Expected Imbalance

 There's a lot of ways to go about being poly.  The process of having multiple partners means that you have an infinite number of factors to try and go about in a way that makes everyone happy.  While there's certainly some ways that are wrong to go about it, there's no one way that's exactly right.

It was a good while back now, but it had me thinking about the idea of hierarchical poly.  Giving one partner a position and title different from another, changing levels of priority and expectation between them.  And while it's certainly not wrong, there are some people that don't like it, because they don't like that level of comparison or feeling less than anyone else.

But, I think that those places will sort of happen with any polycule over time.  The demands of our lives are different, and so we seek varying things from each of our partners.  Trying to give each person the time and focus of a primary partner would take every bit of our days, leaving no time to ourselves.  The only way to manage that would be if you treated everyone like a more secondary type partner, only giving them a small amount of your time, and then you'd need to try and make sure you didn't naturally give one any more than any other.

That's what happens though.  Eventually we make a level of connection that makes one stick out as a partner to live with, or that we simply want to see more, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Comparatively, trying to meet the needs of each partner may simply create different places within itself.  One partner may mainly need conversation, while others need in person time more often.  There's nothing wrong with forming these roles, especially when they develop organically, and we're honest about them coming about.

Even with my having other partners, I try not to say that I would care about any partner more than any other, but I've consistently said that Lux is my primary partner, and made sure to prioritize him whenever necessary.  It doesn't make anyone else less than, but emphasizes that he's still important to me, no matter how many other partners I have.

When it comes down to it, there's only small variation on how we word things in order to create healthy relationships.