Building Healthy Double Standards in Relationships
Double Standards Aren’t Always a Bad Thing — Sometimes They’re the Sensible Option
In a recent work I read, where a Medium writer named Emma Austin described how much their husband loved watching them flirt with another man, though this person doesn’t consider themselves polyamorous in any way, per se, and is seemingly and understandably cautious about moving towards such a dynamic, the discussion came up about having a unilateral polyamorous situation.
As I’ve told of in my story In Defense of Double Standards, personally, I think that double standards can be a very good thing in a healthy relationship. To touch on this line of thinking briefly, we’re not all built the same, and sometimes it’s important for us to sacrifice our gut-level notions of fairness in order to compensate for someone’s very real needs.
Case in point, a man and a woman get together after a string of failed relationships. The woman often bangs and clangs things around in the house while cleaning and the man pays it no mind. But if the woman just left an abusive relationship, one where physical violence was a daily threat, loud noises might send her into a temporary state of shock, panic, fear, and a whole slew of other emotional responses that she’s not in control of. The man, of…
