"What It’s Like to Be a Polyamorous Genius"

New York Magazine

(That's not him, just some illo.)

Leon Feingold, co-founder of Open Love NY, made New York Magazine's list of the city's ten interesting outlier people featured on the cover of the February 23rd issue. The hook is his extreme IQ, but his poly life, and high-end social skills after a dorky childhood, are also a source of the magazine's fascination. The collection is called "Life on the Margins of Experience." A segment from the long (4,000-word) interview:

...Also, I’m polyamorous and I think that has a lot to do with my low threshold for boredom. I think responsible non-monogamy has an amazing benefit, because one person can’t meet all your needs, or if that person exists, I haven’t met her.

When did you discover polyamory?

About eight years ago, I met a girl on OkCupid who described herself as polyamorous. I didn’t know what it was. She explained it and I was mind-blown. I was like, How can I not know that this exists?

...Everyone I was dating had something to offer. Some were gorgeous. Some were smart. Some were fun. Some were really intriguing. Some liked to go to certain parties. So seeing so many people triggered so many parts of my brain and I was really happy with it.... I have about 30 things that are important to me, and if any one of them wasn’t met, I would get antsy.

How does it work in a practical sense?

The model that works for me is a girlfriend, and I have a lot of friends who I may have sex with. A girlfriend is somebody who is the highest priority, someone I spend the bulk of my time with. When I’m in a relationship, that slot of “primary” is not available and if someone else I’m attracted to is comfortable with that, then we will pursue something. Free love only works if everyone is on the same page and comfortable and happy with it.

...There’s a saying in the non-monogamy world, which is to be successful you should date your own species. If you’re monogamous, date someone who is monogamous; if you’re non-monogamous, date someone non-monogamous. But trying to mix and match is a recipe for disaster. So far, we are trying. I do love her, but we all know that love is not what makes a relationship work.

Is intelligence the main thing you look for in a partner?

My dream has always been to marry someone who is smarter than I am. I want to be challenged and I want to be with someone who teaches me things.

Does that mean you believe in marriage? And if you were married, would you continue a polyamorous lifestyle?

Yes. I would love to get married and start a family. I can’t imagine I would ever be not poly and I can’t imagine I would ever be with a long-term partner who would expect that of me.

...You don’t want to challenge the idea that you should be married to have kids?

I wouldn’t want my kids to feel like outcasts. I was an outcast growing up and sure, it made me stronger, but I don’t know what I would answer to a kid who wondered why I wasn’t married to their mother.

...Would you feel like they might feel like outsiders if their friends found out that their dad was polyamorous, or would you keep this from them?

I'd love to raise kids without the traditional shame associated with being sex-positive — talking about sex or relationships should be as simple as talking about how their day was at school. My concern is more with the perception of others, which is probably the biggest problem for poly families. The structure itself works, but they catch a lot of flak from society. It's sad, and while I personally don't mind being a lightning rod for criticism from small-minded people, I'm not sure I'd want to subject my kids to that before they know enough to understand it themselves. Hopefully, by the time I have to think about it, poly will have gained enough widespread acceptance that I'll be able to worry about real parenting issues, like raising awesome kids who make the world a better place....

Read the whole interview (online Feb. 24, 2015).

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At the Poly Living con: Addressing abuse in the poly community

I'm home from Loving More's Poly Living conference in Philadelphia. Cons often develop an informal theme, not necessarily the one on the cover of the program. At Poly Living this year, the theme that emerged was abuse in poly relationships and how the community should respond.

The theme was set by the brilliant keynote speech and workshop presentations by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert, authors of the turning-point poly book More Than Two. They were onstage for a total of 3½ hours during the weekend and, as usual, held their audiences every minute.

"So there was a time, long ago, when I had this naive idea that polyamorous relationships were less likely to be abusive than monogamous relationships," Franklin said in his talk at the opening on Friday night. "Isolating a person is one of the hallmarks of abuse — so I thought, well, if you’ve got more people in a relationship, it’s harder to isolate people, right? You have more eyes on a potential problem, right?"

Against this happy effect, he said he's come to realize, there is a dark countereffect. Because abusers are often influential and charismatic, and because groupthink is one of the commonest bugs of human nature, an abuser can sway an entire group against a person he or she is mistreating, belittling, controlling, or gaslighting. (Gaslighting: Sabotaging a person's confidence in their own perceptions and memories.) This can make abuse in a poly situation much more encompassing and difficult to escape.

That was only part of Franklin's keynote; it was titled "Telling Our Stories, Changing the World." But the theme kept recurring. Since the mid-1990s, he said, "I've watched the poly community grow and change around me into this incredibly strong, vibrant thing it is now." But that strength and confidence ought to give us the courage to tackle dark sides of poly openly. For all our successes, he said, "what we have not done in our community is come to terms with the possibilities of abuse in our community. It is a mistake to think we are any more immune to abusive relationships than other relationship models." In fact, there is no research (yet) on this question at all.

The next morning, Eve and Franklin went into greater depth in their 90-minute workshop "Abuse in Poly Dynamics." It was packed. Here are Eve's 29 powerpoint slides, which are unfortunately brief (and slides 19–21 should be relabeled "Questionable Poly Advice" to match what she said about them). The discussion that followed was also productive, with many in the audience offering insights from personal experience, and psychology professionals in the audience filling in gaps.

Then on Sunday they presented "Putting the Ethics in Ethical Non-Monogamy" (a new updated version), broadening their earlier topics into wider, more general principles for defining and living the good poly life. And life in general. This too was crowded. Closing line: "Now that poly is surfacing in the world and taking off, we are at a point where we have to be clear about our ethics and values as a community, if the community is to survive and thrive."

-----------------------------

Later they posted,

As part of our presentation on abuse in polyamorous relationships, we talked about ways communities can cultivate values that are resilient [against] beliefs that lead to abuse. One of these is to internalize and promote the Relationship Bill of Rights. We've finally made the Bill of Rights available in full on the More Than Two website: www.morethantwo.com/relationshipbillofrights.html.

-----------------------------

Of course lots more went on at Poly Living all weekend. Four simultaneous tracks of classes/workshops ran all day, so you had to miss 3/4 of them — from coming out poly, to practicing vulnerability, to transitioning a relationship (when the black-and-white model of traditional breakups doesn't apply), jealousy management, a roundtable on poly activism, gender explorations, applying faith principles to decision-making, poly parenting, "Creating a 'New Culture' Based on Love and Freedom," and more. Total attendance was 209 people.

The evening after the conference, Loving More hosted an informal social gathering for Polyamory Leadership Network members, featuring get-to-know-each-other games. The PLN, by the way, defines poly "leaders" simply as "people who do cool things without waiting for permission." Is that you? You can read more and maybe send in an application.

------------------------------

Much of what Franklin and Eve discussed plays off Franklin's article a couple weeks ago on the MoreThanTwo site, Some thoughts on community and abuse. Excerpts (with my highlighting):

I realize [the topic] is a bit of a downer, and it’s not a lot of fun to talk about. Most of the poly community is awesome, and polyamory itself is wonderful and rewarding.

But I believe the community — by which I mean all the folks who are interested in polyamory and who get together to talk about this multiple relationship thing that we do — is at a crossroads. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I am not impressed with the way the organized BDSM community walks the walk when it comes to abuse. It certainly talks the talk about consent, safety, and respect, but in more than sixty years I don’t think it’s managed to turn that talk into a meaningful culture of consent.

...Right now I think the poly community has come to a place where we can either content ourselves with talking about respect and consent the way the BDSM community has, or we can work to make it a cornerstone of the social groups we create. I look at the kink scene and the path it’s taken, and I’m afraid. I don’t want the poly scene to become like that.

...Dealing with people who abuse is hard. It’s hard to stand up and speak out when you see something happening in your community that’s not okay, but that doesn’t involve you directly. It’s hard to get involved. It’s hard to tell someone, “Look, you’re not welcome in this space because you did that thing you did.”

And hard as that is, it’s only the start.

...The thing we don’t like to admit is that people who abuse are not necessarily evil. They’re not necessarily bad people. If you ask someone, “What makes a person abuse?” you will hear a lot of answers like “some people are just monsters.” That black-and-white, Marvel Comics caricature of what “an abuser” looks like helps nobody. Often, people who abuse are friends. Often, people who abuse are themselves hurting. Often, people who abuse genuinely do have good things about them. Often, they’re not committing physical violence, and the abuse is hard to spot.

See, here’s the thing. Abusers often sincerely believe themselves to be victims.

...Every person who commits abuse that I’ve ever met, without exception, is someone who is in a lot of pain. They feel that the abuse they do isn’t abuse — it’s a reasonable and natural response to the pain they’re in.

As people working in domestic violence prevention will tell you, abuse is about power and control. Lots and lots and lots of people, abusers and non-abusers alike, believe that if your partner does or says something and it makes you feel uncomfortable, threatened, jealous, or hurt, it’s okay for you to control them in order to deal with your feelings.

Look around. This idea has a lot of social currency.... The idea that if you feel something bad, it means someone else is doing something wrong and you should be able to make them stop doing it … well, that’s the root of all abuse.

[Not quite all. Franklin pointed out during the weekend that true predators do exist: psychopaths born without a conscience (often estimated at 1% to 4% of the population), who camouflage themselves in the larger mix.]

And people who abuse genuinely feel that if they tell a partner to do something and the partner doesn’t do it, they’re the ones being abused.

There’s an essay that sums this up brilliantly at The Community Response to Abuse:

“I was victimized by acts of control” is not the same as “I was victimized by the other person’s resistance to my control.”

Because a person who abuses is in genuine pain, and genuinely feels victimized, and sincerely cannot distinguish between “victimized by someone else’s control” and “victimized because I can’t control someone else,” it’s really, really hard to show these folks why their actions are wrong.

...In order to crack the problem of abuse, you have to cut all the way down to why we think it’s okay to control other people, and that’s extremely difficult. Look at all the people who agree with this idea! Look at how many social messages say that if someone does something that makes us uncomfortable, the best way to handle it is to control that person! Every social message we’re confronted with reinforces this idea.

So people who abuse aren’t (necessarily) monsters. They’re just like us. They’re hurting. And that presents one hell of a problem — one that we need to be able to talk about, and get a handle on, if we are to make safe spaces for survivors of abuse.

Yes, we need to be willing to step up when we see abuse.... Our first priority needs to be to protect and make safe spaces for survivors, to believe survivors, and to support survivors.

But if that’s all we do, if we think it stops there, we can end up perpetuating the cycle....

That’s not good enough.

Survivors of abuse need support. Abusers also need support. They need a different kind of support, though. They need someone to hold them accountable. They need someone to challenge their feelings of entitlement to control. They need someone to call them on their bullshit. And even if, for whatever reason, we can’t get through to them, we still need to work to change the cultural idea that controlling others because you’re hurting is okay.

...It’s not enough to cast out the person who abuses. That often does need to happen, don’t get me wrong. But that’s the beginning of accountability, not the end.

I’m not sure what the rest of the path to accountability looks like. But I really, really want to learn. And I really hope that other people in the poly community want to learn, too. I’m asking for a lot. I get that. But we need to be able to do this.

The cycle has to stop.

Really, go read the whole article (Feb. 10, 2015). He asks ask for your thoughts and input there.

● Here is the article that he references midstream: The Community Response to Abuse, by Shea Emma Fett (Jan. 30, 2015). This too is well worth your time.

● That post was a followup to Fett's Abuse in Polyamorous Relationships, including six Poly Traps (Nov. 22, 2014).

● Here are Eve's Resources on abuse in polyamorous relationships that grew out of the weekend. See the interesting comment there, by Liz, that women and men may abuse in similar numbers, but that this is not visible because men are more able to inflict obvious injury when aggressors, and are more ashamed to admit they are being abused when victims.

● Also helping to prompt this discussion was Cunning Minx's Polyamory Weekly podcast Episode 418, Emotional Abuse in Polyamorous Relationships (Jan. 23, 2015):

An incredibly difficult topic to deal with; this episode has been months in the making....

Shannon Perez-Darby, Youth Services Program Manager for The Northwest Network of Bisexual, Trans, Lesbian & Gay Survivors of Abuse, shares her advice on how to recognize abuse of all kinds and how to respond when you or someone you love might be surviving emotional abuse.

● There's now a hashtag: #AbuseInPoly

● Added April 2015: Dawn Davidson's connection of links, with commentary: Abuse in (poly) relationships: A link roundup.

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A Poly 101 for GLBT business leaders

429Magazine

With its social media and slick online magazine, "dot429 creates opportunities and connections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender business leaders." The magazine just put up a very basic poly how-to, providing the conventional wisdom for those who haven't heard.

Polyamory: a primer

By Emily Rush

Polyamory can be a confusing, scary, but ultimately rewarding relationship model. However, it takes a lot of work to do successfully. So, what should someone new to the idea know about it?

The first thing to remember is that no one starts out doing this right. Even after you’ve opened up to the idea of multiple, simultaneous loving relationships, there are a lot of old monogamy-related beliefs that will take some time to reconcile. It takes time to wrap your head around this whole new way of having relationships. Be patient with yourself.

Almost above all, listen to what your head and heart are telling you....

...Now here’s the biggest part of polyamory: communication. This sounds like a no-brainer, right? Not necessarily. You need to, in some ways, re-learn how to communicate with others.... You have to learn to be okay with telling them exactly where you are emotionally. You also need to be receptive to what they’re saying.

...Know that you are not responsible for someone else’s feelings, just as they’re not responsible for yours. This is an important thing to remember. [And to take in a properly nuanced way, say I. Boy, can this be a wrecking ball in the hands of an asshole. –Alan]

Try to find a community either locally or online....

The notion of cheating takes on a whole different dynamic in poly....

...Important first date tip: let someone know you’re poly before the first date....

The whole article (Feb. 19, 2015).

For further reading she recommends MoreThanTwo.com and the Polyamory Society, but the "Polyamory Society" doesn't really exist; it's a one-man website, most of it very old, and the expensive paid membership is basically meaningless.

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Playgirl touts "poly craze"

Turns out Playgirl had an enthusiastic four-page article titled "Polyamory — The New Alternative to Monogamy?" in its Nov/Dec 2014 print issue. The lead paragraph:

When you’re in love with more than one person, you are (whether you call it polyamory or not) part of the new “it” culture, one that involves complicated communication, open negotiation, and a penchant for honesty and trust. It used to be that coming out gay or lesbian was on everyone’s radar, but now polyamory has been peaking [sic] from those same sex spaces, and “coming out” has taken on new identities involving more than one lover, and sometimes lovers of multiple genders. New paradigms are being created, expanded, and explored with the hope that polyamory will spread into a broader level of acceptance.

And a bit later, "Polyamory is the latest relationship craze to hit mainstream media and the minds of many Americans."

Here's a hi-res (i.e. readable) PDF of the whole article.

Billy Holder, who's pictured in the story with two of his family members, remarks on his blog that he's not so happy with all the people in it being white middle class despite opportunities for more diversity, and with the article calling poly “a 'craze' and using terms that in many ways cut the movement’s strength and direction [like] something that may be around as long as parachute pants. A fad if you will. Even though the people interviewed had all had long-lasting Poly relationships and talked about the movement and its direction."

Otherwise, "not that much bad about it. I think overall it was a good story. It did talk about a lot of the concepts and directions poly people are coming from."

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"Three men marry each other in Thailand, internet goes crazy"

Gay Star News

A story that just reached our shores.

Update: Not a hoax... apparently. A reader points out that their names, "Art, Bell, Joke," suggest a joke by retired late-night radio host Art Bell or someone using his name. But I find no sign of this being exposed despite lots of media coverage worldwide, and their Facebook page seems very real. The story originated in Thailand, it was covered on Thai television and in Thai newspapers, and their nicknames, โจ๊ก, เบลล์, and อาร์ท, don't seem like the doings of an American hoaxer.

Photo via jokebellartfc / Facebook

Three men marry each other in Thailand, internet goes crazy

By Darren Wee

Three men who married each other on Valentine’s Day have become internet sensations in Thailand after photos from their pre-wedding shoot went viral.

Netizens congratulated the men, only identified as Joke, Bell and Art, who were married in a traditional water-pouring ceremony at midnight on 15 February.

The photos show the trio in Thai and western wedding attire and the text on one reads: 'Pure love cannot be seen by your eyes. If you want to know what its worth you have to see it with your heart.'

On one TV station's Facebook page alone, a photo of the men had more than 50,000 likes and 1,000 comments.

'Love occurs unconditionally and is not limited to only two people. Love brings peace to the world,' Art commented on Facebook.

The trio reportedly spent their honeymoon in their home province of Uthai Thani.

The wedding itself was a symbolic one as gay, and threeway, relationships are not recognized in Thailand.

Here's the original, with more wedding pix (Feb. 19, 2015).

Update: Brief story on Queerty, with all the pix from the original article: Meet Joke, Bell And Art, Thailand’s New Happily Married Threesome (Feb. 20, 2015).

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NBC drama pilot to feature an open marriage

But I wouldn't expect a good open marriage. Where would the drama be? That would require imagination.

Note: "Variety estimates that only a little over a quarter of all pilots made for American television proceed to the series stage, although the figure may be even lower." (Wikipedia)

These bits are from Deadline Hollywood, taken from NBC press releases in the last week:

Rockmond Dunbar To Star In NBC Pilot ‘Love Is A Four Letter Word

By Nellie Andreeva

...Rockmond Dunbar has booked his next series regular gig, signing on as the male lead in the NBC drama pilot Love Is A Four Letter Word. The project, from playwright-TV writer Diana Son, 20th TV and Fabrik, chronicles the collision of race, sexuality and gender roles when three diverse couples put modern marriage to the test.

Dunbar will play half of the lead couple, Nick, a charismatic and charming ad agency entrepreneur whose first marriage to Julie, the mother of two of his children, broke up over his affair with Fiona, now his wife. Nick and Fiona have an open marriage, and Fiona takes full advantage of their “arrangement” — but through the years, Nick has always pined for Julie, the true love of his life.

Nadine Velazquez... will play Rebecca, a Cuban American who is deeply in love with Julie and very happy with their marriage, but doesn’t realize her wife is actively considering getting back together with her ex, Nick.

Cynthia McWilliams... will play Tandi, one half of a happy couple with a young son who is experiencing difficulties fulfilling her dream of having another child.

This is just one of 16 Pilots That Will Attempt to Fly on NBC. From that link: "The success of shows like Jane the Virgin, Blackish, Empire, and everything Shonda Rhimes does are certainly reasons NBC is looking at a series with this sort of subject matter.

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"Bisexuality’s Watershed Political Moment"

The Daily Beast

Many surveys and observations suggest that about 40% of self-identified polys also self-identify as bisexual, compared to just a few percent of the general population. Meanwhile, a 2013 Pew Research study found that bis are the most numerous of the four letters in LGBT, but are much more closeted than either gays or lesbians.

So this article seems relevant. The news hook is that Kate Brown was just sworn in this morning.

Bisexuality’s Watershed Political Moment

Polls show that bisexuality is the least accepted of all sexualities. New Oregon Governor Kate Brown, who is openly bisexual and married to a man, could help change perceptions.

Michael Lloyd / The Oregonian / Landov

On February 18, former Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown (D) will become the first publicly bisexual governor in the United States. Brown’s swearing in comes on the heels of Democrat John Kitzhaber’s resignation of the governorship Friday following allegations of corruption and influence-peddling lobbied against both him and his fiancée Cylvia Hayes. But what’s bad news for Kitzhaber is great news for the future of LGBT political representation in the United States.

And it’s even better news for bisexual Americans who are sorely lacking public visibility at a crucial moment in LGBT history.

...The occasion of the first openly bisexual governor of the United States is a cultural watershed for bisexual people in the United States, who have historically been better represented by celebrities like [David] Bowie than by politicians like Brown.

With same-sex marriage in the United States — which has traditionally been represented as an exclusively gay or lesbian issue — seeming all but inevitable in 2015 and public attention quickly turning to what Time has called “The Transgender Tipping Point,” the “B” in the LGBT is at risk of becoming lost in the shuffle. Brown’s assumption of state leadership in 2015 is a particularly fortuitous opportunity to keep bisexual people in the conversation surrounding LGBT equality, as the country’s focus shifts to the last two letters of that ubiquitous acronym.

...In 2012, the Advocate could only count five openly bisexual state officials including Brown out of the then-90 or so LGBT state-level legislators. That’s a lot less than half.

Since that time, former Arizona State Senator Kyrsten Sinema has become the first out bisexual congresswoman but that’s the highest an openly bisexual person has climbed until now, making Brown the highest-ranking openly bisexual public official in U.S. history.

...Why are bisexual people, in particular, lagging so far behind in terms of their willingness to come out?

Brown’s own story contains one possible answer: Many bisexual men and women fear social exclusion from both straight people as well as lesbians and gay men.

...The Oregonian also reports that, in 2008, a Portland LGBT magazine advised Brown to “butch it up” if she wanted to be taken seriously as an LGBT public official.... And today, the fact that Brown is currently married to a man, Dan Little, is reportedly being raised to question her allegiance to the LGBT community....

Here's the whole article (Feb. 14, 2015).

Also, Washington Post story (Feb. 13).

Christian Science Monitor story (Feb. 15).

KOMO News in Seattle (Feb. 14).

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"Catholic church sacks woman for being too 'polyamorous' "

The Australian Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald


In Australia, a judge rules that being poly is a "behavior," not an orientation, and says that to rule otherwise would be a slippery slope to extending orientational protections to anything. The plaintiff is seeking redress after being fired from her position at a Catholic social-services agency, after they found her on the Brisbane Poly People meetup group's list of poly-friendly counselors and on its membership list.

Catholic church sacks woman for being too 'polyamorous'

The court found being polyamorous was "sexual behaviour" and not sexual orientation.

By Marianna Papadakis

A woman has lost a bid for compensation after she was sacked by a Catholic Church social services organisation for having too many sexual partners.

The woman filed the lawsuit against Brisbane-based Centacare last October claiming she was sexually discriminated against, as well as accusing the centre of breach of contract.

The woman was sacked for gross misconduct and bringing the centre into disrepute in August, 2013 after being told her "polyamorous" lifestyle was against the ethics and moral teachings of the Catholic Church.

Polyamory is defined as having multiple sexual relationships or partners at the same time, with the consent of all people involved.

The woman worked at the centre from August, 2007, and had been promoted to the role of clinical practice co-ordinator in its family support division in 2009.

The centre discovered the woman's lifestyle when her contact details as a "poly-friendly" counsellor were published on a website for the Brisbane Poly Group, a site for people involved or interested in varied alternatives to monogamy.

The woman was confronted by her managers on August 5, 2013 with questions as to why her name was at the bottom of a printed list of the group's members and whether she attended for professional or personal reasons, according to the judgment by Judge Salvatore Vasta of the Federal Circuit Court on February 11.

The co-ordinator initially lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission, alleging discrimination because of her sexual orientation.

But after her claim was dismissed by an AHRC delegate, she took her legal battle to court adding she should have been given 12 months rather than five weeks of notice, that there was no valid reason to sack her and she was not afforded procedural fairness in the termination process.

Justice Salvatore Vasta dismissed the co-ordinator's appeal on the basis it had no reasonable prospects of success. He found being polyamorous was "sexual behaviour" and not sexual orientation, which involved something far more than how one behaved sexually.

"Sexual orientation is how one is, rather than how one manifests that state of being. The manifestation of that state of being can take many forms," Justice Vasta said.

He rejected the woman's argument that "sexual behaviour" was a subset of sexually orientation saying it could lead to absurd results.

"If the contention of the applicant were correct, many people whose sexual activity might label them as sado-masochists, coprophiliacs or urophiliacs could claim that such is more than mere behaviour; it is in fact their very sexual orientation," Justice Vasta said.

"If the contention were correct, then the illegal activities of paedophilia and necrophilia may have the protection of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984."

Justice Vasta also said while he lacked jurisdiction to determine the woman's claim concerning reasonable notice, it did not give him any pleasure to rule this way.

No matter what the merits or the probability of success on the substantive claim, she should be allowed to at least ventilate her grievance, he said.

The Australian Financial Review

Here's the original (Feb. 17, 2015). The article is reprinted in today's Sydney Morning Herald and perhaps elsewhere.

Another article, in Brisbane's Courier-Post, identifies the woman as Susan Bunning. It concludes with, "Judge Vasta said Ms Bunning would have to take her common law claim over alleged unreasonable notice of dismissal to the District or Magistrates Court."

Anyone here know what happens next?

I bet we haven't heard the last of this.

(Update: Dan Savage weighs in again on the poly orientation-or-choice question: Australian Judge: Polyamory Not a Sexual Orientation, Feb. 23, 2015.)

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Valentine's Day poly stories, continued

Here's more of what the world just said about us in the last few days. This coverage makes me proud to wear the poly label. Click the titles for full articles.


● The online women's magazine YourTango published 12 Principles Of Polyamory That Benefit Monogamous Marriages, Too. It's undated but apparently they put it up a few days ago for Valentine's. The original appeared on the author's website Dec. 14, 2014.

12 Principles Of Polyamory That Benefit Monogamous Marriages, Too

I believe that understanding how relationships work is key to being happy in them, whether we’re talking about friendships, family relationships, monogamous relationships, non-monogamous relationships, or something else entirely.

A friend recently shared The 12 Pillars of Polyamory (by Kenneth R. Haslam, MD) with me, and I thought, gosh, these ideas are just too good to keep to myself. No matter what kind of relationship(s) you’re in, you will benefit from pondering these principles and figuring out how they apply to your life. I’ll list each of the 12 pillars with some of my own commentary, focusing on making them applicable for everyone....

[Each topic gets a paragraph or two:]

1. Authenticity
2. Choice
3. Transparency
4. Trust
5. Gender Equality
6. Honesty
7. Open Communication
8. Non-Possessiveness
9. Consensual
10. Accepting of Self Determination
11. Sex Positive
12. Compersion

Whew – did you make it through the whole list? What did you think? Are there relationships out there where, say, transparency and consent aren’t important to include? I know I’m a fan of relationship strategies that span relationship types, but maybe this approach doesn’t work for everyone. In that case, I challenge you to come up with counterexamples!

Dr. Jeana Jorgensen is a sex educator, scholar, and writer with a passion for relationship communication, narrative models of gender and sexuality, and alternative sexuality communities like non-monogamy and kink/BDSM.

This article was originally published at http://www.doctorjeana.com. Reprinted with permission.

● GBtimes is a global Chinese media network based in Beijing. Published and broadcast in at least 12 languages, it's designed to promote China's international image. Yesterday its English news site, at least, saw fit to cover polyamory approvingly. The article profiles Robyn Trask, director of Loving More, which is putting on next weekend's Poly Living conference in Philadelphia. We couldn't ask for a better spokesperson (regardless of the medium).

Love: The more the merrier? (Feb. 13, 2015).

By Sara Steensig

...But what if we have got it all wrong? What if serial monogamy, despite being the norm in many societies, is nothing to strive for? What if we could be with whoever we wanted without leaving a trail of hurt feelings?

Robyn Trask with her husband, Jesus, on the right and
her "sweetie", Ben, on the left. (Photo: Robyn Trask)

Having loving relationships with more than one person simultaneously is not only possible, but for some it has turned out to be the only good solution. That is the case for Robyn Trask, executive director for Loving More Nonprofit. The organization raises awareness of polyamory, or “consensual non-monogamous relationships,” as she defines the term in short.

...Trask herself is polyamorous: she shares a home in Loveland, Colorado, with her husband, who she has known for 10 years. Her other partner, who she has known for 12 years, lives in New York with his partner of 30 years. “And he has other partners, she has other partners, and my husband has other partners,” she explains with a laugh. “I have these incredibly intimate wonderful loving relationships, and I just happen to have them with more than one person. That doesn’t lessen the depth of those relationships.”

Thought she’d be alone forever

Honesty is the common factor in all of Trask’s romances. She and her husband introduce each other to new dates, and many metamours – as polyamorous people often call their partners’ partners – have become friends of the family.

“My sweetie who lives in New York, Ben, is friends with my husband. And in fact, when we had our wedding ceremony, one of the most important things was that Ben and his partner could be there for us and that they were part of that ceremony,” Trask explains.

...It was not, however, until the age of 35 that Trask discovered Loving More. Here, she found a community of people similar to her, and she learned that there was a word for openly loving more than one person: polyamory.

Poly people get jealous too

The idea of sharing your intimate partner with others has the potential to make even the most reasonable and open person jealous, and polyamorous people are not automatically free of the green-eyed monster. “Some people think that if you are polyamorous, you're not jealous. And that’s not the case. A few people aren’t, and I personally envy those people,” Trask reveals.

Trust and honesty, love and understanding, respect and commitment are positive features in any type of relationship, and in a polyamorous relationship, they are crucial, says Trask. “There is a need to really be self-reflecting, to be willing to deal with your emotions and take responsibility for them. You have to grow up a little bit, and that can be challenging.

“We're raised in a culture which teaches us that jealousy is an extension of love. And I personally don’t believe that. Jealousy is an emotion which tells us that we're not feeling secure, or that something's going on; something that we need to look at, instead of being afraid of it or using it to throw a tantrum like a two-year-old,” says Trask. “That said, there are plenty of poly people who are very immature and have a lot of drama in their lives, who get jealous and don’t deal with it well,” she adds. Trask knows this not only from personal experience, but also because she works as a counselor for other polyamorous people.

Instead of trying to control each other with rules, she recommends that partners make agreements – these can always be renegotiated. Like most other polyamorous people, Trask and her partners have agreements about safe sex. Trask and her husband have also agreed not to share their common bed with others, unless they both feel comfortable with it; instead, they take dates to the guest bedroom.
Mom, dad and their lovers

Trask has raised all of her three children in a polyamorous family setting. During their younger years, some of Trask’s partners and metamours functioned as an extended family, she explains. “I was dating one woman fairly seriously for about five years. She had kids, and she would bring the kids over: those kids really became family.”

Having more than two adults in the family is not only nice, says Trask, but it can also be very practical. For example, when she and her husband had to rush to the hospital with their son, who had broken his leg. Trask’s female partner came over to care for the rest of the kids. “I don’t have family nearby who could have done that. So that was really useful.”

Trask says that her daughter especially – the youngest of the three – has always appreciated having lots of adults around. There's always someone to talk to, even about topics that she does not necessarily want to share with her mother or father.

Only Trask’s oldest son, who is now 26, had a strong reaction against his parent’s lifestyle during his teenage years. “When he was 16, I remember him telling me that polyamory was wrong and that he would never do that. And then, when he was 17, he was dating a girl, he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend, and his ex-girlfriend was dating somebody.

“They all sat down and talked about it, and the four of them started dating. They actually asked his mom – me – to come and help them talk about it and set up their agreements,” laughs Trask.

...The organization that Trask heads, Loving More, supports people in making their own relationship choices, whatever those may be. But for many people monogamy is not a choice; it’s more of a default, she points out....

In China itself, we should note, sex and relationship radicals are sometimes persecuted by the same government that puts on a happy media face to the world.


● In Canada, the national TV network Global News just published on its website Sharing the love: polyamory offers different take on relationships (Feb. 14, 2015). The stock photo they stuck on top is irrelevant to poly; freelance photographers, get busy.

By Tania Kohut

Two may be company, but three, four or even five might not be a crowd, if you practice polyamory.

Relationships can be tough — you have to care for and be respectful of someone else’s feelings and needs through the ups and downs. Now imagine adding in another person to the mix. Or maybe two or even three more people.

Polyamory is a term many don’t recognize. But it’s a way of life for some, with an upswing of support groups and events for polyamorous people. It’s a term that can be used for open relationships, for someone dating multiple people, or for group relationships.

“Polyamory is becoming more of a general term,” says Samantha Fraser, a life and relationship coach and sex educator. “The root definition is many-love. Poly meaning many, amory meaning love.”

Fraser lives in Toronto with her husband of eight years. They own a home and have three cats. On the surface they seem the norm, but their lifestyle would give some a shock. They have an open relationship, and Fraser is a vocal proponent of “non-monogamy.” She says more and more people are embracing the lifestyle, or at least doing so publicly....

...Infidelity is a leading cause of breakups and divorce. So could polyamory, or ethical non-monogamy, save relationships?

Not so fast, says clinical practitioner and family therapist Carol Morotti-Meeker, based in Philadelphia.

“Some people will run for more partners when things aren’t good, but we don’t think that’s a positive way to have healthy relationships.”...

“Consent is a big part here. Everybody knows what’s going on and consents to whatever is going on.”

She says it takes a level of emotional intelligence to balance a polyamorous lifestyle. And while there’s a lot of info out there, not all is accurate....

She adds that it can be stressful juggling multiple relationships.

“It’s a challenge. It’s really hard. It’s a lot of work and so much communication is required to be successful at it.”

● In the campus paper of the University of Georgia in Athens, GA: Free love: Polyamory in Athens (Feb. 14, 2015).

An example of a polyamorous relationship
on February 10, 2015 in Athens, Georgia.
(Photo by Mercedes E. Bleth).

By Blake Morris

Openly having several romantic partners at once may seem impossible for more traditional folks, but such an outlook on relationships is becoming increasingly popular in Athens.

“[The polyamorous scene in Athens is] small and growing rapidly,” said Eli Gaultney. “It wasn’t something I’d ever heard of five years ago, and these days nearly every person I talk to has at least heard of it. At UGA, I think a lot of people are polyamorous, or at least ethically non-monogamous, without realizing there’s a word for it.”

...Seeing love as a positive and generally unlimited resource, polyamorous people see nothing wrong with sharing their love with multiple partners.

“It’s not solely about sex — we want romance,” Gaultney said.

By definition, polyamory should be consensual to all parties involved and is often egalitarian in nature. As opposed to some other forms of non-monogamy, polyamorous relationships are generally based on pleasing everyone involved.

“I think that one of the biggest things people don’t realize is that there’s so many different ways to do polyamory, and it can be different for each person or group of people,” said Sarah McManus, another organizer of Athens Polyamory. “So it’s more based on figuring out what works in an ethical way than having a specific set of rules.”...

● Poly activist Amanda Zuke, who you may have seen on the interwebs, is psyched to have been profiled in her hometown online daily paper in Sault Ste. Marie on the Michigan-Canada border: Love according to Zuke: 'People who want to be a thing should be a thing' (Feb 14, 2015).

By Donna Hopper

By day, Amanda Zuke is a long-term care provider.

A fairly normal job.

But that's where normal ends.

In her off time, Zuke is a certified wedding officiant with All Seasons Weddings who will join any two people in any situation under any circumstance at any location.

Pretty much, anyway.

..."I'm really lucky in that when couples book with me, they seem to more often than not have a really strong vision of what they want their big day to be. I get really creative couples," she continued.

...But unique weddings are only part of Zuke's unconventionality.

She's also a proud Pagan who, for a number of years, organized the Pagan Pride Days celebration in Sault Ste. Marie.

And although she's happily married, she also has a boyfriend.

She and her husband enjoy a polyamorous lifestyle, and all parties involved are perfectly okay with it.

"I consider polyamory not only a practice, but an orientation," she explained. "In terms of orientation, it's a matter of who you love. But it's also related to how. In my case, I've always been inclined to love more than one person at a time. I just didn't know I could do that for most of my life."

"I often have to correct the notion that [my relationship] is recreational. I'm just not into the recreational thing," she said. "What I have right now are two substantial long-term relationships. I tend to have very long, very serious relationships that just happen to come in numbers more than one."

For obvious reasons, conversations with new potential partners don't open with a declaration of polyamory, Zuke joked, and being comfortable with someone prior to pursuing a relationship is important.

"It can be very impractical when you're in a polyamorous relationship to begin with to meet someone. It can be difficult," she told us. "But part of being poly is developing really strong communications kills. The kind of skills that anybody can use, but are absolutely mandatory when you're dealing with multiple partners. When you're in love with multiple people, you really have to be completely open with them."

Aside from the overt advantages to having more than one serious relationship, Zuke says it's common for polyamorous couples to become very close with each other's partners, developing important and lasting friendships.

In fact, she stood as wedding officiant for her husband's ex-girlfriend.

"The reasons that I've embraced polyamory in my own life are very similar to the reasons that lead me to become a wedding officiant," she said. "Fundamentally, I'm for free choice and finding your happiness. I've found my way to be happy and what I really want when I'm performing weddings is to help other people be happy their way."

...I'm very pro individual choice and people who want to be a thing should be a thing."

---------------------------------

Update: Happy ending to newspaper misusing "polyamory." At the behest of Eve Rickert, who tweeted him, that New York Daily News reporter apologized and corrected his online article (scroll down).

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Misuse of "polyamorous." We still have work to do.

The tabloid New York Daily News has an article this morning about a swing club operator who writes in her memoir that she's had sex with 3,000 men. (I mistakenly said it was in the New York Post originally.) The article begins,

Steamy memoir by 63-year-old Marie Calvert of La Chambre swinging club in Sheffield, England, reveals the source of prominent polyamorous couple’s first interest in alternate sex partners: a magazine her husband brought home when she was 28.

And the lead sentence calls her "one half of one of the UK’s most prominent polyamorous couples".

But the lady herself says, "neither of us puts sex on a pedestal. We see it for what it is: separate from love." Her 3,000 partners are described as casual romps.

Polyfuckery and polyamory are not the same. This too-common misuse of our identifying word threatens to dilute and confuse our identity. If it takes hold it will make life harder for us, make it harder for the curious to google good information, and make it harder for us to find each other.

I posted an early comment calling out the writer and the paper for stupidity. So can you. The article: Swinger magazine inspired woman to sleep with 3,000 men: report (Feb. 15, 2015).

The article is cribbed from a more intelligent one by the lady herself in The Guardian, which makes no reference to polyamory.

Update later in the day: Success! Eve Rickert took the direct approach — she wrote to the reporter. And he promised to fix the wording:

And yes, the article is now fixed. Activism gets results.

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U.K. lesbians look at poly history and practice

The Most Cake calls itself "the chic-yet-undeniably-geeky lovechild of a new generation of London lesbians having their cake and eating it too." Here it delves into lesbian poly history and practice.

When your girlfriend wants two girlfriends

By Lucy Peters

...That’s the version of romance you hear about in pop music and romantic comedies, literature and magazine problem pages: that if you choose right, you can find one person to offer you companionship and sex, financial stability and children, along with red roses on Valentines’ Day.

This idea has persisted through the rise of feminism, which allowed many women to escape the need for male financial and legal protection, and the gay rights movement, which turned mainstream notions of sex and love upside down.

...But over the last couple of decades, more and more people have been opting for something slightly different…

The word ‘polyamory’ appeared for the first time in 1992, in a Usenet newsgroup post by Jennifer L. Wesp, who was credited when, in 2006, it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. The definition was based on a 1990 essay by a pagan writer called Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart about her relationships...

Polyamory originated at the same time as queer theory, the strand of academia that brought feminism and gay rights issues together in books like Gender Trouble by Judith Butler. Like queer theory, polyamory had radical notions about how people might arrange their sex lives, and like queer theory, it was spearheaded by women....

Its first and most famous handbook, The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, was published in the US in 1997, and though (unlike in more recent books and online guides to polyamory) the focus was more on sex than relationships, the book clarified the distinction between polyamory and cheating, was inclusive of some queer identities, and approached topics, like jealousy and scheduling, that are still key discussion points.... Arguably, it rode the wave of gay and feminist political movements, as they worked to change social attitudes to gender and sexuality, but its philosophy might not have influenced so many people if it hadn’t also been published pretty much at the dawn of the digital age.... If I set my filters to find queer, non-monogamous women living in or near London, I end up with a long list: if I went on dates with them all at a rate of one per week, I’d be busy for the next three years.

According to the BBC, polyamory, with its focus on honesty and flexible approach to intimacy, is ‘the next frontier’ of our romantic lives...

...It might not be obvious that this can be a politically radical way to organise relationships. But for queer poly people, there are clear links between seeing your gender and sexuality as political and organising your relationships along polyamorous lines....

Read the whole long article, 2,800 words (Jan. 11, 2015). It goes on to interview women in London's queer poly scene.

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Big batch of poly in the media shows up pre-Valentine's Day

'Tis the night before Val's Day, I'm calling it quits,
And just posting these stories, 'cause that's all that fits.

For now, anyway. I think this is the biggest year yet for a pre-Valentine's runup of poly in the media. Click the titles for the full articles. I'm sure this batch isn't complete, but it's bedtime for me.

Courtesy Kimchi Cuddles. Used with permission.

● On Cosmopolitan's website: Sex Talk Realness: What It's Like to Be Polyamorous (Feb. 13, 2015):

By Rachel Hills

Imagine if your "one and only" was one of many? Polyamorous people believe that you can love more than one person (sexually and/or romantically) at a time. In this week's Sex Talk Realness, Cosmopolitan.com speaks with four women about what it's really like to be polyamorous....

● At Connections.mic, 3 Things We Can All Learn About Love From Polyamorous Couples on Valentine's Day (Feb. 13, 2015).

By Sophie Saint Thomas

...I'm a bisexual woman with a male partner who is supportive of my relationship with another woman. For me, figuring out what the hell to do for Valentine's Day makes multiple Klonopin sound more appealing than multiple orgasms.

Logistics aside, the annual holiday is a celebration of love, and in no context is this clearer than in polyamorous relationships that fully embody the inclusivity, generosity and and limitlessness of intimacy. Here are some of many lessons lovers in all types of relationships can learn from those in polyamorous ones.

Embrace the awkward PDA moments. This day is about you, not onlookers....

..."My partners (and their partners) comprise a distributed network of love and support," Tilde said. "My metamours (in poly parlance, my partners' partners) are amazing. There's a word, 'compersion,' for when your partner being with someone else brings you joy. To me, compersion feels like a cloud of glitter poofting all over my metamours and me."...

Spice up your V-Day to-do list. A lot.

Sheila is a 37-year-old female member of the poly quad behind the app The Poly Life, a tool that facilitates planning polyamorous Valentine's Day dates.... "In my case, the to-do items are a little racier, like what sex acts I'd like to be done to me and vice versa."...

Valentine's Day is longer than 24 hours.

...This year, Sheila is celebrating with Eric and Jill as a triad. "On lucky Friday the 13th, Jill and Eric are having their private date, to honor their primary relationship. Amanda and I are going to a strip club and buying each other lap dances!" said Sheila. "On Valentine's Day, the night of the 14th, I'll join Eric and Jill in their hotel suite for our Valentine's date. I love threesomes!"...

● KQED in San Francisco is an important player in public radio nationwide. Friday morning it broadcast a thoughtful, 51-minute (!) interview with four of our leading lights. The program blurb:

The Bay Area has the largest polyamorist community in the country, and it's growing. Polyamory encompasses a variety of consensual, non-monogomous relationships, from a couple who occasionally sees other people to a group of seven all living together in a group relationship. We talk with a panel of polyamorists about the how and why of their relationships.

Guests:

– Marcia Baczynski, open relationship coach and author of an e-book on becoming non-monogamous, "Four Mistakes Couples Make When Opening Up and How to Avoid Them"
– Pepper Mint, member of a polyamorous relationship for 12 years
– Polly Superstar Whittaker, author of the memoir "Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary" and founder of the San Francisco sex positive communities Mission Control and Kinky Salon
– William Winters, polyamory community organizer

It was on at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. PST. Listen anytime here:




● Rachel Kramer Bussel has a nice piece in the Philadelphia City Paper, coincidentally a week before the Poly Living Conference begins there. Her story is titled Love the one you’re with — and the one they’re with, too (Feb. 12, 2015).

...To explore this more, I asked several poly­amorous people about their relationships with their metamours (essentially, the partners of their partner or partners). I'll use Cunning Minx, Polyamory Weekly podcaster and author of Eight Things I Wish I'd Known About Polyamory: Before I Tried It and Frakked It Up, as an example. She's in a long-term relationship with LustyGuy, who is married to L....

The same story greeted readers of (at least) the "U.S." website of the Metro freebie commuter newspaper, with the headline Exploring Polyamory: Why you should love the one you’re with — and the one they’re with, too.


Some last-minute tags to cut out and fill in:

Courtesy Kimchi Cuddles. Used with permission.

● Meanwhile in the mainstream Philly Voice, an online regional newspaper founded just last year: Open relationships: Boundaries, benefits and drawbacks (Feb. 10, 2015).

By Sharon Margolis

“If we’re going to talk about couples opening up their relationship, it would look like 'Choose Your Adventure,' like those books from when you were a kid,” Dr. Jennifer Pollitt, of Widener University, told PhillyVoice.com. Pollitt's studies focus on human sexuality education.

That’s right, relationships, just like handbags or ice cream sundaes, can be tailored just exactly to your desires. They’re called designer relationships....

“I don’t have any rules with any of my partners,” Dr. Annalisa Castaldo, a polyamorous professor of English at Widener, told PhillyVoice.com over email. “I would consider it rude, at the very least, to tell my partners who they can and can’t date, or that certain acts are allowed or not with other partners.”

Castaldo, who's married, is also in a relationship of six years with another man; he has a full-time live-in partner himself. Her husband, in turn, is seeing two other women, both of whom are in multiple relationships.

Relinquishing control is at the heart of the process of opening up. It’s a rational skill that allows relationships to continue separately and be accepted and understood by those on the outside.

As Pollitt says, there are two factors that may determine who’s going to take the leap into open love: Time and intellectual curiosity.

...One of the most important rules relates to sexual health, especially critical to people so closely and intricately entwined. Some require showing test results, but testing positive for infection doesn't always mean no.

“[Having a sexually transmitted infection] is not necessarily a deal-breaker because there are so many folks that do have STIs, but it would have to be a much more lengthy discussion in terms of susceptibility and risk, not only to me but to anyone else that I would then partner with,” my anonymous source says....

Benefits

It’s all well and good to talk about living on the fringe of society, but what draws people in? And what makes them stay?

For some, it’s the combination of real intimacy and mutual independence that can’t be found elsewhere.

A strong core relationship (not everyone agrees, but generally, the leading two members of a relationship, the "First Couple," as it were, are referred to as “primary” partners, their other partners “secondary,” and so on) can, in fact, grow stronger, as the bonds of trust and honesty about a person’s unfulfilled needs necessarily take deeper root....

Drawbacks

Reports are inconclusive as to whether the tendency toward polyamory is innate. But as new-fangled as this lifestyle may seem, some conventional wisdom holds. When you’re in a relationship already on shaky grounds, it doesn’t help to open up that relationship.

That’s not to say that a designer relationship has to begin with two people already in a monogamous bond. But when it does (and it often does, since the love chemicals that attract us to one another initially bond us in a monogamous holding pattern), that initial union must be strong, or else risking vulnerability can go awry.

You can't prevent the pain of adjustment as your loved one falls in love with someone else and doesn’t pay as much attention to you as they would have before....

Butterflies in your stomach? As it turns out, the day-to-day of open relationships is not so different. Love is discrete, but it can multiply. Love knows no bounds. For love is love by any other name.

● Be Mine, And Hers, And His: The Requisite Valentine's Themed Post On Polyamory, at the online woman's magazine Ravishly (Feb. 11, 2015):

By Jetta Rae DoubleCakes

This time of year casts a shadow of glib apathy over me.... Most might look into a crowded restaurant and see celebratory loving couples. I see dozens of tired actors, forced to re-audition for the parts they’ve already landed....

Sexual and romantic exclusivity is my idea of hell, and for a lot of you celebrating Valentine’s Day, I would reckon it’s the same. Bachelor parties. Mancaves. Girls Night Out. Your monogamy has an entire culture of triage built around it, desperately trying to hold heteronormativity in place as it hemorrhages, free-falling into chaos. The future is upon us. The future is beautiful. The future wore three matching wedding dresses and is having a baby.

Come out into the cold, my dove.

I know you’ve heard things.

But jealousy is not the hardest part of polyamory. When you learn to name and own your feelings, and have space to process them without judgment or reprimand, then to fall apart under their weight like some Jenga of neediness is not the end of the world, but rather the potential start of a healing conversation....

● The Santa Fe Reporter profiles the local poly discussion and social group: Three’s Company: Santa Fe's polyamory Community is Small but Proud (Feb. 11, 2015).

By Emily Zak

...Mim Chapman, author of What Does Polyamory Look Like? and founder of Santa Fe’s only poly group, defines polyamory as “the belief that one can openly, honestly, respectfully and mutually decide to love more than one person at the same time.”

When Chapman started Santa Fe Poly a decade ago, there were few local outlets for polyamorous people to connect with each other. She inititally held monthly potlucks at her house, where as many as 50 people would show up to hot tub and drink wine and talk....

...Chapman sums it up best. “[Polyamory’s] a valid option for people who deal well with complexity, who like communication and depth and feedback from a number of loving individuals. I would love it to be an option for everyone; I would never wish it to be something everyone should try,” Chapman says. “I really hope that at some point it’ll be accepted.”

● In Ireland, in the major daily newspaper The Irish Times Polyamory: ‘People think it’s like a swingers’ party’ (they explain that it's not). With a 2:22 video (Feb. 13, 2015). More on this one later.


● At Identities.mic, a gay perspective on the many sudden social acceptances that have been happening: Here Are 6 Legitimately Amazing Reasons to Celebrate Love This Valentine's Day (Feb. 6, 2015). One of them is,

We're finally taking polyamory seriously.

Polyamory was a taboo subject just a few years ago. But as our ideas about love and sex have evolved, so have our ideas about monogamy. There's still a lot of misconception about why people seek polyamory, but there is growing understanding that consensual non-monogamy is a healthy option for those who don't subscribe to traditional romantic structures. More and more, our society is rethinking what a relationship means, what it is to love another person (or multiple people) and to commit.

● At YourTango, an online women's magazine, How Polyamory May Overtake Monogamy, by Mr. Mike Hatcher. It's undated but seems to have just gone up. BTW, I don't believe the title. And the piece is poorly written.


More to come, I'm sure.

Courtesy Kimchi Cuddles. Used with permission.

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Those crappy "poly" stock photos the media use? Photographers, go for it!

A flood of Valentine's Day poly articles are already showing up, and I'll post a roundup this evening I hope. But in the meantime — what about those smarmy, cheating-looking stock photos so many of these articles use?

The usual trope is a guy nuzzling a girl while holding hands with another girl behind the first one's back. Over and over. A lot of you have said you're pissed.

We see the same pix over and over because that's what media in a hurry find when they type "polyamory" or "three lovers" or whatever into a photo service like Getty or iStock or Shutterstock.

You can change this! Set up any three or more people to look like they're in a mutually supportive, caring relationship. Shoot a bunch of pictures with any camera better than a phone camera. Choose the best few, maybe touch up the lighting, contrast, etc. as needed, and post them to the usual photo agencies tagged with the right keywords. Anyone can do it!

[Which agencies? A reddit commenter writes, "Stock sites would include (off the top of my head) places like bigstock, istock, dreamstime. Just google stock photo site!"]

You might even earn a few bucks. There's a growing demand for stock photos to illustrate poly articles, and there's obviously a short supply.

Do it today and you might possibly see your pix used somewhere in the media for Val's Day tomorrow. And you might get the occasional (smallish) royalty check for years to come.

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Two new articles from South Africa

City Press
Daily Planet

These two pieces in the South African media come by way of Greenfizzpops, longtime SA poly-community organizer.

Love the one you’re with

By Jade Zwane

...There are existing and successful models of relationships with people having more than one partner. This is popularly known as polyamory.

Put simply, polyamory is the practice of having more than one intimate relationship at the same time with the full knowledge and consent of all partners involved.

The boundaries of these relationships are varied and depend on the parties involved....

Like any successful relationship, trust, ongoing openness and honesty are essential in polyamorous relationships. Consensual non-monogamous relationships try to avoid a break of trust and dishonesty by giving all parties involved a platform to vocalise their needs, be they sexual, emotional or otherwise.

Communication is emphasised to manage any jealousy and feelings of being excluded. It is natural to assume that people in polyamorous relationships are unfulfilled or dissatisfied with their primary partner. This is not true. The multiple relationships are independent of each other. One study showed that a person averaged nine years with their primary partner and two and a half years with their secondary one.

The arrangement does not dispense with commitment. Polyamorous relationships can last a long time, are committed to the various partners, and are stable and formal or clearly defined. The only area where extensive research has not been done is the effect of this relationship on children.

But early research has shown that polyamory doesn’t have to negatively affect the offspring of such relationships.

I’m not saying polyamory is better than monogamy — neither is better. It is important to know the options available to us before making such long-term commitments. I lived in a non-monogamous commune for three months in San Francisco in 2012. The couples seemed more fulfilled and genuinely happy. Everything was discussed at great length....

Read the whole article (Jan. 25, 2015).


And at The Daily Planet ("to bring you the best of the web"):

Wicked Wednesday: The lowdown on polyamory

By Lolita Nzito

I love. You love. We love. (Pic: Wikipedia)

The face of dating in 2015 is significantly different from what it was a few years back, at least from where I stand. I discuss dating a lot on social media and with friends. As I draw closer to being a woman in my late twenties, I cannot help but look back at how my views on sex, dating and love have altered over the years. From leaving a marriage, to being in a polyamorous union, and exploring the limits of my depraved mind through BDSM, I can truly say I’ve explored a lot more than the average person in their late twenties, yet it only feels like the beginning.

To have to explain why I am not monogamous, and the challenge of finding someone who ticks the very many boxes means that my dating options are severely limited. Polyamory, especially, is the one topic that raises eyebrows and many people cannot seem to wrap their heads around the idea of having multiple partners who know about each other and are OK with it.

I have come (hehe) across many who have claimed to be polyamorous but really just want to cheat on their partners. If your partner doesn’t know about the other person, it isn’t polyamory, it’s cheating. There are certain elements of the poly lifestyle that are confusing, so let me briefly explain two things that polyamory is not....

...In an age where sex positivity is encouraged but often misunderstood, it is important to be completely honest if you’re considering getting into a poly relationship. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you’re monogamous, and being in a poly arrangement simply doesn’t work for you. It may be difficult if your partner doesn’t feel the same, but openness means you have a choice to stick around and work through your feelings about polyamory or find someone who is monogamous.

Lolita Nzito is a twenty-something year old kinkster, whose love language is books.

The whole article (Feb. 4, 2015).


Greenfizzpops maintains the South African Polyamory website, which lists 23 poly-related print articles and 7 radio interviews (scroll down to the "Local media articles related to polyamory" link) that have appeared in the South African media since 2003. Well done.

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New poly webcomic: "The Feeling is Multiplied"

The Feeling Is Multiplied has been going for four weeks now, and Blue Crow, Matthew Rainwater and Marco Padilla are planning for a long run.

Here's strip #1, starting the introductions (Jan. 11, 2015). As Blue explains in the backstory, this is the true story of a clinic visit after a bike crash.

They're putting up a new comic every Tuesday, and a new Sharing is Caring blogpost every Thursday. The strips so far are about their own homey life.

BTW, my occasionally-updated list of poly comics still gets hits eight years after I first put it up. Yes, I really should remake and repost it. So does anyone have a good current list of poly comics? Lemme know in the comments here, or write me at alan7388 {at} gmail.com.

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