More Valentine's Week poly coverage

A scattering of recent Valentine's Week stories not already noted. No claim of completeness.

● Starting off with a great one, the Philadelphia Weekly presents Plus 2: Being Poly (Feb. 10, 2016), by Timaree Schmit. (You may remember her from this fine piece last September.)

Polyamory, mean­ing “many loves,” is a type of eth­ic­al non-mono­gamy: you can have mul­tiple re­la­tion­ships sim­ul­tan­eously and every­one in­volved knows and con­sents to it.

...Our cur­rent, lim­ited defin­i­tion of sexu­al ori­ent­a­tion doesn’t de­scribe much about de­sires or be­ha­vi­or. It says little about which male or fe­male people you find at­tract­ive, what you want to do with them, the value you put on emo­tion­al con­nec­tion, or how you con­duct sexu­al re­la­tion­ships.

...For me, someone who iden­ti­fies as bi­sexu­al, gender is the least of my con­cerns in po­ten­tial part­ners.... So sum­mar­iz­ing my sexu­al ori­ent­a­tion as “just” bi­sexu­al is wildly in­ad­equate.

...Not every­one who prac­tices polyamory con­siders it to be an ori­ent­a­tion, some folks just end up in com­plex situ­ations or grow in­to the prac­tice. But for some of us, be­ing poly is as in­trins­ic as at­trac­tion to men or wo­men.

...Lynne, a mem­ber of the Philly based group Poly­delphia, says “Poly was my re­la­tion­ship ori­ent­a­tion be­fore I was aware of it.”...

An­oth­er Poly­delphia mem­ber, Kate, had just broken up with two boy­friends she’d been dat­ing sim­ul­tan­eously when she found a pas­sage in the book Polyamory: An­oth­er Life­style that res­on­ated with her [I've never heard of this book and can't find it on Amazon or elsewhere. –Ed.] . “Sud­denly, in a flash, noth­ing was wrong! Everything made sense. And it was so simple: I had been a poly­gam­ous wo­man all my life, try­ing to fit my­self in­to a mold that neither fit me nor my per­cep­tion of the times I was liv­ing in.”

...Is there a ge­net­ic basis for poly ori­ent­a­tion? No one has spe­cific­ally stud­ied that.... Per­haps the ques­tion is ir­rel­ev­ant: crushes de­vel­op from ex­pos­ure as much as wir­ing. All de­sires are de­term­ined by ge­net­ic pro­cliv­ity com­bined with lived ex­per­i­ence.... For me, it’s the ac­know­ledg­ment that I can fully be in­to mul­tiple people sim­ul­tan­eously and that sexu­al ex­clus­iv­ity is not re­quired for a re­la­tion­ship to be vi­tally im­port­ant....

Polyamory is having a moment

Main­stream me­dia are cov­er­ing it with gusto, some with a “loo­kee here” vant­age, oth­ers con­tem­plat­ing what there might be to learn from a life­style so con­tin­gent on hon­est com­mu­nic­a­tion. I don’t con­sider it a trend so much as a game changer. One day we’ll look back on the emer­gence of poly the same way we looked at be­ing gay in the 90s. The real ques­tion is what part of sexu­al ori­ent­a­tion will be next.

● On the website of SBS, Australia's public broadcasting service, How the polyamorous celebrate Valentine's Day (Feb. 13):

By Shami Sivasubramanian

...People who choose the polyamorous lifestyle vary from dating a few people in exclusion, to being in a group of people who date each other collectively. Sometimes it's a combination of the two.

...In terms of sex, pop culture has helped us understand all the nitty-gritty logistics. But when it comes to romantic love in polyamory, the concept still eludes us.

...To better understand the romantic logistics of this less conventional form of dating, we spoke to three people about their experiences, especially when it comes to celebrating Valentine's Day.

[That's Tina Belcher on the Fox series "Bob's Burgers"]

James* entered the world of polyamory at age 18, and finds the key to it being open communication, even with parents.

"It's much like any other relationship I'd assume, except with arguably more communication. This includes communication with parents — they know. Google calendar helps keep things organised, and again, communication."

...When it came to Valentine's Day, he said he and the partners he's had during the romantic holiday were not ones to celebrate it. However celebrating other romantic holidays, like Christmas, was something they did do....

● On the website of New Jersey's Asbury Park Press, Multiple Valentines? 3 facts about a Polyamorous Valentine's Day (Feb. 14). Mute your speakers; a brief video starts autoplaying (a few on-the-street interviews with bemused people who've never heard of the subject).

...Polyamorous Valentine's Day may be unfamiliar to some, but with hundreds of Facebook groups devoted to the subject, it appears to be a lifestyle picking up steam.

Here are three things to know about Polyamory and Valentine's Day.

1. First, let's start with the word itself....

2. Unsure what to get for your polyamorous Valentines? Cafe Press has you covered. There you can download multiple polyamorous themed greeting and Valentine's cards.

3. Polyamory may be more natural than you think....

Be sure to spend the holiday with the one, or ones, you love!

● Farther afield, in Nigeria's The Sun News: Polyamory: Strange world of couples who openly share lovers (undated but recent):

We are a devoted couple… with 100 lovers in 3 years

By Diana Appleyard

MEET loving couple John and Claudia, who have been together for seven years — though during the past three, he has bedded more than 40 other women.

But she does not mind a bit, having had flings with more than 60 men herself in that time.

The pair are part of a growing movement called polyamory, in which couples allow each other full sexual freedom, while main­taining their love and respect for each other.

Polyamorous dating website openminded. com has 36,002 UK members out of 180,000 worldwide....

John and Claudia credit polyamory with keeping their relationship alive and are now planning to get married and have children.

They even say they would invite previous partners to the wedding....

It includes a list of "polyamory terms" that defines "cowboy" backward. The article was reprinted from the U.K.'s Sun, one of that country's trashiest tabloids, where it appeared last November 12th.

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