"Opening the Door on Polyamory"

Marin Independent Journal
(Marin County, California)

Deborah Anapol, one of poly's most visible early activists and author of the 1997 book Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits (expanded from her 1992 edition titled Love Without Limits), is back in the news with a nice interview on the basics published March 12, 2006, in a local newspaper north of San Francisco:

...Deborah Anapol has sifted through most of those layers in 30 years analyzing, living and providing therapy to alternate lifestyles in many manifestations. The San Rafael psychologist and author of "Love Without Limits" isn't sure "Big Love" is going to get it right but at least the idea is creeping out of the closet. Gay characters on TV shows have been hailed as fostering acceptance. "Hopefully this show will do something like that for polyamory," Anapol says....

In some ways, polyamory is much like monogamy, Anapol says. Most of the relationship happens outside the bedroom. "One of the biggest difficulties that people have in polymamorous relationships, once they get past jealousy, is time management," Anapol says. Pointing to the "Big Love" story she adds. "If you've got three different wives in three different houses, you have your hands full."

Anapol says another major misconception is that polyamory is strictly a man's game. While men with multiple wives has been a model in cultures around the world, many women are living the exception, she says. That's not the plot line in "Big Love" but it happens. "While women have been more thoroughly socialized than men to be monogamous, once woman break out of their conditioning, they are equally interested or maybe more interested in having more than one partner," Anapol says....

Nuclear families Anapol claims are not historically the norm. Before World War II, most people lived in extended families with multiple generations under one roof. Polyamory could be seen as a variation on that. Where nuclear families might be overextended, polyamorous homes have multiple adults supporting the family financially and around the home. She counts the idea that such situations are bad for children among the biggest misconceptions of all. "As long as everybody is getting along reasonably well, it is terrific for children," she says. "They don't have the same kinds of judgments that older people do."...

ON THE WEB: Read more about Deborah Anapol and her books at www.lovewithoutlimits.com.

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