The Polyamory Dating Guide

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What This Book Contains

Realizing that you are polyamorous can be a wonderful insight. It may have felt like a solution to a long-term awareness that you never fit in with monogamous models. Or it could’ve been a team decision that you have more than enough love to include others. Or perhaps it’s something you’ve known from the moment you started to be interested in romance. 

This book is about finding other people who share your view of polyamory and want to share it with you.

After all, just because you identify as polyamorous doesn’t mean the poly world suddenly opens up and people are climbing over themselves, saying, Me too, let’s be some combination of multiple-loving humans together! Instead, this can be more challenging than it is on a monogamous path. Finding like-minded people, connecting to those people, communicating your interests and desires, and simply beginning dating are still present and involve more people and more personalities.

It’s our intent that this book helps polyamorous people to successfully find people to date (and for them to find you) and, once you find them, to communicate in a fun and friendly way that lets them know you’re interested. Initially we’ll break it down from a perspective of online dating and in-person dating. But don’t think of dating as online or real time; instead, think of it as an and. Although you might do most of your looking for people online, you’ll want to meet with them in real time at some point! And if you mainly meet people at events or other real-time situations, then keeping in touch and building that relationship online is an important skill. 

A few are approaching this as an established couple and exploring polyamory from that perspective. If this is you, great — we’ll talk about that in later chapters, as well as why some people don’t approve of doing polyamory as a couple (see terminology for unicorns and unicorn hunting), and how to move forward in an ethical and appropriate manner. 

Finally, we’ll include how to date as an introvert, dating during a pandemic, and lots more. 

This book can be read in a classic manner, front to back, and that may be wise, as some sections build upon others (you might want to read how to create a profile prior to online dating apps, for example). But if you’re interested in a specific area, by all means, jump ahead. We’d advise you at least glance at the terminology section and how this book is written to ease understanding along the way. 

Terminology

This brief section is about words and definitions. The polyamory community is quickly growing, and so is the vocabulary around it.  So, take a moment and make sure that when someone asks you if you’re looking to join a throuple or if you’re just cruising, you know what your answer means. 

Here's a caveat to this, though: language and definitions are fluid. Meaning that a word like queer was a slur some years ago and now can be used as an identifier. Or the term open relationship might mean polyamorous to some people but swinging to another. Further, many of us have our own attachment to what’s the appropriate or respectful or correct term to use today.  The term poly as a shorthand way to say polyamory is considered inappropriate to some people, as it could be offensive to Polynesian people. Other people say that we should be aware of not just the word but the intent of the message. We (the authors) have a variety of partners who prefer a mix of she/he/they and others, so that’s what we use.

We hope you’ll understand that our desire for our language is to be clear, concise, but most of all, to reflect how we actually speak. 

Dating  - You, either as one person or more, are actively trying to meet people to spend some form of romantic or intimate time with. You’ll hear lots more about this throughout the book.

Flirting - The action of communicating with another person/people in a style that expresses your interest in them—in this case, a romantic or intimate interest. Of course, our flirting book expands on this a lot, but you’ll find some tips and ideas through this book to assist with dating. 

Monogamy - One person with one other person, in a committed relationship, normally followed by words like forever and ever and til death do us part. No other romantic or intimate (or sexual) relationships except with that one person. 

Non-Monogamy - If you’re not following the course of monogamy, then welcome to non-monogamy. This isn’t just polyamory, but any situations where you have romantic or sexual relationships with more than one person. This includes cheating—but don’t take that to mean cheating and polyamory are the same thing. Let's add the word ethical. 

Ethical Non-Monogamy - By adding one word, ethical, the difference in our meaning is very significant. Ethical non-monogamy adds honesty and consent to our non-monogamy. Thus, swinging, polyamory, casual hookups, sending love poems to your four love interests, and more. As long as everyone involved is aware as they expect to be and has a clear understanding of what’s happening, you’ve got ethical non-monogamy. And since by default cheating includes lying and hiding, it isn’t part of the ethical non-monogamy picture. 

Polyamory - Polyamory is a form of ethical non-monogamy. Where it’s different from other types (such as swinging, for example) is that it includes some level of romantic love. Polyamory is the belief that you can be romantically involved with more than one person and do so in a way that those involved are aware of each other and consent to those relationships, that those relationships can be healthy and enjoyable. Another notable difference between polyamory and swinging is that polyamory may or may not involve sex. Swinging without sex is...well, generally considered a poor job of swinging! 

Polyam - A synonym for polyamorous.

Compersion - Often heard in polyamorous circles, it’s the state of feeling joy at your partner's joy. An example is when your partner has just come back from a date and they have that sly smile that says it went really well. And you feel good for them simply because they feel good. That is compersion (our other polyamory book, The Polyamory Toolkit, spends a fair amount of time on questions around compersion, such as How can I learn to have some?).

Throuple - A relationship of three people who are in equal status to each other. It’s also a threesome in golf. 

Cruising - The process of searching in public places for sexual partners. The term is most often used by gay men but not exclusively.  

It’s worth pointing out that this book has nothing to do with cruising or getting laid or finding hotties to bang. Although sex might be a side effect of dating, this book isn’t about that. 

Unicorn/Unicorn Hunting - In fantasy literature, a unicorn is a rare mythical being that everyone searches for but is very hard to find. The term has been adopted in polyamory to describe a female-identifying bisexual person who’s willing to join an existing couple. This includes a presumption that this person will become involved with both members of that couple and become their third. The male version of a unicorn is a dragon or mustang. 

Couples who seek a unicorn as described above are called Unicorn Hunters. 

It’s as simple as the above for some polyam people; for others, they have very strong negative views on anything related to unicorn hunting. You’ll find groups (both online and in real-time) that have strict rules around it. 

Not all couples who date as a couple are unicorn hunters. The authors of this book have many friends and acquaintances who started as a couple as they approached polyamory and have done so ethically and responsibly. You’ll find chapters on how to start dating as a couple and how to start dating separately as a couple.  

More terminology around polyamory exists—metamour, polyandry, and hierarchical polyamory, to name a few. Some of that will show up in specific chapters—hierarchical polyamory and nesting partners, for example, will be in the section dating as a couple. But since the focus of this book is primarily about dating, we didn’t include every polyam word you might come across. If you’re looking for polyamory relationships tools or more depth of what polyamory is, we recommend checking out our book The Polyamory Toolkit. 

Who Wrote This Book

This book came about as a side effect of the authors doing a book tour for their previous book, The Polyamory Toolkit.

One day while doing a signing, someone said they looked forward to using these tools once they found partners to practice them with. After all, you can identify as polyamorous and believe it’s the right relationship choice for you, but that doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly find people lining up to try it with you! 

As the tour continued, that same question kept coming up: how do I meet poly people for potential relationships, and once we’ve met, how do I let them know I’m interested? 

They realized that most of the advice out there was some version of try a dating app (without any advice on how to modify monogamous-focused apps for polyamory), or stories of people who did all the right things to find someone but didn’t know how to make a connection once they did, or terrible advice around the key to successful poly dating being to reveal as little as possible about other partners.

The authors further realized that the two of them have a different perspective on dating. Dan has a really easy time finding partners and is a natural flirt. He seems to do both effortlessly, and his limitations on dating are more about not having enough time instead of enough people to date. Dawn, on the other hand, has a very different experience with both finding people as well as what to do once she finds someone.

It’s this diverse experience that led us to create this book of practical advice, tips and techniques that would work for anyone. 

Speaking of the authors, this book is co-authored by two people, Dan and Dawn. Dan and Dawn have both been polyamorous for about twenty years at the time this book was written. Their relationship was the first open/poly relationship either of them had experienced, and although they’ve both had many other relationships since then, they stayed in each other's lives the entire time. They’re nesting partners, and you’ll note they share the same last name—marriage is a piece of their story as well and does not detract from being actively poly. Instead, it’s part a statement of a desire to create a long-term relationship and part logistics (here in the United States, polyamory isn’t a relationship status that conveys insurance or tax benefits—at least, not yet).

As they wrote this book, as with their other published works, they kept their own voices. They each have their own perception on dating, so you’ll see sections sub-headed with a Dan says or Dawn says to represent who wrote each part. If you’ve listened to their podcast (Erotic Awakening) or have seen them