Is the poly community toxic?

Polyamory has a lot of love to give…but as usual, trauma survivors need to be more careful than most.

As I’m walking down the street in East Portland, I pass by a woman in her early twenties who says to her friend, exasperated, “Why is everybody in this city poly?”

A couple of times a year I’ll get lonely (or bored) and open an account on a dating app. When I’m looking specifically at men, I tend to see the same dudes I saw the last time I checked. Cheating? Likely. Poly? Probably.

Despite these guys, I love the idea of loving freely — more freely than the traditional “dating to marriage to kids” pipeline. I’ve heavily researched polyamory to suss out whether or not it’s for me. I’ve read The Ethical Slut, Polysecure, and A Therapist’s Guide to Consensual Nonmonogamy. I spent a week journaling about any blind spots I discovered in previous exclusive relationships, and finally, I decided that poly certainly *is* for me…provided people play by the rules.

I know, I know: every relationship is different. The mutual choice to commit to someone else usually means setting ground rules specific to that relationship, so what exactly do I mean by “the rules?”