This jumped out at me in the first paragraph:

When their nesting partner is anxious, your plans evaporate.

So much this when hierarchical polyamory is done badly. The couple's privilege is undeniable and therefore the primary-secondary model is not ethical, no matter how much there is the oft cited "knowledge and consent of all involved." Vetoing a date for emotional reasons about the relationship is not cool. Deal with your own shit, no matter how uncomfortable it is. That's where growth is.

So, imo, it's not just consent that makes polyamory work, it's the active effort of the "leg" partner, whether or not they are dating someone else themselves. The effort to manage their emotions; the effort to facilitate the splitting of time, of resources; the effort to have at least a co-operative relationship with a meta, even if it's only in extreme circumstances. I'll get to that.

We often talk about a mono-poly setup, but I personally think it's doing the non-dating "mono" partner a disservice by considering them as "mono" with the traditional expectations of being the constant priority. My husband hasn't dated for years, preferring to put his energy into friend groups than one person romantically, but he is actively helping me live my poly hinge life. Be it taking me to and picking me up from the airport, or arranging equitable ways to share our car when my other partner is in my city. From the outside, he looks mono, but whether it's dating or an intense hobby or being a social butterfly, a functional long term partnership MUST be supportive of each person, whatever their endeavours outside the coupledom.

A nesting couple holds veto power over how much of their partner's time, emotional energy, and logistical life a secondary person can access — often without anyone framing it that way explicitly. The veto is baked into the structure. It does not need to be exercised dramatically to be felt.

This, frankly, just isn't true in our case. I live with my husband, and in under a year, Puck will be living with his wife once she also immigrates here. It's just a matter of time and international logistics now. Technically, this makes Puck and I secondary. And yet veto isn't a part of our relationships. Once plans are made, they are kept. Sometimes, plans will be more focused towards one person, and sometimes towards the other. When Renee visits here the first time, and when she first moves here, of course Puck will be spending a lot of weekends with her and I won't see him for a while. I'd be a terrible "secondary" partner if I insisted on an equal timeshare in such extraordinary circumstances. But once settled, and routines established, then we'll be aiming to shift to a 50/50 time spilt. That's how far into the relationships we are.

I feel like this article is perhaps discussing the experience of people who are in the early stages (1-2 years?) of opening up. Or haven't managed to deconstruct the internalised mononormativity, a la...

This shows up in the fine print of agreements that sound generous but contain asymmetries most people only notice under pressure. An agreement that says 'we will always sleep at home except for pre-approved trips' sounds reasonable until your secondary partner is going through something hard and needs you there, and you have to explain that the agreement does not allow for that. An agreement that says 'we make major life decisions together' sounds like good partnership until your secondary partner realizes it means their future is contingent on the approval of someone they have never met. The difference between a rule and an agreement often lives in exactly this gap — one party thought they were consenting to a structure, and the other was consenting to something they had not fully imagined yet.

Yes, this is a big part of opening up and learning to share time and resources. Admittedly, Adam (my legal husband) and I had the teething problems of opening up, but it didn't have the kind of high level collateral damage that the article talks about with secondary partners. Personally, I don't agree with the article that those agreements sound completely reasonable and Adam and I weren't quite so restrictive about always sleeping at home, just so long as there was a text to advise what the plans were to avoid worry (which also went awry when cell service dropped out at one location - shit happens and the stress got processed the next day, we didn't dwell on it since everyone was safe and sound). But then, there are probably many people who would consider me unreasonable for making some major life decisions by myself. However, at the end of the day, it's my life and I'm going to live it for me. Even in marriage, both the legal and the non-legal one, I am ultimately autonomous. My partners are extremely supportive of everything I've chosen for myself, and intend to choose for myself, and then they choose their paths and how much they will entangle with mine - but then that could be a by-product of aging. The article doesn't mention the demographic that was surveyed, but it does seem to be writing about the experience of 20 and 30 somethings as per the age of the people we see posting here that are struggling with these things. The abstract to the one academic article that the Brainbook article cites does not mention the ages of the respondents. It would be interesting to know more demographic information about the respondents, like age, length of primary relationship, and number of years practising polyamory.

I note that the article compares hierarchical vs. non-hierarchical but also has an underlying assumption that nesting and married gives a permanent and imbalanced hierarchy. In my experience, this isn't a permanent truth. Adam and I have evolved, as have Puck and I, as have Puck and Renee (his wife). The longer and deeper the "secondary" partners (Puck and I) commit to a shared future, the more egalitarian this 4 person polycule becomes. Hierarchy can be broken down, and the article doesn't acknowledge this. Perhaps that's because the majority of hierarchical relationships don't actually go the distance, because of the issues as given in an anecdote in the following quote: (note the use of 18 months as a timeline)

The problem is not hierarchy per se — it is the gap between how hierarchy is often presented and what it functionally delivers. It is often presented as a mutual choice made among adults with full information. What the research suggests is that the information available at the start of a secondary relationship is rarely sufficient for a person to consent to what the structure will actually feel like eighteen months in, when they are in love and their partner is flying home to someone else.

But before I run out of characters in one post, I'm going to wave my favourite flag, because the article has omitted it entirely.

Hierarchical polyamory, and parallel poly for that matter, have major flaws when it comes to gatekeeping access to a loved one during hospitalisation or funeral. MAJOR flaws.

If you are not ready to have an agreement to make your metamour one of the very first calls in case of emergency or (untimely) death, then you are NOT ready for polyamory. Imagine being the secondary partner, perhaps only barely tolerated in some cases of parallel poly, and being LITERALLY ghosted by someone who you care extremely deeply for, are in love with, and who is in love with you. Are you going to hear about the funeral from the nesting partner? Or from Facebook? Or, at the very least, from a nominated friend of your partner if the nesting partner has a total stick up their ass about you (again, not ethical polyamory in that case). But you're banned from the funeral, because hierarchy and parallel polyamory.

Oh no, not in my life, in my relationships. Adam might be running point, but Puck would be just as entitled to speak, to share photos, and to make any decisions I haven't gotten around to.

I have to be out of characters by now.