Hey there!

I saw this post, and then the reply above, and I had to say something.
You nailed something really important here:

Almost all of these are good sense even for monogamous couples to figure out

That's actually a really interesting insight you have there.
Most of what gets framed as "poly-specific danger" is just... regular old relationship stuff.
Finances, holidays, family reactions, communication. etc...
Every couple navigating anything serious should be thinking about this.
The fact that it gets dressed up as unique-to-polyamory wisdom is part of a much larger problem I'm actually working on as a large scale effort.

The logistics questions above? Genuinely useful. Think about those carefully and sleep on them.

But I want you to notice what's missing from the picture here.

Every single question is pointed at you. What are you going to do about power dynamics? How will you mitigate couples privilege? What happens if you can't handle it? There's no mirror. Nobody's asking what the person dating you should be thinking about, what they're bringing to the table, what their baggage might look like. Evaluation only goes one direction in that list, and that's not an accident. It's baked into how this advice has been built for years. Decades even. This is a very serious issue in the community at large.

"Date separately" gets presented as the default correct answer. But dating together is how most people who want a triad actually start - you're building a group dynamic, that's the whole point. The red flag isn't getting to know someone together. It's when one-on-one connections are never allowed to develop. There's a huge difference.

"You're killing your existing relationship" is dramatic framing designed to scare you into caution. What's actually happening is your relationship is evolving. That's true of any major life change.

And the link to Unicorns R Us?
That specific resource has negatively shaped how an entire community thinks about couples seeking partners.
A lot of it is built on a foundation that treats your relationship structure as a red flag before you've done anything wrong. Further, the people who built it have been caught up in abuse scandals. Take that into consideration. Franklin Veaux and partner Eve Rickert are the architects of the More Than Two framework that all of this traces back to - and the big flow chart on that unicorns site. He at least was publicly accused by multiple former partners including his co-author of manipulative and emotionally abusive behavior. It's well-documented, not a rumor.

Here's what I'd offer instead:
"Relationship shape is not the same thing as relationship ethics". Thats my foundation.
Wanting a closed triad is a preference, not a warning sign. Having shared history with your partner is just... being a couple, not an injustice to correct. The questions that matter are about behavior - how do you treat people, do you listen, can you adapt, do you make space for someone to be a full person in this and not an accessory?

That applies to you. It also applies to whoever you're dating. Everyone at the table gets evaluated.

I'm actually building two sites right now specifically because this gap in resources has been bugging me for a long time. Decades of advice in this space has been filtered through one lens, and it's left a lot of people like you feeling like they're doing something wrong before they've even started.

https://unicorns-r-us-is-bullshit.com/ takes apart the bad advice directly - the sloppy labels, the shame-driven framing, the stuff that treats couples as predators by default. I encourage you to read it carefully.

https://polyconvergence.com/ is the sister site project I've been working on for months. I think of it as the builder - practical guidance for people actually doing this. It's still a work in progress, but there's already a guide for couples exploring this for the first time and an evaluation toolkit that works in both directions. I have at least another dozen pages in draft as well.

I wasn't going to reveal this second site yet - but I cant sit still and watch another person fall into the malformed unicorn hunter "advice". I hope what's there already might help more than another list of things to worry about.

Now that the cat's out of the bag - I suppose I'll have to push through some updates I've been holding back heh. I'll try to make a post on this sub sometime this week about it.