Dedeker: Sometimes it’s not always obvious upfront. I think when people make agreements with partners that they end up not being able to keep, often it’s not a very obvious thing in the front of their brain right away of, “Oh, this isn’t something I can do, and so I’m just going to lie and say that I can.” I think for some people it is, but for many people, I think they do feel positive, like, “Oh yes, I can agree to that. I can totally agree with that. That makes sense.”

Lori Beth Bisbey says that in non-monogamous relationships, cheating is less about the activity, and more about violating the trust you’ve built up in your relationship

Dedeker: Yes. Then they’re actually in the situation like, “Oh gosh, well actually I probably shouldn’t have agreed to that. That’s really hard for me to maintain. Maybe it’ll be easier for me to just break that agreement, but not be honest about it.” I could see that also being a situation.

Jase: We’re going to go on in the second half to talk about what cheating looks like in non-monogamous relationships in a little more depth and look at some input from other people including our Patreons. Before we go to that, we’re going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this show. Please, take a moment, check them out, listen to the ways you can support this show, because it really does go a long way to helping us make this show and bring this content to you all out there for free every week.

We’re going to read a quote from an article in VICE that was published in 2019, titled What Cheating Looks Like in a Polyamorous Relationship

Dedeker: We are back. Now that we’ve talked about the traditional relationship viewpoint, let’s move on to what it means to cheat in polyamory or other non-traditional relationships. I think the recurring theme that I’ve noticed in most people talking about this and writing about this is lying and violating trust are two of the biggest ways that people can cheat in non-monogamy.

Psychologist and sex and intimacy mГёte Thai kvinner coach Dr. “In non-monogamy, you set down how you’re going to manage relationships and what the boundaries are,” she said. “So when you break that, you spit in the face of the work that you’ve done in the relationship. It’s not about sex, it’s not about jealousy. It’s about the lie.”

Which I think makes sense. I think all three of us thinking about our experiences of what we’ve heard through the community of people feeling cheated on, usually it’s about that. It’s about the dishonesty. It’s about the cloak and dagger. There’s also another quote, “Not using a condom and not telling is probably the worst thing to do in a poly relationship.” This is someone that they interviewed for the article called Cathy. “It happened with my ex. I ended up with chlamydia. All of us did. I was absolutely fuming.” Yes, you should be fuming, Cathy.

Emily: Yikes, sorry, Cath.. Shout-out real quick to our awesome Patreons for helping us with this episode. Kiana posted in the Facebook group and asked, “Do you think cheating as such is a framework that makes sense/is applicable within non-monogamous relationships?” There were a ton of really fabulous responses in the Patreon Facebook group. Most folks out there replied, “Yes, cheating in non-monogamy is possible.” The definition varied slightly, but they all had similar themes, which included things like breaking agreements, sustained deception, or lying with intent as someone phrased it.