In polyamorous circles, there’s a saying that gets repeated a lot: “All meta problems are hinge problems.” It’s meant to remind us that if there is tension between two metamours, people connected through a shared partner, that partner a.k.a. the hinge, holds a lot of responsibility for how the dynamic plays out. This can definitely be true. Hinges can cause harm. But what’s often left out of the conversation is just how hard it is to be the hinge.
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It can be a role full of nuance, emotional labor, conflicting needs, and holding space for multiple truths at once. It requires emotional labor that many are not equipped for. And especially when you try to hold space for two people who are experiencing discomfort with each other, it’s being in a position where someone ends up feeling like you have failed them, even you are doing your best.
I know this in polyamory, but where I really experience being the hinge the most is as a mother.
Parenting more than one child is, in so many ways, a hinge dynamic. I am the shared point of connection between people who love me, and who also experience me differently and need me differently. I try to navigate their conflicts with care, to hold their realities as valid. I try to be fair, thoughtful, gentle, and still, there are moments when one of them walks away feeling unsatisfied. Still, I know there are times when they think I am being unfair, picking sides, playing favorites, not understanding.
Just like in polyamory, the hinge often becomes the target of unresolved tension. If I soothe one child before the other or validate one’s hurt before tending to the other’s perspective, it can look like I’m choosing sides. But honestly, I’m just trying to make space for everyone to be okay, including myself.
It’s rarely acknowledged that being the hinge can be exhausting. You are often the translator, the one trying to hold the rope at both ends. And you’re doing it without any idea if you’re doing it right, guided only by values, but still human and trying to figure it out.
This isn’t to remove accountability from how hinges behave. Hinges do influence the energy between connections. How hinges communicate matters a lot and integrity matters. But they also deserve empathy and recognition.
Hinges are uniquely positioned. When they move with clarity and care, they can often help to reduce confusion and tension. But they can’t erase tension or control how someone feels about their metamour. In my opinion, many problems people have with the hinge are the result of unrealistic expectations, not just from partners, but from the community as a whole. Unrealistic expectations like expecting hinges to be translators and neutral parties who never make mistakes. But hinges are just people trying to love outside the dominant systems.
Most of us grew up seeing love stories centered on pairs, not networks. There is rarely an example of someone being deeply connected to more than one person romantically without being framed as untrustworthy or selfish. So when people step into polyamory, especially into the hinge role, they are asked to navigate with no clear path or inherited language. Yet, they are still held to the expectation of perfect fairness and absolute, but selective, transparency. People expect the hinge to do what culture hasn’t taught us and when things get hard, as they do sometimes, it’s easy to scapegoat the hinge rather than interrogate the larger relational ecosystem and unspoken expectations.
This is why I turn to my experience as a parent. As a parent, I’m tending to the emotional needs of each child, while interpreting their developmental context and managing my own energy. In the same way, being a hinge means responding to individual partners and to the conditions under which those relationships are unfolding, including power dynamics, past wounds, miscommunication, and societal expectations.
So are all meta problems really hinge problems? I say no. Hinges are navigating a role that dominant systems never imagined, and doing so under the pressure of idealized notions of fairness and equity that rarely exist in practice. The more we can recognize that, the more grace and nuance we can bring into our expectations, not just of each other, but of what it means to love outside of the dominant systems.
Thank you so much for putting this into words in this way. It really is challenging being a hinge.