Polyamory in the News
. . . by Alan M.



August 12, 2026

Polyamory in the News all over. And upcoming events.

___________________________

First: Here are the regional poly community events coming up in the next four months (that I know about). Conferences, campouts, retreats.


August 13 – 17, Breckenridge, CO
August 14 – 16, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

♥  Camp Constellation (formerly PolyCamp Northeast)
August 17 – 23, central New Hampshire 

August 21 – 23, Denver, CO

August 30 – September 7, Nevada desert

September 5 – 7, Ávila, Spain

♥  Polytopia
September 19 – 20, Portland, OR

October 4 – 8, Breckenridge, CO


November 6 – 8, Indianapolis, IN

More about these events — and others for the next 12 months — is always available at Alan's List of Polyamory Events.

Any missing? Write me at alan7388 (at) gmail.com

___________________________


Meanwhile, the public's (over?)fascination with polyamory and ENM is not slowing down yet.

●  "The Invite" has turned into a box-office hit for an indie movie, whatever you think of its swing-ish presentation of ENM (see previous post). Olivia Wilde’s ‘The Invite’ Nears $40 Million Globally, Becoming a Rare Hit Summer Comedy (Variety, July 31)


[Even] sandwiched between big-budget blockbusters like “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” “The Invite” has climbed to $20 million in North America and $15.7 million internationally... after three weekends in wide release. Thanks to stellar reviews and even better word-of-mouth, ticket sales are about to surpass $40 million worldwide....


●  A Newsweek editor thinks the movie marks a cultural turning point: Olivia Wilde’s ‘The Invite’ Explores the New Rules of Modern Marriage (July 15). An overstatement?


By H. Alan Scott

Every so often a film comes along that gives the culture permission to talk about something in a new way. The Graduate did it for the disillusionment lurking under postwar prosperity. Kramer vs. Kramer did it for divorce....  And now The Invite, Olivia Wilde's new comedy about swinging San Francisco couples over the course of one epic dinner party, is poised to do it for a subject that's seemingly talked about everywhere in real life and almost nowhere on screen: open marriage. ...



●  Also getting wide media attention: Is Polyamory Right for You? Elisabeth Sheff spent 30 years studying polyamory. Here’s what she learned. The New York Times's "Modern Love" columnist Anna Martin interviewed Sheff, the world's leading sociology researcher on the realities of long-term polyfamilies.

Sheff herself is mono. She begins with her own discovery of the movement 30 years ago: at a library talk by Ryam Nearing, co-founder of Loving More the print magazine. Loving More and its starry-eyed conferences were the central nexus of the poly world in its pre-internet infancy. Although Sheff did not want a poly setup for herself, the movement fascinated her: "These people were delightful." 

The podcast (49 minutes) with transcript/article (July 29). Excerpts:


Martin: As a single woman in my early 30s, living in Brooklyn, going on lots of dates, I hear the word “polyamory” a lot. It seems as if everyone is interested in being poly, or had a poly phase in college, or is dating someone who’s poly, or had to stop dating someone because that person is poly. At least in my specific corner of the world, it feels as if we’ve reached peak poly saturation.

But when Elisabeth Sheff, a researcher and sociologist who goes by Eli, first heard about polyamory in the early 1990s, hardly anyone used that word. ...

Eli Sheff (Jordan Gale / NYT)


























...In our conversation, Dr. Eli tells me what she’s learned from talking to the kids who grew up with polyamorous parents, kids who are now old enough to make their own relationship choices. Plus, she has advice for people trying to figure out if poly is right for them.

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

Martin: ...When do you remember hearing the word “polyamory” for the first time?

Sheff: So I was driving home from grad school in the snow... listening to National Public Radio.  And the host was interviewing this person, Ryam Nearing. And they were talking to her about her organization and how it was having an open house, a meeting in a public room in the library that anyone who wanted information could come to. And I was just like, oh, my god, that’s it. That’s the thing [her then-boyfriend] has been talking about. ...And I want to find out from people, how do they do this? How do they manage this in their lives without just feeling awful all the time? Because it really was — I was feeling just awful about it —

...It’s this big room in a library stuffed with people, like standing room only. And there’s people talking about having been in relationships for 20 and 30 years, very happy relationships together.

Martin:
With multiple partners?

Sheff:
Yes, and I’m like, how does that not just kill your heart? So they’re like, it’s the opposite. Their heart opens and blooms with all of these additional people. They really do experience it as more love.

...And then after the meeting, I went up to a person who later participated in my study, and I was just like, you say that you’re so happy with this. And when I think about this, it just feels terrible to me. How do you manage that? And of course, her answer was long and complicated and hard to put into a nugget. But basically, she was like, I get a lot out of it. Sure, it comes with some costs, but she said it benefits her far more than the costs associated with it.

...Interestingly enough, I guess, the polyamorous people in general, they’re very used to talking about their feelings. They’re used to having challenging conversations. They’re used to looking inside and seeing what part of this is insecurity on my part. They’re introspective folks, so it wasn’t unusual for them to have this conversation. It certainly felt exposing to me, but I was fine with it.

...So for about three years, I was a civilian, more approaching it as, how does this impact my own life? But by then I was in graduate school, and I was learning all of these research methods. And one of the research methods classes I had said do an interview with someone, practice interviewing skills. So I interviewed a polyamorous person, and the class was like, "oh, my god, this is amazing. This is your dissertation right here." And I was like, really?

...Nobody [had] done research on it yet, you know? And at the time, I wasn’t aware there were two other researchers looking into this, and that was it worldwide. And none of us knew about each other at first. We all thought we were the only person doing this. I mean, the community had been around, but [in 1996] the word hadn’t been around for as long. ...


She goes on to tell about what became her specialty: the children of poly people and how they've turned out over the decades. And then,


Martin: If you were to say one thing to people that they should know before trying polyamory, the thing in all caps, what would it be?

Sheff:
I would say, it’s no more evolved than monogamy. And there’s a lot of polyamorous propaganda about polyamorous relationships being more mature and more evolved and superior to monogamy. And I would say, maybe some of them are. But some of them are a hot mess and certainly not superior to anything.

There are monogamous people who are quite insightful and evolved, having very mature relationships, and there are polyamorous people having very mature relationships. There are monogamous people who are small and grasping and jealous, and there are polyamorous people who are small and grasping, and their jealousy may express in a different way. ...

...Dr. Sheff is currently gathering data about different relationship styles at The Bonding Project.





This is drawn from a very long Reddit Ask Me Anything. It includes excerpts from research papers and from Sheff's 2024 Psychology Today post, Adult Children of Polyamorous Parents: Three primary reactions from adult children of polyamorous parents who come out.

The daughter doing the AMA is 20 and her brother is 17. The tl;dr: Their childhood and upbring were mostly great. One questioner asked her to list the and cons of triad parents. Her reply:


Pros:
• There's more parents to be there for you and to defend you
• It's very unlikely all three will be working at the same time so there's always someone to go to
• Some people think it's super cool (actually how I made one of my friends)
• If you think a punishment was too harsh, there's two more parents that can reason with your other parent
• It's more love to go around
• As they all have careers it's extra income which means we can have more fun holidays
• Polyamorous parents are much more likely to accept situations beyond the societal norm. When my brother came out as gay they didn't care.

Cons:
• Not having a relationship with grandparents because they don't accept it
• It can be hell remembering which parent had a certain story / liked a certain thing
• I regularly mix up names when talking to Mom or Mama and call them by the others name
• Bullying
• If two broke up but both still want to stay with the other person, it could be an awkward situation for everyone involved, including the kids
I'm sure there's more for both pros and cons but that's all I can think of right now.



●  On NPR, Why explorations of nonmonogamy dominate 'Sex Diaries' columnist's new book ("All Things Considered," July 14, audio only.) Alyssa Shelasky does the weekly "Sex Diaries" column in New York magazine.

An anthology of 20 columns is just out. All are about non-monogamy and polyamory — because, Shelasky says, her own experience of it "was the healthiest relationship of my life": a revelatory bloom of easy, secure compersion. (PSA: Don't count on this yourself.)
Toward the end of the interview:


Summers:  ...You've also talked about how doing this work has given you hope. Can you talk about what it is that makes you so hopeful after collecting so many of these peoples' stories? 

Shelasky: I think we're moving in a very positive direction, in terms of our romantic relationships. I think that with the language that's out there — with the discourse that's out there — we are really moving toward a place where — women in paticular — feel empowered to say, "This is what I'm looking for./ This is not for me." [Finding] where do you fit in there.

What gives me hope is that I'm seeing it more and more in my diaries. I'm seeing people who are truly empowered, and who strive to be an individual within a couple. That's a really important piece of a healthy relationship. You have to know who you are, what you want, and not be afraid to say it out loud.



●  More people over 50 are exploring open relationships — and frankly, the reasons why make plenty of sense (Yahoo Canada, July 13.) It draws a lot from Kathy Labriola and her 2022 book Polyamorous Elders. 


●  It's not just the Western world. Mass media in India have been running with the poly/ENM trend for several years, and not just liberal publications. A recent example: Why Is Everyone Suddenly Practising Ethical Non-Monogamy? in TimesNow, a BJP-oriented outlet with editions in many local languages (Aug. 6). The article is accurate and positive. The header:


Ethical non-monogamy is everywhere, but why are more people embracing it now than ever? From modern dating culture to changing ideas of commitment, here's what is driving the rise of ENM today.



●  Update on the "This Is Poly" reality show (spoilers).  I harshed this show in my last post. Season 1 has now ended with the star throuple breaking up. As they should have.

You may remember husband and wife Kami and Trent and their unicorn Nita, she of the DUI arrests. They present an essential lesson for viewers: the need to communicate constantly and fearlessly from the start -- especially to spotlight and discuss elephants in the room: the underlying statuses, finances, unspoken rank/power, and other realities of each of the three and of the whole dynamic. Right from the start.

Showbiz Cheat Sheet interviewed each of the three. After Dramatic Finale, Nita, Trent, and Kami Reveal Whether They’d Return for Season 2 (July 17)


In the season finale of We TV’s This Is Poly, the show’s “Power Throuple” are preparing to publicly declare their love for each other. But unresolved tensions, particularly Nita’s concerns about her financial security, end up derailing the ceremony entirely. 

“I know that we’re probably still not on the same page,” Kami confesses in an interview segment ahead of the ceremony. “There’s so many things that [Nita] has that she feels like she needs and wants. And oftentimes, there’s expectations that I don’t even know about.”

Nita, Trent, Kami: Not happening
















Ultimately, after tense, closed-door conversation, the trio decide not to go through with the ceremony. Instead, they welcome their guests at their riverside event location and explain their choice not to go through their their vows. 

For Nita, who was dreaming of happily ever after, the decision is particularly painful. But she’s come to realize that Kami and Trent might not be able or willing to provide what she needs from their polyamorous relationship. In previous conversations, she requested assurances she’d be taken care of in the future. But Kami and Trent, who are married and have adult children, won’t promise they will do that. 

“All of my views on the forever are all very traditional,” Nita tearfully tells a producer. “As far as the obligations … there is a significant age difference between us. Hypothetically, they die before me. Then what do I do? Go back to work at 60? And that’s the insult that I felt. How could you ask for such a thing and not have a safety net beneath it?”

...“This is just me becoming part of something that already exists,” Nita tells her former partners. “Not making a new thing. Everything you said was a f*cking lie.” 

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

Given the difficult end of the throuple’s three-year relationship, does anyone from the trio regret going on the show? And would they be open to filming a second season if "This Is Poly" returns to TV? 

“I think we absolutely would be interested in doing another season,” Kami told Showbiz Cheat Sheet, speaking for herself and Trent. “Definitely. I mean, it was fun. It was hard, but it was fun and we’re very pleased with the outcome. They did a great job. We got to share ourselves and we got to share what we believe – that love is expansive, love is growing. We wanted people to see that this is an option.”

“Being authentic is so important to us,” Trent chimed in. “So even though we go through some very challenging things and it’s out in front of everybody, just anything that we could do to help people in their own journeys and that type of thing is very valuable to us. So we would definitely be interested in season 2.”


Nita was less enthusiastic about the idea of returning to reality TV.


“They’d have to pay me a lot more,” she said [referring to We TV]. “I’ve been paid better, I’ll say that. I’ve been paid better to do less.”


Whatever the future holds for This Is Poly, Kami and Trent say they are committed to polyamory.

“This is maybe hard for people to hear, but once you do open your marriage or whatever else, it’s really hard to go back. Really hard,” Kami said. 

“It is the most challenging [thing], but it’s also, as I mentioned, the most rewarding thing, so I wouldn’t change it,” Trent agreed. 

Nita has a different take on polyamory, as it’s a lifestyle she only started to explore once she met Kami and Trent.


“I was never a polyamorous to begin with,” she reveals. “I’m just a narcissistic b*tch that wants her way all the time and thinks that she can have everything.”


She lays out her advice:


“Definitely have those hard conversations fast,” she said. “Just as fast as you’re willing to do everything else, that’s as fast as you need to be willing to have those hard-topic conversations.”


So maybe Nita wins the show's ending. Even if she began the whole thing lying-by-omission to her two partners.


●  Continuing this topic: Good data beats everything, and never mind the oversimplified headline: The One Thing That Can Ruin Open Relationships Has Nothing to Do With Sex (Vice, Aug. 3)


By Askley Fike

Open relationships get written off as either a utopian escape from jealousy or a fast track to emotional disaster. The reality, as with most things involving humans and their feelings, sits somewhere much less dramatic and way more complicated. The problems that ruin them aren’t unique to non-monogamy—and the things that actually help aren’t either.

A new study published in Evolution and Human Behavior surveyed 512 people across 62 countries, split between those in monogamous and consensually non-monogamous arrangements. The focus was a concept psychologists call "mate value discrepancy"—how attractive, successful, or desirable someone feels relative to their partner. In monogamous couples, feeling like the less impressive half reliably produces insecurity, conflict, and controlling behavior.

The study wanted to know whether the same applied when the relationship structure was deliberately open.

People in non-monogamous relationships did report less jealousy on the whole—something researchers have observed before, with polyamorous individuals generally showing higher trust and lower jealousy than monogamous counterparts. What the study also found, though, is that feeling less "desirable" than a primary partner produced the same conflict and insecurity it produces anywhere else. Consensual non-monogamy changes a lot of things. That particular dynamic isn’t one of them.

What Actually Makes Open Relationships Work, According to Experts

Where it gets truly interesting is what the study found about hierarchy. Ranking partners—assigning primary and secondary status, treating one relationship as more legitimate than another—predicted more jealousy, more resentment, and more conflict across the board. The structure people assume provides clarity produced the opposite. Dr. Francesca Miccoli, who completed her doctorate on the legal recognition of polyamorous families, has noted that stability in non-monogamous relationships comes from honesty and clearly communicated boundaries—not from rank.

The single biggest factor associated with fewer problems in both groups was communication—talking openly about attraction and jealousy rather than secretly managing it alone. In non-monogamous relationships, something called compersion also played a significant role. ...

Neither side of the open relationship debate comes out of this looking great. The assumption that non-monogamy breeds chaos and the assumption that it dissolves jealousy are both wrong, and the study makes that pretty clear. What actually determines whether these relationships work has nothing to do with the agreement itself — it comes down to whether people are willing to have uncomfortable conversations, resist the urge to rank their partners, and stop treating a relationship structure like a substitute for honesty.


The study itself:
Swanson, F. L., et al. (2026). "How perceived mate value discrepancies are related to jealousy, mate guarding, intrasexual competition, and partner conflict in monogamous and consensually non-monogamous relationships." Evolution and Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2026.106936

Newsweek also reported on the study: Scientists Found What Goes Wrong in Open Relationships—and What Helps (July 30).


●   Lastly, hold onto this important mainstream-media piece by two up-and-coming activists in our movement: The unfair double standard polyamorous relationships face (Los Angeles Times, July 21).   


By Christina Fialho and Megan Burke

We’ve watched it happen more times than we can count. A polyamorous relationship — one of ours or someone else’s — hits a rough patch or ends, and suddenly the people who once seemed so open-minded have a lot to say.

People are quick to dissect the arrangement itself. Of course there was jealousy. Of course there was drama — what did you expect? Or so the assumptions go. The breakup is treated not as a relationship between imperfect humans that ran its course, but as a verdict on polyamory itself.

It’s time to admit that polyamory’s biggest obstacle has never been jealousy, logistics or commitment, as popular culture might have one believe. It’s instead the societal presumption that nonmonogamy is inherently suspect.

We call this “the poly presumption”: the belief that the nonmonogamous structure is to blame in any breakup or conflict and the burden is on the people in the relationships to prove otherwise. As queer polyamorous people, we’ve spent years tracing the roots of this presumption, and what we’ve discovered is that it operates at a systems level.

...This double standard exists because Western society has created, enforced and normalized monogamy as the only acceptable relationship structure. ... When something is as deeply ingrained in society as monogamy, the failures that people experience when attempting it are interpreted as individual failures, not structural ones. Polyamory, and nonmonogamy more broadly, does not receive that grace. When a polyamorous dynamic experiences conflict, the burden is always on the polyamorous people to prove that the entire nonmonogamous structure isn’t to blame.

Take jealousy. In monogamy, it’s treated as a normal human emotion. But in polyamorous relationships, jealousy is immediately read as proof that nonmonogamy isn’t viable. The same logic applies to the perception that polyamorous relationships are inherently unstable.

Pop culture often portrays polyamory as chaotic, messy and too emotionally demanding to last. The 2025 film “Splitsville,” for example, treats instability as nonmonogamy’s natural state. ...

The irony is seen in how often research cuts against the poly presumption. A 2025 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Sex Research, the largest assessment of its kind, considered data from 35 studies that included nearly 25,000 people and found no significant differences in relationship satisfaction or sexual satisfaction between purportedly monogamous people and those who consider themselves nonmonogamous. Additionally, a 2024 scoping review published in the Journal of Family Theory & Review found that people in polyamorous relationships report less jealousy than those in monogamous couplings. ...

Research also suggests that infidelity affects one in four married couples in the United States. So, the assumption that monogamy is simply the more stable, more fulfilling way to pursue intimate relationships turns out to be a myth.

This myth forms the narrative foundation of modern legislation and continues to guide polyphobic and homophobic legislative decisions....  It also fuels inequities, with people in polyamorous relationships more likely than those in monogamous ones to earn under $40,000 a year.

None of this suggests that polyamory is beyond criticism. Like monogamous relationships, polyamorous relationships can be unhealthy, manipulative and even emotionally destructive. The goal is to ensure that people are not judged, marginalized or denied their rights simply because they choose a different path.

...Until we challenge the poly presumption, the cultural jury will continue to mistake difference for dysfunction — and return a guilty verdict before anything goes wrong.

Christina Fialho is an attorney and the founder/president of Rewrite the BiLine. Megan Burke is a philosopher and the author of three books, including “Becoming a Woman: Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Trans Existence.”


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

Elsewhere in the world... The changing tides of the Ukraine war show how, when a free people don't give up, fortune may swing their way. Don't you give up either.

If you still don't get what this war means to our own future as free cultural weirdos — not to mention to the whole rest of the world — you need the long view.

BTW, the logo of PolyamoryUkraine:








 


...while in Russia, speaking out for "nontraditional sexual relations" is a crime punishable by up to 12 years in a Russian prison under the "anti-extremism" laws. "Extremism" meaning whatever the emperor dislikes.

And BTW, The Invite's first international release was in Ukraine.

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February 25, 2026

Three new cities to enact poly anti-discrimination laws. Scientific American writes us up well. Two NY Times stories. Upcoming movie, and more.


●  Three more cities seem certain to pass polyamory and chosen-family anti-discrimination measures in the coming days.

Folks from the Seattle Coalition for Family and Relationship Equity
at their June 2025 Liberating Love Festival.





















News arrived this morning (Feb. 25) from Brett Chamberlin of OPEN:


Right now, we're on the verge of doubling the number of people living in cities with protections for non-monogamous families and relationships.

Olympia, WA  – Passed first reading unanimously last night; final passage expected Tuesday March 3.

Portland, OR  – First reading today (Wednesday Feb. 25); final passage expected Wednesday March 4.

West Hollywood, CA  – First reading Monday March 2; final passage expected March 16  


These measures prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas due to "family or relationship structure." Similar measures are advancing in Seattle and San Francisco, as told in my previous post, in addition to those already enacted in Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Oakland and Berkeley, California.

Activity is also brewing elsewhere. Want to work to make it happen in your city?

-----------------------
The efforts in Washington State got some deeper reporting by Seattle's SGN (Seattle Gay News): Polyamory advocates fight for anti-discrimination laws in Olympia and Seattle: A new Queer civil rights movement emerges. (Jan. 28) 


By Madison Jones, Managing Editor

...Five years ago, [Jessa] Davis founded SCFRE as a way for Washington’s polyamorous practitioners to finally protect themselves legally against discrimination in employment, housing, and healthcare. 

...Davis, who lives in her Beacon Hill home with three other Trans women and two toddlers, related how she had practiced polyamory for several years and had been active in the community before she got involved with the legislative aspect. Her journey began while doing some research into the topic of protections for polyamorous people, after one of her partners experienced discrimination. She told the SGN that her partner was fired from their job in the medical field for being polyamorous, reportedly having been told by their supervisor that it was inappropriate for them in their position to have a “sex-craved lifestyle.”

“This is illegal — there should be something done about this!” was how Davis recalled her partner lamenting about the experience, and having already looked into its legality, she had no choice but to reply: “Well, technically, it’s not illegal.”
 
Since Davis founded SCFRE, the group has made a lot of progress in a short period of time. ... On October 4, SCFRE held its first “Liberating Love Festival” in West Seattle, which featured a discussion panel, and provided prewritten letters requesting nondiscrimination laws for attendees to take, sign, and mail to their district representatives. Davis reported that around 80 people showed up and that it seemed that “people have been really craving this kind of community.”

In November, the event’s discussion panel was released as an episode of the Seattle-based Mistakes Were Made podcast, which is about “nonmonogamy for imperfect people.” ... Davis warned the audience how “the siloing of our communities and identities saps our collective power.”

“Fifteen months ago, I did not think we’d be this far with this,” Davis reflected, as she related the story of how SCFRE ended up persuading the Olympia City Council to vote on the legislation, which would add nondiscrimination language to Olympia’s municipal code. Davis said that since the bill doesn’t look to add an entire new code or repeal one, that has helped immensely in convincing the city councilmembers to sign on. The SCFRE bill was able to garner support from several key players, including City Councilmember Robert Vanderpool as the bill’s sponsor; it also received endorsements from the Washington Human Rights Commission and Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America. She pointed out that even the bureaucratic process of getting the bill heard was fairly straightforward: “It was an email and two Zoom meetings, and now we have a bill being [considered],” she said with a laugh of surprise at its success so far.  

City Councillor Robert
Vanderpool, Olympia, WA
Councilmember Vanderpool, in an interview with KOMO, spoke to why the protections were important: “With issues like this, you constantly find that — not that folks are underground but it’s hard for folks to come forward about these things, because it is a very private thing, and we want them to feel welcome in our community and not ostracized,” adding that “the biggest thing that comes up is housing. Folks that are in polyamorous relationships or nonmonogamous, or even chosen families — it’s hard in a chosen family to put someone on their mortgage.” ...

“A soccer mom in Bellevue shouldn’t be kicked off the PTA for being in an open marriage,” she stated, pointing out the absurdity of people who could lose their jobs, homes, services, and positions solely on the basis of their private romantic practices. 

“People shouldn’t have to live their lives in fear.” 


Update Feb. 26: The two measures in Olympia have passed: Olympia becomes first WA city with protections for polyamorous families (The Olympian, Feb. 26). "...[Vanderpool] said it’s important Olympia take these actions when the federal government is 'acting to harm civil liberties.' " 

Update Feb. 26: The Portland City Council voted unanimously to advance the measure to a Wednesday March 4 final vote. Portland City Council advances anti-discrimination protections for non-traditional families (KPTV Fox12, Feb. 26).

Update March 2: The West Hollywood City Council voted 5-0 today to move the anti-discrimination bill along to second reading. Its approval seems assured. More complicated is the second part of the effort: to create a local registration program for multi-partner relationships. The mayor and council are sympathetic, but much staff work remains to iron out specifics, including to ensure accord with California state law. This might take six months, per a detailed news report: West Hollywood Votes 5-0 On Polyamory Anti-Discrimination Law (WEHO Online, March 2). Further details: WeHo grants protections to polyamorous relationships (Park LaBrea News, March 4).

Update March 5: Final passage in Portland was expected last night but "got bumped to next week when council ran out of time," per OPEN.  


Central to the success of all these local volunteer efforts have been expertise and resources from OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, and PLAC, the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition. Want to do this in your city or town? Here you go. View the Legislative Toolkit with step-by-step guidance, and watch the training vid.


●  Scientific American has been America's iconic science magazine since 1845. It just published a feature article on the nature of polyamory as widely practiced today, based on many research reports and interviews with "more than 100 practicing polyamorists in depth." It really gets us right.

Online the story is titled The Truth About Polyamory (Feb. 17). In the March 2026 print issue (which flags it on the cover) it's titled Everything You Wanted to Know about Polyamory (but Were Afraid to Ask).

Save the link to send to anyone who needs a serious explanation of us.


An anthropologist’s detailed research shows polyamorists focus on intimacy and honesty, not sleeping around.

Klaus Kremmerz



















By Rebecca J. Lester

The first time her husband went on a date with another woman, Kelly felt sick to her stomach. ... By the fifth time, she just went to bed early. The eighth time, Kelly met her husband for drinks after his date. Then, she says, they went home and had the best sex of their lives.

Kelly, a trial attorney, is no shrinking violet. She goes on her own dates with other men, and her husband, Tim, is thrilled. “There’s nothing like that feeling when Kelly comes home from a date, and she’s soaring and giddy because it went so well,” he says. “And I’m like, ‘That’s amazing, babe! I’m so happy for you!’ And I truly am.”

Kelly and Tim practice polyamory: They form deep, meaningful, romantic relationships with more than one person at a time, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. This departure from traditional dating and marriage is gaining popularity in the U.S., according to research and surveys. ...

I am an anthropologist and licensed therapist, and I have spent the past seven years researching polyamory the way anthropologists do: by spending a lot of time with a lot of people who engage in it. I’ve interviewed more than 100 practicing polyamorists in depth, and we talked about their experiences, motivations and aspirations, as well as regrets and lessons learned. I’ve heard about how polyamorists view themselves and the world, and I’ve observed what they do. And what I’ve found is, in many respects, supported by other scientific research—but not by popular perceptions.

First, polyamorists are not a privileged elite. They are more likely than monogamous people to earn less than $40,000 a year, according to one study, although they do tend to be more highly educated. They are regular folks. They have jobs and children. ... There is nothing inherently class-specific about the practice. (Nor is it limited to particular race or ethnic backgrounds, although the population skews white.)

Politically, polyamory is a rare place where the left and right meet: You might encounter a libertarian or a Donald Trump supporter or a Bernie Sanders bro. The philosophy and practice of polyamory resonate with people across political divides and are not simply liberal indulgences—in fact, they tie into a libertarian and conservative ethos with deep roots in U.S. society, where people rebel against the powers that be telling them what to do.

Where popular portrayals of polyamory most miss the mark, though, is in the idea that the practice is primarily about having sex with multiple partners. Polyamory is mostly about intimacy, not sex, say the people involved in it, and it has ethics at its core. My observations support this claim, and so does other social science research. ... Respect, consent, trust, communication, flexibility and honesty are fundamental to these unconventional dynamics, according to a large review by researchers at Virginia Tech published in 2023.

And these principles can have beneficial consequences. Psychologist Justin Lehmiller, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that polyamorists engage in safer sexual practices than the people who say they are monogamous—a quarter of whom reported having sexual relationships unknown to their partner—and this caution may reduce rates of sexually transmitted infections.

































In short, polyamory is radically different from what many people may envision. Its current flourishing is not just a curiosity or random event: it indexes something important about this cultural moment and how people experience and value intimacy and relationships. ...
---------------------------------

Reality TV shows like The Bachelor, Love Is Blind and Say Yes to the Dress are popular for a reason—they tap into a dominant cultural narrative about “true love” and monogamy. ... If we aren’t fulfilled, then there is something wrong.

Polyamory holds that what’s wrong is the very premise of monogamy in the first place. One person cannot possibly meet all our needs. “It’s like this,” Kris, a 37-year-old real estate agent, says. “We have groups of friends, right? Maybe one you go out dancing with on the weekends, another one is the person you call when you’ve had a horrible day; maybe someone else is a sports fan, so you go to ball games together. Totally normal, right? We don’t expect one friend to be our only friend, because we have different kinds of relationships with different people. It’s unrealistic to expect one person to do it all.”

Love, polyamory practitioners say, is similar. Like friendship, it is not a limited resource—it is additive. More love begets more love. ...

...A 2024 study by gender and sexuality scholar Jessica J. Hille of the Kinsey Institute and her colleagues highlights the flexible definitions of intimacy in polyamorous communities where intimacy is not always predicated on sex. Such relationships are common enough to have their own term, “platonic polyamory,” which describes connections with multiple people that may be deeply significant and intimate but not sexual.


...Polyamorous relationships are generally not fleeting. They might involve commitments that last months, years or a lifetime. A 2017 study of about 2,000 monogamous and nonmonogamous people found no difference in relationship length between the two groups, with an average length of slightly more than 10 years. They were also comparable on measures of relationship satisfaction, commitment and passionate love. ...

None of this means polyamorous relationships are easy. ...

...“It was important for me to acknowledge my jealousy,” Michael says, “and for us to talk about it. But not like in monogamy—the point wasn’t to get Jenna to change her behavior. She wasn’t doing anything we hadn’t agreed to. Jealousy was my feeling to deal with and work through. I don’t own her. Jenna is her own person. It’s a big risk because it means trusting that your partner is still going to want to be with you even though they are free to have other relationships. But ultimately I’d rather she be with me because she chooses to, not because she’s locked into the relationship legally or morally.” Jenna adds that “it makes the relationship about who we are as people to each other and how we value each other, not just about rules about possession and exclusivity.”

...“In monogamy, people have a tendency to go on autopilot,” says Jesse, a 28-year-old bus driver. “You can’t do that in polyamory. You have to be extremely intentional all the time in every single relationship. Otherwise things could go bad fast.” Again, the research bears out these claims. A 2022 study by psychologist Thomas R. Brooks and his colleagues found that, compared with people in monogamous relationships, those in consensually nonmonogamous arrangements reported greater commitment, intimacy, love and passion in their relationships. They favored positive problem-solving with their partners, whereas monogamous participants often used withdrawal tactics.

Not all polyamorous relationships have a couple at their core. ...





●   Remember the 2013 movie Her? A lonely man around the year 2050 falls deeply in love with Samantha, a young female "operating system" who confides to him that she is, at that very moment, having equally deep, emotionally intimate talks with 641 of her other lovers.

The future came faster than expected. Millions of people today are in deep 24/7 relationships, or simulations thereof, with sweet, thoughtful AI companions always ready to be by their side. Among the best known are Replika, Kindroid, Nomi, Ani, Paradot, and Anima. The resulting obsessions, suicides, manias and life-wrecking delusions are being called AI psychosis.

So in the New York Times: ‘We’re All Polyamorous Now. It’s You, Me and the A.I.’  (Feb. 13. Later renamed to "We’re All in a Throuple With A.I.") 


By Amelia Miller

Do you think A.I. “should simulate emotional intimacy?”

It was the moment I’d been working up to. I was talking over Zoom to a machine-learning researcher who builds voice models at one of the world’s top artificial intelligence labs. ... 

The chatty researcher suddenly went quiet. “I mean … I don’t know,” he said about simulating emotional intimacy, then paused. “It’s tricky. It’s an interesting question.” More silence. “It’s hard for me to say whether it’s good or bad in terms of how that’s going to affect people,” he finally said. “It’s obviously going to create confusion.”

“Confusion” doesn’t begin to describe our emerging predicament. Seventy-two percent of American teens have turned to A.I. for companionship. A.I. therapists, coaches and lovers are also on the rise. ... Some of the frontline technologists building this new world seem deeply ambivalent about what they’re doing. They are so torn, in fact, that some privately admit they don’t plan to use A.I. intimacy tools.

Three’s a Crowd

This is especially disturbing when technology chieftains publicly tell us we’re moving toward a future where most people will get many of their emotional needs met by machines. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has said A.I. can help people who want more friends feel less alone. ... A recent ad campaign highlighted the daily intimacy the product can provide, with offers such as “I’ll binge the entire series with you.”...

...When asked to roughly predict the share of everyday advice, care and companionship that A.I. would provide to the typical human in 10 years, many people I spoke to placed it above 50 percent, with some forecasting 80 percent.

If we don’t change course, many people’s closest confidant may soon be a computer. We need to wake up to the stakes and insist on reform before human connection is reshaped beyond recognition. ...

People are flawed. Vulnerability takes courage. Resolving conflict takes time. So with frictionless, emotionally sophisticated chatbots available, will people still want human companionship at all? Many of the people I spoke with view A.I. companions as dangerously seductive alternatives to the demands of messy human relationships. ...

Relational skills are built through practice. When you talk through a fight with your partner or listen to a friend complain, you strengthen the muscles that form the foundation of human intimacy. But large language models can act as an emotional crutch. 

...Which led many of the developers I spoke with to worry: How much of our capacity to connect with other human beings atrophies when we don’t have to work at it?...


Read the whole thing for the author's ideas about what is to be done.


●  So there I was skimming a story about movie people and ICE, and suddenly I'm learning of the upcoming polyamory-based movie The Invite: Brave Hollywood stars hit Sundance red carpet in defiance of ICE 'gestapo' terror (Blaze Media, Jan. 27)


...Take actor Ed Norton. What was supposed to be a lighthearted chat about his new polyamory sex comedy, "The Invite," with co-stars Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde, soon turned decidedly dark... "What are we gonna do about masked gestapo shooting American citizens?" Norton said. ...


The Invite is coming your way. After its premiere rocked Sundance last month (and got a standing ovation), the mainstream-theater distributor A24 snapped it up for more than $10 million. ‘The Invite’ Ignites First Big Bidding War of Sundance (Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 26).

The tale: A couple in a crappy marriage invite the older couple upstairs to dinner. Those two have a first-rate marriage and turn out to be poly or at least open. From a Hollywood Reporter review (Jan. 25): 


The happy two (at left) meet the troubled.

















                 
When it’s cooking... this is a smart, sophisticated and incisively acted adult entertainment that savages the crumbling institution of marriage. [It] dangles the promise of sexual rescue and then brings the walls crashing down in a bitter reckoning that seems irreversible — until a window of hope and healing gets cracked open. That closing note is so lovely, and its visual handling so graceful, that it retroactively smooths the bumps. ...


So what's the angle? A hint comes from the Park Record newspaper in Sundance's hometown: ‘The Invite’ is the cathartic result of actor-director Olivia Wilde’s taste for storytelling (Jan. 28): 


...Wilde said that originality is what drew her to the story, the way it explains something like marriage and relationships in a totally new way.

When Wilde and Rogan’s characters [the miserable couple] finally spend time with Cruz and Norton’s characters, they’re shown a different path to connection — sexually and emotionally. And for the husband and wife who’ve become so disconnected, that example provides both hope and added despair.

“We wanted [Cruz and Norton] to be an example of people who have learned a tremendous amount through life and have embraced the idea of evolution, and really are living lives they’ve chosen for themselves and taking a lot of responsibility within their lives for their own happiness,” Wilde explained. “In the original script, those two were much younger … but it’s interesting to think about, what if they’re sexy and free not because they’re young? [But because] it’s a choice?”


Any of you seen it pre-release? Send me spoilers: alan7388@gmail.com

BTW, opening a problem-ridden marriage or relationship to save it is known in the poly community as an eye-rolling bad strategy. Repair and relaunch your relationship first -- counseling really makes the difference -- live your new relationship well for long enough for it to become the baseline, and then consider whether to add more people.  And make sure they're the right people. 


●   Remember Sophie Lucido Johnson? Her poly memoir Many Love, illustrated with her abundant cartoons, came out in 2018. She later became a New Yorker cartoonist, and now she's out with another book, The Future of Family. Would-be kitchen table and family style polyfolks, take note.

From the publisher's description:


Discover a transformative reframing of intimate relationships with practical steps to build community and combat the loneliness epidemic in this bold and warmhearted blend of memoir and social science...

...To survive today’s age of overwork and precarity, we need to turn to our relationships for the support we need to stay afloat, whether it’s financial, emotional, or otherwise. So why don’t we?

Sophie Lucido Johnson explores the social science of friendship and provides the tools to forge kinship: relationships built on mutual care and shared resources that extend beyond the typical nuclear family or casual friendship. ...Through personal stories and insights from psychologists and sociologists, Kin reveals how to prosper in an increasingly overwhelming and lonely world, that everyone has access to community, and that kin has the power to drastically change our lives for the better.




"[We] were struck by how profound and great it was to be able to share things — including, eventually, our pregnancy journeys,” Johnson said. “Everything about cohabitating made our lives easier. Building on work I’d done in the past around polyamory and queerplatonic partnerships, I wanted to create a guide for people to find a version of the thing we all found.”

Kin dares readers to ask, “What does family look like to me?” and offers a radical answer. “It proposes a future outside of the nuclear family,” Johnson said, “based on close-knit connections among people who exist somewhere between ‘friend’ and ‘family’ — and it offers strategies for building intentionality around those relationships. It’s hopeful and practical.”



●   On Valentine's Day the New York Times ran Love Without Limits: Brazil Flirts With Polyamory (Feb. 14, later reprinted in the Boston Globe)


More people in a still largely conservative and religious nation are rejecting monogamy as they seek new definitions of romance, and of family.


















By Ana Ionova and [photographer] María Magdalena Arréllaga

The toddler, still sleepy, wobbled into the kitchen and planted a kiss on the woman helping make breakfast. Her parents followed her and also planted a kiss on the lips of the woman, one of their lovers.

Rafael Pissurno, the father of 2-year-old Hari, began grinding coffee beans, while the girl’s mother, Iuli Duarte, tidied toys scattered on the floor. Visiting them was their polyamorous partner Jessica Couri, who was chopping fresh fruit into a large bowl, along with Victor Souza, another of their lovers, who was scrambling eggs at the stovetop.

On a Saturday morning, this Brazilian household both is, and is not, just like any other.

“It’s a family — these are the people I chose, they are the people I love,” said Ms. Duarte, 28, a graduate student.

“We know we care for each other,” added Mr. Pissurno, 47, a sound technician. “But we don’t have just one friend to do everything with, right? So why should we expect one romantic partner to fill all our needs?”

In Brazil, Ms. Duarte and Mr. Pissurno’s rejection of monogamy is part of a movement in which more people are embracing different forms of love, marriage and parenthood. ... Many Brazilians appear to be questioning traditional family models, a shift captured by mainstream culture in popular podcasts, books and even a reality television program called “Third Half” that showcases couples looking for a polyamorous partner. 
But the rise of polyamory, here and around the world, has faced fierce pushback from conservative and religious leaders who have cast it as an affront to family values. Pope Leo XIV weighed in, warning against the “the fragility of unions, the trivialization of adultery, and the promotion of polyamory.” ...




●  UK folks recently formed the nonprofit UK Polyamory Association "to educate the public, support the broad and diverse polyamorous community in the UK, and work towards social and legal change." 


Our Goals

The goals of the UKPA are to advance the cause of polyamory in the UK following the model of other campaigning organisations such as Stonewall. We intend to do this through many methods including the following:

‣  Providing statistics about the uptake of polyamory in the UK
‣  Producing education materials about polyamory
‣  Bringing together and supporting the diverse in-person and online polyamory communities in the UK
‣  Tracking the portrayal of polyamory in the media
‣  Working with companies to create polyamory friendly HR policies
‣  Research what changes are needed in UK law to support polyamorous families

Our Currrent Priorities:

‣  Responding to the Office of National Statistic consultation on the next Census with a view to including one or more questions related to polyamory
‣  Reaching out to organisations like Stonewall to learn what we can from people who have done this before
‣  Research provision of educational resources
‣  Research cost and design of national surveys
‣  Collect examples of existing polyamory friendly corporate HR policies
‣  Work with the Green Party to help them develop their policy position on polyamorous families....


They link to 54 local poly groups in the UK. They have, wisely, posted their Ethics and Values statement and Code of Conduct out front from the start.

And, UKPA is working to restart the UK Polyday convention, an annual tradition since 2004 that's gone missing since 2020. The date: September 19, 2026. They're asking for volunteers to help make it go. Get on their newsletter list for more.


●   Lastly,

Metamour Day is coming right up
 
It's this Saturday, February 28th, Valentines Day times two. "Celebrating polyamory's most distinctive relationship."

Make your plans now, and spread this or other graphics on your social media:



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And... if you don't get what our particular future has to do with the war in Ukraine...  you need a longer view. 

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