Struggling With Monogamy

How to know if monogamy or nonmonogamy better suits you at work and at home.

In addition to keeping up with my latest happenings, the Tiny, Private Love Letter provides relationships advice for business and pleasure. My loves, interpersonal relationships include almost any connection between two or more people. As you read today’s letter, remember the advice about relationship structures may be equally applicable for your professional work and personal romantic relationships.

Before 2018, I usually worked full-time by leading organizations’ communications initiatives. For Fortune 500 Company Land O’Lakes, I ran their international development team’s digital efforts. Before that, I was in the outreach teams at Planned Parenthood and Inc. & Newsweek magazines. Back then, I ran my creative projects part time, as a side hustle. Starting in 2018, I brought everything under the same roof.

Now, I’m in polyamorous business relationships with multiple clients. Together with my team, my firm offers nonprofits and small businesses:

• data analytics and digital communications services (e.g. data mining, social media marketing, digital ads, website redesign project management, etc.), and

• we produce my creative projects.

As part of my firm’s onboarding processes, we coach clients on the similarities and differences between full-time hires and consultants or contractors. Sometimes, we use monogamy and polyamory to roughly explain the two.

• Full-time hires are in a monogamous relationship with their organization. If, for half of the week, the full-time hire reported to a different employer instead, that would be odd.

• Consultants or contractors are usually in polyamorous relationships with organizations. You might hire other consultants, and they might have other clients.

Strong teams usually include a mixture of both full-time hires and consultants. Make sense? Great! Now, here’s where problems usually occur …