This is How You Dismantle Couple Privilege

You'll hear the argument all over polyamory discourse: hierarchies in relationships are natural and inevitable, so anyone claiming to practice egalitarian polyamory is kidding themselves. This essay takes that apart by showing the word hierarchy is doing two entirely different jobs in it. Social hierarchy is structural, something the world does to you whether you consent or not. Relational hierarchy is a decision you make about how to treat your partners.

Couple privilege is the structural kind. Legal marriage, tax breaks, employer benefits, automatic recognition at hospitals, holiday packages priced for two: society hands these to an established couple whether they ask for them or not, and additional partners in a polycule receive none of it. Relational hierarchy is the choice to take that unearned advantage and wield it as power over someone else's relationship. Veto power, a hinge defaulting to a spouse's wants over another partner's needs, agreements made about a relationship by someone who isn't even in it.

The move that makes it click is the analogy to white privilege and male privilege. Having privilege doesn't make you an oppressor, but it does create responsibility. We have shelves of books on how white people can be allies and how men can build healthier masculinity, and almost nothing on how couples can dismantle the privilege they hold inside their own polycules. The fourteen concrete practices this essay offers sit behind the paywall, ranked from the easiest internal shifts to the hardest structural ones.