Boring Polyamory: Equality and Bedrooms

Among the correspondence I engaged in following my blog post about my (boring) polyamory were a few examples of people being concerned about the equality of our arrangement: how we keep things “fair”1. By way of example, let’s take a look at a specific example that’s come up. Here’s something that I was asked recently: Why does [my partner] Ruth not have her own bedroom? Both of her partners [JTA and I] get one! Where does my partner sleep? It’s been joked that polyamory is just a fetish for calendar management. Our family calendars are moderately simple, I imagine, compared to those of people in larger polycules or with less routine. Except when she’s travelling or otherwise elsewhere2, Ruth spends her nights in an approximately even split3 between JTA‘s bedroom and mine. This leads some people to observe that: JTA has a bedroom of his own, I have a bedroom of my own, and Ruth “shares” both of those, and this is unfair because her partners both get something that she is denied.…