Dan Savage on monogamy on PBS NewsHour

"Sometimes I 100% agree with Dan and sometimes I want to punch him in the face. This video is such an agree," writes OhMori on reddit/r/polyamory.

The 6-minute segment, aired on PBS NewsHour November 10th, doesn't mention the polyamory option. But it's serious mainstream exposure for perhaps the central idea of our movement (IMO), summed up in the segment's online blurb:

"Some people wind up making monogamous commitments because the culture says this is what 'good people' do," says Dan Savage. "But it should be a choice that each couple makes."

Which means discussing it, early — and understanding the many possible alternatives.

The video (6:15) is only on Facebook as best I can tell. Here's the link:

https://www.facebook.com/newshour/videos/1715245825215954/

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Wait for the second date to reveal you're poly?

The last time I reported on a Dan Savage column a furious reader unsubscribed, writing,

I have no quibble with his poly advice. However, Dan is a pretty bigoted dude across multiple axis, and has been known to harrass and denigrate employees that do not meet his standards for attractiveness. One of them devoted a chapter in their memoir to his fuckery. I find as I age (35 years as a poly full adult plus the pre-poly years) I have zero tolerance for people who have something I agree with to say along one axis, while they are affirmatively wishing me dead along another. ...

What's going on here? You can include links in the comments. Savage's Wikipedia entry has a controversies section that reports graphic death-wish fantasies against Republicans and their enablers, but this sounds like something else. Be aware.

A true lesson for polyfolks is in his column just out: Don't wait until the second date for your poly reveal. Else your date may think you're the snake in the cartoon.

Savage Love: Sneakers

Joe Newton / The Stranger

I am a 34-year-old straight woman. I'm monogamous and have an avoidant attachment style. I've been seeing a guy I really like. He's just my type, the kind of person I've been looking for my whole life. Thing is, he's in an open relationship with someone he's been with for most of his adult life. He was sneaky—he didn't reveal he was in an open relationship until the second date, but by then I was infatuated and felt like I wasn't in control of my actions. [Uh-oh! –Ed.] So what I've learned is that poly couples often seek out others to create NRE or "new relationship energy," which may help save their relationship in the long run. I was deeply hurt to learn about NRE. What about the people who are dragged into a situation by some charmer? ... I feel like such a loser.

Sobbing Here And Making Errors

"One of life's hardest lessons is this: Two people can be absolutely crazy in love with each other and still not be good partners," said Franklin Veaux, coauthor of More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (morethantwo.com). "If you're monogamous and you meet someone you're completely smitten with who isn't, the best thing to do is acknowledge that you're incompatible and go your separate ways. It hurts and it sucks, but there it is."

This perfect, sneaky guy who makes you feel like a loser and a hussy? He told you he was in an open relationship on your second date. You knew he wasn't "your type" or "perfect" for you the second time you laid eyes on him, SHAME, and you needed to go your separate ways at that point. And I'm not buying your excuse ("I was too infatuated!"). ...

Veaux advocates ethical polyamory—it's right there in the title of his book—and he thinks this guy did you wrong by not disclosing his partner's existence right away. "Making a nonmonogamous relationship work requires a commitment to communication, honesty, and transparency," said Veaux. "Concealing the fact that you're in a relationship is a big violation of all three, and no good will come of it."

I have a slightly different take. Straight women in open relationships have an easier time finding men willing to fuck and/or date them; their straight male counterparts have a much more difficult time. Stigma and double standards are at work here—she's sexually adventurous; he's a cheating bastard—and waiting to disclose the fact that you're poly (or kinky or HIV-positive or a cammer) is a reaction to / work-around for that. It's also a violation of poly best practices, like Veaux says, but the stigma is a violation, too. Waiting to disclose your partner, kink, HIV status, etc., can prompt the other person to weigh their assumptions and prejudices about poly/kinky/poz people against the living, breathing person they've come to know. Still, disclosure needs to come early—within a date or two, certainly before anyone gets fucked—so the other person can bail if poly/kinky/poz is a deal breaker.

As for that new relationship energy stuff...

"There are, in truth, polyamorous people who are NRE junkies," said Veaux. "Men and women who chase new relationships in pursuit of that emotional fix. They're not very common, but they do exist, and alas they tend to leave a lot of destruction in their wake."

But your assumptions about how NRE works are wrong, SHAME. Seeing your partner in the throes of NRE doesn't bring the primary couple closer together; it often places a strain on the relationship. Opening up a relationship can certainly save it (if openness is a better fit for both partners), but NRE isn't a log the primary couple tosses on the emotional/erotic fire. ...

The whole column (week of June 21, 2017).

I'm with this on the timing. Announce your poly-ness before the first date. If it's a deal-breaker, move on. Only a neurotic or a scumbag would waste time and hurt on guaranteed date failure — and the decent way to find out is to ask.

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Savage Love: The Quad Squad

Yes, I know, TW, Dan Savage. Since we've been on the subject lately of the Poly 101s the public is seeing, here is his Savage Love Letter of the Day for yesterday.

Tell me if you see anything out of line with the advice he gives here. I don't.

As for tone, that's his shtick. You take it or leave it.

My S.O. and I recently started a polyamorous relationship with another couple, who have been our friends for some time. We see each other pretty regularly for non-sex encounters and sometimes we get together to just hang out. For the first time we were hanging out and I just wasn't feeling it. I attempted to text my S.O. to let him know ... that I just really wanted to go home, but his phone was off and things had already gotten started in the cuddling dept.

Do you have any suggestions for putting the brakes on a potential evening? I'm GGG in the sense that I am fine with him having fun without me, but he's not interested in a threesome with the other male partner, and I don't want to be the reason someone gets left out.

– Friendly Orgasms Usually Relaxing

Navigating interests and libidos is complicated enough for two people — half the mail most weeks is from couples who quite can't get their feeling-it/not-feeling-it dynamics into a rough semi-synch. So it would be highly unrealistic for four members of a poly quad to expect that all four will be in perfect sync all of the time.

And just as it’s perfectly acceptable to communicate that you’re not feeling it when you're in a relationship with one person, FOUR, it's perfectly acceptable to communicate that you're not feeling when you're in a relationship with multiple partners. So it frankly concerns me, FOUR, that you felt you had to send a secret smoke signal to your your S.O., your primary partner, in the form of a text — a text he didn't see, which presumably resulted in you playing along because things "had already gotten started." If you're in a relationship with this other couple, FOUR, and not just fucking around with them, you should be able to communicate with them too — using your words, not your smartphone. If you don't feel comfortable communicating with this other couple (about sex!), FOUR, you may have slapped the "polyamorous relationship" label on this foursome prematurely.

Anyway...

...If you always play as a group... then your S.O. should be used to being around the other male partner while he's in action. So if you took off or tapped out, FOUR, and the others wanted to mess around, the guys could take turns while one waited on the other bed or in another room. If you're already having the occasional MFF threesome, FOUR, then both guys should be familiar with getting left out taking a powder while the other three play. There are lots of workarounds here — including your S.O. getting over his fear of MMF threesomes.

The next time you all get together and you’re not feeling it, FOUR, you could text your S.O. an S.O.S. or make up a bullshit excuse — early work meeting, headache, bad clams — or, you could tell the truth. The truth is your best option — and it puts the onus on the others to figure out how to proceed without you but with your blessing.

I would urge you, however, to have a conversation with your S.O. and the other couple as soon as possible about the other night. ... Tell them you want to open up the lines of communication, so that the next time someone isn't feeling it (and it might not be you next time), that person feels free to say so, without fear of being shamed or pressured by the others.

If your S.O. and the other couple aren't assholes, FOUR, they'll be mortified to know that you didn't feel comfortable telling them how you were feeling in the moment.

Here's the original at his home paper (May 31, 2017). Possibly NSFW ads.

Update July 28: Another Savage Love Letter of the Day, in which he takes a very snarkable poly letter and treats it with delicacy, care and respect: Anxiety Attacks at the Trio Rodeo.

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Spot the Mistakes in This Picture

Here's something to lighten up with. Dan Savage, in his column this week in several dozen alternative newspapers, takes two questions on poly issues. Can you spot the problems?

● One question comes from a poly man whose primary partner put a seemingly petty rule on his outside relationships. This is a stereotypically common thing, but Savage offers a take on it that I've never seen before. Is he on to something, or just being too cute by half? My call follows.

I am a bi man in my late 20s in a poly relationship. My primary partner’s name is Erin. One of the rules she mandated is that I cannot date anyone else named Aaron or Erin. She thinks it would be confusing and awkward. Since those are fairly common names, I have had to reject other Aarons/Erins several times over the last couple of years. ... Overall, it seems like a superficial reason to have to reject someone. Is there any sort of compromise here? We haven’t been able to think of any work-arounds.

—Not Allowed Multiple Erins

Savage presents answers from Dossie Easton (of Ethical Slut fame) and from Franklin Veaux (More Than Two), then one of his own:

...So in the interest of fairness, I’m going to offer a defense of Erin’s position.

It’s not uncommon for people in open relationships to insist on a rule that seems arbitrary, even capricious, to their partners. I call these rules “Brown M&Ms,” a reference to 1980s hair rock band Van Halen. The band’s touring contract stipulated that bowls of M&Ms be set out backstage with all the brown M&Ms removed. To see if their contract had been followed to the letter — a contract that included a lot of technical requirements for their elaborate and potentially dangerous stage shows — all the band had to do was glance at those bowls of M&Ms. If a local promoter couldn’t be trusted to get something simple and seemingly arbitrary right, they couldn’t be trusted to get the bigger stuff right. And if the promoter didn’t get the big stuff right, it wasn’t safe for the band to perform.

Arbitrary rules in open relationships are like Van Halen’s brown M&Ms: a quick way to check if you’re safe. If your partner can’t be trusted to not sleep with someone else in your bed, not take someone else to a favorite restaurant, not use your favorite/special/beloved sex toys with someone else, etc., perhaps they can’t be trusted to get the big things right — like ensuring your physical and emotional safety and/or primacy. So, NAME, if obeying a rule that seems silly and arbitrary makes your partner feel safe to “perform,” i.e., secure enough to be in an open/poly relationship with you, then obeying their seemingly silly rule is the price of admission.

My opinion? Too cute by half. Yesterday, at the Beyond The Love poly convention in Ohio, Ferrett Steinmetz made a more astute observation about such situations. In poly relationships, he told a class, sex between you and me and nobody else ceases to be The Big Thing that defines a "real" couple, as we were all taught to think. So an insecure couple will often seize on something else that must be exclusive to them — maybe involving names, or not drinking tea from a green cup, or not taking anyone else to Bob's Crab Shack.

Rules like that are often a passing phase as a newly open couple gets used to the water. Or they may be a small, permanent accommodation, or a warning sign of deeper problems.


● The other letter raises another common poly issue: whether to open a marriage to solve an intractable sexual mismatch. Dan's advice here is probably good, but one glaring problem leaps out at me. I won't tell you what yet. Can you spot it? Let's see if we flag the same thing.

Joe Newton

I, like many hetero, monogamously inclined single women in their 20s, have had a difficult time finding love in the Tinder age. I’ve been single for two years, peppered with some mundanely heartbreaking flings throughout. Recently, I met someone at work and we’ve been dating for a few months. We’re emotionally and politically compatible and he is solid and kind. The only issue is that I don’t feel the level of sexual chemistry that I’ve felt with others. Part of me feels like, at 26, I’m too young to settle in the passion department. The other part of me feels like it’s a dating hellscape out there and I’d be an idiot to walk away. Please advise.

—Seeking Hot And Lasting Love Or Whining?

Dating is a hellscape, SHALLOW, but it has always been thus. Before Tinder and OkCupid and FetLife came along, women (and men) complained about singles bars, blind dates, moms who gave [your] phone number to [their] dentist....

...If the spark isn’t there — no strong physical attraction — you should bail. You say you’re “monogamously inclined,” and that’s wonderful and I support your lifestyle choice. But monogamy would preclude entering into a companionate marriage with Mr. SolidAndKind while Messrs. ComeAndGo meet your needs in the passion department. The monogamously inclined need to prioritize strong sexual connections (chemistry) and sexual compatibility (similar interests/kinks/libidos) right along with kindness, solidity and emotional and political compatibility.

The problem? "Messrs. ComeAndGo." He's suggesting they're a solution at least for other couples. But people are not dildos. Casual sex has a way of sparking deeper connections, and then what? And if you and your husband have ruled out polyamory in advance, you have agreed to use your future other partners as things. If Mr. ComeAndGo turns out to be an actual person with a heart, you're the dick. "Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things."

The whole column, in Savage's home paper (November 9, 2016).

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Dan Savage on poly as a bed-death solution

Many alternative newspapers

Here's very common motive for going poly or opening a marriage, and an example of why people either love or hate Dan Savage:

Q: My husband and I have been married for 16 years. We have been polyamorous for the last five years. We are a bit mismatched sexually in many ways. Polyamory was our solution. For much of this time, my husband had a girlfriend. Before I go on, let me say that I adore my husband in all ways except sex. We are raising a child together and are a good fit otherwise. I no longer have any desire to have sex with my husband. Lots of men and women write in to complain about their partner's low libido. This is not the case. My libido is fine. I just don't want to have sex with my husband. Whenever we would have sex in the past, I would get anxious and try to avoid it. We each have our issues. He feels insecure and has trouble maintaining erections. I always felt desexualized — not by him, but when I was younger. Being a poly woman dating in my 40s has been incredibly empowering and sexy.

But my husband's experiences have been different. He is frustrated because it is hard for him to meet women, and his frustration is made worse by the fact that I don't want sex with him either. When he had a girlfriend, our sex life wasn't as much of an issue. What should I do? He's unhappy. I'm frustrated. Neither of us wants to divorce. Should I force myself?

Lady In Baltimore Isn't Desiring Obligatory Sex

It is a truth universally acknowledged — in the poly universe anyway — that a married poly woman will have an easier time finding sex partners than a married poly man. Some men in open/poly relationships present themselves as dishonest cheaters rather than honest nonmonogamists because women would rather fuck a married man who's cheating on his wife than a married man who isn't cheating on his wife.

Go figure.

Anyway, LIBIDOS, the answer to your question — should you force yourself to fuck your husband? — depends on your answer to this question: How badly do you want to avoid divorce? Because if your husband can't or won't pretend to be cheating, LIBIDOS, and if women won't fuck him because he's in an open marriage, your refusal to fuck him could wind up incentivizing divorce.

...Forcing yourself to fuck someone is tiresome and dispiriting, I realize, but you can always close your eyes and think about someone you'd rather be fucking — a time-tested stratagem employed successfully by millions of people in loving, stable, and sexually enervating/dead marriages.

And since you're off the hook when your husband has a girlfriend, LIBIDOS, you might wanna do everything you can to help him find a new one — a stratagem employed by tens of thousands of women in poly relationships. You don't want your husband stewing alone at home.... So help him craft messages to women he contacts online, go to play parties and poly mixers with him, and vouch for him to women he's interested in.

But between girlfriends, LIBIDOS, you'll probably wanna fuck him once in a while. Lube for you, Viagra for him, pot for you both.

The whole column at its home site (May 18, 2016).

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"How do I accept my polyamorous son?"

Many alternative newspapers

Say what you want about Dan Savage, he's willing to change his mind. He once snarked polyamory, but his Savage Love column out this morning echoes standard poly-community talking points.

Although I don't really see the implied criticism of the parents' marriage that Savage goes on about.

Joe Newton

My son, who is almost 30 years old, was married four years ago. He just shared with us that for the last three years, he and his wife have been practicing polyamory. They are committed to their relationship but have each had relationships with both men and women. We are trying to get our heads around this, as we come from a more traditional background (we've been married 40 years in a loving and respectful relationship), and we find ourselves feeling very sad. We are accepting and nonjudgmental, just trying to understand how he came to this decision. He feels that to make love "finite," to love only one person, is "not being true," and that their kind of relationship prevents dishonesty and is based on truth. He shared that his wife was the first one to broach this idea — and after many deep conversations, he eventually overcame his jealousy and is embracing this practice. They do not have children or plan to have children. I asked my son if he's happy, and he says he is.

—Sad Mama

If your son says he's happy, SM, you should believe him and be happy for him.

It's unfortunate that your son framed the news about his choices and his marriage — which make him happy — in what sounds like a clumsy critique of your choices and your marriage. (If that's what he did, SM. I've only got your characterization of his comments to go on, not a tape recording of them, and it has been my experience that monogamous folks sometimes hear critiques of their choices when we nonmonogamous folks talk about our own choices. "We're not doing what you're doing" ≠ "You're doing it wrong.")

There's nothing necessarily "finite," untruthful, limiting, or dishonest about monogamy. If that's what two people want, SM, and it makes those two people happy, that's great. Monogamy is what you and your husband wanted, it's what made you and your husband happy, and it worked for your marriage. You could see your son's choice to be nonmonogamous as a rejection of everything you modeled for him, or you could see his choice as modeled on the fundamental bedrock stuff — for lack of a better word — that informed the choice you made....

There are lots of people out there in happy, fulfilling open/poly relationships, SM, and lots of people out there in happy, fulfilling monogamous relationships. (And there are lots of miserable people in both kinds of relationships.) There are also lots of people in happy, fulfilling monogamous relationships they will one day choose to open, and lots of people in happy, fulfilling nonmonogamous relationships they will one day choose to close. It's happiness, consent, and mutual respect that matters....

If your son is happy, SM, you should be happy for him. But if he states — or clumsily implies — that you and his dad couldn't be happy because you're not doing the same thing he and his wife are doing, you tell him from nonmonogamous me that he's full of nonmonogamous shit.

Two pieces of recommended reading: the book Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage by Jenny Block, and an informative interview poly activist and frequent Savage Lovecast guest Diana Adams did with the Atlantic. But I don't think you need to do a whole lot of homework about this....

Here's the original (Sept. 16, 2015).

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Ashley Madison fallout: a wave of problem open-marriage newbies coming our way? And, Dan Savage nails it.

I suspect that the Ashley Madison hack may send a surge of desperate open-marriage newbies to poly websites, local groups and poly conventions.

Consider the numbers. The site's roughly 31 million actual customers (the number if you assume that nearly all the female accounts were fake [Update: that claim has been retracted]) have been outed forever to anyone with a laptop or smartphone: name, address, pix, lists of preferred sex acts, and more. To put that 31 million in context, there are only 68.6 million American men married or living with a domestic partner as of 2013 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Granted, the Ashley Madison customers are spread around the world, and an unknown number of them may be single. But nearly half of the 37 million total accounts (real and fake) are reported to be in the U.S., and the site was pitched not to singles but to bored members of couples with a promise of secrecy justifying the high price.

Work this out, and roughly one in five married or domestically-partnered American men has an Ashley Madison cheating account.

That matches reports that 5.1% of the total American population (320 million men, women and children) were on Ashley Madison: 16.3 million U.S. accounts.

So a lot of divorce-quality discussions are probably happening, or about to happen, within shouting distance of wherever you live.

Suppose just one in a hundred of those couples decides that the solution is to try an open marriage, or this lovey-sounding polyamory thing they saw once on TV. If they come looking for help (or partners), we'll have 300,000 new troubled cases on our hands. Or 600,000 if both members of the couple show up.

I'm guessing that most of these new honest-nonmonogamy experimenters won't realize they need the support and wisdom of a community (they do). Or, they'll be ashamed to seek us out. Even so, the next year or two could be interesting for your local discussion group.

The hack is so big that it has prompted media ruminations about the future of marriage. The gist of the thought-pieces I've seen is that explicitly open relationships will become more common in the wake of the hack, and that actual monogamous people really need to make a deliberate effort to seek each other out.

Which is what the poly movement has been saying for years: we're about relationship choice. Understand what kind of relationship or marriage you actually want, and date people who are compatible with that.

Don't assume, discuss.

If I'm going to highlight just one article on this whole business, it's Dan Savage's piece that went up yesterday evening:

Savage Love Letters of the Day: End of Week Ashley Madison Letter Dump

...Someone who was a victim of this hack — an outed Ashley Madison member or group of AM members — has got to start organizing other victims of the hack. If you're all going to be outed, you might as well come out swinging. Call press conferences, tell your stories, defend yourselves. There are millions of you out there. You know what would instantly make news and change the narrative? Staging a protest at a business that fired someone whose named turned up on the database. Act up, fight back — like gay men did back in the 80s and 90s. The stigma then around being gay and/or having AIDS was greater than the stigma now around being one of those cheaters outed in the AM hack. Gay men with and without HIV were treated like diseased pariahs — and we embraced the term. We wore "DISEASED PARIAH" t-shirts, for fuck's sake.... We refused to be shamed.

If I personally knew someone who was reeling from the AM hack — someone whose info was out there, someone whose in-laws were freaking, someone whose boss had been emailed a link to his or her data — I would sit them down and make them watch "How to Survive a Plague," David France's Oscar-nominated documentary about ACT UP and TAG, and then make them read "So You've Been Publicly Shamed," Jon Ronson's book about public shaming in the age the Twitter mob. (AM members: Please pay close attention to the chapter on Max Mosley.)

...Not everyone who was on AM cheated [the vast majority never had a chance –Ed.] ...and some people who cheated had grounds to cheat. And the only people who have the power to rewrite or complicate the narrative around who AM members are? AM members themselves. Which is why you motherfuckers need to stop sitting at home pissing your pants and start fighting back.

Go read the whole thing, and pass it on. (August 28, 2015).

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Dan Savage urges poly outness, when possible

Many alternative media

Dan Savage, possibly America's most important sex ethicist, devotes his advice column this week to three poly-related questions from readers. Parts of his responses to each:

Joe Newton

...As for his current girlfriend: It's possible that your presence made her uncomfortable, AHW. It's also possible that she's socially awkward and you misread her signals. Or perhaps she's never had to interact with a partner's ex before. She's still a teenager — the whole concept of exes remaining on good terms and being there for each other during a crisis may be new to her.

If you and your ex are close enough to spoon during a health crisis, AHW, you're close enough to ask him a direct question or two about his current relationship. Is it open or closed? If it's open, are we talking open in practice or open in theory? If it's the latter, you may be the first "non-primary" partner — or the first ex-primary partner — with whom this girl has ever had to interact. Meaning: She may have been more comfortable with You, the Idea, than she was with You, the Person....

I consider myself one of the lucky ones: happily married for decades, with a long-term girlfriend. GF is at this point part of the family, and while it hasn't always been an easy arrangement to sort out, it has worked for over a decade. Recently, I've been talking with other nonmonogamous folk and find myself wondering whether I have any responsibility to publicly admit details about my multi-partner lifestyle.... Am I crazy to feel guilt for not being openly poly?

Not everyone who's poly can be out, NUNYA, just as not everyone who's gay, bi, trans, kinky, or poz can be out. But the only way to dispel myths about poly people and poly relationships — poly people are all burners, poly relationships don't work out for the long term, all nonmonogamous relationships ultimately fail — is for poly people to come out when and where they can. So if you're in a position to be out, NUNYA, you should come out.

And while your poly relationship isn't anyone's business, it's not something you should have to hide, either.

...When a person says she wants something sexual to happen "naturally," NEFH, what she means is "spontaneously." Three-ways don't happen that way. An opposite-sex couple that wants to have a three-way is gonna have to make an effort, NEFH. You'll have to take out personal ads, go to swingers clubs, and approach trusted friends or exes and carefully broach the subject. (A gay couple that wants to have a three-way? They just have to leave the house. Pretty much.)

Read the whole column in Savage's home paper (week of Nov. 12, 2014).

On the subject of poly outness: I went to the Beyond The Love poly con in Columbus, Ohio, last weekend, and I was blown away by how well the organizing triad and staff put the whole thing together. This was only its second year and they got about 200 people both times. One of the presenters was Billy Holder of Atlanta Poly Weekend. He led a session on why you should be as out about being poly as you can.

Short version: It's often easier, less stressful, and safer for you. It benefits other polyfolks. And it benefits a free society. You can read the whole thing on his blog: Coming Out Poly.

My favorite quote:

My wife says it best: ”You don’t have to wave a banner to carry it.” By that she means there isn’t a need to shout from the roof tops, draw attention and make a scene, but rather by living our lives quietly and openly we can make a big impression.

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Poly Problems as seen by Dan Savage

Many alternative media

This week Dan Savage devotes his Savage Love column to readers' poly messes. Aside from his almost impossibly strict definition of "triad," I don't see much to disagree with. How about you?

Joe Newton

...And now the real problem: His desire to bring another woman into our relationship borders on obsession.... I have this fervent wish that he doesn't find someone. So do I sit back and hope that he doesn't find another woman, or should I be upfront with him and tell him that I'm not interested in threesomes anymore? I'm afraid that if he finds someone, my jealousy — which I work very hard to hide from him — will break us up.

Just Wants To Be Monogamous

Ask yourself which conversation will be more difficult:

A. After a frustrating and protracted search, your boyfriend finally manages to find a woman who's interested in being your "friend and lover," JWTBM. At that point you tell him you're no longer interested and he needn't have bothered.

B. You tell your boyfriend today — now — that you're not interested in bringing a third into the relationship.

...I would argue that having the conversation now would be preferable.... And who knows? An honest and open conversation about the state of your relationship — including the fact that you're dissatisfied with the once-a-week routine and the waning of D/s — may [reignite your] interest in a third. Would you feel differently if it turned out she wasn't for him, but for you?...

I'm not telling you that you have to agree to the third — if it's monogamy you want, then it's monogamy you should ask for — but keep your mind, your options, and those lines of communication all open.


I'm a middle-aged, fat, and happy gay man. My partner has a best friend, and they share everything — including our bed. Most weekends, we tromp through town together, watch TV together, and share waking and sleeping moments together. Recently I referred to us as "poly and in a triad," and I was shocked by my partner's response. He claims that we aren't a triad; I say that if we're sharing home, heart, and bed, we're in a poly relationship. Sign me...

Honest Accidentally Poly Person, Yep

Perhaps it's the triad designation that makes your partner uncomfortable. That particular label implies that you're all equal partners — not just equally attracted to each other and in love with each other (which three people rarely are), but equals on the emotional, social, and financial fronts as well, i.e., equally obligated to one another....


I'm a married 28-year-old male. My partner and I are conflicted over the level of openness in our relationship. She describes herself as "post-mononormative." I consider myself GGG....

I reject the polyamorous notion that love is limitless — when she has misinterpreted conversations and transgressed boundaries, it has always coincided with the neglect of our own relationship. I have given up seeking the moral high ground and just want to find a solution. Should I have polyamorous relationships of my own? Or should I focus on cultivating shared erotic experiences with my partner? And do her transgressions mean that the boundaries we've set are not explicit or generous enough?

Non-Normative Problems

I don't think retaliatory polyamory is healthy or sustainable.... And while you can focus on cultivating shared erotic experiences, NNP, your partner has made it clear that she needs — and intends to have — novel experiences that don't include you. And while her transgressions may mean the boundaries you've set aren't explicit or generous enough, NNP, it's likelier that your partner gets off on transgression. Some people do.

I think you're confused, NNP, and your confusion stems from the fact that your partner is negotiating with you about her nonnegotiable terms.... Accept her terms or divorce her ass, but stop deluding yourself.

Read the whole column, which is more nuanced than these excerpts. (Oct. 15, 2015).

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Dan Savage apologizes to polyfolks

Dan Savage once had a rocky time with polys, starting with an ignorant little snark. Later it got better. Now he publishes a reader's letter and admits that yeah, he was an asshole back then.

Letter of the Day: Happy Anniversary

As a long time reader of yours, I've been gleefully awaiting this day for three years. You see, I am the unicorn part of a poly triad, and today marks the three year anniversary for myself, my husband, and my wife — we aren't legally married, of course, but our commitment ceremony was beautiful nonetheless....

So, Dan, it's with a certain degree of smugness that I ask: will you wish us a happy three year anniversary?

—Totally Reached It, Ability Doubter

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

You're doubtless referencing this asshole remark of mine [and here he quotes me! –Ed.]:

Savage, a long-partnered gay man who coined the word "monogamish" for his somewhat open relationship, used to snark at polys. He famously remarked that he'd been to poly multi-marriage ceremonies but never to a poly third-anniversary party. That prompted many long-term polyfamilies to speak up as counterexamples, jumping up and down to try to catch his attention.

You're not the first poly triad to let me know that they've made it to their leather anniversary, TRIAD, but I'm thrilled to hear from you nonetheless. Congrats and best wishes to you, your wife, and your husband.... But... technically speaking... my snark still stands, TRIAD: I have been to a few poly weddings but I've never been to a poly third-anniversary party. Still. I know they happen — yours is happening — but somehow I never seem to rate an invitation. Was it something I said?

Read the whole piece (Aug. 14, 2014).

A commenter comments, "I've never been to anyone's third anniversary party. Who the hell has third anniversary parties?"

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Dan Savage has Diana Adams exhort for coming out poly

Many alternative newspapers and websites

In his latest Savage Love column, sex and relationship writer Dan Savage takes a reader's question on whether to come out poly, then turns it over to Brooklyn queer-and-poly attorney Diana Adams, who's bursting to expound on the topic:

Q: I’m a fairly boring person by your column’s standards in that I’ve always identified as a straight male into typical relationships. I’ve realized, after multiple long-term relationships that were unsatisfying, that monogamy isn’t for me.... I’ve struggled to remain faithful in the past and don’t want to cheat on anyone. I just want the rules to fit me so that I don’t have to be considered a cheater. Do you think this detail is something I should disclose to my family and friends?... While polyamory seems to be more common today than in the past, I don’t see anyone who is publicly “out” as is the case with most of the queer community. I’m also not too deeply involved with that community, so maybe I just don’t see the activism happening.

— Pondering Over Life’s Yearnings


A: If you’re not seeing anyone who is poly and publicly out, POLY, then you’re not watching Showtime, which broadcast two seasons of Polyamory: Married & Dating, and you’re not paying attention to poly activists who are out — like Diana Adams, an attorney (dianaadamslaw.net) who specializes in nontraditional family relationships.

“I applaud POLY for considering boldly coming out as polyamorous to his family and friends,” said Adams. “We need more people to come out in order to destigmatize polyamory. I came out as poly in the national media six years ago, and I built my career as an attorney advocate for queer and polyamorous families.”

Adams recognizes that not all poly folks can be out—some work for conservative employers, some could lose custody of their kids—but she believes that poly people who can be out, should be out. “For those of us who have the privilege to be out, I encourage us to speak our truth, which will support a cultural understanding of healthy relationships beyond monogamy — and, of course, help us find like-minded partners. In POLY’s case, I urge him to learn more about poly first. Poly has become a major subject of media attention, with profiles of out poly people published practically weekly. Link up with groups like Loving More (lovemore.com) and Open Love NY (openloveny.com), and follow people like me on Twitter (@dianaadamsesq), and he’ll get tuned in to the nationwide activism that’s happening. He’ll also get tapped into resources for creating successful poly relationships.”

And a word about those successful poly relationships: Just like successful monogamous relationships, poly relationships have limits — both sexual and emotional. But instead of coming to an agreement with one partner about those limits, you have to hammer out agreements with two or more partners. So when you say you want to be poly so that the “rules fit you,” POLY, you better be using the plural “you” and not the singular.

“Poly may not be easier to maintain than his monogamous relationships,” said Adams. “Poly works for emotional ninjas who possess tremendous emotional awareness and communication skills to create their own agreements with their partner(s). If POLY is ready for that level of effort, poly may work for him so well that he’ll want to tell the world.”

Here's an original of the column, with additional readers' questions (week of June 17, 2014).

Update: Dan Savage follows up in his weekly podcast: Dan Savage Podcast Episode 400: How do poly people balance all those relationships? (June 24, 2014).

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Dan Savage: Is poly queer?

Many alt media

In his column this week, Dan Savage talks about whether polyfolks can call themselves queer in the absence of any compounding factors. He doesn't say what I thought he would.

LGBT&P

Joe Newton

Q: My husband and I have been married for 20 years, and we both also share our lives with additional partners. Rather than spend a lot of time dishing about who and how we love — and how fortunate we feel! — I'd like to get right to my plea for support.

I want freedom. I want the freedom in my life that I've always wanted for you, Dan: to be able to live and love and talk about your actual life without being afraid that it could cost you your job, your kids, your family. Having to live in the closet is difficult. I cannot say that it is as difficult for us as it is for someone who is LGBT.... [But] this isn't a contest about who suffers more.... The progress we have made together toward a more tolerant world for gay people gives me hope that we could be next.... So can we be added to the acronym, please? Perhaps we can honor the differences between our experience and the LGBT experience with an ampersand. What do you think of LGBT&P?

–Privately Polyamorous Person

A: You haven't been keeping up, PPP. We are no longer the LGBT community. We are the LGBTQLFTSQIA community, aka the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, leather/fetish, two-spirit, questioning, intersex, and asexual community/communities. I don't see why we can't slap a "P" onto the end of our acronym, so say it with me now: "I'm proud to be a member of the LGBTQLFTSQIAP community/communities!"

But I have to draw the line at the ampersand. Because if we give poly folks a punctuation mark, PPP, then soon everybody is gonna want a punctuation mark....

And why should poly folks be held at arm's length with an ampersand? Because most poly folks are straight? Lots of leather/fetish folks are straight, and they're covered in the acronym. Lots of trans men and trans women are straight, and they're covered. David Jay, founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, "is in a romantic relationship with an asexual girlfriend and hopes to adopt a child," according to his Wiki page, and he's covered.... You're a sexual minority, too, and poly people sometimes face discrimination, bigotry, and oppression. So welcome to the club, PPP. Congrats!

And here's the best part of putting poly folks in the acronym: It brings us one step closer to seizing control of the entire alphabet. While religious conservatives are fighting a losing battle to "take back the rainbow" from the gays — a movement led by a fundamentalist preacher in Washington State — we've been making off with the alphabet one letter at a time....

Read the whole column (Dec. 11, 2013). This is the last item.

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Dan Savage and the "poly orientation" hornet's nest

Two weeks ago Dan Savage, America's most important sex-and-relationship columnist in a lot of people's opinions including mine, walked into the controversy over whether poly is an orientation — something you are —— or a way of life, something you choose.

This matters, for reasons we'll get to. Savage riled the poly world to such a point that he promised to devote a column to polyfolks' responses. That's what fills his column today.

First, here's his original bit that got things going:

Q: I am a 30-year-old straight man who has always known that he is a poly. The woman I love is not a poly. She is a monogamous person.... Can someone who is poly be happy with someone who isn't?

—Polyamorous Polymath

A: You are not "a poly."

Poly is not a sexual identity, PP, it's not a sexual orientation. It's not something you are, it's something you do. There's no such thing as a person who is "a poly," just as there's no such thing as a person who is "a monogamous." Polyamorous and monogamous are adjectives, not nouns. There are only people — gay, straight, bi — and some people are in monogamous relationships, some are in open relationships, some are in polyamorous relationships.... These are relationship models, PP, not sexual identities....

Read the whole piece (Nov. 21, 2012; Scroll to the second item.)

His column today begins,

Poly Orientated

By Dan Savage

Sometimes I kick the proverbial hornet's nest intentionally — "bullshit in the Bible," for instance — and sometimes I kick the hornet's nest accidentally. I honestly didn't expect the outraged response I got after I wrote that poly wasn't a sexual identity in the "sexual orientation" sense of the term. Some people identify as poly, of course, just as some people identify as, say, dominant or submissive. While I recognize that poly (or D/s) can be central to someone's sexual identity, I've never viewed it as a sexual orientation and I didn't think this was a controversial point of view.

Many poly people disagree. I've received a ton of impassioned e-mails from polyamorous readers, most of whom see themselves as poly-oriented, not just poly-identified. And while some seem confused — I've never denied the existence of polyamorous people, I never said that people couldn't or shouldn't identify as polyamorous — I'm turning the rest of this week's column over to the polyoutraged....

Read on (Dec. 5, 2012).

He also had briefer things to say in the intervening two weeks. On November 26:

Is poly a sexual orientation?

I said "no" in last week's Savage Love, kicking off a shitstorm in the comments thread, in my e-mail inbox, and here and there on the interwebs. (Even the right-wing nutjobs have taken notice.) At least one poly person agrees with me:

There are a few problems with describing polyamory as a sexual orientation. The first of which is that polyamory is not sexual. Polyamory is about relationships, honesty, and intimacy. Look back at the definitions given by Loving More. Not a single one mentions sex. Calling polyamory a sexual orientation is a joke.

Secondly, polyamory is not an orientation. Polyamory is not a physical desire or a feeling. While there is not complete agreement on what polyamory is, there is clear agreement about it isn’t. And it isn’t just an attraction to multiple people. As Shaun pointed out, if you define polyamory as a feeling or an inclination, then half of the country is polyamorous, which is an absurd result. Almost everyone feels attraction for multiple people at the same time. This does not make them polyamorous.

A third problem with describing poly as a sexual orientation is that being poly is nothing like being GLB. Being GLB is about the type of person to whom you are sexually attracted. Being polyamorous is about the amount of people you love. Describing polyamory as a sexual orientation suggests a false equivalence between the groups, and seems like an attempt to co-opt the sympathy that the GLBT community has built up.

I'm hearing from lots of poly folks who disagree....

And then more two days later (scroll to end).

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Some backstory to understand what's going on: Savage, a long-partnered gay man who coined the word "monogamish" for his somewhat open relationship, used to snark at polys. He famously remarked that he'd been to poly multi-marriage ceremonies but never to a poly third-anniversary party. That prompted many long-term polyfamilies to speak up as counterexamples, jumping up and down to try to catch his attention. At the time Savage was already infamous for declaring that bisexuals don't really exist. He backed off from both attitudes, and two years ago offered this:

Q: Do you think polyamory is possible or healthy?

A: Polyamorous relationships are possible — I know for a fact that they're possible — but they're only as healthy as the folks who are in them. The same goes for monogamous relationships.

And he wrote a nice feature article about the folks behind the annual PolyCamp Northwest near his home base of Seattle, especially their children: Heather Has Two Mommies, One Daddy, and Several Matriarchal Women in the Community Who She Thinks of as Moms.

After Savage's You-Are-Not-a-Poly column, Anita Wagner posted on her Practical Polyamory blog,

...Over the last 15 years I've met many, many polyamorous people for whom being polyamorous is to them about a lot more than what (or whom!) they do. They say emphatically that it's about who they are. Many tried to live by mainstream society's monogamy rules because they thought they had to, but it chafed — a lot. Many always felt like they were different and like they were the only ones who saw relationships differently. We still have people come into our community who are delighted and relieved to have discovered they weren't alone after all.

Is polyamory a sexual orientation? Some will insist that it is not as to the traditional meaning of it. Yet many polyamorists express themselves differently sexually, i.e. with more than one person at a time. If not sexual orientation, then sexual relationship orientation or sexual relationship identity — that's how I refer to it, and I've done so for some years now.

I expect that this point will be made much more frequently in the future as research under way now gives us more scientific insight into such questions....

And Anita's round-2 followup November 28th.

A lengthy discussion got rolling on reddit/r/polyamory: Is polyamory a sexual orientation, or is this just a first world problem?

Franklin Veaux's take: You are not "a poly": Dan Savage runs off the rails:

...Every now and then, he says something that leaves me scratching my head and wondering what color the sky is on his planet. He has in the last few years backtracked from the notion that there's no such thing as bisexuality (a claim that seems so absurd on the face of it that it's hard for me to understand why it still has any currency whatsoever), but when it comes to polyamory, it's hard to find anything to like about his ideas.

...What's most interesting about this is that it mirrors almost precisely the attitude of folks who believe that homosexuality is an activity, not an orientation — that there is no such thing as "a gay" or "a straight" but merely those who engage in homosexual activities and those who don't. Dan Savage's words would be right at home in Ministry Today Magazine, which ran an article that claimed something similar about sexual orientation....

Now we're getting to the heart of why this is such an issue: because of the gay experience with the same debate, and the usefulness that the inborn-orientation model has had in winning gay legal rights and public acceptance.

Sarah Taub of Network for a New Culture wrote in a Polyamory Leadership Network discussion,

Folks are asking why people care whether polyamory is an orientation (sexual or relationship) or not. I agree with others that the reason is political and linked to struggles for rights and freedoms.

In the USA, we have (at least) two rationales for granting rights and/or freedoms. One is, basically, "It's not fair to penalize people for something they can't help." The other is, "Free people get to choose what they do."

We see the first rationale in many rights struggles — for people of color, people with disabilities, etc. We see the second rationale in our rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc.

The GLBT movement, broadly speaking, made a choice to frame its case in terms of the first rationale. If sexual orientation is innate and unchanging, then it's something people can't help, and it's unfair to penalize people for it. This makes (e.g.) bisexuality and pansexuality a big problem — if a person can choose either to be in a heterosexual relationship or a homosexual relationship, that person doesn't really fit in the "I can't help it" framework.

At the same time, there were voices within the GLBT movement who preferred to frame the case in analogy to freedom of religion —— free people get to choose who they love and who is in their family.

Poly activists generally tend to frame their case in this second way, though sometimes we see polyamory framed in the first way. I believe that it is the tension between these two approaches to rights and freedoms that makes the question "is poly an orientation" keep coming up as a heated debate.

As our opponents are aware. Looking down this road two years ago, Ann E. Tweedy of the Hamline University School of Law published a sympathetic 55-page analysis of the question in the University of Cincinnati Law Review, looking to future legal battles:

Polyamory as a Sexual Orientation

Abstract:

This article examines, from a theoretical standpoint, the possibility of expanding the definition of “sexual orientation” in employment discrimination statutes to include other disfavored sexual preferences, specifically polyamory. First, it examines the current, very narrow definition of sexual orientation, which is limited to orientations that are based on the sex of those to whom one is attracted, and explores some of the conceptual and functional problems with the current definition. Next the article looks at the possibility of adding polyamory to current statutory definitions of sexual orientation, examining whether polyamory is a sufficiently embedded identity to be considered a sexual orientation and the degree of discrimination that polyamorists face. After concluding that such an expansion would be reasonable, the article briefly outlines some issues for further investigation, including potential policy implications and the conflicting evidence as to whether polyamorists want specific legal protections.

Date posted: June 30, 2010 ; Last revised: August 29, 2011
Suggested Citation:
Tweedy, Ann E., Polyamory as a Sexual Orientation (June 29, 2010).
University of Cincinnati Law Review, Vol. 79, p. 1461, 2011. Available at
SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1632653

I went to Tweedy's talk on this at the Poly Living 2012 conference in Philadelphia. You can download her entire paper here. It's not too soon to start thinking about this.

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P.S.: Here's Dan Savage's powerful Big Think video on why expecting monogamy is ridiculous (2:41). Directness has always been his trademark.

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