Free More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory by Franklin Veaux

threatening to your partner's emotional or physical health. Your partner deserves to have a choice about how they want to participate in a relationship with you given the new information. Examples might be sexual activity with others, drug use, acquisition or use of weapons, and violent impulses or behavior. Anything you know or suspect might be a deal-breaker should be disclosed. You cannot force someone to make the choice you want them to make, and if you lie or withhold information, you deny them the ability to know there was a choice to be made.
    When people talk about dishonesty, often it's in the context of uttering falsehoods. By the simplest definition, a lie is a statement that is factually untrue. But there are other kinds of lies. For example, Franklin has spoken to a married woman cheating on her husband who said, "I'm not lying to him, because I'm not telling him that I'm being faithful!" In truth, she was lying: she was concealing information that, if he knew about it, would have changed his assessment of their relationship. When we talk about honesty in this book, we will do so from the position that a lie of omission is still a lie.
    Sometimes, when confronted with the notion of a lie of omission, people say, "Not mentioning something isn't a lie. I don't tell my partner every time I use the bathroom, and that's not lying!" That brings us to the idea of relevance. An omission is a lie when it is calculated to conceal information that, were it known to the other party, would be materially relevant to her. Failing to tell your partner how long it took to brush your teeth isn't a lie of omission. Failing to tell your partner you're having sex with the pool man is.
     
    Agency is also intertwined with consent. Many people have been taught that if we are empowered to make our own choices—to have agency—we will become monsters, so we must surrender some of our decision-making power to external authority (which is somehow magically proof against becoming monstrous). This idea permeates society, but also seems to inform how we build our own intimate relationships. Without engaging in a debate about whether people are fundamentally good or bad (or option C), we ask you to look at your partners and ask yourself if you respect their ability to choose—even if a choice hurts you, even if it's not what you would choose—because we cannot consent if we do not have a choice.
    Empowering people to make their own choices is actually the best way to have our own needs met. People who feel disempowered can become dangerous. Communicating our needs, and equipping others to meet them, succeeds more often than attempting to restrict or coerce another into meeting them. (We talk more in chapter 13 about what we mean by "empowerment.")
    WHEN IT'S HARD TO ACT ETHICALLY
    Embracing polyamory may well expose you to a great deal more uncertainty and change than people in monogamous relationships experience. Every new relationship is a potential game changer . Every new relationship might change your life. And that's a good thing, right? Picture your best relationships. Can you think of any truly awesome relationship that didn't change your life in some important way? The first time you had a long-term partner, did it change things for you? The first time you fell in love, and had that love reciprocated, did it change things for you? Every person you become involved with stands a good chance of changing your life in a big or small way. If that weren't the case, well, what would be the point? The same goes for your partners and the new people they become involved with—and when their lives change, so will yours.
    Change is scary for a lot of people, and so preparing for poly relationships in many ways is about assessing and improving your ability to handle change. Even just thinking about it, taking a deep breath and saying, "Yep, I know my life is about to change" is a huge step toward preparing yourself to live polyamorously.
    In