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one person to tell another to end a relationship with a third person…though as we discuss in chapter 12, these agreements can be difficult to implement and dangerous to use. Other relationships have no veto provisions, preferring negotiation and discussion instead. We discuss some common poly structures, with their pitfalls and benefits, in Part 3.
    CONFRONTING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT SEX
    Polyamory makes few assumptions about sexual connections. In monogamy, a romantic partner and a sexual partner are, almost by definition, the same person. Emotional intimacy and physical intimacy are so tightly entwined that some self-help books speak of "emotional infidelity" and encourage married couples not to permit each other to become too close to their friends. Advice columnists and television personalities will speak gravely of the dangers that "emotional affairs" pose to a monogamous marriage and ask, "Is emotional infidelity worse than sexual infidelity?" Monogamy can leave surprisingly little room for close friendships, much less nonsexual romances. Your intimate friend and your sexual partner are presumed to be one and the same.
    This creates problems when the couple are no longer sexually attracted to one another or have mismatched libidos. It also creates problems for people who identify as asexual. If our romantic partner is also expected to be our only sexual partner, what happens when sexual compatibility isn't there? What do we do when one person is unwilling or unable to be sexual with the other? In cases like this, monogamy struggles. It seems on the face of it absurd to tell another person "I forbid you to have your sexual needs met by anyone but me, and I won't meet your sexual needs," but that's precisely what happens. The person with unmet sexual needs faces a choice: pressuring, coercion, cheating on the sly or celibacy.
    Even when a good monogamous relationship is nonsexual through mutual choice, it is often treated dismissively, if not derisively. "You and your wife haven't had sex in two years? Oh, I'm so sorry. That must be awful! What's wrong?"
    One of the advantages of polyamory is that it does not mean hitching all your sexual wagons to a single star. It allows room for change that would threaten the existence of many monogamous relationships. An emotionally satisfying, deeply committed, loving open relationship between two people who are, or have become, sexually incompatible can flourish without being sexually thwarted for the rest of their lives.
    Now, of course, needs aren't necessarily transitive. What you need from one partner can't necessarily be given by someone else. We're not saying polyamory is an easy solution for mismatched or missing desire. For some people, sexuality is an expression of romance and love; such people may need to be sexual with all their romantic partners, and if that sexual expression isn't available, it may damage the relationship.
    Many polyamorous people, including both of us, have deeply connected romantic relationships in which sexuality plays little or no role. We have also both spoken to people who self-identify as asexual who find polyamory attractive because it allows them to form intimate, loving bonds without the fear that they are depriving their partners of the opportunity for a happy sex life.
EVE'S STORY Peter and I had been together for over ten years when we married. On our wedding day, we hadn't had sex in close to a year and a half.
We started out like most couples do, horny as hell, experimenting and fucking like rabbits. And like many couples, our sex life declined over time—though our decline may have been quicker than many, due to stress, my poor body image, medications I was on, and several long separations due to my graduate program. It was, in fact, a need for more sexual variety—and more sex—that initially prompted our choice to explore first swinging, and later polyamory.
When I became lovers with Ray, my sex life with Peter improved dramatically for