ways to reassure your partner while protecting your own needs and boundaries. The most stable relationship formation for dealing with jealousy and competitive urges appears to be monogamy. To be sure, I think people have plenty of other reasons for choosing monogamy. But the relationship tool that seems to work most thoroughly, and most often, and for the most people, is simply... being monogamous. There are many ways of approaching non-monogamy, but the one I'm most familiar with is polyamory. A lot of polyamorists, though not all, organize their relationships into hierarchies: they have one or more "primary relationships,” and then "secondary relationships" and other relationships that don't make it to secondary level. Sometimes a primary partner will have "veto power" -- 1.¢., if one partner wants to get a new partner, then the primary partner can explicitly block that partner. This seems to help control a lot of jealousy and competitive behavior. Some poly folks say that they see hierarchies and veto power as "blunt instruments," and that they prefer to negotiate every interaction case-by-case. This sounds fine to me as long as it works for them, of course. But I would offer this: I think that blunt instruments are sometimes the most useful tool for a given project. And in fact, blunt instruments are more often useful than finer-tuned instruments. The whole idea of finer-tuned instruments is that they're useful for precise circumstances... but they're also harder to use, and more fragile. Some people don't have the time or inclination to create a whole new toolkit for every individual relationship. Some people will settle for a slightly less precise, perfect relationship in exchange for a more stable one. Sometimes it's simply easier to use a blunter, but more universally effective tool. I will also add that I have seen plenty of polyamorous relationships in which there were unspoken hierarchies, and unspoken veto power. This resulted in maneuvering that struck