"Exploring the Ins and Outs of Polyamory"

Seven Days (Burlington, VT)

Seven Days is the alternative newspaper of northern New England's coolest city, where I once edited the paper's predecessor, the Vermont Vanguard Press. So I'm sentimental about this one. It's a profile of people in the area's poly community, including the Vermont Poly Woodchucks, but I was sorry to see no mention of the group or its public contact info.

The writer (a longtime staffer at the paper) promised anonymity to those who needed it. Many did, and that means there are no real names or faces either.

The writer got the idea for the article when a member of a local quad contacted him last October about broadening the topics in the paper's bi-annual sex survey. That conversation sparked the writer's interest in the area's polyfolks. Remember, if you'd like some media notice for anything, you can often get it just by writing or calling cold. The smaller the outlet the better your chance.

"Exploring the Ins and Outs of Polyamory"

By Ken Picard

Kim Scafuro

Betsy has a full day ahead of her, even for someone with four romantic partners. An hour after her interview with a reporter, she's due to pick up one of her girlfriends at the airport. Later this afternoon, she'll have a coffee date with a potential fifth partner, followed by dinner and a movie with her "primary partner," Lola, whom she sees three nights a week.

"This is not a typical day," the 60-year-old Burlington grandmother confesses. "Usually, I don't double-book myself like this."

Betsy (who asked that her last name not be revealed) has nothing against monogamous relationships; she was married for 28 years and still would be, she adds, had her husband not died when she was 51. Two years after his death, Betsy began practicing polyamory, or having more than one romantic partner at the same time. Today, she's part of a constellation of intermingled love interests.

Betsy also leads poly activities (potlucks, movie nights, discussion groups) for other Vermonters, conducts polyamory workshops at sex-positive retreats in Maryland, and coordinates Vermont polyamory groups and pages through Facebook and FetLife. The latter is an online social network for the BDSM and fetish communities.

But, contrary to what many non-poly people may assume, Betsy insists that polyamory is not synonymous with swinging or open relationships. For her, it requires much deeper emotional connections with her partners. They all know about and consent to her other romantic relationships, as she does to theirs....

For Betsy, that means she may go kayaking and cycling with one partner, see movies and have dinner with a second, and attend workshops and weekend retreats with a third. Her sexual intensity with each partner may ebb and flow over time. But what remains constant, she says, is the deep emotional attachment she feels to them all.

"There are so many different kinds of candy out there," she says with a smile. "I'm not gonna eat just one."...

...How common is polyamory in Vermont? It's difficult to say.... Still, there are clues to the practice's popularity. Several Vermonters interviewed for this story belong to a local polyamory email discussion list that claims 100 to 150 members. Similarly, a search of PolyMatchMaker, an online polyamory dating site, turned up 360 people within 100 miles of Burlington — from singles in their twenties to gay and straight couples in their sixties — who are interested or engaged in polyamorous partnerships. Those in the poly community suggest their actual numbers are much higher....

The original print version of this article was headlined "Whole Lotta Love".

Read the whole 1,700-word feature (online Feb. 4, 2015). It's in the paper's annual Love & Marriage issue.

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