Okay, so in order to answer this question, I need to start by defining terms because hierarchy is one of those terms that people use in very different ways.
So, hierarchy, in my way of thinking about it, is a relational structure wherein people in one relationship get a certain amount of power and say in relationships that they are not in, in a way that the people do not get in reverse, right?
So, primaries get a say in secondary relationships that they are not a part of, in a way that secondaries do not get in that primary relationship.
To make it a concrete example, if you have a married couple and they are hierarchical, so one of their rules is that they are not allowed to go unbarriered with other sexual partners.
The secondary does not get to tell the primary partner, “Actually, you have to start using barriers. That's a rule now.”
There's a power imbalance, right?
The relationship for – like one relationship is moderated through the other.
That is what I mean by hierarchy is a power imbalance.
Sometimes people use hierarchy to talk about ways that things are prioritized or ways that people have different levels of entanglement with each other.
So, like for instance, if you're nesting with someone, there are going to be certain ways in which you likely prioritize some aspects of that relationship and that those entanglements create responsibilities you have to live up to.
That does not necessarily mean it is a hierarchy.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.
It really depends on how the people within it practice it and operate within it and interact with their other partnerships.
So, prioritization is going to happen in every relationship.
You're not going to want exactly the same thing from every single person you date, ever.
You're never going to have two relationships that are exactly the same because the people in them are different.
You know, there's a saying in the therapy world, no two children have the same parents.
The parents that I experienced growing up are different than the parents my brother experienced because he came into a family that already had an older sibling in it.
Because of how he was and how he behaved and what his personality was, he saw different pieces of our parents than I did.
We had technically the two same humans as our parents, but the parents we experienced were different parents.
No two kids have the same parents.
No two people have the same partner.
The way that a person shows up in partnership with me, even if we've been together the same amount of time, even if structurally our partnerships are very similar to someone else, that person is getting a different partner because they're going to show up somewhat differently because the relational interaction is a big piece of how we show up.
This is why when people talk about attachment theory, my biggest caveat is that I don't think most people have one completely 100% stable attachment style.
I think that a lot of how our attachment systems show up is relational and interactional, that if someone is very anxious in their attachment style, that's going to drive many people towards avoidance, even if they are secure or insecure.
Similarly, our relationships are never going to be exactly the same.
Prioritization is always going to happen.
Sometimes we're going to want more with some people than we want with others.
That does not necessarily create a power imbalance, which means it does not necessarily create a hierarchy as I think of it.
So, if we are using hierarchy to describe a system in which there is a power imbalance within those relational structures, that a primary gets a say in secondary relationships they are not a part of, then yes, it is always bad.
Because it is reducing the autonomy and agency of everyone involved in that secondary relationship, including the other primary partner, right?
It is allowing someone not directly involved in that connection to make decisions about that connection, which is unethical.
Some people will argue like you have to have hierarchy if you have kids, if you're married, if you share finances, and that's simply not true.
A lot of people believe that because they have difficulty imagining what a non-hierarchical approach to being married, cohabiting, sharing finances, and having kids would look like, but there are people who do that already.
There are a lot of people who do that already.
Kevin Patterson, who I adore, who many of you probably know, he and his wife are relationship anarchists.
They cohabitate, they have kids, they're married.
They decided to separate their finances because that was better for them, then they didn't have to worry about each other's spending.
But they have three of those big ones that people say necessitate a hierarchy, and there is zero hierarchy there.
That is not how they do things.
I think that this assumption that certain kinds of entanglement or entwinement necessitate hierarchy is born of mononormativity and the ways in which that limits our imagination and our ability to look at how relationships could be if we just don't assume any of the rules have to apply.
Now again, non-hierarchical does not mean everybody is exactly equal all the time.
That does not – it doesn't mean that because we don't want the same thing from every person.
Just because we're non-hierarchical doesn't mean that every partner gets exactly the same amount of time.
We might want more or less with one person.
What it means is that partner A doesn't get to tell us, like Apple, our partner doesn't get to tell us that Barry can't spend an overnight with us.
Apple can come to us and say like, I'm really nervous about you having an overnight with Barry because of these reasons.
Or I'm noticing a lot of fear that if you start doing overnights with Barry, these things might happen.
But like Apple doesn't get to tell us what to do in that relationship.
Now, hierarchy I think also, aside from being unethical, often leads to a style of hinging that I see that is, in my opinion, really terrible, which is this like helpless, passivity approach to being a hinge, which is like, I would love to spend the night with you, but Apple said I couldn't, and I just, you know, I can't – that means I can't.
You could, though.
The thing about hierarchy is that that power imbalance only holds so long as both of the people at that primary level continue to agree to let it hold.
At any point, a person who is in that primary level can say, actually, no, I'm not going to honor this power imbalance anymore.
I hear that you don't want me to have overnights, but I want to have overnights with my partner.
So, you and I can talk about what that means and what it is that you may need around support about that.
We can figure out what that looks like to transition to a relationship where we do have overnights with other people, but I'm actually not okay with that limitation.
So, hierarchy is often used as like a justification for why someone is like powerless to change things.
And like, that's not true.
They are choosing to agree to that.
They are choosing to value the comfort of one of their partners over the autonomy and agency of another.
And they are placing themselves in this like de-identified role where they aren't acknowledging their own agency or decision.
They're saying, “I'm not responsible for this choice. Someone else made it.”
But like, you agreed, so it's now your choice.
You now own that choice.
So yes, hierarchy, the way that I am using it is always bad.
Prioritizing people because you have different things you want from them is not bad.
That's totally normal and understandable.
But hierarchy wherein there is a power imbalance between relationships where people in one relationship get a say in relationships they are not a part of is always bad.
