More to Love

And much more time spent on communication.

By Kathryn Robinson

Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, assistant professor in the Sociology Department at Georgia State University, has studied polyamorous couples and families since 1997. The following is taken from an interview with Seattle Met ’s Kathryn Robinson.

How do you define polyamory?
Polyamory is a form of relationship in which people openly maintain multiple romantic, sexual, and/or affective partners. With its emphasis on long-term, emotionally intimate relationships, polyamory differs from swinging—and from adultery—in its focus on honesty and full disclosure of the network of relationships to all who participate in or are affected by them.

What form has your study of polyamory taken?
I initially wrote my dissertation at University of Colorado at Boulder on polyamory, looking primarily at the Midwest and West. It was not designed to be longitudinal, but I have conducted follow-up studies since then to track as many of the initial respondents as I can.

What have you learned?
That polyamory works great for some people and is disastrous for others. Some find it an extremely fulfilling, liberating lifestyle based on really authentic, deep, emotionally intimate interactions, and are willing to put a lot of effort into that, because it is extremely time-consuming. It’s a lot of work. For others, it produces a lot of insecurity, jealousy, fighting. Some relationships break up. I would say overall, it doesn’t often turn out to be the idyllic, utopian love fest that many people want it to be. It takes a lot of effort to make it work well. It’s not just constant sex all the time; it requires a lot of communication. In fact, sometimes there’s alarmingly little sex.

So it looks like real life?
Yes! A lot!

What are the reasons people give for pursuing it?
The idea of emotional plentitude; that you don’t run out of love by just loving one person. That there’s lots of love to go around. With that comes a rejection of ownership. The idea that one can lay claim to someone else and what they can do with their body and their emotions is repugnant to these folks. So often there’s kind of a libertarian streak, a kind of ‘We’re gonna do what we want, so leave us alone!’ Some are consciously rebellious, so their polyamory is a kind of label of non-conformity to the regular, vanilla crowd. It often goes with ideas of multiplicity on other levels, so many enjoy paganism.

But many practitioners are just regular people, who feel they either have plenty of love to go around, or needs they don’t want to put all on one person. It’s a way to have more attention or different kinds of attention, or more companionship. It’s the idea that it’s too much to ask one person to be everything, so you either have to deny your needs or find a different way to get them met. Finally, [polyamory] offers a model that allows women complete access to multiplicity rather than the traditional [polygamous] model of just men having access to multiplicity.

Who does it not work for?
The ones I’ve seen as doomed are the couples who come in with a very staunch idea of what they’re looking for. Like the female-male couple, maybe married or maybe just partnered, looking for a bisexual woman to add to their relationship. They’re looking to create a triad of one man with two women. Often they have set ideas about who she’ll be and act, come looking for her, and frankly they have a hard time finding her.

So it’s a couple that wants a wife!
Yes. And it’s hard to find. Not that many women want to do that. It often leaves the bisexual woman feeling like ‘Hey! I’m not your sex toy!’ And it often leaves the couples dissatisfied. This search is so common within poly communities, this bisexual woman is called ‘The Unicorn.’ Because most of the women in the poly scene are partnered on some level.

But what about the heterosexual couple where the guy just wants freedom for both of them to pursue other love relationships outside the primary relationship?
Yes, there are folks like that. Pretty regularly it is the dude who says, ‘Let’s check this out.’ The women is often more hesitant at first, sometimes will enter the poly community, if not kicking and screaming, at least lagging behind. Then she’ll realize, ‘Wow this is great! It’s not as scary as I thought.’ And he’ll realize, ‘Wait this isn’t as much fun as I expected. It’s not living up to my fantasy. There’s not as much sex. Not as many partners as I thought.’

Is that common?
Enough that it’s cliché that they each do a 180.

I think that some men think they’ll be the sexual center of attention, but then they end up just having two women they have to be communicative with. In fact in some of the couples who do end up finding The Unicorn, and having sex with her, the man will say, ‘How disappointing!’ because the women were so focused on each other, he’s like, ‘Hello, I’m over here!’


The story of Amy and Josh, a couple contemplating polyamory, HERE.

Pages:12

Published: June 2010