Is poly "like a big, hearty buffet?"

San Diego City Beat

A writer for "San Diego's real alternative newspaper," (circulation 50,000) wrote a bemused article about polyamory but failed to report on the local poly scene other than to say that it exists. As a former editor for alternative newspapers, I would have told him "Don't just talk to your friends, go back out and get the damn story."

Nevertheless, the article does help the increasingly successful cause of poly awareness. Despite its gross lead.

Attracting a crowd

By Alex Zaragoza

There are few things that get me into a glutton-filled tizzy like a big, hearty buffet.... Asian? Yeah, I’ll have some of that! Italian? Sure! Looks tasty! Mexican?... it’s my natural instinct to gorge.

People who practice polyamory apply that buffet mentality to love and sex. Those who are polyamorous, or “poly” for short, choose to have multiple open relationships, either serious or just sexual, while keeping everyone involved in the know. Usually hierarchies are involved, with a primary partner and secondary partners. However, it’s really up to each individual to decide the best fit.

...“It’s a great personal-growth experience,” explains Robyn Trask, executive director of Loving More, a nonprofit dedicated to the support and education of polyamory. “It takes being very open with communication. If you’re having a relationship with three people and see you always have the same problem with each of them, you realize it’s something on your part and you work to fix it. In that way it can be really healthy.”...

...My friend Erica, a 25-year-old San Diego transplant from Denver, has been practicing poly for about three years and says she gets all her itches scratched with multiple partners. She describes herself as “really horny,” but she thinks it’s unreasonable to ask one person to meet all her sexual and emotional needs, so she’s open to having multiple people fill the partner role. As a result, her sex life has gotten an extra pinch of spice.

“I learned a lot about sex being poly,” she says. “What I enjoy, what I’m looking for in a partner. It’s nice to have different partners because everyone knows a lot and gets ideas from their other partners. They’re getting fresh input and I’m getting fresh input, and so it brings freshness to the bedroom.”

Before you start cruising poly meet-ups (yup, there are poly potlucks and poly “sacred snuggle parties” in the area), it’s not all steamy sex romps with horny hippies. There are some drawbacks.

Erica gripes that many poly guys are often “sensitive, feminist types” who “want to make love,” so it’s hard to find someone who will “run a train through you” when that’s what you’re in the mood for.

Well. That’s one con, I suppose.

More so than that, being poly takes a great deal of work when it comes to overcoming jealousy. I spoke to another poly friend of mine, Alex, a 46-year-old transgender fellow who’s been poly for a few years now. He acknowledges that being non-monogamous can be difficult and awkward since it requires approaching relationships in a way that goes completely against what society has taught us....

...I’m amazed that poly people can nurture all this free-flowing love. As much as I love multiple options at a buffet, something on my plate always ends up getting ignored. I can’t deal with more than one partner’s needs at a time while still balancing work, family, friends and my Netflix account.

But if others can, I say get yours.

Read the whole article (Feb. 9, 2011).

Does an article like this actually help? Absolutely. It spreads the awareness that multiple love can work happily, openly, ethically among equals — something that almost no one used to imagine could happen in real life — and that healthy people create their own relationship styles.

Since I began Polyamory in the News in 2005, I've put up 490 posts covering roughly 1,000 media treatments of the topic. You saw nothing like that 15 years ago. This public attention, or rather you people who are prompting it are changing the world with a powerful new idea. For the better, and probably forever. Thank you.

[Permalink]