering information, I never have to weigh whether something is worth saying. It just gets said.

And it goes both ways. If I can trust that a partner will let me know when they feel hurt or when something feels off for them, that’s an enormous weight off my mind. No reading between lines. No second-guessing a yes. I honestly don’t think people who haven’t had this realize how much energy and emotional bandwidth the guessing takes up.

Something you’ll hear me say a lot: you can trust the yeses much more when you also hear the nos. If I know someone is willing to tell me when something doesn’t feel good, then when I get a yes, I can be fairly confident it’s a real yes.

Structures that feed rather than substitute

I should mention that I don’t think structures themselves are the enemy. More that structures that substitute for relational work can create a false sense of security while the actual connection goes unexamined. (As I said before, emotional security theater!)

There are also structures that feed that work! The main one I use in my closer partnerships is a relationship check-in called RADAR, from the Multiamory podcast. The funny part is that new things rarely come up in RADARs anymore. The scheduled conversations made the unscheduled ones easier and more frequent. Now they mostly serve as a recap and a nice connection point. 💜 I highly recommend them as a practice.

A looser one: Franz and I are long-distance, and when we’re in different places we default to longer calls on Sundays. We hold it lightly, though. If one of us has an event they’d like to go to that conflicts, we adjust.

Talking about the future

None of this means we can’t talk about the future. I do so often with people I’m close to. The difference is that we talk about the future as a collection of potential futures rather than one expected future, and about what the current “today us” wants rather than what we’re promising.

What this means in practice: I can tell a partner I can imagine us being together in old age, and they can hear it as information about where I'm at rather than as a contract they've just been handed. This creates an atmosphere that optimizes for honesty. I’m not filtering what I say out of worry that a partner pictures something different, since we’re not trying to land on a single agreed future anyway. And I’m not worried that saying it leaves them feeling obligated.

There’s a lot more to say about how I think about this, which is why I’m working on a full post on the topic. Coming soon!

Where this leaves us

So let’s get back to the question. What am I promising or not promising in a committed relationship?

I’m not promising to know the future. None of us can honestly do that. I’m also not promising that things will stay as they are.

What I am promising is that, to the best of my ability, I will be kind and respectful to you. I’ll be in your corner, and I’ll treat our frictions as something we’re solving together. I’ll own my part when I get it wrong. And I’ll be honest with you about where I stand and about what I can give.

To some, this can feel like it carries less weight than a vow. However, I think it’s more powerful. A vow is said once. This is a thing you have to keep doing.

Before you go

How do you define commitment?

Tell me in the comments or fill this out.

Resources

• Multiamory’s Relationship RADAR: A monthly relationship check-in with a set format: review what’s happened since last time, agree on an agenda, talk through it, set action points, and reconnect at the end. The structure means things get raised before they turn into problems.

• More than Two: if you’re going to read one poly book, this is the one I’d suggest!

• Crucial Conversations: this is one of my favorite books of all time. It details why we should bring up the hard conversations rather than let them simmer, and gives a lot of helpful guidance on how to maintain a safe space while you do it!

Art in this post made by Adora.

Handle with Care

Any framework for relating can be picked up and used badly. Here are the ways I can see that happening with this one, whether it’s someone doing it to you or you doing it to yourself. As always, I’m hoping that naming them helps folks spot them in the wild.

“I can’t promise you anything” The most likely misuse is treating this as a license for vagueness. It is a refusal to be honest about where they stand. Nothing here means you can’t say anything about the future. One can minimally say what’s true for them right now. One can say what possible futures they can currently imagine. If someone genuinely doesn’t know what their feelings are telling them or what they want for next week, that can also be said honestly.

The people-pleasing trap. All of this requires knowing what you want, which is harder than it sounds and not equally available to everyone. I’ve written before about the risk of indexing too far on someone else’s comfort: if you constantly accommodate, you’re not finding an honest overlap anymore, you’re masking an incompatibility.

I don’t have a tidy fix. But it’s worth checking periodically whether you’re accommodating someone else at the cost of your own comfort or well-being. And perhaps check out Disease to Please. It’s an excellent book that people pleasers in my life have found helpful.

Lack of introspection rather than villainy. Sometimes someone simply hasn’t looked closely enough at themselves. For example, the partner I mentioned earlier who I couldn’t get a clear read on - he wasn’t being intentionally confusing or manipulative. He had blindspots and baggage he didn’t fully understand yet.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to hurt less by the people receiving it, but it does change how you might want to handle it. You can’t fix someone’s behavior or force them to be self aware. What you can do is point out what you’re seeing and ask whether they’re willing to look at it. Whether or not they are willing will tell you a lot. And you then get to decide how you want to relate to them going forward.

If you think of anything else I could add to the list, please let me know!

It’s 11pm. Your partner is out with someone new. They have done absolutely nothing you didn’t agree to, and yet your chest still feels tight. You meant every word when you said you wanted them to have a great time. You also want to throw your phone against the wall.

That gap between how you want to behave and how your brain and body are reacting is what this post is about.

I was not originally going to tackle this subject so soon. However, I recently gave a lightning talk about gremlin thoughts for some friends. One week later, I got the following message from an acquaintance:

[My friend] was at your party this past week and told me about Gremlin thoughts and I have to say, it has invaded my language now. I’ve shared it with my other partners and it’s now part of our vernacular. Thank you.

Knowing that a shorthand I came up with to facilitate communications for my own relationships resonated enough to start making its way through San Francisco polycules (the connected web of people in a group of non-monogamous relationships) was delightful. Since the framework is already making the rounds, I figured I would tackle it here sooner rather than later.

What are gremlin thoughts?

Gremlin thoughts is the name I give to thoughts, feelings, and emotions that prod me toward doing things that conflict with my values and with what I want when I’m thinking clearly. They show up when no one has done anything wrong, and I still feel bad. They are thoughts and feelings I may even feel a bit ashamed of having.

I use the label as a catch-all for thoughts, physical feelings, and emotions. When you are activated, all of these things often arrive in one big, jumbled mess, with feelings and thoughts influencing each other. Distinguishing between a thought and a feeling in the middle of a panic spike is difficult, and the difference does not matter all that much. Having one simple umbrella label saves the energy of categorizing which is which.

One way I see this come up often in polyamory is with jealousy. There can be a thought along the lines of, “If I were a good poly person, I would not be feeling this!” This is sometimes also paired with shame or embarrassment. Because we do not want to be feeling these things, there is a strong urge to keep them to ourselves. This is especially true if we do not feel the other person has crossed any boundaries.

The truth is: thoughts arrive uninvited, with no particular regard for our values or how we want to relate to others. Jealousy (or any other feeling) showing up doesn’t make someone a bad poly person (or a bad person). It just makes them a person. We can’t necessarily control our thoughts and feelings, but we can decide to take a look at them and be intentional about how we respond to them.

The occurrence of gremlin thoughts is not limited to non-monogamy. They can also come up just as often in a monogamous relationship, or with platonic friendships!

For example, a friend or partner might back out of weekend plans because they are burnt out and need rest. Logically, my values dictate that connections should be fed by a genuine desire to be there, not by obligation. I actively want to support my friends and partners cancelling and rescheduling, whether it be to recharge, or because a special event came up that they’re excited about. If I was really looking forward to those plans, my body might still serve up some feelings. I can simultaneously feel good about them honoring their boundaries and doing what’s best for them while my body and mind produce gremlin thoughts.

Diagnosing gremlin thoughts

When you are in the thick of a panic response, it is easy to let anxiety dictate the next move. Having a clear sense of values provides a necessary anchor in these moments. [See values-aligned action over emotional reactivity].

Here are some questions you could ask yourself to determine if you are dealing with gremlin thoughts:

• Am I physically or emotionally depleted right now? Physical exhaustion or burnout can make it much harder to stay regulated.

• Does this reaction align with how I would feel about the situation if I were completely calm? This helps isolate whether the distress is coming mostly from adrenaline.

• What is this feeling asking me to do? And do I want to do it? If the action it’s suggesting is one you’d reject in a calm moment, you’re likely looking at a gremlin.

• Is this reaction rooted in a scarcity mindset? Scarcity mindset makes everything feel urgent, like love, time, or attention are suddenly running out.

• Am I feeling insecure right now? Insecurity can create a false alarm, causing the body to interpret neutral information as a threat.

• Did an agreement get broken, or did a boundary get crossed?

That last question is important. If an agreement was broken or a boundary was crossed, it is not a gremlin thought. It is a legitimate relationship issue that requires a conversation. That includes boundaries you didn’t know you had until someone walked through them, and while there’s no one to hold accountable for that, it is still worth naming out loud.

Comparing your current state to a calm baseline requires having a calm baseline to compare to, and not everyone does. If those questions feel unanswerable right now, that isn’t a personal failing. It’s a skill, and it gets easier with practice and often with help.

[future topics: what are my values?; Am I angry, or am I insecure?]

What if it’s both?

Feelings aren’t always so clear-cut, and it may be a bit of both: a gremlin thought, and a signal that something is wrong or that you have an ask.

Your partner was a little careless about the scheduling, and your reaction is roughly four hundred percent larger than the carelessness warrants. Your friend did make a remark that felt bad to you, and you have not slept properly in a week.

Both can be true, and both can be named. More on how to do this a bit further on. :)

Warning: the self-blame trap

It is important to point out that this framework requires a solid baseline of self-trust and an ability to objectively view a situation. If your default internal narrative is that you are always in the wrong, searching your thoughts and emotions for gremlins can easily lead to you calling things gremlins that are not, and can be weaponized against your own self-esteem.

If you chronically take the blame when frictions arise, skip this post for now, and focus first on building foundational self-compassion and learning to trust your own reality. This will still be here later, and will be far more useful once you have a more solid foundation to stand on.

More on ways I imagine this framework could be misused in Handle with care .

What’s in a name: the power of a primer

In the past few years, I’ve realized that creating a shared vocabulary for difficult and nuanced concepts makes it easier for both parties to collaborate on the topic that the words help describe.

I started using the term “gremlin thoughts” because I wanted a conversational primer that would signal to my partner or friend that I was about to share something highly emotional . And because these reactions often contradict my values, I am likely embarrassed to bring them up, and sharing may feel difficult. If we’ve already established the use of gremlin thoughts and what they mean, then starting a conversation by acknowledging that gremlin thoughts are incoming helps set up a comfortable and safe container (a shared sense of what this conversation is and isn’t).

Being able to communicate all of this with just two words helps both sides of the conversation:

• For the Sharer: It gives you an easy script when your brain is too activated to find the “right” words. It means you do not need to repeat the same disclaimers every time you are struggling. Instead of having to explicitly state, “I don’t think you did anything wrong,” “I am not asking you to change anything,” or “I feel ashamed of this reaction,” the label communicates all of that context instantly. It also removes the pressure to be perfectly articulate, making it much easier to speak freely.

• For the Listener: It helps disarm defensiveness. It signals that the other person is sharing internal discomfort, not assigning blame or demanding that behaviors be changed. It helps the listener be ready to listen and ready to offer care instead of preparing for an argument.

Additionally, if you like the idea, but “gremlin thoughts” doesn’t quite resonate with you, then you could collaborate with your partner or friend to come up with a term that feels right for you! The phrase itself doesn’t matter so much; having a shared vocabulary is the important part.

Why share gremlin thoughts

It can be very tempting to keep gremlin thoughts to yourself. If you're not asking the other person to change anything, why bring it up at all?

Sometimes, a gremlin thought is soft enough that it can settle with a bit of internal processing. But when it lingers or feels heavy, bringing it into the open is the most helpful path forward.

Bottled up too long, difficult emotions tend to curdle. It feels bad to hold them in. Plus, unexpressed frictions easily turn into resentment. That resentment inevitably bleeds out into the dynamic, often causing people to act poorly toward the exact person they were trying to “protect” from their feelings.

More importantly, hiding reality damages intimacy. As I noted in a previous post (Love without entitlement): without a baseline of honesty, we cannot be truly close to someone.

Maintaining a level of closeness with someone requires understanding what their internal reality looks like. Sharing your gremlin thoughts gives the other person the gift of transparency, and it provides them a clear opportunity to step in and offer support during a hard time.

If someone shows you they consistently cannot receive your honesty, that’s helpful information and it’s worth knowing. We can’t force others to behave in certain ways. What we get to do is decide how close we want to be to people, based on how they show up.

Real-world example: new connections during a hard time

A while back, my partner Franz started seeing someone new. It was during a time when I was navigating a lot of general anxiety about other things. Everything felt harder for me during this time, and his new connection brought up a very strong surge of difficult feelings.

However, I did not think that Franz was doing anything wrong. He was being completely honest with me, and no boundaries were being crossed. One of my core values in romantic relationships is supporting my partners in being autonomous. My logical brain actively wanted to support this new connection.

Franz and I had already established the term gremlin thoughts in our shared vocabulary, so I started a conversation by telling him I had some gremlin thoughts to share.

I explained that I was struggling in general, and my exhausted brain was projecting that anxiety onto his new connection. I explicitly asked him not to take on any responsibility for these feelings, and I encouraged him to continue seeing her in the way he was excited to. Instead of asking him to change his behavior, I asked for the exact care that would be helpful: extra reassurance and extra messages of love.

See what happened next in back to the story: transparency in practice.

How to share gremlin thoughts

So, you’ve decided to share a gremlin thought. Great!

Treating difficult emotions with care takes a lot of energy. Before dropping into an emotional conversation, checking for capacity—both your own and the receiver’s. If someone just worked an all-nighter or navigated a highly stressful day, they might not have the bandwidth to engage with care. Asking if it is a good time gives them the opportunity to fully opt in to the conversation or set a specific time when they will be ready to listen.

One way to check capacity is by using the HALT acronym. Originally used in addiction recovery to help people identify the physical or emotional root of a behavioral urge, it stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. The Multiamory podcast expanded this to HHALTDS to include Horny, Drinking, and Sick (though they rightly note it lacks the same catchy ring). Running through this list may help you decide if you have the resources to hold space for a vulnerable conversation.

Once capacity is established, lead with the primer: “I have some gremlin thoughts I would like to share.”

If this is the very first time introducing the concept to this person, it’s worth taking a moment to explain what you mean:

• You’re bringing up an emotion, not an accusation.

• You’re being vulnerable, and you’d like some patience while you find the words.

• You’re not asking them to own the feeling or change their behavior to make it go away. In fact, you’re asking them not to do these things.

Once the container is set, the hard part gets much easier to say out loud.

Naming both at once

Let’s say you’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a combination of gremlin thoughts and a signal that something is wrong or something you want to ask for. When both are true, I suggest naming them both, separately and clearly.

An example:

Two things, and I want to keep them apart so they don’t get mixed up. First, the one with an ask in it: that joke about my job in front of your friends stung a little. I’d like to talk about why that felt bad and ask that you don’t make that joke anymore. Second, the gremlin: my brain spent the whole drive home building a case that you’re embarrassed by me, which I feel pretty confident isn’t true based on your past behavior. That part isn’t yours to fix, although some reassurance would help. And it would help to hear that you’re glad I shared, assuming that’s true.

Splitting them means the ask gets heard as an ask, and the gremlin gets heard as a gremlin.

Care requests

After sharing the gremlin thoughts, it helps to say what would feel good while you process. Keeping these asks simple and actionable makes a difference.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of actionable requests one could pull from when establishing what support looks like:

• Can we have 15 minutes of dedicated snuggle time?

• Would you send me a quick voice memo telling me a story about a time you felt really connected to me?

• Would you be up for dropping random animal gifs, cute memes, or extra hearts in my chat a few times tomorrow while I am at work?

• Could we do a video call before bed so we can connect and I can see your face?

• Would you remind me of three things you appreciate about our dynamic right now?

• Would you hold my hand or keep a hand on my leg while we watch a show tonight?

I’d also love to hear from others on this! What is your go-to reassurance request? 🤗

How to receive gremlin thoughts and feelings

When someone tells you gremlin thoughts are incoming, that’s your cue to run HALT (or HHALTDS) on yourself. Holding space for someone else’s hard feelings takes real effort, and it’s worth knowing whether you have resources and ability before you say yes.

If you don’t have it in you, say so. Punting the conversation is a totally fine thing to do, provided there is intent to come back to the conversation. Offering a specific time when you feel you’ll be more able (like “after dinner” or “tomorrow morning”) shows interest in having the conversation while also keeping anyone from having to push through and engage when they are depleted. Without this, it can easily feel as though the topic is being avoided.

Once the conversation begins, your job is to simply listen. And while you do this, do your best not to internalize blame or take ownership of the emotion.

After the gremlin thoughts are fully out in the open, if support has not already been requested, asking what would feel good to receive is a solid next step.

The temptation to over-accommodate or withhold the truth

It can be tempting to try and fix the discomfort by immediately offering to change behavior to make the bad feeling go away. Don’t fall into the trap!

If you instantly change what you’re doing to shield someone from a bad feeling, especially when they’ve explicitly asked you not to, you’re actually making things harder for them. Shielding steals the opportunity for the person struggling to sit with the friction, self-soothe, and build emotional resilience. If you want to do something, ask what would help.

A secondary temptation is to stop volunteering information in an attempt to prevent a gremlin thought from triggering in the first place. This once again removes the opportunity for the other person to work through their discomfort, and it degrades the connection. It can make the struggling person feel even more anxious, because sensing that information is being kept from you tends to feel much worse than just hearing the information.

This is different from someone asking you to hold off on details for a bit while they recalibrate. That’s a request they made, and honoring it is fine. It’s also worth recognizing that in some poly dynamics, both partners agree to share only certain details, or to share only when asked. I feel pretty strongly that full transparency is important for continued closeness. What matters most, though, is being honest to the full extent of what was agreed upon, and not holding back, altering, or sugarcoating facts or feelings to spare your partner a hard feeling. The problem isn’t how much gets shared. It’s deciding on your own that someone can’t handle something, and never telling them you decided.

Continuing to give the gift of honesty, even when it causes temporary discomfort or difficult feelings, is what allows a connection to remain genuine.

Back to the story: transparency in practice

I’ll now return to the story with Franz.

I’d handed Franz the gremlin, asked him for extra showings of love, and explicitly asked him not to change a thing about the connection he was excited about.

It went as I had hoped. He listened, offered reassurance, sent the extra lovey messages I requested, continued seeing the new person, and maintained honesty and transparency.

By choosing to hold my own feelings and ask for reassurance, the anxiety began to lose its grip. I did not need to manipulate the situation or build restrictive walls to feel safe. Instead, asking for support while the feeling passed helped my nervous system settle while allowing both of us to maintain our autonomy, and keeping my actions aligned with my values.

When we established that I had the capacity to hear about dates, he shared how they went and was honest that he had a great time. If there were times I was exhausted and wanted to wait before hearing updates, he would hold off until I was rested. Sometimes hearing these updates would cause temporary pangs of challenging feelings for me, but alongside them were strong surges of joy and love. It felt incredibly good to me that he was maintaining transparency during a time when many would be tempted to minimize the truth to dampen hard feelings.

The result was a connection that continued to feel honest, secure, and loving.

How this felt for Franz:

When Mollie first brought up that she was having difficult feelings about a new connection of mine, the way she introduced it made a big difference in how things unfolded.

Past relationship experiences have left me sensitive to the feeling of being restricted or subtly manipulated, which often prompted me to react defensively. But because Mollie made it clear from the start that she wasn’t saying I had wronged her, it was easier to listen with compassion without feeling guarded.

Without defensiveness, my next instinct was to try and make her feel better in any way I could. In the past, that urge might have pushed me to start preemptively ‘fixing things’ even though this would have felt bad to me. Here, it helped that Mollie explicitly asked me not to own her feelings or change my behavior.

With that clarity, being supportive felt straightforward: full transparency is my natural inclination, and I was glad it also made her feel more secure knowing I wasn’t trying to hide anything. I took extra care to check if she wanted details before sharing, and her positive reinforcement – even when hearing updates brought up a pang – helped a lot. Giving extra love and reassurance was easy because it came purely from care, rather than trying to make up for something I did wrong.

Overall, while I felt compassion for Mollie’s difficult feelings, they never felt like a threat to our relationship or a request to restrict my other connections. The gremlin thought framing made it easy to provide whatever support was needed while staying authentic to myself.

The reward of sharing gremlin thoughts

Navigating gremlin thoughts requires being vulnerable. It means admitting when the brain is manufacturing a crisis and suggesting actions that directly contradict your core values.

Refusing to hide these spikes helps keep a dynamic resilient. By bringing hard feelings and fears into the open, examining them without assigning blame, and asking for actionable support, the discomfort becomes a tool for connection rather than a wedge.

One last thing: the goal is not necessarily to kill the gremlin. The goal is closeness.

It’s tempting to treat all of this as a procedure for forcing the bad feeling to leave. It isn’t. Plenty of times I’ve shared a gremlin thought, gotten exactly the care I asked for, felt genuinely held, and the gremlin was still there for some time. The gremlin going away is not a prerequisite for achieving closeness. Naming it helps either way, though!

Over time, gremlin thoughts tend to lose their sharpness. Some go away entirely. Others ebb and flow as new experiences bring them back around. Either way, they get easier to meet, until eventually one shows up and you think, oh, it’s you again, and you already know what to do.

A relationship where the messiest, most uncomfortable parts of the brain do not have to be hidden is a relationship where it is possible to rest.

Before you go

What are your stories?

Want to share your own gremlin thought stories? I am working on a community stories post on this topic. If you have had an experience that you think folks could learn from, please share it here!

Additional resources

• Crucial Conversations: this is one of my favorite books of all time. It details why we should bring up the hard conversations rather than let them simmer, and gives a lot of helpful guidance on how to maintain a safe space while you do it!

• Multiamory HHALTDS episode: where they discuss HALT and HHALTDS.

Handle with care

Any framework that gives people language for hard feelings can be turned around and used to shut those feelings down. Here are the ways I can see that happening with gremlin thoughts, whether it’s someone else doing it to you or you doing it to yourself. I’m hoping that by naming it, it will help folks keep an eye out for it in the wild!

You name your own gremlins; nobody names them for you. Gremlin thoughts are yours to name for yourself. The moment someone else informs you that what you’re feeling is a gremlin thought, it has stopped being a tool for getting your hard feelings out and become a tool for getting them dismissed.

Reassurance is not a substitute for repair. Gremlin thoughts come with a built-in “you don’t need to change anything.” That’s the right ask for a gremlin, but it should not become a listener’s default. Watch for the person who dismisses or ignores an ask and reaches for only reassurance.

Watch for preemptive gremlins. Are you calling it a gremlin thought because it is one, or because “gremlin” feels like a friendlier or less frightening word than “concern”? If you find yourself opening with “this is probably just a gremlin thought, but…” every single time, notice it. Ask yourself if you’re brushing off your own feelings.

Be wary of the self-blame trap. I mentioned this above in the diagnosing gremlin thoughts section, but it’s worth restating here. If your default internal narrative is that you’re always in the wrong, this framework will only help you confirm that. Go looking for gremlins and you’ll find them everywhere, including in the places where something real happened. Build self-trust first! Come back to this later. <3

If you see this being weaponized in other ways, please let me know so I can keep this updated!

Franz read this before publication and okayed everything I’ve shared about him.

Art in this post made by Adora.

I share my life with people I call partners, alongside affectionate friendships and relationships that do not fit neatly into standard societal boxes. If I were to try to describe my life and relationships using the traditional relationship escalator, none of the standard labels would apply well. If I had to choose an existing label that best fits me, it would be relationship anarchist.

Some people look at relationship anarchy (RA) from the outside and claim it is an excuse to avoid responsibility or commitment. In practice, I see it as the exact opposite. It means building connections based on active, intentional choices rather than relying on default societal scripts.

The concept of relationship anarchy is not new, and many of the foundational ideas in this piece have been mapped out by others (for example, in Andi Nordgren’s instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy). My aim here is to describe the underlying concepts that drive how I personally approach relating to others and the reality of what relationship anarchy looks like in my day-to-day life.

Because there is too much ground to cover in one post, you will see bracketed placeholders throughout this piece pointing to topics I plan to tackle later. Over time, I look forward to diving into these specific areas with much more depth and personal context.

[Future topics: addressing relationship anarchy myths]

Dismantling the defaults

Building authentic connections requires actively unlearning the societal scripts we inherited. It means replacing the relationship escalator with a desire to understand how our connections function without a script.

Descriptive reality over prescriptive hierarchy

At the foundation of my relationship approach is a rejection of the idea that relationships should be ranked prescriptively.

Being anti-hierarchy does not mean I lack deep commitments. I often share my life with people I refer to as “partners.” We communicate almost daily and are heavily woven into each other’s lives. I also casually date other people and am open to exploring additional connections that may organically arise.

Someone might say “hold on… if you are more closely connected to some people you’re dating than others, isn’t that a hierarchy!??”

There’s an important distinction to be made here between our current reality and the rules we try to impose on the future. Descriptive reality is what is happening. It is a relationship’s current circumstances, like how much time two people spend together or how intertwined their daily lives are right now. It’s a description of the current shape of the connection. And that description can, and likely will, change over time as the people in that relationship evolve.

Prescriptive hierarchy, on the other hand, is a rule. It’s the idea that one relationship must always come first, and that it has inherent power over other relationships.

Designating a primary partner would put an artificial cap on the potential of every other connection. It applies a “first come, first serve” mentality to human connection, as if the person who got to someone earliest owns a permanent stake in their future as well as priority rights.

It’s also worth noting that removing prescriptive hierarchy does not mean forcing equality across all relationships. Because each relationship connection is distinct, the amount you overlap with one person will be different from how you (or they) overlap with someone else.

I strive to keep my relationships free of any prescriptive expectations saying we are entitled to our connection staying exactly that way forever. Rather, our connection is something we both continually contribute to and opt into.

Letting go of the idea that we are entitled to a particular place in our partners’ future creates space for each of us to continue to evolve as people, and for the shape of our connection to shift organically alongside us. When we stop trying to control the ongoing evolution of our connections, we are more accepting of what the other people in our relationships are interested and capable of offering as it changes over time. We are also more capable of cherishing the present.

[Future topics: veto power and gate-keeping, unintentional unethical hierarchy dynamics]

Romance-friendship parity and relationship spectrums

Our society conditions us to force every connection into one of two distinct boxes: “just friends” or “dating.” This creates a rigid binary where connections are either on the escalator toward a traditional partnership, or they are treated as less important.

Platonic connections can be just as central, committed, and profound as romantic ones. When we stop reserving our highest levels of communication, intention, and care exclusively for people we are romantic with, we open ourselves up to more possibilities and a much richer support system.

I try to approach new connections without expectation of where they will land and without forcing them into a predefined category. This is where the “anarchy” comes in: dismantling default relationship scripts in favor of intentional design.

Instead of a single line between friendship and romance, my approach to relationship anarchy views human connection as existing across dozens of different spectrums. Where do I land with someone on a sexual spectrum? What about a life-planning spectrum? How about emotional support?

Instead of finding the perfect label, I often prefer to use a few descriptive sentences to outline what a relationship is. Trying to force a living connection into a neat box usually creates unnecessary friction. The problem isn’t necessarily the idea of using labels; the issue is when we try to force a living connection to fit within a label that may not fit so well, rather than using a label (even if it means coming up with a new one!) that reflects the current descriptive reality. We end up prioritizing the label over the connection itself.

I still often use the label “partner” as a linguistic shorthand for external conciseness and clarity, even while knowing it doesn’t describe the full descriptive reality. Other times, I abandon standard categories altogether and come up with labels that fit best, often with the collaboration of the other person. For example, I have a “Seattle person” and an “Australia person”. And I once had a girlfriend that preferred being referred to and introduced as my “lover”.

You may notice I also use the word “partner” throughout this post. The label itself isn’t important; feel free to replace it in your head with whatever label you like!

[Future topics: what is romance anyways?, The spectrums of human connection, the rewards of a friendship-first approach]

Building a communal web of relationships

The end result is a communal web of relationships. When we refrain from funneling every need into one person or prescribing what each and every person in our lives will mean to us, we build a life that is fundamentally more resilient.

The standard relationship script dictates that we find a romantic partner, move in together, and allow them to default into becoming our primary source of domestic and social support. Our sense of emotional worth would come primarily from that central romantic relationship, creating a huge amount of dependence on that specific connection. If we look at the hierarchy from that perspective, it’s easy to see how this model of relying heavily on one person creates a fragile system. It turns a romantic relationship into a single point of failure.

As we move toward anarchy by opting into a variety of connections across various relational spectrums, we replace obligations with organic community and support. We stop demanding that one partner bear the weight of our entire emotional world, and instead allow a diverse network of people to show up for us exactly as they are capable.

Tools that make it all work

Removing default rules leaves a gap that must be filled with intentional behavior and an interest in continuing to build the emotional and communication skills that make it all work.

Saying the quiet parts out loud, especially when it’s hard

Existing in a space without scripts requires a willingness to state desires explicitly and boundaries out loud. If our level of closeness is to be dictated by who we are and what we value, we have to have a means of sharing that. A commitment to transparency and direct communication is required.

Honesty isn’t just a prerequisite for relationship anarchy. Without a baseline of honesty, we cannot be truly close to someone, regardless of the relationship style. Without a commitment to the truth, partners end up with a false foundation built on assumptions, projection, and incomplete information. It can also lead to a situation where people are walking on eggshells rather than communicating honestly.

But in RA configurations, honesty is especially important because there is no default script or relationship escalator to fall back on. When we remove societal obligations, the connection survives entirely on the organic intersection of what we both actively want and have the capacity to give. If we are not radically honest about what those wants and capacities are, we end up building a connection with a fictional version of each other.

I heavily prioritize clarity over comfort. When someone tells me what they assume I want to hear instead of the truth, they are actively denying me the one thing I desire: the reality of the situation. I want the truth, even if it is uncomfortable or difficult for me to hear.

Unfortunately, this is not how most people behave. It is quite common to make decisions for the other person about whether or not they can handle the truth. We can sometimes assume that because honesty might make someone feel bad, it is better to withhold it.

For many, this practice requires actively reprogramming one’s brain to view hard truths as a positive thing rather than a threat. This can take work, but the alternative is committing to a fantasy. When you welcome the uncomfortable truth, you stop wasting energy managing illusions and restore your agency to make decisions based on honest reality.

[Future topics: Valuing truth over comfort, frictions vs fights / working through conflicts as collaborations, more on direct communication]

Values-aligned action over emotional reactivity

If we want to navigate relationships without relying on default scripts, developing emotional intelligence, and the ability to recognize the disparity between our immediate feelings and our logical thoughts, is a requirement.

I have been in the position before where I felt very intense anxiety and insecurity relating to a partner dating someone new. One example was during a time where I was depressed, burnt out, and pretty anxious in general. And that anxiety seemed to spill over everything, including my partner’s new connections.

An “easy out” here, and I think a way out that unfortunately many choose, would have been to ask for that partner to stop seeing the new person; however, I also knew that would have completely misaligned with my values and what the rational me wanted. Additionally, I knew that by pulling that ripcord, I would have robbed myself of the chance to examine my own insecurities, sit with the friction, and build my emotional resilience.

The reality is that sometimes feelings just feel bad. It is a vital relationship skill to understand the difference between a feeling simply hurting and a feeling indicating that something is actively wrong.

When in the thick of a panic response, it is easy to let anxiety dictate our actions. But if we have a clear sense of what our values are and how we want to show up, we can use those values as an anchor. Instead of requiring a partner to manage our emotional discomfort, we can choose to acknowledge the gap between our feelings and our values / logic.

In summary, the following things are extremely important for building connections rooted in autonomy: clarity about our values, a willingness to take note of when our emotions misalign with those values, and a genuine interest in growing through the discomfort that we feel when that misalignment happens. At the same time, we must be careful not to intellectualize away the emotions that are trying to protect us. If a feeling arises in response to a direct boundary violation, it is an alarm bell, not a growing pain. This practice is a diagnostic tool to check our internal alignment, not a mandate to ignore legitimate harm.

[Future topic: Gremlin thoughts: when you feel bad and nobody did anything wrong]

Assessing the overlap and opting in

Using the lens of honesty, I think about every connection as a Venn diagram. One circle encompasses my life, and the other belongs to the person I am relating to. The question is: where do those circles overlap?

The overlap is determined by finding that honest shared space. How do we both want to relate? What do we both have the capacity for? Where do we want to live? If one person has an interest in moving into a shared community house, but the other needs their own apartment to recharge, that’s not in the overlap. And that’s ok!

Finding this overlap requires us to communicate our needs and boundaries. And it is important for us to share these with our partner, as they will not necessarily intuit them. These are not default obligations inherited from a relationship label. They are specific requests. Either the other person is able and willing to meet the needs and hold the boundaries, or they are not. If they are not, then there may be particular types of relationships that are not available between those two people.

We must also be careful not to index too far on the comfort of others while searching for this overlap. If we constantly accommodate someone else’s anxieties or bend our own boundaries, we are no longer finding an honest overlap. We are simply masking a fundamental incompatibility and prolonging a dynamic that does not work.

[Future topics: the different types of “want”, needs vs wants, boundaries vs rules, an exploration of my needs within committed romantic relationships]

It’s got to be optional

At the core of this opt-in ethos is that each connection has got to be optional. When my partners and I are not trapped by the invisible scripts and obligations that usually come attached to labels, we stay because we want to be there. That makes staying infinitely more meaningful.

For example, I might think towards a partner: I love you, and I deeply like you, but I do not need you to fill a preconceived space or play a specific role in my life. And what I want is to find the connection that feels good for both of us. I want connections fed by a real desire to be there, not by anyone showing up strictly out of obligation.

In our culture, we are often taught that needing someone (being “incomplete” without them) is the highest form of romance. However, this sentiment turns people into need-meeting machines. If my ability to function or feel stable relies on a specific partner, then my choice to be with them is not fully free. It is a requirement for my own stability. It also creates an ultimatum and an obligation on the other person to maintain the connection as it is, or else I will fall apart. By removing “need” from the foundation, the chosen overlap (the “want”) becomes much more powerful. When a “no” is an option, the “yeses” mean so much more.

This does not mean we operate without care or that we cannot rely on our partners during hard times. It means our connections are built on active choices rather than desperate requirements.

Wanting to share your daily life with someone is fundamentally different from owing them your default availability or them owing you theirs. It is not about being uncommitted. It is about commitment that is 100% authentic, present, and chosen by both parties.

[Future topics: loving fully without grasping at outcomes, scarcity vs abundance mindset, the fellow travelers approach to the future, approaches to bringing up concerns, adjusting relationships without ending them]

Final thoughts

At its heart, this approach to relating is not about avoiding the hard work of deep connection. In fact, I feel that Relationship Anarchy allows for more robust versions of commitment because it is built on intentional choice rather than a script. By refusing to limit connections with predefined labels, we build something far more stable: dynamics with the room to become exactly what works best for all involved, even when finding that overlap takes effort.

Art in this post made by Adora.

All of us have labels that we use to describe ourselves. Some labels I use to describe myself are: pansexual, queer, polyamorous, relationship anarchist. I describe myself as being pansexual because I am unconcerned with gender labels when evaluating to who I am attracted; I consider myself a relationship anarchist because I am unconcerned with placing a label on relationships, am open to relationships falling wherever they may land on a relationship spectrum, and don’t necessarily place romantic relationships as more important than strong friendships. So in a way even labeling myself as pansexual or a relationship anarchist feels pretty funny to me, as the labels themselves nod to my acknowledgement of how limiting labeling can be!

I didn't always understand these things about myself. In fact, I didn't even learn some of these words/phrases—like pansexual and relationship anarchy—until late into my 20s or early 30s. My understanding of how I view myself has been a slow and steady evolution. It has luckily not been a painful journey, I think largely due to my family’s unconditional love, respect, and “whatever makes you happy” attitude, as well my own personal acceptance of an evolving self.

I have a loving family who I knew wouldn’t be phased by any of these revelations. As expected, I was met warmly with responses that had the undertones of “If you are happy, I am happy for you! <3”. When I told my dad I started seeing a woman for the first time, he waited for me to finish telling him about the relationship and then responded with “I may be mistaken, but I think this is the first time you’ve told me about a woman, is that right?” When I responded with a “yup!”, he came back with, “I thought so! Tell me about her. What does she do?”. ...I acknowledge I am incredibly privileged in this respect, and that not everyone has this support, which is such a shame. I feel so lucky to have a family that doesn’t make me second guess who I am.

I also do my best to be relatively open to changing (or the view of myself changing). The people we think we are when we are 18 will not necessarily be the people we are (or will view ourselves as) when we are 30, 50, and so on. We’re constantly changing, understanding ourselves better, distancing ourselves from conforming to what other people want us to be, and updating our internal algorithms that help us interpret how we see ourselves and how we interact with the world around us. By being open to the fact that we are complex, always changing beings, and being open to our own emotional and personal evolution, we will be more accepting of ourselves as we come into our own, discover new views from which to see the world, and understand ourselves better.

There are many for which their coming out journey was—or will be—painful and agonizing, and may even cause estrangement from family. But if we accept our family and friends for the people they are, it doesn’t have to be this way! I see Pride month as being about love and acceptance. Practicing acceptance and respect for others, the fact that we all choose to live our lives a little differently, and celebrating those differences.

It is important that we also make sure to point this acceptance inward. Accept ourselves as we are, give ourselves room to change and grow—or for our understanding of ourselves to change and grow—do our best to understand these changes, and love ourselves along the way. 💜

I am a relationship anarchist. I want people to be with me and near me because they truly want to and not because they feel an obligation, and I want to show others the same respect. The transition from monogamy to relationship anarchy has been taking place for a while now - slowly at first, but I feel that I’ve really come into my own the past couple years. I think this transition has helped me to become the best version of myself.

I’m less dependent on other people / more comfortable being alone. At the same time, my relationships are more fulfilling than in my monogamous days. Ridding myself of the need to place expectations and obligations on other people has made me the happiest I’ve ever been. It leaves people to be exactly what they’re capable of being to me and in the amounts they’re able.

I have multiple people who could be called partners who I love in different ways and for different reasons. I have many friends, some of which are so close to me and who I snuggle at such a frequency that it’s hard to know where the line between friends and dating is and whether we’ve crossed it. But the beauty is—and the point is—it just doesn’t matter. When I’m not worried about where I am on some relationship spectrum with someone, I’m more capable of enjoying what it is that we have, regardless of what label might be thrust upon it.

I feel lucky to be surrounded by loving people. People who are kind and respectful. People who are able to have intense conversations without starting a fight. People who love (or really like!) me for me and only ask for the friendship, intimacy, and time that I am capable and willing to give them. People who love to snuggle!

I feel like a rich lady. :)

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