Franklin Veaux Quotes & Sayings

You'll need courage because polyamorous relationships can be scary. Loving other people without a script is scary. Allowing the people you love to make their own choices without controlling them is scary. The kind of courage we're talking about involves being willing to let go of guarantees - and love and trust your partners anyway. — Franklin Veaux

If you need a relationship to complete you, get a dog. — Franklin Veaux

STARTING THE JOURNEY The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON — Franklin Veaux

Anyone should be able to reopen discussions about an agreement at any time. It helps to think of agreements as mutable, organic things that will be revisited and modified as people grow and relationships change. When we see these structures as static, they can make relationships less rather than more stable, because they will fail to adapt to change...sometimes spectaculary.
A good relationship is not something you have, it's something you do. Over and over, the best, happiest relationships we have seen and been involved in are those whose members are constantly willing to renegociate the goundwork beneath them. In fact, some people set periodic dates in their calendar when they will review their relationship agreements with each other to make sure they're still working and see if anything needs to change. — Franklin Veaux

Some poly lesbians find it especially difficult to come out in their communities, because lesbian couples have fought so hard to gain social recognition that they are wary of anything that seems to risk undermining that recognition. The small size of such communities can make it difficult for some gays and lesbians to have the same freedom of choice and expectations of privacy that cisgender, heterosexual people enjoy. ("Anyone can know except my softball team!" is something we've heard more than once - really! - and on opposite sides of North America.) We've also heard from trans people who have been told that polyamory "de-legitimizes" them by preventing them from finding "true" intimacy. Franklin has heard people say polyamory is something that trans people settle for when they can't find "real" relationships of their own. — Franklin Veaux

It's possible to be single and poly. It's possible to have only one partner and be poly. If your intention is to remain open to the possibility of multiple romantic relationships, you are polyamorous regardless of your current relationship status. Indeed, if polyamory is part of your identity (for some people, it is; for others, it isn't), you might be in a monogamous relationship and still be poly. — Franklin Veaux

Having a brilliant life means going outside your comfort zone. And sometimes discomfort shows us ways we can improve. — Franklin Veaux

when you seek to reduce risk by imposing constraints on other people's behavior, you transfer that risk onto others. By doing this you say, "I want to explore polyamory but I don't want to take this risk, so I will transfer it onto any new partners, by asking them to be open and vulnerable while also limiting how much they are allowed to advocate for their own needs. — Franklin Veaux

We know we're expecting a great deal of courage by suggesting that you start exploring polyamory without relying on rules to feel safe. It does seem that the secret to healthy, dynamic relationships keeps coming back to courage. Forget training wheels. Forget trying to figure the right rules that will keep you safe forever ; there is no safe forever. Instead, go into the world seeking to threat others with compassion whenever you touch them. Try to leave people better than when you found them. Communicate your needs. Understand and advocate for you boundaries. And look for other people who will do the same. Trust them when they say they love you; where communication and compassion exist, you don't need rules to keep you safe. We don't learn how to be compassionate by disenfranchising other people; we learn how to be compassionate by practicing compassion. — Franklin Veaux

Be flexible. Be compassionate. Rules can never cure insecurity. Integrity matters. Never try to script what your relationships will look like. Love is abundant. Compatibility matters. You cannot sacrifice your happiness for that of another. Own your own shit. Admit when you fuck up. Forgive when others fuck up. Don't try to find people to stuff into the empty spaces in your life; instead, make spaces for the people in your life. If you need a relationship to complete you, get a dog. It is almost impossible to be loving or compassionate when all you feel is fear of loss. Trust that your partners want to be with you, and that if given the freedom to do anything they please, they will choose to cherish and support you. Most relationship problems can be avoided by good partner selection. Nobody can give you security or self-esteem; you have to build that yourself. — Franklin Veaux

The assumption lurking beneath a desire for hierarchy is that we can't really trust our partners to act well without a set of rules. That without a formal ranking to remind our partners that we come first, we will lose our status, lose the things we most value about our relationship, lose our sense of security, or even lose the relationship entirely. But as we've said before, if your partner can't be trusted to work with you on your needs when asked, she probably can't be trusted to follow rules. — Franklin Veaux

Talk about what you need and how your partner can help you, — Franklin Veaux

Polyamory can feel threatening because it upsets our fairy-tale assumption that the right partner will keep us safe from change. Polyamory introduces the prospect of chaos and uncertainty into what's supposed to be a straightforward progression to bliss. But a healthy relationship must first of all be resilient, able to respond to the changes and complexity life brings. Nor is happiness actually a state of being. It is a process, a side effect of doing other things. The fairy tale tells us that with the right partner, happiness just happens. But happiness is something we re-create every day. And it comes more from our outlook than from the things around us. — Franklin Veaux

Things will go wrong. You and your partners will make mistakes. People will get hurt. To paraphrase Voltaire, we are all born of frailty and error. What happens afterward depends on how capable we are to forgive one another for our errors, handle the consequences with grace and dignity, and learn from our mistakes. — Franklin Veaux

The difference between "boundaries we set for ourselves" and "rules we place on someone else" might just seem like one of semantics, but it is profound. Rules tend to come from the idea that it's acceptable, or even desirable, for you to control someone else's behavior, or for someone else to control yours. Boundaries derive from the idea that the only person you really control is yourself. — Franklin Veaux

A sense of worth is critical to counteracting the scarcity model of love and life. If we do not believe in our worth, we become disempowered, unable to advocate for our needs. We do not see or embrace the love that is actually around us in our lives. — Franklin Veaux

a person who has already shown a willingness to cheat in a monogamous relationship may well cheat in a polyfidelitous relationship. — Franklin Veaux

Ask for what you need Asking — Franklin Veaux

Above all else, trust that you don't have to control your partner, because your partner, given the freedom to do anything, will want to cherish and support you. And always, always move in the direction of greatest courage, toward the best possible version of yourself. Strong, — Franklin Veaux

But while it is often necessary to make sacrifices of time, short-term gratification or non-essential desires for the long-term benefit of a relationship (or a partner), it is never desirable to sacrifice your self for a relationship. — Franklin Veaux

There is no yardstick for measuring love; nevermind that the heart doesn't follow rules — Franklin Veaux

The most immediate is that if you tell your partner "It's okay to ask for anything you want," it better be true. If you're not prepared to make it safe for your partner to open up to you, he won't. Because he'll feel he can't. — Franklin Veaux

Almost always, jealousy is rooted in some sort of fear: of abandonment, of being replaced, of losing the attention of someone you love, of being alone. Jealousy isn't really about the person you feel jealous of. It's about you: your feeling that you might lose something precious. — Franklin Veaux

is critical for that relationship to be consensual. You must give your partner the opportunity to make an informed decision to be in a relationship with you. If you lie or withhold critical information, you remove your partner's ability to consent to be in the relationship. — Franklin Veaux

We were so busy thinking about protecting ourselves that we didn't think about the happiness of anyone else who might become involved with us. As a result, our rules focused on our own relationship. We thought that if we preserved the relationship between the two of us, the "core relationship," we were doing the right thing. We never considered that rules that worked for us might not work for the other people we would come to love, and we certainly never looked at our relationship from their perspective. — Franklin Veaux