4 Ways to Be a Good Poly Metamour

Whether they’re mine or yours, it’s good to have metamours. But for the newly initiated here, you might be asking: What’s a metamour?

In polyamory, your partners can be with other people—it’s not just a one-on-one thing. And if a partner already has a partner when you meet them, and they want to get with you anyways? Then my friend, you have just gained a metamour!

What Is a Metamour?

A metamour is the non-sexual partner connected to your polyamorous sexual partner.

This person your partner is with is someone who might be directly in your life. But even if they’re not, you are still all aware of each other because that’s just what ethical polyamory practices. So, here’s how you keep being the best supportive metamour you can be.

Read: How to Practice Ethical Non-Monogamy

4 Ways to Be a Good Poly Metamour

1. Don’t try to take up your partner’s time with their partner.

Not only is it rude, whether it’s from your partner’s partner or from your partner alone, but it’s also a selfish and manipulative action that no healthy poly relationship should practice. If you want to be a good person, don’t ****block dates that your partner has with their partner! Let them breathe, make memories, and have their time… in healthy balance with the time you spend with your partner.

Read: Ways to Show Love for Your Metamour

And don’t do that thing people sometimes do when you both have time scheduled together on the same day. You might be hanging with them first but you lounge, laze, and lollygag your ass an extra half hour or s0 with your partner, to make them late for their date. That’s not being a good metamour at all. Bad Poly 101!

2. Don’t force or avoid a time for everyone to meet.

Will you all hang out together at some cool-ass social gathering? Nobody knows. But one thing you should know is that it won’t be good for the relationship future if you think it has to happen immediately, and you force a coffee date together with everyone in the first few days of you becoming a metamour. That’s just not necessary or even healthy.

Let things come together naturally, and it will feel right when you all are hanging out in the park and life is just chill because your schedules naturally aligned and nobody felt pressure to spend time with each other. And on the other hand, don’t run away from the opportunities for six months either. Being a metamour is cool and actually a goal for healthy poly people. Be one of those folks!

3. Find common ground to communicate on when you’re all together.

Maybe the first conversation won’t be about the thing you do with your shared partner, ha ha. Not usually, nah. Things aren’t that raw and evolved with many couples, but I’ve kinda been that person sometimes, where we DO laugh about the shared taste we have in sexual partners. Conversations are usually more along the lines of sports, local events, sexual politics, music and other arts—common interests you share.

Just try to talk to them about something more memorable than the weather when you meet up. Metamours are supposed to be friendly, at least in the poly world we aim for.

4. Don’t complain to your partner about their partner.

It’s in poor taste to complain about your partner’s partner to your partner! IF you have a problem with your metamour, then bring it up as respectfully as you can, and don’t do anything rash or selfish like ask your partner to break up with them for you, or anything of that nature. That’s not cool at all.

There’s a way to discuss concerns you may have with your partner’s partner, and if you’re very honorable and kind, then you can discuss behavior that you are not in agreement with, without slandering the actual person your poly partner is with. This is my solution for the situation, and it can be navigated with compassion and empathy.

Read: How to Handle a Challenging Metamour

So yeah, if you can do those things, you are well on your way to being a good metamour in a good polyamorous relationship, and you will have the best of all worlds at your fingertips—with lovers galore and friends galore too!

xoxo
Adhimu “Malcolm Lovejoy” Stewart