Polyamory in the News all over. And upcoming events.

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

♥  Colorado Poly Weekend Retreat, Summer

August 13 – 17, Breckenridge, CO

♥  Polywood Camping 2026

August 14 – 16, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

♥  Camp Constellation (formerly PolyCamp Northeast)

August 17 – 23, central New Hampshire 

♥  Mile High Love Fest

August 21 – 23, Denver, CO

♥  At Burning Man: Village of Poly Paradise

August 30 – September 7, Nevada desert

♥  OpenCon Madrid

September 5 – 7, Ávila, Spain

♥  Polytopia

September 19 – 20, Portland, OR

♥  Colorado Poly Weekend Retreat, Fall 

October 4 – 8, Breckenridge, CO

♥  Midwest Love Fest 

November 6 – 8, Indianapolis, IN

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

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

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

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

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

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

By H. Alan Scott

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eli Sheff (Jordan Gale / NYT)

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

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

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

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

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

Martin:

With multiple partners?

Sheff:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheff:

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

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

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

Read on or listen. 

●  Speaking of kids, Daughter Of Polyamorous Parents Reveals 30 Truths About Her Unique Upbringing (Bored Panda, Jan. 20).

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

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

Pros:

• There's more parents to be there for you and to defend you

• It's very unlikely all three will be working at the same time so there's always someone to go to

• Some people think it's super cool (actually how I made one of my friends)

• If you think a punishment was too harsh, there's two more parents that can reason with your other parent

• It's more love to go around

• As they all have careers it's extra income which means we can have more fun holidays

• Polyamorous parents are much more likely to accept situations beyond the societal norm. When my brother came out as gay they didn't care.

Cons:

• Not having a relationship with grandparents because they don't accept it

• It can be hell remembering which parent had a certain story / liked a certain thing

• I regularly mix up names when talking to Mom or Mama and call them by the others name

• Bullying

• If two broke up but both still want to stay with the other person, it could be an awkward situation for everyone involved, including the kids

I'm sure there's more for both pros and cons but that's all I can think of right now.

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

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

Toward the end of the interview:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nita, Trent, Kami: Not happening

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She lays out her advice:

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

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

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

By Askley Fike

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

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

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

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

What Actually Makes Open Relationships Work, According to Experts

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

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

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

The study itself:

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

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

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

By Christina Fialho and Megan Burke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BTW, the logo of PolyamoryUkraine:

 

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

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

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Polyamory in the News is back. Why we've been away. And lots of new coverage.

Okay, we're back.

Polyamory in the News was on pause for several months for a tragic reason.

Two years ago my wife Abby Hafer, "Sparkle Moose," was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. We held it at bay for a year and a half, thanks to Harvard's world-beating Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. But her cancer was a fast-evolving ecology of mutating cells. As an evolutionary biologist she knew what that probably implied. It finally evolved around every barrier and broke through our defensive lines.

Sparkle Moose
1958 – 2025

In her final months Abby, always strong-willed, chose home hospice care until nearly the end. The nurses taught us to do all the things. I camped on the living-room floor next to her hospital bed for companionship as much as for care. On the night of July 30th we moved by ambulance to the Care Dimensions hospice house. I snuggled next to her there and eventually drifted off. Around 4 a.m. a nurse gently wiggled me awake: "She has passed." She was warm as life under my arm, but utterly motionless, unresponsive, still. It was as if she had simply decided, in her matter-of-fact way, it was time to switch off the lights. She was 67. We were together 29 years.

Abby was extraordinary: a PhD zoologist, professor of human anatomy and physiology to nursing students, a loud and proud feminist atheist, and an in-demand comic-educational speaker championing reality, nature, and reason against religious malarky and disinformation. She wrote two books,

The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why evolution explains the human body and intelligent design does not, and Darwin's Apostles: The men who fought to have evolution accepted, their times, and how the battle continues (with David Orenstein). And chapters in Women v. Religion, The Case Against Miracles, Christianity in the Light of Science, and the massive Oxford Handbook of Humanism. She was recruited to be a director of the American Humanist Association; here's the memorial article in its magazine. The author classes her with "luminaries like Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett".

Along with me Abby cofounded The Polyamory Foundation, which makes grants to projects that advance understanding and recognition of ethical poly and serve the community. She immersed herself in nature, adventure, friends, our dear heart-sharers, our beloved Unitarian-Universalist church, sci-fi cons, and other interests too many to list. Her superpower was putting people together who ought to know about each other.

The closing line that she chose to be the coda for her life was Louis Armstrong's song "What a Wonderful World". She was the best thing that ever happened to me.

So that is why I've been out of commission. Now I'm getting my mojo back. 

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

●  Let's start with this big, upbeat Sunday newspaper feature: Forget love triangles. Meet the ‘polycule’ with 80 people in it.

The article paints our nearby city of Somerville, Massachusetts, as the poly-friendly capital of the world. (Seattle, Portland or the Bay Area might disagree.) The story appeared far away: in the UK's Sunday Times Magazine (online Sept. 4, print edition Sept. 7), illustrated by this idyllic concept of a Somerville neighborhood. Enlarge for details.

 Janne Iivonen

Polyamory is on the rise — especially in one US city where romantic partners have organised themselves into ever expanding networks. Yes, it can get complicated.

By Megan Agnew

On a suburban street in Somerville, Massachusetts, there is a white clapboard house with a note next to the doorbell. “If no answer at No 3 please ring No 4,” it reads. “And vice versa.”

On the top floor lives Jay, 56. In the bedroom next door is his partner of 12 years, Ash, 44. Next door again is Ash’s husband of 19 years, Chris, also 44. Chris spends a lot of time in the connected apartment downstairs where his “sweetie”, Cal, 36, lives. Ash also has a boyfriend more than 3,000 miles away in California (they date over video calls), as well as a “sweetie” over the state border in Connecticut. Jay has another partner 1,000 miles away in Chicago. And he recently split up with a live-in girlfriend who has moved out. Are you keeping up?

...Somerville, a northern suburb of Boston, is the most polyamory-friendly city in America, a haven for people and their girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, “them-friends”, “hunnies” and “sweeties”. It’s a left-leaning place with “smut slam” dirty poetry readings in church halls and yonic sculptures on front lawns. With the universities of Harvard and MIT down the road, this is where people thrash out the politics of relationships, creating an experimental idyll away from the confines and pitfalls of monogamy.

In 2023 it became the first city in America to legally protect people in polyamorous relationships against discrimination. Three years earlier the city had extended the definition of a “domestic partnership” to include relationships involving more than two people. This grants nontraditional families similar rights and privileges as married couples under city law.... It has made Somerville the Las Vegas of polyamory, with poly people from around the country travelling to its city hall to obtain domestic partnership certificates.

(You don't have to live in Somerville to get one of those, though its validity is unlikely to be recognized elsewhere. Instead, people frame it on their wall.) 

I spent a week in Somerville, a tight-knit small world made even smaller by the fact that so many people in “the community” are dating each other, or have done. Meet the polys.

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

Jay, an IT consultant and self-confessed computer nerd, grew up in suburban New Jersey and became interested in polyamory at the age of ten after reading Robert A. Heinlein sci-fi books featuring sexually promiscuous open marriages. His first teenage relationship was nonmonogamous. “I was poly before poly was a term,” he says, blue hair tied back, maroon nail varnish on his toes.

...He moved to Somerville in the mid-1990s to find many people he knew coalescing around Boston’s university hub — either tech nerds he’d met in online chatrooms or those who attended the sci-fi conventions he would frequent. Large numbers of them were interested in polyamory.

“We had all independently been working on this thing [polyamory], and we found each other and we had a lot to talk about,” he says. He started attending casual poly meet-ups in people’s homes, applying the same academic rigour to discussions about romance as they did to technology. “How do you handle jealousy? How do you handle getting a new partner when you’ve had one for a while?”

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

...Jealousy can be a problem, Ash admits, recalling the arguments when one of Jay’s girlfriends moved in during Covid soon after they first occupied the property: “I was mad as I thought he and I were gonna get a nesting period. And then there was this other person around who was very exciting and sparkly and taking a lot of his time.”

Tensions mounted over sleeping arrangements: Jay’s partners had their own bedrooms and he was switching between the two, without a room of his own. “There were points when each of them was, like, ‘Go away, I want to have the bed to myself,’ ” he says. “And points where each of them was, like, ‘I want you and I’m not getting enough cuddle time with you.’ So there were continuous adjustments. We say often in poly that love is infinite but time is not.”

Many of the people I speak to share complicated Google calendars with their various partners to co-ordinate schedules.

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

...“There’s a popular view that polyamory should only be nonhierarchical, seen as the purest, most progressive and equitable, almost social justice-oriented,” says Jennifer Schneider, a Massachusetts-based relationship therapist.

Others find this oddly prescriptive. Kathy Labriola, 70, was at the centre of the gay rights movement at Berkeley in the 1960s and 1970s, and is in two concurrent romantic relationships, each 50 years long. “There is no utopian way or morally or ethically ‘right’ way to be polyamorous,” she says. “It’s strange and ironic to me that some of these folks who are so into this nonhierarchical model are so puritanical and judgmental about it. It makes the individual king.”

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

...Willie Burnley Jr, 31, a socialist [city] councillor and polyamorous mayoral candidate for Somerville [update Nov. 5: he lost to the more establishment liberal Jake Wilson], rejects any hierarchy in any relationship and describes himself as a “relationship anarchist”. We meet at the Diesel Cafe, a famous meeting point for poly folk in the area.

Burnley was “ardently and passionately monogamous” until 2015, when he had a shattering heartbreak. “I felt so bad that the relationship failed,” he says. “I realised the monogamous view of romance was very self-destructive. I realised my most important relationship is with myself. And frankly I’m a bit indulgent — I don’t like the idea of denying myself something that I want and could potentially have, just because society says no.”

Surely there are some hierarchies in his relationships — is he closer to some friends than others? “Oh, certainly,” he replies. “But saying that you’re closer with someone isn’t saying that you will always be closer to someone.” Isn’t this just an exercise in semantics? “No, it’s an exercise in building life in the way that you want to build your life.”

We walk out of the café and on to the street. “They’re another person in the community,” he says, waving to someone loading their shopping into the car. Does polyamory get complicated in a small place? “Oh, certainly.”

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

...In another suburban home about ten minutes’ walk from the high street is another polycule. Ryan Malone, 39, a biochemist, lives here with his girlfriend, Emily, 31, a veterinary nurse. “Four cats is too many,” says Malone, 39, as their pets go scampering down corridors covered in fake vines, psychedelic art and fairy lights.

Emily has a girlfriend, Anna, living nearby, whom she met while Anna was dating Malone, a bouncing labrador of a man with a jaunty quiff and bright blue patchwork denim trousers. Among Malone’s many lovers is a “comet” partner in Toronto — so called because they only see each other about four times a year — another lover, Marissa, and a married woman in Vermont who has children aged 11 and 9. “I’m like an uncle to the kids,” Malone says. “She’s very open about it, they know that their mom’s poly. The oldest son and I read the same books and play chess together.”

In an apartment upstairs live Nick and his “nesting partner”, Kit; they’re both 39 and trying for a baby. Kit is an occasional romantic/sexual partner of Malone and also has a number of other lovers.

...“There are probably over 80 of us in our polycule,” Malone says. One member — “a data nerd at Harvard” — tried to build a 3D map of all their romantic connections but it got so convoluted that it stopped being able to show information meaningfully. “It was just showing how complicated everything was,” Malone adds.

How does he manage having so many partners? “I have a comfort with complexity,” he says, grinning widely.

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

...Their polycule was “formed after a failed orgy”, Kit says. “A bunch of us rented a cabin, one person didn’t get the memo and invited some co-workers. We had to wait each night until they went to bed before the shenanigans could happen. It was very awkward. But we were, like, OK, we have to be more intentional about this.”

...Though their polycule doesn’t have formal membership, people have to be vetted and sometimes interviewed before attending a party or meet-up. “We try to find out if this person has any history of problematic behaviour in terms of consent violations,” says Kit, one of the main organisers. “For example, we found out one person would constantly drag people in to dance [on a dancefloor] and not take no for an answer. And we’re, like, that’s kind of a red flag. It shows that you just don’t really respect someone’s bodily autonomy.”

Another person who organises social events in Somerville, who wanted to remain anonymous, tells me it can be a “slow and selective process” to make friends here.

“You almost need ten references for whether you’re going to be invited to a group hangout,” they tell me. “There is also this social ostracism, this call-out culture, which I’m not sure is as productive as people often hope it is. Every so often there will be a Facebook post that circulates that’s, like, ‘Just so everyone knows, this person did this thing on this date and I no longer feel safe around them and you shouldn’t either.’ It feels like we’re boycotting people the same way we boycott companies.”

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

...“Seeing others has been really inspirational — you can do something weird and out there and have a loving family,” Nick says. In fact the sense of community the polycule provides was one of the reasons he decided to have children in the first place. It takes a village to raise a child, after all. “What stressed me out about monogamous relationships is that you had to be co-parents, lovers, owners of a home, friends all in alignment. And if one stops working, then that’s a problem that could crater the whole relationship. Being able to not need all of those things, all the time, from one person feels very freeing.”

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

...[James] has since learnt there are two types of people who enter polyamory: those who feel it has always been innate and generally find it easy, and those who have to unlearn everything they thought they knew and battle through extreme discomfort, after which, he insists, comes a sort of nirvana. James was in the latter group, reading books and listening to podcasts and talking and talking, trying to reason his way through the jealousy and fear.

“I felt like I was on fire all the time, in both a good way and a bad way,” he says. “I went through a long process of figuring out why these things were so upsetting and then changing myself so they were not upsetting any more.” ...

● That article must have been successful for the Times, because three weeks later the paper followed up with Everyone could learn from polyamory — and I should know (Sept. 27)

By Leon Craig

...After getting burnt by non-monogamy, in the past year I’ve somewhat reluctantly hung up the glittery fairy wings and am now prioritising a more traditional arrangement — or at least the lesbian approximation of that. Still, I miss the ready influx of strangers into my life, with exciting anecdotes and new perspectives — one strong reason for my not being monogamous for so long was that I like meeting new people and feel a strong curiosity about what makes them tick. I’ve built a good number of genuine connections from dates and hook-ups.

Instead of regretting time wasted, I hope that what I’ve learnt practising non-monogamy will stay with me into the future. What has been helpful was being made to look at all the individual components of a relationship, from sexuality to cohabitation to finances, and to assess individually what I wanted those to look like, instead of receiving a set of assumptions and just going with those. ...

●  More Somerville: Two weeks after the UK Times ran that big Somerville story, a more thoroughly reported long news feature appeared in the magazine of the student-run Harvard Crimson: Love and the Law: A Look at Polyamorous Camberville (Oct. 18.) "Camberville" is localspeak for Cambridge and Somerville; they're socially similar and share a long border.

●  A fifth municipality to enact poly rights? West Hollywood Considers Recognizing Polyamorous Relationships in Domestic Partnership Ordinance (WEHO Times, June 18). It would follow Somerville, Cambridge, Oakland, and Berkeley. 

By Paul Murillo

The West Hollywood [CA] City Council is set to consider updating its domestic partnership ordinance to allow for legal recognition of polyamorous relationships, including throuples and other non-traditional family structures.

...This proposal follows a related initiative by Mayor John Erickson, who earlier this year introduced a measure to amend the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance to prohibit discrimination based on family or relationship structure. That measure was approved in May and is currently under legal review.

If adopted, the update to the domestic partnership ordinance would complement the non-discrimination amendment and expand legal protections to residents engaged in diverse relationship structures.

...The West Hollywood City Attorney’s office will lead the legal review, with assistance from city staff. The proposed directive is expected to have minimal fiscal impact and will not require significant staff time. ...

Update October 30: Action still pending.

●  LGBTQ+ partners in polyamorous relationships are slowly winning legal recognition and rights (LGBTQ Nation, July 2). It's a quick review of the state of play.

Poly partnerships have always existed. A new generation of activists is fighting to protect them and their families from social [and legal] stigma. ...

●  Normalization, continued. And another new book. Natalie Davis edits the large, curated Polyamory Today section of Medium, with 74 writers. A year ago she wrote there of her experiences emerging from the closet: Coming Out as Polyamorous Has Not Been What I Expected (Medium, Aug. 29, 2024). Friends, family, and employer were not only unshocked, they were mostly uninterested. As poly becomes normalized, we no longer turn heads like we did.

“Hey, Natalie! It’s so good to see you!”

My friend smiled brightly and stood up from the table where she had been scanning the menu. We hugged hard. It had been almost a year since our last lunch.... “So, what’s the writing project you’ve been working on?”

...I made myself look at my monogamous friend across the table. “I’m polyamorous, and I’ve been writing a book about that part of my life.”

You can preorder.

Her face showed no change in expression. Had she heard me?

I continued, “I gave the first 150 pages to my husband to read. I didn’t realize how anxious I was about whether he would be angry or hurt at the public revelations about our life, but he was supportive and had only a few editorial suggestions.” I smiled nervously and added, “What a relief!”

...After a delightful two-hour lunch, we embraced warmly and parted ways.... When I got home, I told my metamour, “I came out as poly at lunch today.”

“How did that go?”

“Anticlimactic,” I said. ... To be honest, I was a little disappointed.”

...My meta mused, “You’re finally in a position in your life where it doesn’t matter to your livelihood who knows, because the morals clause at work doesn’t apply, and you now find out it doesn’t matter. It’s kind of ironic.”

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

...My married cousin, making polite conversation, had said, “I understand you guys moved into a new house.”

“Yes, it’s bigger than we need, but we like the location. We have someone living in the second master bedroom.”

“Sounds smart,” he said. “If you don’t mind my asking, who lives with you?” ...

“My husband’s girlfriend lives with us,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he responded, frowning slightly in sympathy.

“Don’t be. We’re polyamorous, and she’s my metamour.” I smiled. “She’s great.” ...

“Okay,” he said. Then, we talked about his house, his kids, and the upcoming presidential election.

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

...When my husband’s girlfriend came out as poly to her older married brother, after much angst about doing so, he interrupted her when she started to explain that as her metamour, I was her partner’s partner. He rolled his eyes dismissively. “I know the polyamory lingo.”

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

When my husband told his boss that he was polyamorous and had a girlfriend, his boss joked, “Is she hot?”  Not missing a beat, my husband said, “You can judge for yourself. She’s meeting me at the office happy hour tonight. That’s why I am telling you now.” ...

That book she was writing is Saying Yes: My Adventures in Polyamory. Its publication date is January 13, but you can preorder now.

●  New novel out: Middle Spoon by Alejandro Varela. From the publisher's description:

The narrator of Middle Spoon appears to be living the dream: He has a doting husband, two precocious children, all the comforts of a quiet bourgeois life—and a sexy younger boyfriend to accompany him to farmers markets and cocktail parties. But when his boyfriend abruptly dumps him, he spirals into heartbreak for the first time and must confront a world still struggling to understand polyamorous relationships. ...

With a big heart and just the right dose of the anxieties that define the modern era, Middle Spoon skewers the unspoken rules we still live by ...offering a surprising perspective on love, loss, and reinvention. ...

From a review by Thane Tierney on Book Page:

...The narrator ruminates: “Maybe there’s something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it.” His nearly unshakable faith in the viability of this belief forms the beating heart of this funny, perceptive and ultimately gratifying love story. 

If you've read the book (I haven't) send me your thoughts (alan7388@gmail.com) and I may add them here.

●  An indie film has been making news: Splitsville: A Comedic Proof of Polyamorous Dysfunctions (High On Films, July 13). Splitsville presents a caustic, mocking view:

It’s glossy, slightly smug, and packed with styled emotions, echoing the trend of self-consciousness we’ve been cultivating—but Splitsville works, mostly because it doesn’t ask you to believe in the couple, but rather laugh with the confusion. Michael Angelo Covino seems to be working toward a doctorate in infidelity and distraught breakups (within romance, at least), letting friendship run alongside and strain under the weight of love’s detritus. Friendships are messy, unfiltered, and strangely durable. Somehow, friendship survives the wreckage romance leaves behind.

...What’s most effective here is that the script refuses to deepen its characters too much. ... 

●  Another new indie film: Michael Doshier Talks Throuple and Why Polyamorous Stories Matter (Instinct, July 13)

Following a successful theatrical run in New York and Los Angeles, Throuple – a raw and refreshingly honest film from writer, star, and queer indie musician Michael Doshier – is now available to stream on major platforms including Dekkoo, Amazon, and iTunes.

Loosely inspired by Doshier’s own life, Throuple follows a lonely gay singer-songwriter who finds himself romantically entangled with a married couple while fearing he’s losing his lifelong best friend to her new girlfriend. As he navigates the complexities of desire, jealousy, and shifting relationships, he’s forced to confront what he truly wants from love, and from himself. 

...Rather than reducing polyamory to a gimmick, Throuple explores non-monogamy as a valid and deeply human structure, and since its festival debut, the film has struck a powerful chord – particularly with queer and polyamorous audiences. 

At its heart, Throuple is about connection, and Instinct recently caught up with Doshier to talk more about the pivotal moment he realized these personal experiences from his life needed to be told on screen. ...

●  Another upbeat local-focus piece: How a Canberra couple built a community around consensual non-monogamy (HerCanberra, Oct. 1)

“We can’t remember who brought it up exactly, but we both have always had wonderful communication, and we started having a lot of feelings which – looking back – were compersive feelings,” says Abbey.

...Abbey realised that she liked the idea of Liam being intimate with other women (and vice versa), and the couple began thinking seriously about the logistics of taking the fantasy into the real world while maintaining their deep, connected bond.

...Luckily, they were living in New York at the time – where there’s a thriving non-monogamous community – and it was easy to anonymously discover what they really wanted. ... They spent their twenties in New York – coming home only to get married and live in Sydney for six months before jetting off again – surrounding themselves with an open and like-minded community where they were free to explore.

But everything changed when they decided to move back to Canberra to raise their young son.

From private conversations to public platform

Arriving back in Canberra at the end of 2019, it was while reconnecting with old friends and chatting about relationships ... that Abbey realised there might be a space for her to share her stories as someone in a consensual non-monogamous relationship.

When she decided to tell friends and family about how she and Liam approach their marriage, their response shocked her.

“To my surprise, they were really open-minded and curious, and they wanted to know more about it,” says Abbey.

“So, I started a little private Instagram page....

Writing about her own experiences with Liam and sharing her perspectives on the topic, as more women requested to follow her, Abbey decided to launch The Evolving Love Project – a public Instagram page and Substack where she dives into the dynamics, emotions and everything else involved in open relationships.

Abbey and Liam (Jeremy Wikner photo)

From there, the logical next step was the Evolving Love podcast.

“I started hosting women’s circles – conversation evenings about these different concepts. Then we opened it up and started having conversation nights for anyone interested,” Abbey explains.

“It’s a beautiful way to meet people interested in the non-monogamous environment, through a purely conversational lens… it has been a wonderful experience. We’ve had many people reach out to us or email me about my writing that we decided to start a podcast.”

...“I think without compersion, even from a values perspective, there’s no real point to non-monogamy.”

Building community and changing conversations

Supported by friends and family as well as the community they’ve built, Abbey and Liam are proud to have created a safe space for those interested in consensual non-monogamous relationships to explore this nuanced topic.

...“It doesn’t feel like it’s as taboo as it used to be, but that also might just be me living in a bubble. But it’s all about the importance of sharing stories. Storytelling is so important, and by podcasting and writing, we’re destigmatising it.” ...

●  Also from Australia: It’s official: Melbourne is in the world’s most polyamory-friendly country (Beat Magazine,"Melbourne's voice in music, arts & culture", Oct. 2).

That title is an overclaim. This project surveyed only 17 countries, the sponsor was a London adult-toy company with perhaps a commercial interest, and the metrics for assessing a country's poly-friendliness were too broad: "Pornhub category rankings, average lifetime sexual partners, search interest, divorce rates, moral sexuality scores."

Nevertheless, 

Australians... showed the strongest search rate at 257 searches per 100,000 people for open relationship and polyamory terms.

●  In The Guardian: ‘It’s risky business emotionally’: the social shift towards open relationships (Oct. 31)

With a rise in people opting for non-monogamy, experts suggest the idea of the traditional couple is radically changing

By Jessica Murray 

...Juliet Rosenfeld, a psychoanalyst and author of Affairs: True Stories of Love, Lies, Hope and Despair, said the growth of open relationships was part of a wider societal trend in which “the idea of the couple is shifting radically”.

“It’s a challenge for therapists because there is a much wider range of ways to be in a couple now,” she said. “A monogamous lifelong relationship is simply not what a lot of people, in particular women, want.”

...People choosing to open up their relationship after one partner has had an affair, or doing it in order to “fix” something, are cause for concern. “It’s bound to be problematic going down that route,” [Katherine] Cavallo [psychotherapist and spokesperson for UK Council for Psychotherapy] said.

...Katerina Georgiou, a psychotherapist and senior-accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said there was an important distinction to be made between people who identify as polyamorous, and heteronormative couples choosing to do this. ...

● Traditional polygamy survives in various African cultures, with varying legal status. In African news media I've noticed increasing attention to modern polyamory vis a vis the old way.

For instance, here's a thoughtful, personal essay in Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper: Polygamy not new but its meaning no longer same (Aug. 2). She contrasts traditional, high-functioning tribal polygamy with its often degraded state today, and she recommends polyamory's values as an upgrade.

By Stephanie Shaakaa

What once stood as a system of communal survival, built on cooperation and collective responsibility, now trembles under the weight of secrecy, betrayal, and broken trust. Our forefathers practised polygamy with a kind of order that baffled logic, multiple wives, one compound, children everywhere, and yet, somehow, harmony found a way. But today, that same institution is cracking at the seams, not because it is outdated, but because its essence has been replaced by ego, deception, and silence.

...In the 21st century, we see polygamy re-emerging not necessarily through formal polygynous households, but in polyamorous communities, co-parenting cobbles, and digital matchmaking platforms. The heart isn’t limited to binary partnerships, and neither is commitment. While the law clings to monogamy, reality increasingly drifts toward multiplicity.

A cartoon with the story. (Laobis O.)
 

Yet polygamy is not a silver bullet. For many women, it signifies unequal power, emotional overload, and perpetual comparison. Where income disparities exist, polygamy can reinforce patriarchal privileges. Moreover, when children from different mothers share resources, questions of inheritance, guardianship, and social equity become painfully salient.

Now contrast this with modern polyamory where consent, equality, and open communication are central. Some families share parental duties across multiple homes. Some couples have spendthrift days with one spouse, quiet evenings with another. These arrangements speak to a generation seeking relationship fluidity that reflects their broader values.

Globally, the legal response varies. While countries like Iran, Ghana, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia allow men multiple wives, many Western nations penalize it even amongst equally consenting adults. The human rights lens complicates this. ...

Evolving gender consciousness is challenging the very foundation of polygamy as a male-centered tradition. ...

●  Similarly, also in West Africa: Polycule: The modern love web you are just hearing about (Guardian Nigeria News, no relation to the UK's Guardian; Oct. 16)

Freepik

By Suliyat Tella

...One of the latest terms gaining attention in modern relationship talk is polycule. A word that captures how complex love networks can be.

...While polycules are more visible in Western societies, they are not entirely new ideas. Some compare them to traditional African polygamy, though there are key differences. Polygamy is often gender specific and tied to marriage, while polycules are gender neutral and based on mutual choice rather than cultural or religious expectation.

For believers of polycule, it represent emotional honesty. The idea that one person may not meet all of another’s romantic or emotional needs, and that’s acceptable as long as there’s transparency. ...

●  And lastly: Buzzfeed, an internet behemoth whose business is virality, often asks redditors to send in their life experiences: Your best-ever revenge on a bad boss. The worst horror you've seen working a fast-food kitchen. The stories are out of control.

Now comes People With Polyamorous Parents Are Sharing What It Was Like Growing Up, And It's So Fascinating (Oct. 4). The 29 (!) accounts in the collection are almost all positive or at least no-sweat. One example, by reddit/u/rroowwannn: 

"My parents were poly since well before they got married and I was born. Mostly, it was just boyfriends or girlfriends who would visit. I didn't know anything about sex; they didn't tell me anything inappropriate, although they did make sure that I wouldn't gab about who slept in what bed when I was young. They were dead scared of child services getting involved.

One of the many happy stock photos Buzzfeed used.
(Oliver Rossi / Getty)

"One of my mom's boyfriends became a lot more serious, and he moved in when I was about 8 or 9. It was a lot like having an uncle move in. He became part of the family, drove me and my brother to places, and got involved in our interests. I told people he was my uncle. He had another girlfriend aside from my mother, too, openly. He broke up with my mother in a big way (which they kept private from me) and moved out when I was maybe 14 or so. It might have been hard for my mother, but it wasn't traumatic for me. We kept in touch for a few years until he moved farther away for a new job. It wasn't like a divorce experience, more like my uncle moving out.

My dad had a serious girlfriend too, but she was also married with a kid my age, so she never moved in with us, but we went and visited as a family a few times a year. She's great friends with my mom to this day. Her kid and I were good friends for a while and drifted apart as we got older, a lot like cousins."

Another:

"It's waaaaaaay more boring than most people would think. Most of the time, my mom wouldn't introduce a partner to me unless it was a long-term relationship, so most of the time, I got the single mom experience. I think the most exciting thing was going out for dinner to meet someone new, and occasionally my mom would date someone who had a kid my age....  Really, for the most part, it was so completely average, other than knowing my mom had two girlfriends, and eventually, I also got a stepdad."

"The worst part was around 6th-8th grade when kids found out and started bullying me for it, asking all kinds of disgusting sexual questions about my parents (no one wants to think about their parents having sex). Eventually, I learned to just not tell anyone unless we were close and I knew they were cool. I only ever had one person I trusted enough to actually come to a family picnic where my mom's partners would all be there. My mom's partners aren't my parents, but they are part of my life and my family. They're wonderful and supportive, and have helped me through some horrible dark spots in my life. I'm grateful to have such a wonderful, loving family. So yeah, not very exciting, I know. But it's my life!"

And as usual, Buzzfeed asks for more:

Did you grow up with polyamorous parents? Or if you're poly yourself, what's it like raising a family? Tell us in the comments. Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, leave a submission in the form.

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

BTW, it's very much time to read this afresh. 

    

For more than three years I've ended these polyamory posts with Ukraine. At first some of you didn't get the connection. Now that frankly fascist-adjacent patrimonialists are smashing what we thought were the constitutional limits of power in America, more of you do.

We're in a world struggle for whether free and open societies, or brutal illiberal oligarchies, will rule the 21st century. What's happening in America is only a part. Authoritarian rulers around the world have been linking up with direct mutual support that is stated out loud.

I've seen too many progressive movements die out, or get wiped out, because they failed to scan the environment accurately and understand their position in it strategically. We polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, depends on a free and pluralistic society that respects people's freedom and dignity to create their own lives and identities, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.

Innovative people, communities, and societies who create their own lives, who "choose to live within the truth" per Vaclav Havel, and who insist on the democratic structures and rights to do so safely, infuriate and terrify the world's authoritarians. 

Authoritarians seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose their lives — by intimidation, inflammatory disinformation and public incitement, by stacking courts and agencies, by legal erasure, by shifting ever more wealth and power upward, and sometimes, eventually, by artillery and glide bombs.

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

For those of us born since World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Because we have entered another time when calculating fascism, at home and abroad, is rising and sees freedom, liberalism, and social tolerance as weak, degenerate, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. As Russia thought it saw in Ukraine. All sides worldwide are watching what we will do about it.

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

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

Here's an easy start: Get on the 50501 email list. Join No Kings and your local Indivisible or at least download Indivisible's guide for practical good-citizen strategies and tactics. Read and follow the personal guidelines that have been learned from history in Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny. 

Stop moping and buck up. Play this, and this, and this, by people heading into a scarier part of the fight than you or I will face. Another: "My Son, Hold On."  Sixteen thousand more of those, sorted just for that one background song by Shadow Phoenix. (lyrics)

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

But the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years then either. Popular history remembers the 1945 victory over the Nazis and the joyous homecoming. Less remembered are the defeats and grim prospects from 1939 through early 1943.

Some Americans have felt called there because they were more able than most. By comparison, you and I have it easy.

Remember, the Ukrainians say they are doing this for us too. They are correct. In the global struggle between a brighter future and a fearful revival of the dark past that's shaping up, the outcome is again uncertain. It will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its other problems.

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

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

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

They have a word there, with a deep history, for the horizontal, self-organized, mutual get-it-done that grows from community social trust: hromada. We polyfolks often dream of creating something like that community spirit in miniature, in our polycules and networks. Occasionally we succeed.

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Social attitudes in Ukraine are mostly traditional, rooted in a thousand years of the Orthodox Church. But in the last generation the ideal of modern European civil society has become widely treasured. The status of women has fast advanced throughout society. As of November 2025, 70,000 women volunteer in the armed forces, not just in support roles and as drone pilots but as combat officers, artillery gunners, tankers, battlefield medics, snipers, and infantry. Some LGBT folx in the armed forces display symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, with official approval, whereas in Russia it's a crime for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin or "say gay." A report on Ukraine's LGBT+ and feminist acceptance revolutions. Another. Another. Another. "We Won't Win This War Without Women". War changes things.

Polyfolks are like one ten-thousandth of what's at stake globally. Ukraine must have our full support for it to win its security, freedom, and future. Speak up for it. Like, right now.

                                     

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

PPS:  U.S. authori-tarians, such Pete Hegseth and Ted Cruz, say that allowing even the most capable women into front-line roles is a woke plot to weaken America's armed forces. Ukraine puts that shit to bed. Do you have a relative who talks like that? Send them this video link to Vidma, a junior lieutenant who commands a mortar platoon, recounting one of their many battles.

Update 2025: Three years later Vidma is still alive, still at the front, and posting TikToks. Her mortar unit has graduated to heavy artillery. A young girl who looks high-school age showed up to join them; another vid with her. Their lives, and their promising society, depend on us. 

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

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

             

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