The first deep profile of Jessica Fern. Poly law activists run an op-ed manifesto. Churches, their poly members, and group agapé. New research. And more.

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But first, US citizens: Are you registered to vote? Have you been purged from the voter list without your knowledge?  It happens. To register or to check your registration, go to vote.gov. Time grows late.

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●  Jessica Fern, the polyamory movement's current top book author, gets a long, deep magazine profile of herself, her work, its cultural impact, and her extended chosen family: 'Polysecure' is the reason everyone you know is in an open marriage (Business Insider, Sept. 5).

Business Insider has been expanding its range of topics, and it sometimes runs long-form articles of impressive quality. This is one of them; you might expect to see it in Vanity Fair or The New Yorker, and it's 6,000 words. The author, Ana Silman, came from New York magazine's The Cut.

It's paywalled, but here are excerpts:

When Jessica Fern joined Feeld — the "dating app for open-minded individuals" (or as some call it, the threesome app) — she wasn't looking for love; she was looking for someone to dominate her. Under smiling photos of herself hiking a waterfall in Costa Rica, she wrote that she wanted to explore BDSM with someone who could offer genuine emotional connection.

"Kink isn't my primary sexual style," she told me as we drove through the mountains surrounding her rural North Carolina home, but "I wanted to know that part of me before dying."

For those familiar with consensual nonmonogamy, or CNM, running into Jessica Fern on Feeld is like running into Lionel Messi at your local pickup soccer game. The psychotherapist's 2020 book, "Polysecure," has become the poly bible for an increasingly queer and fluid generation. On apps like Feeld, it's not uncommon to see people flaunting copies the way straight men on Tinder pose with a freshly caught fish. Recently, my friend and I were discussing the book in the sauna at the Russian Baths in downtown Manhattan when a ponytailed man with "if not now, when" tattooed on his chest interrupted to say the book changed his life. "The one good thing my therapist did in eight years was recommend that book," he said, leaning in for a sweaty fist bump. ...

Somehow, Fern, now 44, matched with "the one person" on Feeld "who hadn't heard of me," she said. At the time, she was living in Asheville with her son, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend. ... But the pair had a deeper connection from the get-go. ...

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...As consensual nonmonogamy went mainstream, searches for Fern's "Polysecure" spiked. The book has become a sleeper hit since coming out in 2020, selling more than 300,000 copies. ... It continues to sell around 350 copies a week, according to Nielsen BookScan, and is frequently one of the first resources recommended to poly newbies. One recent convert told me she refers to the book like "a religious text."

...To explain how it works, Fern, a therapist with a master's degree in conflict analysis and resolution, draws on a long-standing concept in psychology called attachment theory, which categorizes people's relationship styles as either secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized. As Fern notes, relationships thrive when both partners are securely attached. Because poly relationships can't rely as much on the rites of passage monogamous couples use to feel safe — shared bank accounts, white dresses, and diamond rings — the focus instead must be on optimizing the "quality of experience" among partners. Once you've figured it out, you can be "polysecure," or "securely attached to multiple romantic partners" at once, Fern writes.

Part of the book's mass appeal is that it also resonates with monogamous people. If you look at Fern's steps for nurturing relationships — "process, communicate, grow, and then process, communicate and grow some more" — a lot of monogamous couples are on autopilot, if not asleep at the wheel. "It's like, OK, we're married. We don't need to talk about anything now," my friend Hannah said. While she has always been straight and monogamous, she found the book a few years ago after an ex cheated on her and she was looking for less black-and-white advice around jealousy.... "A lot of the skills" required for nonmonogamous relationships "are actually necessary for monogamy to work," said Fern's ex-husband and collaborator, Dave Cooley.

The other part was timing. "Polysecure" was published right as relationship therapists like Esther Perel, Dan Savage, and Orna Guralnik — who worked with a polycule on the most recent season of her Showtime series "Couples Therapy" — were becoming household names. Attachment theory, in particular, had captured the zeitgeist....

...In the past year, "Polysecure" has entered its meme era. In March, someone on X posted a photo of two copies of the book, with its distinctive yellow cover, dumped in a cardboard box labeled "free." "I hope they're doing okay," read the caption. The post got 34,000 likes. "Reading polysecure in my local cat cafe to try to get the hot butch barista to notice me," another X user wrote. ... My former coworker Allison P. Davis, who wrote a cover story on polyamory for New York Magazine, said she and a friend started keeping a tally of the number of copies they saw abandoned around Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. (They got up to around 10 this spring.) Davis ditched hers on her front stoop after her last poly relationship blew up, frustrated by how the book's terminology was being "weaponized by straight heteronormative people who are doing ethical nonmonogamy badly." Which she acknowledged isn't Fern's fault. "But I blame the book." ...

But brandishing "Polysecure" as a symbol of sexual enlightenment cheapens Fern's message, which is that there are no shortcuts to a functional relationship — singular or plural. ... During our interview, the author makes it clear that nonmonogamous relationships are just as pedantic and grueling as conventional relationships, if not more so. "I don't feel like my mission is to be this advocate for polyamory or deconstruct monogamy itself," Fern said. "It's more just to say, you're allowed to do either."

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Fern lives 30 minutes outside Asheville, down a winding backcountry road. ... Fern is waiting outside to greet me in a purple spandex athleisure dress and a straw sunhat. Her bangs, round cheeks, and big blue eyes, ooze "Gilmore Girls" wholesomeness — but the gold spacers glinting in her ears and the flintiness in her voice suggest otherwise. Fern gives me a tour around the expansive property, which includes a blue-shingled house for her mom across the driveway and a cluster of RVs, owned by her six tenants, in a forested glade beside a creek. Other residents include Cooley, Fern and Cooley's 9-year-old son, Diego, two cats, and, the day I was there, a fat yellow labrador who'd showed up out of nowhere and would not go home.

"It's not necessarily a commune," said Cooley, who is wearing a hemp bracelet and a novelty Star Wars T-shirt that says "the Dadalorian." It's "living more communally," Fern said, finishing his sentence.

In addition to being Fern's ex-husband, Cooley is the father of her child, her roommate, and the coauthor of the "Polysecure" 2023 follow-up, "Polywise: A Deeper Dive into Navigating Open Relationships." Cooley has his own bedroom downstairs with a kitchenette, but they usually have breakfast together upstairs and "just chat," Fern said, mostly about work — they're currently cowriting a new book on shame. Though Cooley and Fern disentangled from a "primary emotional attachment" when they divorced, what they have now is "no less meaningful," Cooley said as the three of us sat down together on the front porch. "He calls us life partners," Fern added. "I like that phrase." ...

Read on. I'm not suggesting you cheat a paywall, but some people hit ctrl-a,c super-quick between when an article comes up and the paywall covers it, and paste the result into a word processor to see if they caught the fish.

●  A powerful polylegal manifesto appears as an op-ed in my hometown Boston Globe today. It fills half a page in the editorial section:

It's by two of our movement's top lawyers, Alexander Chen and Christina Mulligan: Polyamorous relationships are a good thing (Sept. 27 online, Sept. 28 print edition). The subtitle online:

"Expanding our understanding of what kinds of committed relationships are possible and desirable will strengthen American society, not weaken it, particularly given that Americans are delaying and avoiding marriage like never before."

Alex is the founding director of the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at Harvard Law School and a cofounder of the energetic Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition (which The Polyamory Foundation has helped fund). Christina Mulligan is a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School.

Here's the whole text, with its links. After it went up yesterday morning it jumped to the top of the Globe's most-read opinion pieces and remains there a day later.

Polyamory seems to be everywhere right now, with media pieces often focusing on titillating questions, like how to navigate sex with multiple partners and reckon with jealousy.

But for the growing population of polyamorous people, the most important issues often aren’t about how to navigate sexual adventures but about how to navigate having multiple, committed relationships when legal and private institutions assume that the center of a “family” is a monogamous couple. This assumption makes it more difficult for people to organize their life in a way that deviates from the nuclear family norm.

For example, consider zoning laws. Many municipalities restrict the number of unrelated adults who can live in one home, even when the home would not be crowded, often as an indirect way of discouraging rowdy young people from living in a neighborhood. These kinds of rules can also forbid the “mommunes” (homes of cohabitating single mothers committed to supporting each other) recently celebrated in The New York Times, or other small groups of adults who, polyamorously or platonically, want to live with and support each other as chosen family.

Polyamorous people, and others who live in nontraditional arrangements, are often scared to be open about their lives because of fear of discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere. In many states, adultery is still a crime, and consent to it is not a defense. As a result, polyamorous people hide and miss out on the tacit societal support and recognition that monogamous relationships receive.

Change is needed. And members of the public who care about strong, supportive families should welcome it. Legal scholar Barbara Bennett Woodhouse observed in 1996, “Defenders of the traditional family elevate form over function — the marriage certificate becomes an end in itself rather than a means to the end of encouraging committed, mutually interdependent, and self-sustaining family systems.” Expanding our understanding of what kinds of committed relationships are possible and desirable will strengthen American society, not weaken it, particularly given that Americans are delaying and avoiding marriage like never before. Put simply, more people committing to care for each other is a good thing.

Accordingly, legal and social institutions should evolve to support what we have termed an individual’s parafamilial relationships — important relationships with extended family, friends, and romantic or sexual partners. What support should look like depends on the issue. In the case of zoning laws, it means adopting rules that “get out of the way” and allow unrelated people to live together and support each other like family.

Supporting parafamilial relationships can mean repealing laws criminalizing adultery, as New York is currently considering. It can also mean passing laws that recognize multi-person domestic partnerships, like those passed over the past several years in Arlington, Cambridge, and Somerville, which provide rights like hospital visitation for a polyamorous person’s registered partners. And it can mean passing laws that forbid discrimination on the basis of one’s relationship status or family structure, like Berkeley and Oakland, Calif., did this past spring, following similar laws being passed in Cambridge and Somerville.

Legal change like this will help not just polyamorous people but also others whose lives don’t fit into the nuclear family ideal. Extended family, platonic friends, and nonmarital romantic partners all can be critical components of a rich and fulfilling life but are often minimized by social norms that equate having a single, monogamous relationship with stability and fulfillment. So people hesitate to make major life choices with these other individuals, for both cultural and legal reasons.

It seems weird to say a relationship with a platonic friend or extended family member is more important than a longstanding romantic and sexual relationship. Or to want to live in a house with multiple adults late in life. Or to be polyamorous and center your life around multiple committed romantic relationships. But many people’s lives are, or would be, enriched and improved by making these kinds of choices.

Are there dangers in accepting, even celebrating, committed polyamorous and parafamilial relationships? So far, the research indicates no. Sociologist Elisabeth Sheff’s research on polyamorous families concluded that “children in [polyamorous] families appeared to be thriving with the plentiful resources and adult attention their families provided.” This occurs in part because, despite the dramatic and salacious tenor of media coverage of polyamory, polyamorous relationships do not tend to be any more unstable than monogamous relationships, so children in polyamorous families are not inherently more likely to have unstable parental figures, even if they have more of them.

There’s also no indication that acceptance of polyamory would lead to widespread polygyny. To the contrary, Sheff observed in her study of polyamorous families with children that she found far more triads composed of a woman with two men, than a man with two women.

Many advocates for LGBTQ rights cheered the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, codifying a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. There won’t be an Obergefell moment for a polyamorous or parafamilial movement — and there shouldn’t be. Recognizing romantic partnerships with a status, whether it is marriage or a domestic partnership, may be desirable for some, but supporting committed relationships isn’t only about creating statuses. Indeed, we should spend less time asking who is in and out of a family and more time supporting all relationships that contribute to each other’s flourishing and care. And there will be plenty of opportunities to do so in every area of law.

We must continue to build on the Commonwealth’s proud legacy of being at the vanguard of necessary social change throughout American history. Boston and other municipalities should pass legislation similar to bylaws recognizing multiple domestic partnerships adopted by Arlington, Cambridge, and Somerville. The Legislature should pass nondiscrimination laws like the ones adopted by Cambridge and Somerville, so that all residents can live free from fear that the families and relationships they cherish could be the reason they lose their job or home.

Here's a pic of Chen (center) and most of PLAC's other members celebrating their victory at the Somerville City Council, March 23, 2023.

Matthew J. Lee / Boston Globe

● In research news: Children in polyamorous families report positive experiences with parents' partners (PsyPost, Sept. 14)

A new study provides a rare glimpse into the experiences of children growing up with polyamorous parents. The research, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, found that many of these children feel positively toward their parents’ romantic partners, viewing them as important adults in their lives.

...Much of the existing research has focused on the perspectives of adults involved in these relationships. Little is known about how children in these families feel about their parents’ romantic partners, despite the fact that many polyamorous individuals have children.

“Studies show that about one in five people, both in Canada and the United States, have been involved in a polyamorous or open relationship in their lifetime, a proportion that is even higher among young adults today,” said study author Milaine Alarie, an affiliate professor at the Centre Urbanisation-Culture-Société at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique.

“While we know that many of polyamorous people have children, little research has focused on the experiences of children growing up in polyfamilies."

That's largely because it's very difficult for a researcher to get any institution to approve research on children, even just interviews, because minors cannot give legal consent and their parents might not give consent accurately. And yet,

Considering the stigma attached to polyamory as well as the lack of legal recognition and protection for multi-partner unions and multi-parent families, investigating these children’s experiences and perspectives is key to adjust social programs and policies, so that they represent and protect all families....”

The study involved interviews with 18 children between the ages of 5 and 16, all of whom lived in Quebec, Canada, and had one or both parents involved in a polyamorous relationship. The researchers used a qualitative approach, employing semi-structured interviews and tools such as a three-field map to capture how children perceived their family and the various adults within it.

Each child was invited to place important people in their lives on the map, which was divided into three categories: “My family,” “My friends,” and “Other people.” The children could place individuals in different circles of closeness, such as “I like a lot,” “I like,” or “I like a little.”

The interviews were conducted via video calls, with no parents present to ensure children felt comfortable speaking openly. ...

The study found that children generally held positive views of their parents’ romantic partners. Most children placed these adults in the “I like a lot” or “I like” circles, indicating varying degrees of emotional closeness. Younger children and pre-teens were more likely to feel closely attached to these partners than teenagers. The length of time the partner had been in the child’s life and the frequency of contact also seemed to influence how strongly the children felt about them.

The children described their parents’ romantic partners in several ways:

Fun Adults: Many younger children emphasized the fun they had with their parents’ partners, whether through playing games or engaging in enjoyable activities. This theme was common across various ages, with some children highlighting that their parents’ partners taught them new skills or shared hobbies with them.

Material Contributors: Some children noted that these adults contributed to their material well-being. For example, a few children mentioned gifts, access to cool amenities like swimming pools, or even pets that they enjoyed spending time with.

Caregivers: Many children viewed their parents’ partners as supportive figures who took care of them emotionally. Some children confided in their parents’ partners and appreciated having an extra adult they could rely on during difficult times.

Social Expanders: Children who had regular contact with their parents’ partners’ children often described these kids as new friends....

For some older children, particularly teenagers, the emotional closeness with their parents’ partners was less pronounced. ...

None of the children in the study expressed hostility toward their parents’ romantic partners or reported any conflict with them. However, one participant, a 16-year-old named Laura, initially felt upset and apprehensive when her mother revealed she was polyamorous. Over time, though, she came to terms with it, realizing that her protests wouldn’t change her mother’s decision. She emphasized that children need time to adapt to such changes. ...

...The researchers also observed that some children in the study had difficulty finding the right words to describe their family relationships and often used terms from stepfamily structures, like “stepdad,” to explain their family dynamics in ways others could understand. Some children felt uncomfortable using conventional terms that didn’t fully capture their polyamorous family structure, struggling to accurately express their family reality. Surprisingly, despite these language challenges, few children mentioned experiencing stigma related to their polyamorous families, a theme commonly raised by polyamorous parents.

While this study provides important insights, it does have some limitations. One challenge is that the sample size was small, with only 18 children participating, and the majority of them were girls. Another limitation was the potential influence of social desirability bias. Children might have painted an overly positive picture of their family life, possibly due to concerns about how others might view their non-traditional family structure.

The study report itself is titled  'It’s someone who means a lot to me, and who means even more to mom': Children’s views on the romantic partners of their polyamorous parents (online Aug. 7). The work was carried out by Milaine Alarie, Morag Bosom, and Isabel Côté. 

●  More research in the news: How Gen Z is transforming sexuality and relationships. A Kinsey Institute press release (Sept. 4) says,

Feeld, the dating app for the curious, in collaboration with Dr. Justin Lehmiller of The Kinsey Institute, has released a groundbreaking report, The State of Dating: How Gen Z is Redefining Sexuality and Relationships.

It's a survey of Feeld's adventurous users, not the public at large. Still,

The Kinsey Institute lives in Lindley
Hall at Indiana University.

...After analyzing the latest data from Feeld’s diverse community and drawing insights from broader Kinsey Institute research, this new report reveals how Gen Z is carving out its own paths in sexuality, embracing fluid identities, and reimagining traditional relationship structures to reflect their complex realities. Dr. Lehmiller examines broader generational trends, attitudes and behaviors towards sexuality and relationships that vary for Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X, and Boomer adults. ...

[Some of the findings:]

–  Despite the common perception that Gen Z is moving away from traditional relationship structures, monogamy actually emerges as the most preferred relationship style at 23% for Feeld’s Gen Z members, where only 15% prefer a non-monogamous relationship. ...

 –  59% of Gen Z Feeld members report a sexual identity other than heterosexual, while 18% identify as gender diverse. ... These figures are significantly higher than national averages reported by Gallup and Pew, where nearly 1 in 5 Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ. ...

–  Feeld Members demonstrate significant fluidity in sexual and gender identities, with 10% of Gen Zers reporting a change in gender identity since joining the app, and 18% reporting a change in sexual identity.

●  Yes, poly in churches. Some liberal and mainstream Protestant denominations have come around, timidly, to recognizing that poly love among their members can be a thing of goodness. We in the Unitarian-Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (now the UU Poly Alliance, still "UUPA") convinced our denomination's General Assembly in 2014 to officially recognize and welcome people of diverse "family and relationship structures" in UUism. The United Church of Christ  magazine extolled polyamory's possibilities with a discussion of how it's treated in the inter-church sex-ed program Our Whole Lives (OWL); see one-hour webinar. Other churches, even evangelicals, are facing the issue of sincere and unapologetic polyfamilies in their pews. For instance. More.  

Now comes polyamory in Quakerism: True to Your Word: Faithful Non-Monogamy in Quaker Vows, which appeared in the Quakers' official Friends Journal (Sept. 1).

"In the presence of God and these our friends, I take thee to be my spouse, promising with divine assistance to be unto thee a loving and faithful partner so long as we both shall live."

My wedding took place in a beautiful outdoor location on a day when the weather could not have been more comfortable. The venue met all our needs, and both families were thrilled with the setting. It was also five miles from my second partner’s house. My now-wife knew when she reached for my hands to exchange vows that I have another longtime partner. We were also in agreement that our use of the traditional Quaker wedding vows was honest and true. We did not feel that our relationship configuration was in contradiction to the core of the traditional Quaker vows, and we still feel that way years later. ...

The vows on our wedding certificate from the late 2010s are the same vows that countless other couples have on their certificates going back to almost the very first days of Quakerism. Those vows hew closely to the ones London Yearly Meeting laid out in 1675....

Much farther back:  Some of the earliest Christians in the first generations after Jesus, riding the dazzling wave of their religious agape ¹ — a generalization of love from being limited and individualistic into something wider, communal, and divinely ordained — were described as holding not just all their possessions in common, but their wives too. Later church leaders dismissed these reports as hostile Roman libel in some cases (such as by the historian Tacitus) and in other cases as false accusations between rival Christian sects. (The 2nd-century Christian apologist Tertullian went out of his way to insist that Christian communities held everything in common except their mates.)

But to me, dazzled and NRE-soaked amid my discovery of group romantic agape at age 17, the legends suddenly were totally realistic obvious sense.

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1. Agape or agapé ("ah-GAH-pay") in ancient Greek means, literally, love "without limits" (as Deborah Anapol titled her foundational book of the modern polyamory movement in 1992. Coincidentally?). In the New Testament, agape refers to the broadest, most wide-reaching love, such as for one's neighbors, enemies, and all humanity, as well as God's love for humanity and vice-versa. Early Christians, bedazzled and in love with their new love-centering religion, gathered, often in secret, for "agape love feasts." These were communal dinners of local Christian brother-and-sisterhoods, and sometimes, per rumor, more than that. Nineteen hundred years later most Christians are shocked at the idea that eros had any part in these deeply sharing communities, rather than just the other two of the four classical loves: philia (brotherhood or friendship) and storge (family love). But, come on.

Some Christian churches today continue the tradition of "agape feasts," but these are just ordinary church dinners — pale, weak things indeed compared to the world-changing originals.

●  One of the poly movement's honored elders, Kathy Labriola, recently gave an engaging, wide-ranging interview on the podcast of the Evolving Love Project: Polyamorous for 50 Years: Kathy Labriola (Aug. 16, 1 hour 6 min).

...An author, nurse, counsellor, and hypnotherapist, Kathy is author of four books on consensual nonmonogamy: Polyamorous Elders: Aging in Open Relationships (2022),  The Polyamory Break-up Book (2019),  The Jealousy Workbook (2013),  and  Love in Abundance: A Counselor's Advice on Open Relationships (2010). 

She has also provided affordable mental health services to alternative communities for the past 30 years. Kathy has been polyamorous for over 50 years and lives with her two husbands in Berkeley, California.

In today’s episode we discuss the importance of intergenerational conversation, whether she still struggles with particular emotions after 5 decades of polyamory, stigma against polyamorous grandparents, sex as an aging person, developing your own code of ethics, non-monogamy as an orientation, class and non-monogamy, advice for younger non-monogamous people, polyamorous elders and so much more.

●  In New York magazine's "The Strategist," How I Sleep: The Polyamorous Throuple Sharing a King Bed (Aug. 27)

Sharing a pair of sleep-meditation earbuds. (Arnaud Boutin illustration)

As told to Kitty Guo

Rachael and Aaron Meir met as freshmen in college and were married six years later. ... In 2019 the couple met Kasey Kershner through Bumble, and the relationship eventually developed into a committed polyamorous triad. The throuple now lives together in a house in Gulfport, Florida.

“The No. 1 question we get,” Aaron says, “is how we sleep.”...

“It’s like, ‘Well, we sleep in a bed; there’s just more people,’ ” Kasey explains. “But there are definitely more complications. And the dog.”

On keeping cool

Kasey Kershner: The three of us sleep in a regular king-size bed. We have an eight-pound miniature dachshund as well, and she sleeps with us a lot. So it gets a little crowded, but obviously sleep time is the time to be close and reconnect with your people. We live in Florida, so it’s hot. We actually have an overhead fan and a floor fan, and both pretty much have to be on high.

...Rachael and I go back and forth every night on who sleeps in the middle. Aaron can’t sleep in the middle because he gets too hot.

RM: If Kasey or I have to get out of the middle, we have to navigate very carefully, crawling out the top and right through the center and trying not to wake anyone else up. We know another triad where they were working on developing a zipper sheet because you get stuck in the middle....

On negotiating the mattress

KK: We have a memory-foam mattress that somewhat mitigates the movements of a lot of people in the bed. I definitely like a more soft, squishy, pillowy feel. I like to sink into the mattress. We have a spare bed that’s more my preferred feel — it’s very cushy and soft — but that didn’t necessarily work out for everybody else.

RM: Due to pain from a car accident, I do better with a hard mattress.

AM: Yeah, firmer mattress for me too.

RM: We ended on one that was a compromise between hard versus soft. We were trying to find something that was close to the previous mattress Kasey had. ...

KK: Do we have a mattress topper?

RM: We put it underneath.

KK: Oh right, it used to be on top, but it was too squishy for them.

On having seven pillows among them

KK: We tried to get a uniform pack of pillows, and that did not work. So I have my specific pillow, Aaron has his specific pillow, and Rachael literally has three or four pillows that she cycles through for her head. And she also has a second pillow that she puts under her arms, like a body pillow. That’s like a whole other person in between three people.

RM: Any pillows with a therapeutic benefit are for me. I have neck issues, and I’ve gone through a whole range of pillows trying to figure out what would help with neck support. ...

On their individual bedtime routines

RM: All three of us pretty much wear the same pajamas to bed. Aaron is usually in boxers and T-shirt. Kasey and I stole some old boxers of Aaron’s — we call them our sleeping shorts — plus a T-shirt as well.

AM: You guys used to use the VR goggles for meditation.

KK: We did use the Oculus, or the Meta headset, to do meditations. But now, when Rachael and I do audio meditations at night, we share a pair of earphones to do that. ...

...KK: Sometimes I’ll do your sleep spray, but it’s pretty infrequent. But if I’m wired or I know we have to get up early and I need to get to sleep quick, I’ll do melatonin. ...

On bedtimes

KK: We tend to go to bed at 10:30-ish, and we all usually go to bed around the same time.

RM: Because Kasey and I rotate every night, we usually just know who’s in what position, so if someone comes to bed later, their spot will be open. Usually going to bed is a joint experience. But it can be challenging if someone wants to go to bed earlier or someone is up longer. For cuddling, it’s whoever’s feeling whatever they’re feeling. Sometimes if Aaron falls asleep right away it might be Kasey and I. Sometimes she’s snuggling him and I’ll snuggle her. If the dog comes in the bed, then she might separate us.

KM: At night, Rachael likes to watch shows on her phone because she’s not tired and she doesn’t want to go to sleep. So Aaron and I are turned away, trying to hide from the light.

RM: I didn’t know that.

KK: Sometimes. But we also all mess around on our phones for a while.

RM: I have the worst sleep hygiene habits.

On waking up

KK: I’m not a morning person. I would rather sleep in; they would rather get up and go to the gym. But ultimately, when you have two people getting up out of bed, you’re most likely going to wake up anyway, so I can’t really stay asleep past when they’re leaving.

RM: Sometimes it’s three separate alarms. ...

You may remember that we met the three of them featured in their local newspaper in 2022, which ran this pic of them:

Rachael Meir, Aaron Meir, and Kasey Kershne.  (Ran & Rami Photography)

●  A nice, basic Poly 101 story greets the upscale readers of San Diego Magazine. It starts with a local ex-Mormon gay couple who, after three years, opened their partnership. Unhinged, A Dating Series: Consensual Non-Monogamy (Aug. 30).

uncredited stock photo

By Nicolle Monico

...Admittedly, I had some preconceived notions about non-monogamy: Is it for people who don’t want to commit? Does it only work if you never get jealous? But during my conversation with Parker, it quickly became clear that everyone in a relationship—monogamous or not—could learn something from the tenets of polyamory.

...Aragon was the first to bring up polyamory. Parker says the concept wasn’t completely foreign to him, since he’d grown up in the Mormon faith, in which polygamy was once common. Three years into their relationship, they started seeing other people and eventually moved to San Diego.

“When the two of us started dating polyamorously, there definitely was messiness. It was a lot harder, just because you don’t know how to react to things,” Parker says. “But as time went on, there were lessons learned; your own boundaries start being understood more.”

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

Every new relationship involves a learning period, where you’re figuring out how your partner wants to be loved and how that differs from past partners. In polyamory, that’s amplified, and practitioners have more practice than most at letting go of limiting ideas about how relationships can and should look. 

“Each individual that came in and dated us was different, and they would each have unique things that we would have to learn with them [and] go through disagreements,” Parker says.  “When you have two different people that have different preferences and different love languages … it’s so important to focus sometimes on how your partner needs to be loved rather than how you like to love other people.” 

Making it work requires a powerful level of communication and honesty: constant check-ins, early discussions of boundaries, and the willingness to voice desires and fears.

The writer found her way to Marie Thouin, a personal coach in the area and author of the new book What Is Compersion? Understanding Positive Empathy in Consensually Non-Monogamous Relationships.

“Some of that wisdom could be applied to every other relationship,” says Dr. Marie Thouin, a dating and relationship coach and expert in non-monogamy. “I think everyone should import some of the wisdom from non-monogamous communities, including compersion—the idea that love is not about controlling one another, it is about empowering one another to be our fullest self.”

Successful polyamory involves creating a safe space for everyone involved to explore their boundaries, feelings, and thoughts—including those about safety. 

...They’re also not supremely evolved beings who’ve magically removed the jealousy gene. “When jealousy and insecurities come up, the idea is not to eradicate [them], because that’s impossible to do,” Dr. Thouin says. “Non-monogamous people know that. They reassure each other.”

...I’ve heard from friends who have used Feeld that it’s refreshing to speak with its members because of how open and upfront they are about their wants, needs, and desires. Better communication right away could ease the process of meeting someone who shares your values and weeding out those who may not be a fit. ...

●  In Medium, a poly coach for 10 years offers 4 Unexpected Lessons Proven to Succeed in Polyamory (Sept. 5). She writes on Medium under the name Polyamory Mentor. She still wrestles with stuff herself.

...I started dating at 16. A handful of boyfriends and 10 years later, I strayed from the monogamous path straight into polyamory. And now, 12 years down that road, I believe it’s taught me a lot more about relationships and self than any other phase in my life.

How to Hear “No”

...I vividly remember a time when my partner declined to go home with me after an event the polycule would be attending (we always went home together) because it was their scheduled date night with another person. Initially, I was hurt, angry, and confused. However, I eventually realized that their “no” was a way of saying “yes” to their other partner and fulfilling their commitments.

...Understanding that hearing “no” is often a way for someone to prioritize their own needs over my request was a profound shift in perspective. ...

It’s Okay to Feel Upset

...It took me a long time to figure out that it’s ok to not react to things the way you thought you would. ...

You May Never Get Over Being Jealous

A handful of people in this world claim to not get jealous on any occasion. Ever. However, this does not seem to be the case for the majority of the non-monogamous community I have met.... 

Taming jealousy was...  different than I expected. But it was manageable. Not at first, though. ...

Their Time Does not Belong to You

I grew up thinking that finally getting a boyfriend meant we’d want to spend all our time together. ... The third guy I dated was my first love.... It was an extremely bad relationship, we fought every day. Nonetheless I gave up all of my interests, stopped socializing with my friends, neglected school work… I lived for that relationship, as did he.

Transitioning into polyamory challenged this notion. ...

●  Lastly, remember that cringy Couple to Throuple reality series last winter? It's not coming back. ‘Couple To Throuple’ Rested By Peacock After One Season, With No Future Series Planned (Deadline, Sept. 9).

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And as the situation grows more immediate. . .

    

Here is why I've been ending posts to this polyamory news site with Ukraine: I've seen too many of our progressive movements die out, or get wiped out, because they failed to scan the wider world accurately and understand their position in it strategically. 

We polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Increasingly powerful people call us a threat to society, religion, and nation — because by living successfully outside their worldview, we expose its incompleteness.

Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, is just one way we depend on a free and pluralistic society that respects people's dignity to create their own lives, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.

Such a society is possible only where people have reasonably good power to govern themselves, combined with legal structures that are at least supposed to guarantee the rights of all.

Innovative people, communities, and societies who create their own lives, and who insist on the democratic structures and legal rights that enable them to do so safely, infuriate and terrify the authoritarians who are growing in power around the world and in our own United States. Now with direct mutual support that is increasingly stated out loud.

Such rulers and would-be rulers seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose their lives — by intimidation, repressive laws, inflammatory disinformation and public incitement, stacking courts, and sometimes, eventually, artillery.

For what it's worth, Polyamory in the News received more pagereads from pre-invasion Ukraine over the years (56,400) than from any other country in eastern Europe.

For those of us born since World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Because we have entered another time when calculating fascism, linking up at home and abroad, is rising and sees freedom and liberalism and social tolerance as weak, degenerate, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. As Russia thought it saw in Ukraine. The whole world is watching what we will do about it, starting with China with its eyes on Taiwan.

Background: "The United States has a much higher stake in Russia's war on Ukraine than most people think."  More: "If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about “fatigue” because we will all be talking about disaster."

The coming times may require hard things of us. We don't get to choose the time and place in history we are born into. We do get to choose how we respond to it. 

Need a little help bucking up? Play this. Another version. More? Some people on the eastern front trying to hold onto an open society. (TW: war is awful.) Maybe your own granddad did this from a trench facing Hitler's tanks — for you, and us, because a world fascist movement was successfully defeated that time, opening the way for the rest of the 20th century.

But the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years then, either. Popular history remembers the 1945 victory over the Nazis and the joyous homecoming. Less remembered are the defeats and grim prospects from 1941 through early 1943.

Remember, these people say they are doing it for us too. They are correct. The global struggle between a free, open future and a fearful revival of the dark past that's shaping up, including in our own country, is still in its early stages. The outcome is again uncertain, and it will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its other problems.

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PS: Ukraine should not be idealized as the paragon of an open democratic society. For instance, ‘A Big Step Back’: In Ukraine, Concerns Mount Over Narrowing Press Freedoms (New York Times, June 18, 2024). And it has quite the history of being run by corrupt oligarchs — leading to the Maidan Uprising of 2013, the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, and Zelensky's overwhelming election in 2019 as the anti-corruption candidate. So they're working on that. And they're stamping hard on the old culture of everyday, petty corruption.  More on that.  More; "Ukraine shows that real development happens when people believe they have an ownership stake in their own societies."

Wrote US war correspondent George Packer in The Atlantic early in the war, 

Here was a country with a tragic history that had at last begun to build, with great effort, a better society. What made Ukraine different from any other country I had ever seen—certainly from my own—was its spirit of constant self-improvement, which included frank self-criticism. For example, there’s no cult of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine—a number of Ukrainians told me that he had made mistakes, that they’d vote against him after the war was won. Maxim Prykupenko, a hospital director in Lviv, called Ukraine “a free country aspiring to be better all the time.” The Russians, he added, “are destroying a beautiful country for no logical reason to do it. Maybe they are destroying us just because we have a better life.”

They have a word there, with a deep history, for the horizontal, self-organized, mutual get-it-done that grows from community social trust: hromada. It's been keeping them going  to the extent they've been able. We polyfolks often dream of creating something like that community spirit in miniature, in our polycules and networks. Occasionally we succeed.

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Social attitudes in Ukraine are mostly traditional, rooted in a thousand years of the Orthodox Church. But in the last generation the ideal of modern European civil society has become widely treasured. The status of women has fast advanced, especially post-invasion. More than 43,000 women volunteer in the armed forces, flooding traditionally male bastions — including as combat officers, artillery gunners, tankers, battlefield medics, snipers, and infantry. Some LGBT folx in the armed forces display symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, with official approval, whereas in Russia it's a prison-worthy crime for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin or "say gay." A report on Ukraine's LGBT+ and feminist acceptance revolutions. Another. Another. Another. War changes things.

Polyfolks are like one ten-thousandth of what's at stake globally. Ukraine must have our full material backing for as long as it takes them to win their security, freedom, and future. Continue to speak up for it. Like, now.

                                     

A Russian writer grieves: "My country has fallen out of time."

Women defenders on our world's eastern front

PPS:  U.S. authori-tarians, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, say that allowing women in front-line roles is a woke plot to weaken America's armed forces. Ukraine puts that shit to bed. Do you have a relative who talks like that? Send them this video link to Vidma, who commands a mortar platoon, recounting the story of one of their battles near Bakhmut.

Update Sept. 15, 2024: Two years later Vidma is still alive, still with her mortar unit, still at the front, and posting TikToks.  A young girl who looks high-school age showed up to join them. Another vid with her. Their lives, and their promising society, depend on us. 

And maybe our own? Says Maine's independent Senator Angus King,

Whenever people write to my office [asking why we are supporting Ukraine,] I answer, 'Google Sudetenland, 1938.' We could have stopped a murderous dictator who was bent on geographic expansion…at a relatively low cost. The result of not doing so was 55 million deaths.

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