Another college newspaper weighs in

The Daily Aztec (San Diego State U.)

The 34,000 students at San Diego State University get enthusiastically introduced to the concept of polyamory in this morning's daily student newspaper.

Polyamorists multiply their love by sharing

By Andrea Mora, Contributor

Polyamory differs greatly from monogamy with an emphasis on sharing infinite love with more than one person. Although polyamory isn’t as common as the typical monogamous relationship, there is a passionate community of people who follow this lifestyle. For polyamorists, this practice allows for balanced and ideal relationships.

Imagine loving someone so much that sharing him or her with someone else would be ideal. Not only that, by sharing him or her, jealousy and infidelity would be thrown out the window because there would be no secrets or affairs, just people loving other people. For those who practice polyamory, this scenario is not only perfectly fine but, it’s ideal — the more the merrier.

“You have the capacity to fall in love with multiple people,” Kamala Devi, author, sex and relationship coach, and organizer of www.meetup.com/sdpoly said. “Being in a polyamorous relationship is a commitment to making that work with all those involved in an open and honest way.”

Devi, a bisexual polyamorist, is married and shares a girlfriend with her husband, Michael McClure. He has lovers whom Devi knows about but does not share and vice versa. Both are engaged in long-term relationships with other people and refer to their lovers as their “poly partners of choice.”

...Compersion, the joyful feeling that comes from knowing the person one loves is loved by another, is also a core belief of polyamory. Overcoming jealousy is a sign of emotional maturity.

Devi, who hosts monthly potlucks, said she has seen heightened interests in the last five years and is thrilled San Diego has a fairly large and active polyamorous community.

...“I realized that my nature fit in with the polyamory philosophy,” [Jasen] Hansen said. “It was not about getting into as many women’s pants as I could. It was that I could care for more than one person and I felt like I was denying part of myself by not allowing that to be expressed.”

...Some members of SDPoly currently practice monogamy but are open to the idea of polyamory. Member Ryan Pearson said he prefers monogamy but can see the pros and cons of both lifestyles. “(Polyamory is) loving someone deeply, wholly and completely without having the need to possess them,” Pearson said. “Many people that are in monogamous relationships have certain possessive ways of being, often with an underlying fear of losing that person.”

Others say they are happily satisfied being monogamous. “I’ve been in a monogamous relationship for over a year,” member of SDPoly Ryan Altman said. “(We) may try alternatives in the future, but for now (I) am digging the one-on-one thing.”...

Read the whole article (Nov. 9, 2009) and leave a comment.

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