Big Love
For Seattle polyamorists, love is a many-partnered thing. And managing the jealousy is a full-time job.
MY OLD FRIEND, whose name isn’t really Amy, had never even heard the word “polyamory” until her husband of 15 years brought it up one night, between dessert and indigestion.
“I love you, I love you, so completely,” the man not named Josh began, then protested too much for several more minutes. (“I should have known another shoe was about to drop,” she told me glumly a day later.) “So what I want to talk about is not a commentary on my satisfaction with us,” he continued. “I love us. It’s that I’ve recently learned about this practice called polyamory and I’m wondering if we might…you know, as a couple…think about…considering it.”
As she sat piecing together Greek and Latin roots—many? loves?—he elaborated, with all the enthusiasm of a toddler clutching a shiny trinket. Not superficial swinging, nor Big Love–style polygyny, he explained, polyamory is the umbrella term for the practice of loving more than one person at a time. He wanted her to consider the kind that would free each of them to openly pursue romantic interests in addition to the primary one at home.
“So…cheating,” Amy summarized crisply, her strawberry pound cake thudding to the bottom of her gut.
“No!” Josh corrected. “That’s just it! It’s openly loving more than one person, within a context of honest disclosure and loving agreement. It’s actually the opposite of cheating.”
“Hmm,” I mused over coffee with her the next morning. “I guess I thought fidelity was the opposite of cheating.” She smiled weakly and I took her hand. “Josh is a good man, Ames. The only guy in the world who would ask his wife’s permission to play around. He loves you to the point of adoration, you know he does.”
Gratitude shone from her weary eyes. “I know he does. The irony is, this ‘open love’ thing appeals to him precisely because of the qualities I love best about him.”
I knew what she meant. I’ve known Amy through the long chain of cads we all dated before we were surprised by fine men, and Josh is among the finest. Kind, smart, and grounded, he is made of a nonjudgmental spirit, a large heart for people, and an integrity so genuine he would never submit blindly to any convention for its own sake. Josh is a flower child, born 10 years too late.
So it makes sense that when he heard about polyamory—from a friend who turned out to be a practitioner—it stirred something deep in him. Deeper, he insisted to his wife, than mere sexual variety—though to the woman who knows him best he wouldn’t deny the attraction of that. Deeper, he explained, than the rigid mind sets about monogamy and romantic possession we accepted wholesale from the era before the sexual revolution changed everything. “If ours is the generation willing to validate gay marriage—to redefine marriage away from gender!—can we really continue to insist that it requires a specific number?” he asked Amy. “Ours is the generation that has finally named the one defining characteristic of marriage: consensual love.”
But Josh isn’t asking a generation to consider opening its marriage. He is asking his wife to do it—a flesh and blood woman who feels a pang if he gets too animated with the grocery clerk.
Published: June 2010
Thanks for the thoughtful comments on this month’s Back Fence. I figured it would be a hot topic and knew that the one anecdotal experience I had room to relate here couldn’t sufficiently mine the territory. So to those who wish I’d talked more about the other issues relating to the practice of polyamory—the scheduling issues, the successful polyamorists—check out my interview with Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, who is one of the nation’s foremost academic experts on polyamory and a practitioner herself. The link’s on the story.
Nice opening, Kathryn. Tightly written. Glib. Smug. Perfect tone for an urbane alternative mag. And ultimately wrong. May I propose that a quick glance at one other person’s incomplete experience (especially since there are two involved and you know them both), a proverb on an tangentially related topic from dear old dad plus your own viewpoint do not a careful analysis make. Interview some successful poly folk, and then complete your article. It seems to cut off abruptly in mid-thought anyway. I know. I write for a couple of alternative pubs and would have been slapped around by my editors had I submitted this piece. Good beginning, however. It has promise.
So often I see articles equating polyamory with “wanting to cheat without having to sneak around”. Told as a morality tale, ending in pain or breakup, with the other person inevitably deciding “I’m not wired for that.”
Cue the choir of successful, vocal polyamorists with successful examples and resources and facts (like the one that marriage is NOT, for instance, universal across cultures), and there’s a divide too great to cross. The debate becomes philosophical, and easy to shut down with the “communism is great… in theory” argument.
So I’ll extend the olive branch by saying what no other male polyamorist dare, at the risk of playing right into the primary, stereotypically “female” fears people try to tiptoe around: Monogamy gets boring. It’s certainly not the ONLY reason for polyamory, but it’s the elephant in the room people most often end up talking past each other about.
You can have the hottest, smartest, best-suited partner in the world- one you’d never in a million years want to leave, but that person will never be the one thing that sparks dopamine-level chemical excitement: newness. A new partner really CAN bring new inspiration, forcing you to reassess yourself with respect to how you want to be perceived, allowing you to be open to new things in a way you can’t really achieve without some vested interest.
And this basically happens to most people anyway – they just call it “cheating”.
Cheating, at best, gives one partner some excitement at the expense of trashing the relationship’s trust & honesty, and at worst, blindsides the partner with a breakup.
The polyamorous version of this requires enhancing communication, trust, & honesty, and the primary relationship gets to share the benefits of the excitement & inspiration (and be forced to deal with jealousies that might have been simmering below the surface anyway), and at worst, both partners experience their breakup in slow motion (but honestly). Though without a supportive community, if something unfortunate happens, the fault is all on HIM for suggesting something nonstandard and YOU for agreeing to it, and your story becomes another morality tale to other “normal” people warning them to stay away from polyamory because look what it did to your relationship (conveniently ignoring monogamy’s role in all the other failed relationships in your life)
So yeah – I can see the resistance. If I weren’t in Seattle in a supportive community, I am not sure I would have had the nerve to try – but I’m happy I did.
P.S. A great example of the type of conversation you show in your article is here:
http://xeromag.com/fvpolydialog.html
“Or if he’s just, well…a guy.”
How narrow minded and insulting of you. Men are not inherently unable to control themselves, and women are not inherently faithful.
I’m a longtime polyamorist and this story is wretched. Although I would never refer to my polyamory as a “lifestyle” (the farthest I’ll go is "lovestyle"), I agree with Theresa B. that it wouldn’t hurt to talk to some people who have real experience with polyamory instead of just recapping a conversation with a friend and calling it journalism. I also agree with Theresa that the hardest part of polyamory for most of us is scheduling, not jealousy! Some polyamorists don’t feel jealousy at all, others only feel it occasionally. If managing jealousy is a full-time job, then I would suggest that the problem is severe insecurity, not polyamory.
Remember when inter-racial relationships were an anomaly? Remember when living together outside of marriage was abject sin?
Only ten years ago when a lover suggested to me that we try polyamory, we couldn’t find living examples of it anywhere. Now I can find them all around me (bless you, Seattle!!).
What we can imagine is limited by what we can see. And it is so difficult to live something that we cannot imagine.
Thank-yous to everyone who share their stories about polyamory. It is wonderful when men (and women) such as Josh can find a path that is about love, and not cheating.
Polyamory, or ethical non-monogamy is more than managing jealousy (as a long-time polyamorist I can tell you the real issue is scheduling). Your article made it feel like this is some high-minded, unachievable theory, when in fact its about looking at your self realistically and being honest about your relationship needs. Most people are not monogamous in actuality. Our culture has simply integrated serial monogamy and cheating into its theory of relationships. Polyamory takes the lying and the cheating out which means communication becomes the only way to have healthy relationships.
Next time you decide to highlight an alternative lifestyle I suggest you find some folks who aren’t new to the idea — find some people who have made a success of the lifestyle. And that being said you could also provide resources for people who are new to the idea or looking for more help in their relationships.
You were right Seattle has a large Poly community. There is the sea-poly@yahoogroups.com online community, a Seattle Meetup (http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Polyamory/), and several events at the Center for Sex Positive Culture (http://www.sexpositiveculture.org/) and the Sharma Center (http://www.sharmacenter.org/main/) all around polyamory.
Theresa B.
relationships and marriage are not social issues. they are private issues. its not really my place to have an opinion about what other people do with their lives.
It’s too bad that “Amy” hooked up with someone who is so arrogant and delusional. I know that “breaking up is hard to do,” but “Josh” wins the prize for (attempted) creativity.
The polyamory relationships go contrary to atthe continuance of the human race. Where do the children fit into this? When you have an extended family you already have ’BIG LOVE" – and all the challenges you could want in making the relationships work!
I’m disappointed that this article is being billed as about “Seattle Polyamorists” when it is in reality just an anecdote about a woman whose husband has just introduced her to the notion of polyamory. With such a large community and so much information out there, this article could’ve presented something much more in line with its description.
I have been in a polyamorous relationship for more than 10 years. It’s possible, but is it worth it? At this point in my life, after seeing that separate is not equal, I contend, no.
Polyamory is not about honesty & trust. It’s about getting what you want and convincing the person that loves you most that if they aren’t willing to give it to you then they don’t truly love you.
“Amy” my advice to you is be a woman. What do I mean by this? I mean you were born with a gut, with intuition, with a mysterious sixth sense. Use it! If it don’t feel good then don’t try to convince yourself that it could or it will. If people can find find many loves while they are in relationships already. Then, you can find love in a new relationship too, on your terms.
I wish you the best. After all these years, I’m starting over and I know better now.
To all of you poly folks out there who say this is a bad article – I heartily disagree. It’s actually perfect. It doesn’t convey any worthwhile information about polyamory, but it does indeed display the typical reaction of a person unfamiliar with the precepts.
You see, one of the things buried underneath the monogamy/non-monogamy issues that very few people like to discuss is the monster called in-security. Some people are naturally monogamous. However many people use monogamy as a shield for insecurities.
I’m fine with whatever lifestyle people choose for themselves (LGBT, straight, mono, poly – as long as we’re all consenting adults), but something I’ve noticed in almost every conversation I’ve had with a monogamous person unfamiliar with polyamory is that within minutes, all of their personal insecurities come boiling to the surface. It’s almost bolded and highlighted in this article:
“I guess I thought fidelity was the opposite of cheating.”
“But Josh isn’t asking a generation to consider opening its marriage. He is asking his wife to do it—a flesh and blood woman who feels a pang if he gets too animated with the grocery clerk.”
"All righty then!” I said, trying for perky. “Whole lotta new words in this game!”
For quite awhile now (almost ten years) , I’ve played the role of ’let’s all get along’ and it’s gotten me almost no where. I’ve approached this topic as though mono and poly were on equal terms. They aren’t. Monogamy has an insidious hidden allies in insecurity, selfishness and low self-esteem.
Those are battles we can’t win unless we stop playing nice and start calling people out. When was the last time a monogamous person had to defend their monogamy. Maybe it’s time they start.