Oh that’s gross. Never been in a poly relationship so I don’t have much experience.

In the relationships we have with others one thing we (they and us) make explicit is that priority is not a hierarchy. For example, when they are with their other partners or friends those partners or friends are the priortiy. When they are with us, we are the priority and vice versa. However, we do not treat our friends or other partners as in some hierarchy, more temporary priorities.

Hierarchy to us and we believe our partners means that people get treated as more important overall and that is just not the way we see people. This is why we are more relationship anarchists because we explicitly do not treat others as less or more important than others overall.

Expectations are tricky things, a lot of them are born of what society teaches us and so we can lessen that over time if we wish to or really think about if those are things we really want or not. Yes we agree that it’s important to talk about any automatic expectations we have and whether those are something people can meet or not, this can be difficult sometimes though if someone or somemany has a “never say never, never say always” approach to it. So we have learned over time to more go with the flow and ask in the moment though we do try to keep in mind general boundaries and mental states etc.

So whilst we do understand where you are coming from, in our own experience and philosophy we disagree with the assertion that hierarchies or preferences towards certain people are always likely, or rather that it’s a bit more nuanced and complex. This is likely due to the fact that we don’t in general tend to see people as more or less important than others and more based on what we can and want to provide for each other and what we cannot or do not want to.

Mostly when it comes to hierarchical relationships though we are talking about explicit hierarchical ones where one (or maybe more) people hold veto power over others (which is something we completely disagree with) or where in disagreements in things like polycules one person usually wins out over others. We don’t like this thinking or when it happens which is why we are explicit in our dislike of it and tend to stay away from others who either do like it or are unaware of it and yet we see them doing it anyway.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.