Nico Tortorella is developing a TV show around polyfolks

Bethany Meyers (left) and Nico Tortorella camp it up at Love Ball III in June. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty)

 
Actor Nico Tortorella and partner Bethany Meyers are vocal exemplars of gender fluidity, bi acceptance, and polyamory, as described here in 2017 and when they got unconventionally married in 2018.

Now Nico is out with a memoir: Space Between: Explorations of Love, Sex, and Fluidity. The book occasioned an interview yesterday in Nico's hometown Chicago Tribune. Toward the end comes this:

Q: You point out that there’s not a lot of storytelling about polyamorous relationships in TV and film.

A: I think we’re still sex obsessed as a culture. And I think we’re all pretty confused on what sex means and why we do the things we do. And we’re not at polyamory yet in terms of mainstream conversation and culture. But I think it’s coming. It’s the next wave, for sure.

Q: It seems like being able to see what that is, through a TV show or movie, would be invaluable for people who have a hard time conceiving what it looks like.

A: Which is why it was so important for me to the write the book.

And I’m in early stages of development for the TV show right now.

Q: A show about polyamorous relationships?

A: Yeah, it’s going to be roughly based off the book and the characters, but not me and Bethany.

The whole article (September 18, 2019).

We're staying tuned.


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● Also up today: A nice little Poly 101 explanation What is Polyamory? in Happiful, "the magazine devoted to mental health," a print magazine in the UK as well as online (Sept. 19)

Not sure if there’s one person out there for you? Got a lot of love to give? We take a closer look at the non-monogamous approach to relationships

...Mental health blogger Lindsay Hughes tells us about her own experience: “I became aware of polyamory via someone on social media. The set-up she has with her partner seemed to work well for them, and it was refreshing to see a non-conventional relationship where both partners were supported, and seemed to flourish with each other as well as others.”

Lindsay and her partner of five years started discussing polyamory at the start of this year. “It’s working for us at the moment. It would be difficult to disengage from it now we’ve started, but if, in the future, it no longer suits us, then we would transition back to monogamy, or inactive polyamory.” ...

What are the downsides?

Taking an approach that’s outside of social norms doesn’t come without its challenges. According to counsellor Alex Sanderson-Shortt, dealing with other people’s opinions can be tricky to negotiate.

“Decisions need to be made about who knows what about your relationship. Living with these kinds of secrets can be stressful for people, and affect relationships.”

Jealousy is another issue that can come up. ...

What are the benefits of polyamory?

...Lindsay notes: “It’s not that my partner and I don’t meet each others’ needs, but you don’t necessarily share everything with one person. I think that relying on one person to meet all your needs may not always be the best idea.”

She also says her confidence has been boosted by meeting others. “My partner and I are both quite anxious, so it hasn’t always been easy, but there’s something lovely about meeting someone completely new and developing a relationship.”

For Lindsay, it’s this meeting new people, and the self-awareness polyamory facilitates, that helped her tackle her social anxieties, and made her more resilient.

If you’re thinking of trying polyamory…

Counsellor Alex reiterates that communication is key. “Managing any form of consensual non-monogamy needs communication. There needs to be resilience and a support network, as it is still considered odd by many. It can be a really positive experience, and should be celebrated as such when everyone feels they have a fully-consensual experience within the relationship.”

...Stepping outside of societal norms can feel daunting, but for many it’s also liberating. Our advice? Educate yourself on your options, keep communicating, and find a way of loving others that feels good to all involved.

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We're moving from Stage 2 to Stage 3 polyamory. An example in an upscale city mag.

At last week's Rocky Mountain Poly Living conference in Denver, Leanna Wolfe — a poly anthropologist and sexologist active in the movement almost since its birth in the 1980s — spoke on what she called the three historical stages of polyamory in Western culture.

Her Stage 1 was mostly male-centric (my paraphrase). She described it as running through the Oneida Colony and other utopian communities of the 19th century through the free-love beliefs and attitudes that exploded in the 1960s.

Stage 2 has been what we call the modern poly movement: strongly feminist in its origins and growth, born in the mid-1980s and running until more or less now. Its founders, organizers, media spokespeople, bloggers, podcasters, book authors and opinion leaders have been mostly women (the ratio by my count is about 3 to 1). Its ideology has been gender-egalitarian, communication-centric, and consent-based since before consent culture was a thing. Like Stage 1, Stage 2 has been something of a counterculture that sees itself apart from mainstream society.

The May 2019 issue

The current Stage 3 is the mainstreaming of consensual non-monogamy (CNM) in its various forms, including polyamory, into the general culture. This shift is well under way and bodes to take over the conversation in coming years — for better and for worse, as I've been speechifying about since 2008.
Stage 3 typically involves mainstream couples who have little or no experience in questioning dominant paradigms. They consider opening their marriages for any number of reasons, with dreams of a new society not on the front burner. Couples in this position are primed to walk straight into the traps of couple privilege/ unicorning, and to bring along lots of unexamined cultural baggage from monogamism.

This is why I thought that More Than Two, published in 2014, was exactly the book needed for this era. It pounds relentlessly on avoiding the mindsets and assumptions that trip up so many of the Stage 3 types we're seeing now. That angers some of the book's readers, which says to me it's on target.

This morning, Chicago Magazine — the glossy, upscale city mag of the town and its burbs — posted a long self-portrait of a would-be Stage 3-er, a moderately bigtime book author, considering joining the poly world. The article is also in the magazine's May 2019 print issue. Excerpts:

Married With Benefits

Author Kim Brooks takes a very personal journey into Chicago’s burgeoning world of consensual nonmonogamy.

Chicago mag / Martha Williams

My date with David began the way most first dates do, except for the fact that I brought flowers for his wife. I knew Kate wouldn’t be there. She was gone for the weekend, attending an out-of-state polyamory conference with her boyfriend. David and Kate live in a single-family home they renovated in Pilsen. As David showed me around, he mentioned that the small carriage house out back was one of the features that had attracted them to the property. He told me Kate liked to joke that eventually they could have one of their other partners move in. It was the perfect setup: a shared space, shared lives, a feeling of community and connection. Separate but close.

Author Kim Brooks

I’d had coffee with Kate a few weeks before, and she’d expressed a similar sentiment. “My parents are married, they stayed married, but they hated each other,” she’d told me. “They didn’t want to spend time with us. I didn’t get along with my brother and sister. So I had a family, but I felt so alone. I always envied the families where they had cousins and aunts and uncles over all the time, a whole tribe of people.” Polyamory — the practice of having multiple sexual partners where all involved are willing participants — seemed to offer what she’d long felt was missing from traditional family structures.

David found a vase for the flowers and told me Kate would appreciate them. “She loves that sort of thing,” he said. He made us margaritas, and we talked for a while, though not too loudly because David and Kate’s 18-month-old son was asleep in the nursery. ...

David and I had met several times for coffee and once for lunch. Our conversations had been warm and friendly. Now, though, I was nervous and a little nauseous. The house felt like another woman’s home. True, she knew I was there, but that didn’t assuage my sense of discombobulation. What was I doing? I had my own home with my own family. I had my husband of 15 years, and there was also the man I’d been dating for several months since my husband and I had opened our marriage. I was in love with that other man, but he was out on a date with another woman he’d been seeing. My husband was also dating other women. ... I tried to focus on David and enjoy my drink, but I kept thinking of these other men in my life, wondering what they were doing. I felt insecure, jealous, panicky.

A year or so earlier, I hadn’t really known about consensual nonmonogamists — as practitioners of polyamory are often called — much less that (as I’d soon learn) a whole community of them in Chicago organizes monthly meetings, social outings, and support groups. When I read an essay five years ago on Salon about a woman who lived with her husband and her boyfriend, I’d thought why. Also, how. ...

If I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, and tried to forget everything I’d learned about relationships in the past 39 years — as a daughter and a wife and, most recently, an author writing about marriage and parenting — and let go of every rule and every assumption about what love and dating are supposed to look like, then there was nothing unusual at all about what I was seeing and doing. Perhaps it would be easier with another margarita. ...

She interviews Sophie Lucido Johnson, the "Chicago artist and polyamorist who recently published Many Love, an illustrated book about her experiences practicing poly."

Johnson told me over coffee that for her, polyamory means treating her friends more like lovers and her lovers more like friends. “Which is not to say I have sex with my friends! I don’t. But my friendships are as important to me as my other relationships.”

She emphasized that embracing polyamory was not just an affirmation of a different lifestyle but also a negation of the kinds of relationships she didn’t want. ...

In some ways, that was how I became interested in polyamory, too. In the years leading up to opening our marriage — a decision we’d arrived at without any clear road map, much less the support of a whole community of like-minded people — my husband and I had been trying everything we could think of to make our marriage work. ...

... I’ve since wondered how unhappy we could have been if we were soaking in a tub together, holding each other’s wrinkled feet. Or maybe more to the point: What was the nature of this unhappiness? I couldn’t quite name it, but many of the poly people I spoke to could.

Take Eric, for example, a north suburban high school teacher whose friends call him the Mayor of Poly Town for his uncanny ability to draw people into the fold. He told me how before he went to his first poly support group meeting, he assumed there was something wrong with him: “I’d always felt like such a freak, like I was just doing relationships wrong.”

...The idea of monogamy had always felt impossible to [Eric], but he assumed this was a thing about him he had to hide. He had no vocabulary for what he felt — this longing to have different types of relationships with different types of partners, this suspicion that no single relationship was ever going to meet all his needs. He had cheated because it never occurred to him that there was any alternative, a community of sex-positive people who eschewed monogamy but still maintained open, honest, and meaningful relationships.

I'm glad to see her emphasizing the importance of poly community. Your own friends and lovers are fine, but if there's one thing I urge people new to this, it's "connect with the poly community." You need community.

It was a few months after this conversation that he discovered the Chicago Polyamory Meetup, a group with more than 3,000 members that hosts a monthly cocktail party, a “newbie” support group, karaoke hours, and other social and educational events. “Suddenly I was in a room full of people who were describing that they had experienced the world in a way I always had.” More important, he said, was that they weren’t lying or hiding this part of themselves. They were talking, negotiating, writing their own scripts. “It was just revelatory,” he told me. “I didn’t feel alone.”

The cocktail parties, held at the Lake View bar Matilda, attract a mix of newcomers and longtime members, who wear glow bracelets to stand out to those who might have questions. On many of the tables, organizers place laminated placards detailing rules of etiquette. The guidelines emphasize consent (“Please be sure to ask and wait for a yes before hugging or initiating any physical contact”) and communication (“Get to know your fellow attendees by asking respectful questions and listening carefully”). One attendee told me the rules are a response to some problems the group encountered early on, namely that “people think polyamory means easy sex.”

And this:

The answer to nearly all of the questions or problems raised was communication. “There’s a saying in polyamory,” one of the mentoring attendees said, “that if you’re not talking too much, you’re probably not talking enough.” With open communication, so the poly philosophy holds, jealousies can be worked through, insecurities overcome, needs and wants negotiated, boundaries established and respected. A support group regular named Stephanie told me that polyamory had taught her how important direct communication is: “It’s about owning your own shit instead of expecting people to guess what you’re feeling.”

And this too:

One point that emerged repeatedly was that most people blindly follow societal norms. A healthy relationship, we’re told, is one that progresses in a timely fashion from dating to exclusivity to cohabitation to marriage to kids to retirement to death. “In my marriage,” one woman told me, “I was on autopilot most of the time. In polyamory, there is no autopilot. The rules of each relationship are made from scratch.”

It all sounded freeing to me, but I wondered, Do these people have children? (Many did, I learned.) Do they have bills that need paying and front stoops that need shoveling and groceries that need buying? One of the lessons I’d internalized since starting a family was that time was a scarce commodity. I was surprised and also a little jealous that these polyamorists had the leisure to spend so much energy customizing their relationships. And so at one point in the meeting, I asked the question that had been in the back of my mind for months: “Isn’t it all a lot of work?”

“Yes,” a woman across the room answered. “But it’s the work people should be doing in monogamy. It’s the work of building healthy relationships.” ...

The article winds up with her own angsty journey.

Ideologically, at least, I was on board. And yet that night in Pilsen with David, I’d found myself struggling not to cry into my taco. I felt like an impostor in someone else’s home and couldn’t stop asking myself, How did I get here?

...One polyamorous friend suggested that the only antidote was seeing other people [than David]. Polyamory wasn’t just about replacing one all-consuming relationship with another, she said. It was vaster and lighter than that. ...

...Over the course of the next year, as I began exploring the poly community more purposefully, he and I texted and sometimes sexted halfheartedly, starting and stalling but never gaining momentum. ... Was I a polyamorous anarchist trapped in an unsatisfying monogamous arrangement? Or was I a bored and bitter housewife, sexually frustrated and emotionally disconnected from her husband? ... Despite all David’s wonderful qualities and all the work he’d done to practice nonmonogamy with her, he still didn’t do his own laundry. If I started dating David, would I one day find myself sorting his socks? Who would sort mine and my children’s while I was dating him? Like so many women my age or older, I’d been socialized to believe that part of what made men love women was the caretaking and the labor they performed — domestic labor, emotional labor, invisible labor. Could polyamory cure such deeply internalized ideas? My own experience suggested not: A few weeks earlier, I’d already started making soup for my lover. I phoned a girlfriend as I stirred tomatoes in a stockpot.

“You’re not supposed to make your lover soup, Kim. You take a lover because you’re tired of making soup, not to make more soup.”

“I know, I know,” I said, stirring. ...

I asked my friend if she thought my dissatisfaction was with marriage or with my own codependency.

“It hardly matters,” she answered. “A codependent is to marriage as an alcoholic is to an all-night bar.” ...

No spoilers about how it ends. See the whole article, all 5,000 words (online April 23, 2019).

"Kim Brooks is the author of Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear, an NPR Best Book of the Year.... Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, Salon, Buzzfeed, and other publications. She has spoken as a guest on CBS This Morning, PBS Newshour, 20/20, NPR’s All Things Considered, Good Morning America, the Brian Lehr Show, and many other radio shows and podcasts. Her novel, The Houseguest, was published in 2016."

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Three polyfolks tend our message on PBS TV

Last Tuesday the news show Chicago Tonight on WTTW, the city's PBS TV station, featured a thoughtful, 11-minute (!) interview with three fine spokespeople: Chicago Polyamory Connection co-founder Caroline Kearns and poly-friendly therapists Rami Henrich and Jennifer Rafacz. This comes after the first-ever Chicago Non-Monogamy Conference three weeks ago.



It wins my "Show Your Parents" tag.

Caroline Kearns says, "I thought it went fine -- very limited time, was able to get a very basic sum-up of poly in without it being sensationalized. Overall, I feel pretty good about it."

That New York Times Magazine cover story three weeks ago was what prompted the show. Tim of Chicago Polyamory Connection writes, "The PBS station reached out to Rami first, saying that they wanted to do a small-panel segment after [that] article came out. She's pretty visibly poly in Chicago as a part of Lifeworks. Rami asked if any of us at the CPC would want to join her in the panel, and Caroline reached out."

Continues Tim, "The reaction in the local community was really enthusiastic. We also saw a big spike in web traffic at polychicago.com after the segment aired. I wonder if we'll have a bunch of new people at Poly Cocktail night in two weeks."

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Here's the segment's webpage at the TV station, including the video and a longer text interview with Henrich and Kearns (May 30, 2017). This extended interview goes into topics that weren't aired on TV.

For instance, the part below caught my eye — what with the ugly history of an abuse/consent crisis in Chicago's BDSM world, which spread to split apart Chicago's poly community a few years back. Kearns was part of the rebuilding from that, with a firm foundation now of consent awareness and an ethic of community enforcement. Did someone tip off the TV host?

Host: When a community is marginalized and its members are afraid to seek help, it can make it easier for predatory people to operate within those communities. [The BDSM crisis in a nutshell.] Do you find that to be the case in the poly community?

Caroline Kearns: Poly ends up being very empowering to women, and that can counteract a lot of that behavior. Being open and transparent is always going to help mitigate abusive behavior, as well as having a strong community. But the immediate reaction I got to talking to people about poly was “of course men would want to sleep with you, and all they’re going to want is to sleep with other women” – the thought is that it’s all about the male partners exhibiting predatory behavior. [That thinking] is based on a lot of outdated assumptions that men are always the most sexual member of a heterosexual couple, or that sexual desire is inherently difficult to control and monitor, or sex is sinful and will always lead to corrupt behavior.

But in the reality of the bubble of the polyamory community, women tend to hold equal power and (often) more options than the men do. The women are sought after, they’re respected, they’re feminist, sure of themselves, committed to a culture of consent, able to identify predatory behavior, empowered to voice accusations of assault, and supportive of one another in more transparent polyamory communities.

Of course people of all genders have to be careful, just like anyone would if they go to a bar on Saturday night or meet strangers on Tinder or OKCupid. ... Polyamory is so much about communication, honesty, and being open — the moment I see someone trying to be dishonest or cagey or like they are hiding something from a partner, huge red flags go off and I run in the opposite direction.

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A surprised columnist: "Polyamorous relationships and the 'messes' of love"

Chicago Tribune

Here's an interesting one. A news columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a millennial judging by her photo, wrote a column that went up on the paper's site this afternoon about her surprise that something called polyamory exists. She heard about it from a friend (who described it pretty well), assumes that it's mostly a new thing for millennials, and is intrigued but skeptical.

It's interesting to see the assumptions that someone makes these days when they first hear about this thing.

Polyamorous relationships and the 'messes' of love

Is the heart big enough to accommodate polyamory?

By Dawn M. Turner

My introduction to the concept of polyamory, or Polyamory 101 as I like to think of it, occurred a few months ago when I was walking with a friend across Harvard Yard. My friend, who's in her late 20s, mentioned that she engages in polyamorous relationships.

For a second, I thought: A poly-who?

Then, my knowledge of Greek and Latin kicked in and helped me divine the word's meaning. Still, I didn't know it was a thing. Or, maybe I should say, a new thing.

A polyamorous relationship is one in which consenting adults openly have several deeply intimate, monogamous-like relationships, but without exclusivity. It may, as my friend described, include sex. It may not.

Confused? Keep reading.

In my mind, it's a concept that used to be called "playing the field" if you were single, and "swinging" (or engaging in an "open relationship") if you were married. Now, it's been repackaged and hybridized into a heady euphemism for millennials.

I must tell you that I conducted a highly non-scientific survey of several Gen Xers and baby boomers, folks between the ages of 38 and 60, and asked them if they'd heard of polyamorous relationships. They hadn't....

To be clear, the concept is not new. (We're just late to the party, so to speak.) For my research, I found the websites of several local polyamory meet-up groups, one started in 2012....

So what distinguishes polyamory from "swinging" or "playing the field?"

The big difference, said my friend, is that it's a way of negotiating a relationship — talking about how you feel and what you want in your many companionships — and not merely negotiating sex....

...But I wonder: Is the heart so big, so muscular, that it can accommodate so many loves, however open and honest couples are?

What do you think?

Read the whole article (August 18, 2015), and comment with some further information. (Free registration required.)

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"I Quit Polyamory Because I Fell In Love With A Man"

xoJane

I've always said I'm a poly-mono switch, so I'm not bothered by people moving from one identity to the other. A few hours ago the popular online women's magazine xoJane published, in its "It Happened to Me" section, a story with the title above.

Remember, what we're about is relationship choice. She seems happy with hers.

It Happened To Me: I Quit Polyamory Because I Fell In Love With A Man

Maybe all I can really take away from my experience is that you just never know what’s going to stumble into your life and change it completely.

By Jessica Ebacher

...I’d been doing what some people call serial monogamy for years, and I knew that it wasn’t good for me....

...It wasn’t too long after that that a friend of mine, a girl I’d had a crush on for years, told me that she was in a polyamorous relationship with a couple....

...I became very active in the poly community, helping to run and organize events. I made a lot of friends through that, some of whom I’m still really close with. I was dating a man and a woman, both fairly seriously, when I met the man I can only describe as my soul mate. I know that terms like that are cheesy as hell, and I’m sorry to use it, but how else do you describe the person that, after two dates, you want to tell all of your darkest, most painful secrets to? Whom you trust absolutely? Who seems to understand you in a way that is completely unexpected, and just as completely wonderful? Seriously, I’m asking.

...Now, I don’t want this to come across as some kind of critique of polyamory.... It made me more open about my needs and a better communicator. It also helped me get over my lingering social anxiety. I’m still a fairly introverted person, but I’m not scared of social situations the way that I used to be, and I can only be grateful about that. I’m also really grateful to the people within that community, who are, by and large, friendly, thoughtful, engaging, and generous with their time and advice.

...There is a certain sense of scorn in the poly community for knights, the (usually) men who think that the (usually) women in the community are just waiting for the right guy to come along and rescue them. That’s a sentiment that I still agree with, to a certain extent. Polyamory is a totally valid choice, and to assume that someone is only practicing it because they haven’t met the right person yet is, frankly, wrongheaded.

On the other hand, sometimes I wonder if maybe I wasn’t waiting for that very thing....

Read the article (April 21, 2014).

I know what you're thinking. "She's young, she'll get over it." Maybe, but that reminds me of what my mother said years ago when I told her I was living with two lovers.

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Dating: "How to come out as polyamorous"

RedEye (Chicago)

The Chicago Tribune puts out a free, supposedly hip daily tabloid paper for 18-to-34-year-olds, circulation 200,000. In this morning's issue, a dating columnist offers advice to poly people on the eternal question of when to break the news to a potential new interest.

Advice: How to come out as polyamorous

By Anna Pulley

Anna Pulley

I'm wondering when is the best time, and how, to tell a prospective dating person that you are in a polyamorous relationship. Obviously before any physicality, but in a more granular sense, when? Call, text, first date?

--Poly Wanna Answer

...There’s a delicate balance when you’re first dating someone of what to disclose and what not to. You want to be honest and upfront, but you also want to respect the “getting to know you” process, which can be upset by Big Conversations too early....

I’m a big fan of letting squishy topics come up organically, which they inevitably do when there’s a budding mutual attraction. Dropping a bomb on someone out of context tends to come off like a guilty confession, or something you’re ashamed of....

“So, are you dating anyone?” is a common question, and a perfect opportunity to let your prospective date know that you are dating other people, and not monogamously. If they want to know more, or have specific questions about it, then tell them. Don’t lie or evade the question if it comes up, since that will only serve to bite you in the ass later (and not in the way you are hoping).

I don’t think you’re obligated to come out as poly before anything physical happens, unless there’s been some kind of relationship talk, or if the person is under the assumption that you only have thighs for her. If the date in question seems more conservative or traditional, I’d disclose your poly status sooner than later. But if it’s more of a casual encounter, there’s no need to bog down your date with a treatise on the hierarchy of your relationship structure and long-term compatibility....

Read the whole column (May 15, 2013).

Well, a lot of us realize that many people assume that a real relationship with a good person will be monogamous, without anyone saying anything. You'll save them and yourself time and trouble by happily telling about your poly beliefs at the first reasonable opportunity. I like her idea of "So, are you dating anyone?" And, tell exactly what "poly" means to you, because interpretations and assumptions differ widely. The right person will be enthused or at least accepting. Many won't be, unless you have the sense to be dating in a poly-friendly pool to begin with, and the sooner you both find out the less time and energy you both waste.

When dating online, this filter belongs smack up front.

I've never heard a good reason to delay informing a potential new partner unless it's clearly just a one-night stand kind of thing. Name one! If you hope to bedazzle a possibly mono person and "convert" them after they're hooked, you're not just a dick, you're a fool.

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Gay poly roundup

I spent a fun day helping staff the “Polyamory!” booth at Boston's Pride Festival last month. We seemed to fit right in — weirdness is as weirdness does, Forrest Gump might say... except maybe for the harried, suburban MF couple behind the table who were constantly chasing after their excited young kids like any couple at the Nebraska State Fair. They stood out a bit in the present surroundings, where "normal" meant sights like the elderly men marching down the midway in full leather horse gear with bits in their mouths, being directed by a horse driver tugging their reins.

We talked with loads of people and gave out flyers for Poly Boston, Family Tree, the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund, Loving More's East Coast Conference/Retreat, the Network for New Culture Summer Camp, Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness, and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. We displayed books and infinity-heart pins. I directed a sweet Quaker lady to the PolyQuakers yahoo group. The booth next to us was recruiting for a welcoming mixed-race Presbyterian church; the kids had a grand time helping the church people mass-produce pinwheels to give out; we talked church management (my wife used to be president of our UU church), and the Presbyterians seemed to come away with a very good impression of us.

So where does polyamory stand in the gay world?

Open, consensual nonmonogamy is certainly much more discussed, understood, and practiced among gays than straights. But my impression is that gay culture is so well developed at this point — while poly culture is still in its infancy — that gaydom easily fills up a person's entire queerness identity. That is, if a gay person is nonmonogamous, it's usually just viewed as an aspect of being gay. At least among men. The lesbians who stopped by our table seemed more intrigued with polyamory as a radical life in and of itself.

Or so it seemed to me. Full disclosure: I'm straight. Opinions?

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

Anyway, it's past time for a roundup of gay poly media items.

1. In the online version of Chicago's Windy City Times, the gay therapist who writes the "Couples Connecting" column says, "I've probably spent over 100,000 hours over the last 19 years listening and speaking with lesbians and gay men about love and relationships." Last fall he described the nonmonogamy debate:

Can gay men be monogamous?

By Bruce Koff, LCSW
Oct. 10, 2008

Of the many questions gay men face in forming romantic relationships, two are most prominent: “Can gay men be monogamous?” and “Should they be?” If you want to stir it up at a gathering of friends, go ahead and touch this “third rail” of gay male discourse and watch the sparks fly....

The open relationship argument goes something like this. Gay men, being men, are by nature inclined toward sex with multiple partners. It's not only natural, but is a vital component of urban gay male culture and offers a sexually charged counterpoint to heterosexual norms. Open relationships, it's argued, challenge traditional beliefs that equate relationship with ownership; that is, the exclusive control of one person's body by another. When men give each other permission to have sex with others, they are expressing an unselfish love that strengthens the relationship and enhances their sexual chemistry.

The monogamy side, in contrast, views a closed relationship as a more stable one in which the bonds of love are expressed and reinforced through fidelity, restraint and moderation. Some would add that monogamous relationships are more secure, that men in monogamous relationships are happier, and that monogamy fosters psychological health and inhibits the spread of HIV. Proponents of monogamy often view non-monogamy as a visceral reaction to our history of having been criminalized and stigmatized. Sex with multiple partners is a deeply ingrained response to oppression in which the gay man declares: “No one, not even a partner or spouse, can tell me what I can and can't do sexually.” While that response is understandable, the monogamist might argue that it is irrelevant to the modern gay male relationship....

Read the whole article.

Later Koff did a followup:

Non-Monogamy: Does It Work?

By Bruce Koff, LCSW
Feb. 25, 2009

...Most of the gay men I've known who've had any success with open relationships emphasize the deep level of honesty required. I have also observed several other factors that, taken together, create a set of guidelines that can work. I list them here....

— The decision to open the relationship should be a function of the strength of the relationship, not of its weakness....

— The decision to open the relationship must be mutual. Partners should have equal power in the relationship.... If you're doing this because you think you have to, don't.

— Any agreement to open the relationship should contain within it elements that recognize that the relationship comes first; that's why it's called a primary relationship. I've encountered a range of such elements....

— Any agreement should be time-limited and subject to periodic, routine discussion and review....

— Partners should agree to do nothing that could expose each other to danger or harm, such as sexually transmitted diseases, drug use or interpersonal violence....

— Most important, both partners should have already established a high level of trust in each other. The relationship should have a proven capacity to foster honesty and to deal with conflict, jealousy, competitiveness, hurt, or other types of vulnerability....

Read the whole article.

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2. In The Gay and Lesbian Times this week, psychotherapist Michael Kimmel offers GLBT folks advice on how to choose whether to open or close a relationship:

A guide to infinite sexual possibilities

...Although [The Ethical Slut's] “infinite sexual possibilities” sounds great, how do you pull it off with grace and sanity?

...Let’s say you and your partner want to remain emotionally faithful but want to sexually open up your relationship. This is likely to bring major changes to all its aspects. So it’s important that you both sit down and figure out what you each mean by “emotionally faithful” and how sexually opening up your relationship is likely to change it. Ask yourselves:

• What is your intention for your relationship? Why are you still together? Is it to have fun, share great sex, deepen an emotional connection, see if you can be life partners?

• What would be the purpose of either an open relationship or of monogamy? What are the pros and cons of each?...

• What does “emotional monogamy” mean to you and your partner? If this is important to you, how can you remain emotionally committed to each other while having sex with other people?

I’ve seen many longterm emotionally monogamous relationships that are sexually “open” or periodically go through “open” periods to refresh sex that has become predictable. Depending on the value that the partners place on sex, this may or may not be a problem. Some people like consistency (e.g., I know what you like and you know what turns me on), while others thrive on change and creativity....

And... nothing is irreversible. You can always change your minds!

Read the whole article (July 2, 2009).

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3. "Noah's Arc," the all-black gay drama/comedy on Canada's OutTV, is reviewed at length (with nonmonogamy mentioned) as this week's cover story in the Vancouver edition of Canada's Xtra:

“You interrupted my four-guy for this?” a more than exasperated Ricky protests as his best buds Noah, Alex and Chance summon him to a conference call....

...What “The Cosby Show” did for heightening the visibility of straight black middle-class America in the 1980s, “Noah’s Arc” does for black gay maledom.

It’s a celebratory vehicle that makes the lives and sexuality of black gay men visible to mainstream North America in general, and to African-Americans and the broader queer community in particular.

...Shortcomings aside, Noah’s Arc manages to treat several issues almost never addressed through the vehicle of black skin in the media: colourism, body image, phobia of effeminate men (cleverly dubbed effemina-phobia in the show), gaybashing, HIV/AIDS, monogamy, non-monogamy and being on the down low.

Read the whole article (July 2, 2009).

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4. Dan Savage speaks. Here's a video of the gay advice columnist (of "Savage Love" fame) answering a question about poly at a recent lecture event:

I've been to poly weddings, a couple. I've never been to a poly third anniversary party? I know that's an asshole thing to say (laughs). But it's true.... I haven't seen it done successfully often.

Savage, who is proud of his own 15-year pairing, argues that even a couple-relationship has so many moving parts that it often spins out of control, so the odds are stacked against relationships that are even more complicated. Comments Mus Q. Rat, "I think he needs to get out more." Watch and leave a comment. Interestingly, Savage mentions that all his poly friends are straight.

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5. Kathryn Martini (RecoveringStraightGirl.com) describes her ethical nonmonogamy for JustOut, a gay paper in Portland, Oregon, and wonders "if forbidden fruit isn’t forbidden, it may not taste as sweet."

Faithful Only Unto You?

I don’t value monogamy; I value honesty. I recently told this to my hair stylist during a coloring session. She looked at me in the mirror with a perplexed expression and didn’t know quite what to say. Her reaction was not unusual. When the subject of monogamy comes up and I answer this way, the typical response is, “You’re more evolved than I am,” followed by, “I could never do that.”

And then I ask, “Why?”

Monogamous relationships are not necessarily biologically natural, yet we as a society place an incredible amount of value on them.... Unfortunately, most people are too afraid to have an honest conversation about it with their partner.

...My wife and I have a 3,000-mile clause. If we’re more than 3,000 miles away from each other, we are free to explore anything we like, no questions asked....

More than anything, it has taken the taboo out of cheating. I know that if I wanted to be with someone else, my partner would most likely allow me to do so as long as I was up front and honest with her. This makes the idea of it almost not as interesting. People are more likely to want something they know is forbidden than something that is not — this is proven repeatedly in many different situations....

Read the whole article (April 3, 2009).

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"Multi-love: It's complicated"

RedEye (Chicago)

The mainstream Chicago Tribune puts out RedEye, a free daily "lite" newspaper read by more than 100,000 public-transit commuters. It's aimed at (as it tells advertisers) "young, urban professionals who are short on time and long on disposable income." Today it offers the longish feature article excerpted below.

Nitpicks aside, this is another little step toward our poly-friendly future world.

Multi-love: It's complicated

For some Chicagoans, enjoying multiple serious romances without cheating makes more sense than monogamy.

By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz

...Today, Kumar, Prather and Bennett are in a relationship known in polyamory parlance as a "vee," because the structure resembles the letter "V": Bennett, representing the center point, is married to Prather and is dating Kumar, but Prather and Kumar are not romantically involved with each other (though they are close friends).

Unlike swingers, who swap or add partners to spice up their sex lives, polyamorists maintain multiple intimate relationships that are emotional as well as sexual — "swinging with breakfast," some call it. The "vee" is one of many forms of polyamory, which, once you add hierarchies and outside partners, can begin to look like an extended family of lovers.

...Sound complicated? It can be. The relationships take work, scheduling is paramount, and partners are not immune to jealousy. But for some people, enjoying multiple serious romances without cheating feels healthier than committing to one person for life — and society increasingly is taking notice.

...Though no statistics show the ranks of the polyamorous are increasing, anecdotally there seems to be growing awareness of and interest in the lifestyle, particularly among young adults, said Richard Sprott, executive director of the Berkeley-based Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities.

"Many people question if one person can fulfill all of their needs," Sprott said. "They want to explore many parts of themselves and not put such a burden on one person. And they want to do it honestly, ethically, upfront."

...People are hard-wired to want the security of connecting profoundly with one other person, said Josh Hetherington, a marital and family therapist with the Family Institute at Northwestern University.... "Anyone I've come across who wants to have multiple partners or multiple relationships, somebody is feeling burned by that," Hetherington said....

...But just because monogamy works for most people doesn't mean it works for everyone, said therapist David Rodemaker, who runs Many Loves, a workshop that meets monthly at the Center on Halsted for people practicing or interested in consensual nonmonogamy....

...To many, multiple partners may seem like more trouble than they're worth. But Prather said Kumar brings important elements to his marriage: a different point of view, a companion for Bennett, and another person to turn to in hard times. "He's like family; he's on our emergency contact list," Prather said.

And if Bennett and Kumar broke up?

"I'd be heartbroken," Prather said.

Read the whole article (June 22, 2009). With it are two sidebars: "Poly Lingo" and "Living the polyamorous life".

Nitpick: the writer naturally sought voices expressing the other side, but is the family therapist she quoted really so dumb as to think that the troubled couples coming to him for therapy are the only kind of couples? High-school students should know more about sampling error than that.

(Side rant: One of my beefs about our dumb high schools is that basic concepts of statistics often go untaught, even in the data-driven 21st century. Why? Because algebra and calculus were what our great-grandfathers needed — to get mechanical-engineering jobs based on pencil-and-paper math and 19th-century analytical techniques. So in 2009, algebra and calculus still often fill up the whole math curriculum, no room for anything else, sorry, don't bother us.)

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Poly at a kink/LGBT clinicians' conference

Windy City Times

In Chicago, a gay newspaper reports on the poly presence at a Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Institutes conference:

Kink tank: Center hosts sexuality confab

May 27, 2009

A recent conference at the [LGBT community] Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, looked at provocative issues like leather, kink and polyamory. But rather than provide merely scintillating glimpses into our sexual lives, the event sought to present clinical therapists and the public with a range of analytic and practical tools with which to approach what are often termed “alternative” sexual practices.

The 2009 Alternative Sexualities Conference was a one-day national conference organized by the Center's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Institute (SOGI) and the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities (CARAS) based in San Francisco. In his welcoming speech, Conference Director Braden Barkey addressed a packed room at the Hoover-Leppen Theater and spoke about the need for such events, noting that while there were many broadly focused community events about alternative sexual practices, “there's nothing that addresses clinical issues.”

...Richard Sprott of CARAS, who gave the plenary speech, “Polyamory: The Question of Consensual Non-Monogamy,” said that clinicians had to unpack [their own] cultural assumptions and negative perceptions of the practice....

For therapists working with polyamorous clients, Sprott said, it was necessary to clearly understand that concepts like jealousy and intimacy are constantly discussed and negotiated within polyamorous relationships. He added that many people are puzzled by the idea that someone might form intimate and romantic-sexual relationships with more than one person....

Sprott went on to detail the different ways in which people negotiate their polyamorous relationships, and also discussed the thornier issues of childcare (polyamory can become a lightning rod in some child custody cases) and the “impact of prejudice, stigma, and heteronormativity” that can affect the well-being of people in polyamorous relationships. He also said it was important for therapists to make sure that no one in such cases was being coerced, however subtly, into arrangements they might not really want....

Read the whole article.

Sprott and other CARAS speakers have been giving presentations at other alt-sex and polyamory gatherings. At last winter's Poly Living Conference, Rob Bienvenu spoke about "Research on Poly and other Alternative Sexualities: Why it is important and how CARAS is working to promote more and better scholarly research." He asked for poly-community input to help sociologists and other researchers design their projects realistically and productively. And at Poly Living West in San Francisco this weekend, Richard Sprott is doing much the same. From his program description:

Many people who create polyamorous families and circles are often confronted with institutional difficulties and run into interpersonal difficulties due to ignorance, stigma and prejudice. Some of these difficulties arise because there is a lack of scientific facts available to the larger community and the public. To replace ignorance or misunderstanding, research is needed to discover and document the realities of polyamory. Community-based research is a model of doing science where professionals/academics/clinicians partner with community members to design appropriate research, to ensure community benefit, and to increase the quantity and quality of the body of knowledge. CARAS (Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities) is a model of community-based research. The presentation will introduce CARAS as an organization and discuss the strengths of doing community-based research.

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All My Love: Polyamory play opens in Chicago

Chicago-area newspapers

Update, May 19, 2009: The play, All My Love, has now closed, and Annabelle River wrote the following on the new sexgenderbody site; copied with her permission:

Where are all the poly writers?

Last week I attended a polyamory book club meeting to discuss [the play. The meeting was organized by Cunning Minx, who also] interviewed the playwright and actor Tony Fiorentino, and published it on her podcast, Polyamory Weekly. (Which podcast I highly recommend in general, and thank you Minx.)

But early in the meeting, we determined something funny about the poly book club discussing this play: The play showed a deeply cynical view of polyamory. And yet there we were, about a dozen active polyamorists, discussing it for three hours.

Now that the play has closed, this review will contain spoilers. Yes, the central character is a woman who claims polyamory as an integral facet of her identity, and she has two boyfriends, and she is a sympathetic character. But one of her boyfriends makes it very clear that he hates polyamory and is barely, painfully sucking it up to avoid losing the girl - and the other boyfriend turns out to be lying to his wife about very important things. Throw in our "heroine's" deeply disturbed teenage daughters and her metamour's infertility, and these characters spend most of their lives screaming and/or crying. New layers of dishonesty and heartbreak are revealed in every scene.

And as a polyamorist, that frustrated me to no end. ...Until someone else at the book club pointed out from Minx's interview with Tony Fiorentino that Mr. Fiorentino is not himself polyamorous, and he never intended to create converts. To quote him from Minx's podcast: "I was actually researching stuff for my previous play... and just came across the word 'polyamory' and started reading a little bit about it, and I thought... It would also make a great play, because... when you put a couple of people together who do not share the same ideologies but they happen to be in love, you have the seed of what could be a play with a lot of conflict."

And there is nothing in that with which I can argue. Mr. Fiorentino is not obligated as a playwright to be our spokesman. And there's nothing untruthful about the implication that some individuals practice polyamory badly. Some individuals in his play also practice monogamy badly. We are all flawed, and melodrama ensues. Then a statutorily-raped teenager attempts suicide on prom night, and far worse melodrama ensues. That much is realistic enough.

No artist should be expected to speak for an entire community, especially if the artist's familiarity with the community is only from books. The unfortunate part is that plays like this do end up speaking for the entire community, because there are so very few artists saying the word "polyamory" at all - and none with any more fame or attention. Reviewer Alan Breslof called the play "educational". The depressed teenagers get at least as much dramatic stage-time as their polyamorous mother, but all the reviews focus on the novelty of polyamory. Fiorentino himself apparently had never heard of the concept until shortly before he decided to write the play. Whether anyone likes it or not, the play did create first impressions for a lot of its audience.

So why isn't anyone else producing poly fiction that's less cynical or tragic? I've heard the argument that good stories require a conflict, but Western writers seem to have an easy enough time writing romantically for monogamy. Hollywood and Broadway and bestseller book-lists have fed us plenty of emotionally engaging stories about couples in love. Where are our poly romantic comedies? Where are our stories about people in functional poly relationships battling external conflicts? Twenty years after the publication of Heather Has Two Mommies, where's the book for Heather's classmate with three?

Read her original post, with comments.

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And now, back to my original post:

The new play All My Love, exploring problems poly life, will open March 19th at the Theater Building in Chicago. Already a chain of suburban newspapers has an article:

Love but no marriage in this show

By Myrna Petlicki
March 19, 2009

Monogamy isn't for everyone. Glenview playwright Tony Fiorentino explores one option in "All My Love," a new comedy-drama about open romantic relationships, presented by Diamante Productions, under Braden Lubell's direction, at Theatre Building Chicago, March 19 to May 10.

Diamante artistic director Fiorentino stumbled upon the topic of polyamory during some recreational reading. "I realized that there's this whole subculture of alternative styles of relationships," he said, "when we're so accustomed to thinking monogamy is the only model for a relationship."

Fiorentino stars as Jack, a divorce attorney who lives with his girlfriend and her two children. "He's very possessive of her and very jealous," Fiorentino related. "He would prefer a traditional monogamous relationship and even be married, but his live-in girlfriend Ellen is an avowed polyamorist. He loves this woman very much so he's willing to endure the jealousy and the frustration of having to watch her date another man."

...Unlike Ellen, Hallie "believes a little bit more in traditional notions of monogamy, but her character is willing to go along because she's with somebody who purports to believe in (polyamory)," Fiorentino said.

...Fiorentino hopes audiences will get a few laughs out of the show, "But I also want them to walk out with the realization that there's more than one way of doing things," he said. "When it comes to relationships, the predominant belief in Western cultures is that there is one way ... lifelong monogamy. I'd like people to question the possibility of alternatives."

Read the whole article.

From the blurb on the producer's website:

When a middle-aged divorcée decides to explore the world of polyamory, she must temper the jealous passions of her lover, while her teenage daughters search for the meaning of love through the prism of their mother’s unorthodox practice of relationships. “All My Love” is an exploration of alternative “lovestyles” and a critique of Western society’s most cherished notions of love, monogamy, and marriage.

From an article in Broadway World (Feb. 25, 2009):

...All My Love is a smart, fun and thoughtful look into the world of polyamory and is the fifth production presented by Diamante Productions. The cast includes Fiorentino as Jack.... Fiorentino founded Diamante Productions in 2005, a non-profit theatre company dedicated to the production and development of new plays.

It runs through May 10th. The Theatre Building Chicago is at 1225 W. Belmont Ave. More information and video previews.

Updates: Writer and comedian A. R. Higgins, an outsider to the poly world, reviews the play.

Here's another review, by Alan Bresloff.

And another, by Jennifer M. Lezan.

And another, by Rachel Gillman.

Cunning Minx, a Chicagoan herself, reviews the play and interviews the author, Tony Fiorentino, in her Polyamory Weekly podcast, Episode #199.

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Minx vs. talk jocks

Q101 radio (Chicago)

After she appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times article day before yesterday, Cunning Minx, who produces the wonderful Polyamory Weekly podcast out of Chicago, got a few minutes this morning to explain poly on a local radio station. She held her own against a couple of morning DJs who can't believe that male bisexuality exists (though gal-on-gal is hot). Listen here, and educate the idiot jocks here.

"Wedded to Variety"

Chicago Sun-Times

Prompted by the Tilda Swinton news, one of Chicago's two daily papers (the more sensationalist one) has a good article in today's issue explaining polyamory:

BY PAIGE WISER | March 18, 2008

When Tilda Swinton won the best supporting actress Oscar for "Michael Clayton," there wasn't too much talk about what designer she was wearing.

But people were curious about her date.... Both men know about each other. And both are OK with it.

You might call the arrangement "awfully messy." Or you might call it by its proper name: polyamory. That's the practice of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

...It's not a higher love, says Cunning Minx, an Oak Park polyamorist who hosts a weekly podcast at http://polyweekly.libsyn.com/. Poly people get jealous just like everyone else. "It's not more evolved, it's just a little more complicated," she says. "People do this because it's an orientation. For some, it's a lifestyle choice."

Like most polyamorists, Minx uses a pseudonym because there's no legally protected status. In the poly community, especially in Chicago, people try to keep things quiet.

"You can be fired for it, and your kids can be taken away," Minx says. "We have a saying: In a divorce hearing, the first person to call the other person 'poly' gets the kids."

..."Chicago is probably the least well-organized of the major cities in terms of having an active and well-organized polyamory community," [activist Anita] Wagner says. "This doesn't mean that poly people don't exist, though."

There's a PolyChi Yahoo! group with more than 1,000 members, who meet once or twice a month. Sidekicks on Montrose, and the Center on Halsted, are common poly gathering places. "The Fox Valley area is very active for meet-ups and potlucks," Minx says.

She was initiated into the lifestyle when she fell in love with a polyamorist, Gray Dancer, who was engaged and later married. Without any rules to follow, the threesome sometimes had a hard time working things out. Her podcast started out as a way to ask questions and find others like her.

"The amount of communication and calendar shuffling involved can be daunting," Minx says.

...A few other famous "responsible non-monogamists":

– Diego Rivera tolerated wife Frida Kahlo's relationships with other men and women (including Leon Trotsky).

– Amelia Earhart had a prenuptial agreement that "I shall not hold you to any midaevil [sic] code of faithfulness." [Read her letter, in the Purdue University archives, to her future husband George Putnam.]

– Billionaire Warren Buffett was happily married to his wife until she died in 2004. He also had a long-term relationship with mistress Astrid Menks. They sent out Christmas cards signed, "Warren, Susie and Astrid."

– After Jada Pinkett Smith was interviewed by Britain's Daily Mail, polyamorists rallied behind her marriage. "In our marriage vows, we didn't say 'forsaking all others,'" said Smith in the interview. "The vow that we made was that you will never hear that I did something after the fact.

...Don't be shocked until you examine your own history, Minx says. "Think back. Was there ever an 'aunt' or an 'uncle' who visited your grandparents all the time? Or a couple they spent a lot of time with, or a 'good friend of the family?' "

Welcome to the club.

Read the whole article.

The article is fairly superficial, and there's a backstory to this. The writer sought, and got, a lot of help in trying to find more local people to talk to. No one would. Writes Anita Wagner, about the shortage of willing interviewees:

Here's an example of the situation as it stands today. A couple of we community organizers have been working with a journalist from the Chicago Sun-Times who has a green light from her editor for an article on polyamory. She's seeking a married poly couple in the Chicago area willing to be interviewed.... Despite having put out more than one call/invitation on the 1,000+ member Chicago poly list, all we've gotten back are crickets chirping.

Wagner has more to say about this "chicken-and-egg problem" on her Practical Polyamory blog.

Local organizer David Rodemaker (a doctoral student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and an intern at the GLBT Center on Halsted mentioned in the article) posted elsewhere about the reasons why Chicago people stayed hidden. Copied with his permission:

I made a point of bringing [this reluctance] up in my "Many Loves" seminar this weekend at the Center on Halsted. There was some interesting discussion around the issue.

1– That it was the Sun-Times as opposed to the Tribune (an unfortunate but real factor in some people's minds).

2– That it was asking for a "poly couple," which was sort of missing the point for a number of the people there — and which provoked reactions from the bemused to the annoyed.

3– That the person wasn't looking very hard, given the Many Loves seminars at the Center on Halsted, plus a recent brown-bag discussion on Polyamory at UIC; it's not like it's *that* hard to actually find somebody who could at least act as a local gatekeeper. Add in three somewhat active polyamory groups/listservs in the area, and it became even more of a "head scratcher" for some people.

4– And yes, the stated issue of fear of being outed. This is less of an issue for some people and more for others — but all of the above issues really seemed to make people wonder how positive or sensitive the article/interviewer would actually be.

"Hers, hers, his and hers"

Chicago Sun-Times

Prompted by "Big Love," and not to be outdone by its rival the Chicago Tribune (see this article from February), the Chicago Sun-Times went prospecting for local polys and came up with a decent general-interest article:

For a sliver of America, HBO's "Big Love," a Sunday night television show about a man "married" to three women, isn't just a weekly hour of drama. It's the way they live.

They call themselves "poly people" or "polyamorists" — people who say they have marriage-like commitments to more than one person.

The idea conjures up images of group sex, though it's not always a free for all: Not all of the partners necessarily sleep with each other, but they do have what they call deep emotional connections. It's negotiated non-monogamy where the goal is falling in love. A lot.

...Ten years ago, [Manelqua Hinton] met Mary, who had also previously lived in poly arrangements. Hinton said his promise with Mary is "for eternity." The promise to Kristi is to stay with her "as long as love lasts."

They share one bedroom. He's sometimes asked by the women to leave them alone together, he said.

The secret, Hinton said, is to "be totally open and honest. If something bothers you, you have to say it now and not later. It takes a lot of love and trust."

Kristi declined an interview. But, said Mary, "I'm lucky to have two very supportive, good friends."

For balance, the article quotes Christian right-winger Bill Maier, a vice president with Focus on the Family:

"It's all about 'my wants.' It's radical individualism."... Maier said the polys who consider themselves married are anything but, because marriage is about "putting the other ahead of you."

"Polyamorist relationships [are] about 'me-me-me.' And that's why they're bound to fail," Maier said.

In poly arrangements "women are objectified — they're collected like a commodity. Women always lose in a poly society," Maier said.

Sheesh. Successful polyamory requires exactly the opposite: unusually good antennae for the feelings of others; generosity and readiness to put others first; compromise; willingness to work a whole lot on communication; and readiness to sacrifice (when you've all worked out what's best) with a smile. To suck it up for the good of all. If Maier's is the quality of criticism we're going to face, our debate muscles will get flabby.

Read the whole article (from the issue for April 2, 2006). The writing did strike me as rather flat, and the reporter committed a howler: calling Minx, the Chicago-based hostess of the Polyamory Weekly podcast, a "he"!

Never mind. We should do all we can to facilitate this sort of article. Each one introduces thousands of new people to the concept. A few who have been longing for our community will discover us and perhaps lift their lives out of the mundane forever. The rest will at least become aware of the concept before they run into us — and will know that some people find it a glorious life that works for them.