Tag Archives: Transparency

Non-Hierarchical Polyamory Requires Strong Personal Boundaries

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Polyamory, when practiced without hierarchy, can be liberating.
No primaries calling the shots. No pecking order. Just grown-up humans building intentional relationships.

But freedom doesn’t mean chaos. And connection doesn’t require constant visibility.

This is a guide to practicing non-hierarchical polyamory with strong personal boundaries – for people who believe in honesty, not overexposure; in love, not surveillance; and in building sustainable relationships that don’t burn everyone out.

🔸 Truth Is Enough

“No, I’m not available tonight.”
That’s the truth. Full stop. It doesn’t need a follow-up essay.

In a culture that glorifies radical transparency, there’s pressure to explain yourself constantly –
❓Who you’re with
❓What you’re doing
❓Why someone else got your time

That’s not truth. That’s emotional bookkeeping.

In this model, truth means what someone needs to understand you – not every detail of your personal life. You are not a contestant in someone’s ranking system. You’re a whole person. Privacy is not betrayal.

🔸 Honesty Isn’t a Weapon

Honesty matters – but, not all honesty is created equal.

Too often, “radical honesty” becomes an excuse to dump emotional weight without care.
Let’s call it what it is: emotional discharge without consent.

Instead, ask:

  • Is this honest and kind?
  • Is the timing respectful?
  • Has the other person consented to this level of openness?

🗝 Good honesty is relational, not performative.
If it’s not asked for, or if it’s about your anxiety more than their needs, maybe it’s not time to say it.

🔸 Transparency Is a Choice, Not a Virtue

In some poly circles, transparency becomes a tool for control:

  • 🗓 Shared calendars turned into scoreboards
  • 🕵️ “Open access” used to snoop
  • 📢 Disclosures demanded to prove loyalty

This isn’t transparency. It’s surveillance.

In this framework, transparency is always opt-in and consent-based.
It’s a tool, not a virtue. Use it where it builds connection – not resentment.

🔸 Discretion Is an Act of Love

Discretion doesn’t mean secrecy. It means respecting privacy with care.

  • 💬 Not everyone wants to know everything.
  • 👂 Not every detail needs to be shared.
  • 🛡 And not all relationships want to be laid bare.

Discretion is choosing grace over total access.
It’s knowing how to protect dignity while staying honest.

🔸 Boundaries Make Freedom Sustainable

In non-hierarchical poly, where nothing is pre-defined, boundaries are your framework.
They’re not about control. They’re about clarity.

✒️ Examples of healthy boundaries:

  • “I need 24 hours’ notice before committing to plans.”
  • “I don’t share who I’m seeing unless it’s relevant.”
  • “I’m not available for emotional processing late at night.”

A boundary is how you take care of yourself – and tell others how to love you well.
🛠 It’s not a wall. It’s a tool.

🔸 Emotional Self-Regulation: Your Feelings, Your Job

You will feel things: jealousy, rejection, insecurity. That’s real.
But what you do with those feelings? That’s what makes or breaks your dynamic.

💡 Emotional self-regulation means:

  • Not reacting from your most triggered state
  • Asking for support, not compliance
  • Taking responsibility for your emotional landscape

Instead of:
❌ “Why didn’t you choose me?”
Try:
✅ “I’m feeling vulnerable – could we plan some time together?”

You’re allowed to feel. You’re just not entitled to offload your reaction onto someone else.

🔸 You Don’t Owe 24/7 Access

Say it again:
You don’t owe constant availability.

You can:

  • Say no
  • Ask for time
  • Turn off your phone
  • Decline a request without guilt

Your value doesn’t come from how available you are.
It comes from how authentic you are – even in saying no.

🔸 Build the Polyamory You Can Sustain

This is non-hierarchical polyamory for grown-ups.
It works best when it’s:

  • ✨ Rooted in respect
  • 🛠 Framed with boundaries
  • ❤️ Practiced with care
  • 🕊 Protected with discretion

You don’t need more rules. You need more self-awareness.

And if you’re constantly explaining yourself, justifying your schedule, or sharing things just to soothe someone else’s anxiety –
That’s not polyamory. That’s a pressure cooker.

🖋 Final Thought

You can choose transparency.
You can practice honesty.
You can love widely and deeply.

But only if those things are in service of connection – not control.

This is the polyamory of people who know themselves.
People who protect their peace.
People who choose love, and freedom, with care.

Honesty vs Transparency

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In my world, there is a strong push towards total interpersonal transparency these days. It’s a hard marketing sell by the “authentic living” leadership and coaching community – “Tell it all, be proactive, share everything, spare no detail, be vulnerable”.  As you can imagine, this doesn’t sit well with me, and while I am all for honest, open, clear and direct communication, I am also for keeping parts of my life private, and the lives of my close intimate friends and partners too. 

As I evolve and mature, it’s becoming easier to maintain my personal boundaries, although they are often seen by the uninitiated as rules, and please remember this is my social circle, not necessarily my close or particular friends, and yes, there is a difference. Before moving on to exploring the difference between honesty and transparency, let’s do a quick side bar, and clear up personal boundaries vs rules. 

My Personal Boundaries are empowering and enforceable because they are all about my actions, my choices, and there are consequences for others; whereas Rules are disempowering and often unenforceable, because they are about you and therefore out of my control. Perhaps I need to write a dedicated post of this subject. I will think more!  

As I have said, my privacy is very important to me, as is the privacy of my partners and particular friends, so for me the difference between honesty and transparency is that honesty is what I share with people as my perceived truth, whereas transparency is what others feel they need to know about me.  A good example of this would be how we share our tombstone data.  I like to share the minimum possible such a name, address, email and perhaps phone number (this is honesty), whereas many social media apps want all of the above plus DoB, hair colour, gender and inside leg measurement (for sake of transparency).  For me, the issue is that, if you’re transparent, you may not succeed in educating people as to what they really need to learn about you, whereas my truth is my truth and it informs people about my reality. When I am accused of being secretive, I am often simply exercising my right to privacy. People frequently dress up their invasive demands for information about my life as a need for “full transparency and disclosure”.  

This happened this week, when someone asked me why I wasn’t willing to attend a social event? I had already answered that I wasn’t available, and yet they pushed for full transparency demanding more disclosure, including what exactly I was doing with my time and with whom? My honesty was that I wasn’t available, and that’s a hard “No”, which is all they really needed to understand to access my truth; whereas if I had fully disclosed how I was engaged during that time, this information would have opened up a conversation about social and friendship priorities, which I wasn’t prepared to explore. My choices are my choices!    

There is a concept called a Disclosure Agreement that can be made with partners and particular friends about what we will and will not disclose about our relationships with other people. Perhaps it’s time for this concept to become a more common practice, especially in the days of megacorporation-controlled social media where anything and everything can be disclosed and shared on the InterWeb in an instant?