The high-culture polyamory feature in today's New York Times

It's only been online for a few hours, but today's 2,300-word feature article in the New York Times Style section, "Polyamory Works for Them," is getting a lot of attention judging from the Google alerts coming in.

It presents a stunning view of polyamory, enhanced by Yael Malka's gorgeous photography, that is not the one I'm familiar with in my part of the poly world. The people come across as the social and sexual upper crust of New York City's young style-and-culture influencers.

And BTW, I counted: This time the photography presents 15 black faces, 9 white ones, and 2 that I don't classify. I wonder if someone at the Times Style section took on board the criticisms of whitewashing and tokenism that followed the Times's last massive, photo-heavy CNM feature, Is an Open Marriage a Happier Marriage? (May 11, 2017). Tip 'o the hat to Kevin, Antoinette, and Ruby for kicking up that storm.

Polyamory Works for Them

Having multiple partners can mean more pleasure, but it’s not always easy.

Polyamory breaks a mind-set that Narjesi Tragic, right, calls “the relationship escalator: meet at school, get married, have kids, continue until we get old.” Here, Narjesi is pictured with Tiana North, whom they date, Orion Starbreeze, who dates Tiana but not Narjesi, and Mr. Starbreeze’s partner Brat James. All four are friends.

 
Photographs by Yael Malka
Text by Alice Hines
Produced by Eve Lyons

Through a half-century of sexual upheaval, monogamy has been a curious stalwart.

...Yet in certain concrete burrows, monogamy’s inverse is on the rise. Jade Marks, a 26-year-old artist and herbalist in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, recalled a recent post by a friend on Instagram: “Are there any other queers out there who are monogamous?”

...Most weekends in New York ... there are lecture series, workshops and discussion groups. There are cocktail hours and meet-and-greets. And there are, of course, parties.

On a recent Saturday night in Crown Heights, an angelic gatekeeper in a pastel harness did her best to assure a reporter that she wouldn’t be a total buzz kill at a private party of 200 mostly straight, mostly non-monogamous New Yorkers. “Just watching is O.K.!” she said outside the site, a loft lit like an infrared sauna. “Have a good time! Stay hydrated! And always ask for consent!”

Inside were some of the happiest-looking sober adults ever seen after 2 a.m. “It’s like ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ meets a Gaspar Noé film,” said a Scandinavian digital artist and recent Brooklyn transplant. He and his girlfriend were attending for the first time; they had read about the party, called NSFW, on the internet.

NSFW caters to the 25-to-35 age bracket, has an all-black dress code and is made up of 60 percent women, according to its founder, Daniel Saynt. Its application for membership requires a social media profile link (“It’s very curated,” Mr. Saynt said) and responses to open-ended and check-box questions.... That may sound like the precursor to a job interview, but the point is to ensure that the needs of attendees are met. Wouldn’t it be nice if other clubs worked that way?

...“I don’t think that polyamory is somehow more evolved than monogamy,” said Zhana Vrangalova, a sex researcher who will teach an online course for couples and individuals seeking to open their relationships this fall. “But it should be an option. People should have more options.”

That was a maxim for the two dozen non-monogamous people interviewed for this article. ...

“I got indoctrinated with monogamy,” Tourmaline, left, said. “It’s important for us not to reproduce that with non-monogamy.”

 
Consensual or ethical non-monogamy is an umbrella term that encompasses various relationship models, including polyamory, open relationships, sexual encounters with more than two people and swinging. Polyamorists are interested in exploring long-term relationships with multiple people. Swingers tend to be older couples opening their marriages recreationally.

...In major cities, there are plenty of ways for non-monogamous and polycurious people to meet, among them apps, dinners, friends, blind dates and parties. In New York, organized sex parties include Chemistry, which requires a Q. and A. application and photo, but doesn’t screen for a particular look; NYC Inferno, a gay play party that mostly attracts cisgender men but is open to queer, trans and nonbinary people (Playhouse, a spinoff event, revolves around trans guys); Skirt Club, a members-only club for bisexual women; and Wonderland, which welcomes everyone as long as they bring a buddy who will vouch for them, and are committed to fantastical dress codes (“Ancients vs. Aliens,” “Dungeons and Drag Queens”).

...Now a cottage industry of coaches and educators has cropped up to help polyamorous partners strive for compersion, the happy-for-you alternative to jealousy. Effy Blue, a relationship coach in Brooklyn, works with all of the following: triads, or three people in a committed relationship together; individuals seeking to transparently date multiple lovers simultaneously; partners who each have intimate friends, all of whom are close; and clients cultivating long-term relationships with someone who already has a primary partner.

“There is no single model that suits everyone,” Ms. Blue said. She also wrote a book on play-party etiquette. “Consent is the cornerstone of any well-produced, healthy and fun sex party,” she said. “This makes it safer and more fun than an average nightclub on any given day.”

“We were going to spaces and parties and noticing there’s not a lot of people of color,” said Ms. North, right. So she started an Instagram group, “chocolate factory,” recently renamed the more inclusive “united colors of poly-kink.” It now has 30 members.

 
Ella Quinlan, a 27-year-old event planner, said she knows hundreds of peers on the East and West Coasts practicing their own flavors of non-monogamy. In her own relationship with Lawrence Blume, a 55-year-old tech investor, Ms. Quinlan’s goal is to enhance what is conventionally beloved about monogamy, she said.

“We want to show people that it’s actually possible to be in a long-term, healthy, satisfying, deeply rooted and connected emotional relationship with somebody — and do this,” Mr. Blume said. ...

...“We’re returning to that nomadic sharing of partners and resources,” [Tiana] North said. “There’s ride shares, there’s house shares, bike shares — we’re in a sharing generation now.” ...

Read the whole long article (online August 3, 2019). It also includes (how could it not?) a lot about Hacienda, the "intentional sex-positive community in Bushwick," which now has four locations.

The article doesn't seem to be in today's print issue, but I bet it's planned for tomorrow's Sunday edition.

Update Sunday Aug. 4: Yup, there it is on page 4 of the Style section.

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USA Today contributor declares for poly. Buuut. . .

In this morning's USA Today online, by a millennial contributor:

Polyamory isn't just about sex or lack of commitment. People should be free to explore their options.

By Victoria Gagliardo-Silver, Opinion contributor

I do not feel threatened by feelings or relationships my partners have with other people because that does not make our relationship any less real.

...My friend looked horrified at the notion of me being "the other woman" in someone else's relationship, which I was quick to explain that was not the case. I, my new partner and his girlfriend, like many other millennials, are polyamorous.

Polyamory, or nonmonogamy, defined as the practice of having one or more open romantic relationships at any given time, has gotten a bad rap in modern culture. ...

But, did she fluff the definition there? Whatever people think "open" means, she left out that poly is "with the full knowledge and consent of all involved." Although it becomes clear later on that that's what she means.

....Myths and even positive news media portrayal show us that polyamory is all about crazy group sex, disloyalty and lack of commitment, something even I was guilty of believing at one point.

And if you fumble the definition, casual readers may get those ideas from you too.

In reality, polyamory is a lot less sexy or radical than it has been portrayed in the media. It is not just about having tons of sex or not committing, it is a refusal to limit myself to receiving love and affection from any one person. Instead, I am open to explore whatever may or may not develop, creating lasting friendships and honest relationships without expectations.

Whew, okay, there's the honesty part.

As a young woman in my 20s in a city of 8.6 million, monogamy feels restrictive and unsustainable. There isn't anything wrong with monogamy as a concept, but many young people, like myself, are exploring new types of relationships. ...

(This graph does not tell whether there were many or few
searches on "polyamory" in 2018. It only shows their relative
weekly numbers, scaled to set the peak week at "100%.")

In 2018, the term "polyamory" was a constant high-interest term in Google searches. And our changing culture and growing acceptance of identity beyond the binary have paved the way for queer relationships and polyamory to be seen as valid.

I was introduced to the concept of polyamory in the late summer of 2018 by a new friend, Deborah Joan. I was baffled by how she was able to balance a boyfriend, a (nonlegal) husband, a girlfriend, a fiancé in Europe and her five pets. In seeing Deborah interact with and speak about each person she loved, I learned that love shouldn't be restricted, that feeling love is the most human experience. It was then that I understood what polyamory really was about: sharing and engaging in a human experience.

It is not defined by sex but rather honesty. I am able to openly explore my own feelings toward other people; I am comfortable ending things with anyone I am seeing at any point; and most important for me, I am able to speak openly about my polyamorous endeavors with all of my partners. Monogamy might be something I am open to in the future, but at this point in my life, as a young 20-something in New York City, polyamory has given me everything I felt was lacking in my dating life.

...I have been given the opportunity to create healthier partnerships without the restrictions of monogamy. No longer do I find myself concerned about my partner "cheating" as I no longer expect them to only see me; I don't feel the need to look through their phones or ask where they were. I do not feel threatened by feelings or relationships they have with other people because that does not make our relationship any less real, or any less ours.

Rather, I feel an abundance of love, attention and affection that I am privileged enough to be able to exist in with people I care about. ...

Victoria Gagliardo-Silver is a New York-based writer and student. You can follow her on Twitter: @Viccsilver.

The whole article (March 20, 2019).

As with many millennials, her relationship style sounds like Relationship Anarchy, a well-developed philosophy that overlaps polyamory but is in some ways distinct.

Update: This piece made USA Today's selection of 6 of our top opinion pieces this week: ICYMI (March 22).

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"All you need is loves: the truth about polyamory"

The Guardian —a major progressive daily paper based in the UK but circulated worldwide — has run feature stories on polyamory for many years, and today it's out with another. I presume this means the topic is a click bringer. The story bobbles a couple of definitions (can you spot them?) but it's basically on-target and quite positive. It gets my Show Your Parents tag.

Following the main article, four people tell of their personal experiences.

‘There’s so much joy in being poly’: (l-r) Laura, Alex and Mike, who are in a ‘polycule’ along with William (not pictured). Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

 
More and more young people are abandoning monogamy in favour of open relationships. But is it really that easy to turn your back on jealousy? And what about all the admin?

By Sirin Kale

Alex Sanson is nervous. She is hosting a dinner party this Friday, and wants it to go well, because her lovers are coming – all of them. “Cooking for one person you fancy is hard enough, but three of them is even more stressful!” says Sanson, who has brown hair, an open, friendly face and a bookish air.

...Dinner-party jitters aside, things are going swimmingly for Sanson, who works in marketing. “There’s so much joy in being poly,” she says. “It’s lovely not to burden one person with all your stuff. You just spread it all out.”

Polyamory, also known as consensual non-monogamy, seems to be growing in popularity among young people, though with no definitive figures it’s hard to know how much of this is a matter of increased visibility. It comes in many shapes and forms, from open relationships (where in layperson’s terms you “cheat” on your partner, but they are aware and do not mind, and do the same to you), to solo polyamory, where you identify as polyamorous, but are not currently in multiple relationships. But all those involved reject monogamy as stifling, or oppressive, or simply not to their taste.

“It’s not as complicated as people make it sound,” Sanson insists. If you are unsure whether polyamory might suit you, try this simple thought experiment: does the thought of your partner in the first flushes of romantic ardour with another person fill you with contentment, lust, indifference, or murderous rage? If it’s the last one, best to swerve polyamory. (There’s a term for the warm feeling polyamorous people experience when seeing their partners with someone else: compersion.)

...“The thing I’ve always disliked about monogamy and marriage,” Sanson adds, “is the idea of owning another person and them being your other half or somehow completing you, like you weren’t complete before you met them. What I love about polyamory is that I’m my own person and no one owns me. I don’t own any of you, either. We’re all free.”

Polyamory is having a cultural moment right now, with celebrities such as Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith speaking about being non-monogamous, and the BBC drama Wanderlust depicting a middle-class couple as they open up their relationship.

...“Things are changing rapidly,” says Janet Hardy, the co-author of the polyamory handbook The Ethical Slut. “More people are getting the idea that it’s possible to be happy and healthy without being monogamous. What I’m seeing among young people is that they don’t have the same need to self-define by what they like to do in bed, or in relationships, like my generation did. Everything’s out on a big buffet, and they try a little of everything.”

Polyamorous people reject the end game of romantic monogamy, and disdain so-called “relationship escalators”.... Still, being polyamorous isn’t just a carefree romp. It requires you to unpick the messy yarn of human emotion, and that most familiar knot of all: jealousy. Perhaps the biggest myth of all about polyamorous people is that they don’t feel jealousy. “Jealousy is a part of human nature,” says 27-year-old William Jeffrey, a member of Sanson’s polycule. “You still feel it. But I’ve found with every jealousy I’ve ever had while being polyamorous, I’ve been able to trace the jealousy back to an insecurity about myself. When I figure out what the insecurity is, I can overcome it.”

...Is jealousy only ever the result of insecurity? “I’d say that’s too simplistic a view,” says Hardy. “I don’t think there’s one emotion you can call jealousy. I think jealousy is an umbrella we put over all of the emotions we find difficult that we want to quell by changing someone else’s behaviour.” In her introduction-to-polyamory workshops, Hardy asks participants to write a thank-you note to their jealousy. “It exists for a reason. Jealousy tries to protect you from something.”

...The polyamorous people I interview effortlessly manage packed schedules. Jeffrey, for instance, will meet once a week to play a Buffy the Vampire Slayer role-playing game with Scoins and the fourth member of their polycule, Laura Nevo. He also has a weekly date night with his live-in partner, as well as seeing Sanson and Nevo once a week.

While shows such as Wanderlust depict polyamory as a tumescent bonk-fest, in reality polyamorous people spend most of their time doing the deeply unsexy business of talking about their feelings. Sanson credits polyamory with giving her more emotional self-awareness. “Polyamory has allowed me to be more introspective, think about the motives behind what I’m doing, identify emotions more accurately and be explicit about how I’m feeling about things.”

...And monogamous people can learn from polyamory. Twenty-three-year-old Aliyah, who uses they/them pronouns, was polyamorous, but is currently in a monogamous relationship. They credit polyamory with giving them a healthier outlook on monogamy. “The way I was taught monogamy wasn’t healthy,” Aliyah says. “I’d have this constant paranoia of being cheated on.”

Polyamory made them better at monogamy. “I learned that monogamy doesn’t have to be as strict as we conceptualise it growing up,” they explain. “Before I felt that deep love should only be reserved for romantic connections. But being polyamorous taught me I have so much love for my friends, and that doesn’t have to be explored in a sexual context.”

As polyamory becomes more visible, it won’t be seen as such a tear in our social fabric, but as an ordinary and unremarkable thing. ...

Read the whole article (Sept. 15, 2018). It's also in today's print edition, under the title "The Rise and Rise of Polyamory," with a promo box at the top of the front page:

● Here are three previous articles that appeared in the Guardian this year:

'What were her knickers like?': the truth about trying an open relationship (September 8).

My son is trans and polyamorous – here's what I learned from him (February 9).

‘Discovering my true sexual self’: why I embraced polyamory (January 20).

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Poly values may reduce #MeToo incidents, says prestigious think mag.

With the polyamory concept percolating deeper into mainstream society, the topic crops up in the media so often now that I'm way more selective in what to highlight here. I'm focusing on high-influence articles in major media, anything substantial in mass media that your friends or family might be talking about, and other items that seem especially insightful or interesting. Keep those suggestions coming!

The Pacific Standard is a small but prestigious, foundation-supported magazine "for readers interested in working toward forward-looking changes to private behavior and public policy." This article goes into the "insightful or interesting" and "possibly influential" categories.

A condensation:

Will the Sexual Openness of the 'Hook-Up' Generation Confront the Concerns of #MeToo?

There's a chance the sexual culture being cultivated by Millennials can diminish the environment of harassment and assault that's plagued so many workplaces.

Andras Vas/Unsplash

By James McWilliams

...Most of the abusers identified by the #MeToo movement [are Baby Boomers who] came of age in an era of conflicting sexual norms. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and '70s brought Americans greater access to birth control, and, in countercultural circles at least, experimentation with free love. At the same time, conventional marriage — heterosexual and monogamous — remained the sanctioned end goal of the mainstream. ...

Might the clash of these competing expectations — premarital freedom and marital monogamy — have fostered a dysfunctional sexual identity that's especially predisposed to abuse others?

...One way to start testing [this idea] might be to look at the emerging sexual habits and ideologies of Millennials (and Gen Z).

...[Today's] easy prevalence of sexual themes and content [porn especially] ... has not led to greater promiscuity among young adults. According to one study, American adults born in the 1980s and '90s had the same number of sexual partners as Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964. Contrary to the stereotype of a "hook-up generation," young adults are also waiting longer to have sex. And while greater sexual permissiveness has not coincided with greater promiscuity, it has emerged alongside a broader tolerance for multiple partners and open arrangements, skepticism of marriage and childrearing, and a radical openness to all gendered and sexual identities.

At the core of these expanding attitudes is a suspicion of monogamy. According to a 2016 study, nearly 20 percent of people who are under 30 and in a serious relationship have engaged in sex outside of their relationship with their partner's knowledge. Nearly half interviewed expressed some level of tolerance for consensual non-monogamy. ...

Tolerance of non-monogamy demands something the Boomers, half of whom are divorced, did not practice especially well themselves: constant communication. Non-monogamous seekers of multiple relationships are more obligated to discuss boundaries, needs, and desires than are monogamous couples (who can more easily go on auto-pilot). ... Bjarne Holmes, a [Champlain College] communications professor, explains how "People in these [non-monogamous] relationships really communicate.... They are potentially doing quite a lot of things that could turn out to be things that if people practicing monogamy did more of, their relationships might be better off."

According to [Robyn] Trask, director of Loving More, a non-profit dedicated to fostering polyamorous arrangements, polyamory is increasingly popular with Millennials. Trask works closely with all age groups to support polyamorous relationships (which can be sexual or platonic or even alternate between both). But she notes that, while overall interest in polyamory is "on the rise," "this growth appears to be driven by the 20-something crowd."

And their approach, she suggests, is unusually tolerant and communicative. She says people in their 20s are "much more comfortable exploring polyamory" and that, in so doing, "they are constantly dealing with a need to communicate better" — about jealously, family, sexual health, wants and needs, and so on. ...

Polyamory isn't going mainstream anytime soon. But to the extent that its growing acceptance portends a larger cultural shift away from the demands of monogamy (both within marriage and not), and to the extent that this shift is complemented by healthy communication over sexual issues, the conflicting cultural norms that plagued those raised in the 1960s and '70s may yield to a sexual culture that, while more exposed to graphic sex, is nonetheless less repressed, no more promiscuous, better able to discuss sexual desire, and, no matter how powerful a person is, cognizant that we all have boundaries. ...

Read the whole article (August 23, 2018).

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

PS: Vote for a poly presentation at SXSW! Leon Fiengold writes, "My submission for a polyamory presentation at SXSW 2019 is in. I helped put together last year’s SXSW presentation on polyamory; this year I want to do my own presentation on helping people in all relationships use the skills polyamory teaches to find happiness in their own relationships. PLEASE sign in and vote for it! Takes just a minute, promotes polyamory awareness in a positive way on a national level. Deadline August 30."

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Wired: "The Ins and Outs of Silicon Valley’s New Sexual Revolution," meaning polyamory

Wired again notes the extent to which polyamory has become embedded in the culture of America's tech capital.

The Ins and Outs of Silicon Valley’s New Sexual Revolution

Jochen Schievink

By Julian Sancton

In Silicon Valley, love’s many splendors often take the form of, well, many lovers. For certain millennials in tech — as well as, rumor has it, a few middle-aged CEOs — polyamory holds especial appeal. Perhaps that’s because making it work is as much an engineering challenge as an emotional one, requiring partners to navigate a complex web of negotiated arrangements. (There’s an app to keep track of that, obvs: The Poly Life.) Some enthusiasts even claim it’s the way of the future. “If life extension is possible, we might have to think about relationships differently,” says one Valley-based polyamorist. “It’s pretty hard to have an exclusive relationship with someone for 300 years.” True that — but balancing multiple LTRs takes just as much dedication and discipline (if not more).

Rules of Polyamory

1. Tap OkCupid

Good old OkCupid is where you’ll find a critical mass of polyamorous users. The app features questionnaires to help determine if the lifestyle is right for you, plus tools that make it easier to find other poly enthusiasts.

2. Study up

The gospel is Dossie Easton’s 1997 book, The Ethical Slut. But more compelling to STEM-y polyamorists might be Sex at Dawn, which draws on primate physiology to prove that monogamy is, like, totally a construct.

3. Join the club

Some workplaces (coughGooglecough) have quasi-official poly clubs; you can also find meetups online. Just know there are plenty of subsets within the community, especially in California, so be prepared to discuss neopagan liturgies with Nebula Moon-Ostrich.

4. Don’t be a letch

You shouldn’t go to a get-together hoping to hook up. These are not orgies. (Though tech-nerd orgies do get pret-ty wild, what with the color-coded bracelets signaling what you’re cool with doing/having done unto you.) And stick to your age bracket—restrictions are enforced to keep things comfortable.

5. Be honest (and avoid Manhattan)

Transparency is what separates polyamory from infidelity. It’s also what makes it difficult. Thankfully, this is one area where the Valley’s left-brained legions have an advantage. “Lying is unacceptable,” says Emily Witt, author of Future Sex. “In New York, playing people is much more normal.”

6. Don’t get jelly

No matter how rational you think you are, you’re hardwired for jealousy. But you can stifle that instinct through frank discussion. Some polyamorists even show their primary partner the romantic texts and emails they send to other ­people. Sound awkward? Hey, rela­tionships are work — and more relationships are more work.

The original (April 4, 2017). This also appears in the April print issue.

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"Millennials and polyamory: Will dating ever be the same?"

Avvo, "changing how people get legal help," is a massive legal-services marketplace, founded by Mark Britton of Expedia fame, that provides "detailed information on lawyers and legal issues." Its free portion offers 10 million searchable legal questions and answers, and ratings of essentially every lawyer in the United States.

It's big enough that it also runs a general-interest online magazine. This just appeared on AvvoStories:

Millennials and polyamory: Will dating ever be the same?

By Elizabeth Weiss

A recent edition of The Washington Post Magazine’s Date Lab — pairing two Washingtonians on a blind date — featured two millennials: a polyamorous woman and a woman open to trying something new.

The outing failed to produce fireworks between the women, but the Date Lab write-up did prompt scathing online comments. Total strangers berated the poly dater for broadcasting her lifestyle. Both women were labeled caricatures, members of a confused, experimental generation that needs to mature so they embrace the one true relationship approach — monogamy.

...The truth is that many millennials, whether a factor of generational change or youthful exploration, are open to the unexpected. Polyamory is increasingly considered an opportunity by millennials and, amid the hookup-heavy Tinder scene, some of them embrace the option wholeheartedly.

The new generation of polyamory

“After my divorce, I wanted to start from scratch and relearn how to be in a relationship. The last thing I wanted was to date and start the whole dysfunctional cycle again,” says Lucy Gillespie, creator, writer, and producer of Unicornland, a fictional web series about a woman who unconsciously practices “unicorning” by dating polyamorous couples to explore her own sexuality.

...Heather Claus — aka NookieNotes, owner of online dating site DatingKinky.com — [says] “In non-monogamy, I am exactly me. Every relationship becomes what it can be, without the hindrance of traditional social customs.”

      ● Read more about modern relationship trends in the full Avvo Relationship Study

...Page Turner, who maintains the website Poly.Land, was prompted to explore polyamory when she discovered that the affair she thought her friend’s husband was having was a wife-approved relationship. “They were stable, responsible people. It rocked my world,” says Turner. ... She hasn’t turned back since.

A non-monogamous millennial family

...Gillespie floats another idea: “They say millennials are very tribal. The New York polyamorous/ open relationship/ sex-positive communities are small, tight-knit worlds. I think that appeals to millennials — especially urban ones who moved from somewhere far away — because it becomes like family.”

Hacienda Villa, a sex-positive intentional community in Bushwick, Brooklyn, is one example of a place that promotes that familial feeling. Fourteen full-time members reside together in one space, some monogamous, some “monogamish,” some ethically non-monogamous, and some polyamorous. The Villa was co-founded by Andrew Sparksfire, a real-estate entrepreneur who is building community living environments nationwide that practice responsible hedonism to raise the visibility of the sex-positive movement in mainstream society, and Kenneth Play, a sex-hacking expert and educator and collaborator on The Casual Sex Project.

As Villa’s mission states, and most non-monogamists would agree, the lifestyle is about respecting everyone’s needs and boundaries while still indulging your desires. “Polyamory, open relationships, and sex positivity are ways that true love and emotions can enter the conversation. You can be friends with your lovers. That evolved, chill mentality appeals to millennials. It’s a genuine relationship hack,” says Gillespie.

...The legal ramifications can be daunting. But there are clear feminist implications that, at least for women, might make polyamory a more appealing option. Gillespie, for example, says her personal goal with Unicornland is “to see how a woman handled sexual situations; how she went from being passive, to being more active, in control, and powerful. I’m less interested in making polyamory mainstream, and far more interested in women being more in control of their sex lives.”...

...Are millennials testing out non-monogamy in search of something purer than the relationships they’ve been experiencing? A YouGov study found that only 51 percent of people under age 30 believe their ideal relationship is a completely monogamous one. And a recent Avvo study on relationships found that modern marriages are more romantic than practical.

...These millennials aren’t too concerned about being judged for a polyamorous lifestyle either. “I’m out as polyamorous although, in my day-to-day life, I tend to take an approach of being honest when asked directly about it but not advertising or disclosing electively,” says Turner.

If you’re worried about how a non-monogamous lifestyle could impact your job (and it might) be aware that in most states employees are at-will, meaning an employee may be fired for any reason or no reason. “Being polyamorous is not a protected class, so an employer could fire someone for being polyamorous,” says Robert S. Herbst, an attorney in Larchmont, New York....

Read the whole article (March 30, 2017).

● The same author wrote a brief piece on the same topic for AvvoStories last February 16: Millennials may just have a thing for polyamory.

● And almost a year ago, The legal ramifications of polyamory (May 16, 2016).

● The previous year, Avvo published an interview with a leading sexologist: Q&A with Dr. Pepper Schwartz: The rise of non-monogamy

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From Future Sex: "Are millennials better at free love?"

Emily Witt  (Michael Danner / The Guardian)

Emily Witt's book Future Sex: A New Kind of Free Love has been out for a couple months and has had a lot of buzz. You may remember the October New York Times review I quoted, with this paragraph:

There is very little darkness in what is probably Witt’s best chapter, a deep dive into polyamory in San Francisco. By the time she arrives in the city... it’s a playground for successful, bright-eyed young adults [with an ethic of frank openness.] At first, Witt isn’t sure what to make of their sexual appetites. “Their sex lives were impossible to fathom,” she observes, “because they seemed never to have lived in darkness.”

This morning's Guardian reprints much of that chapter. A precis:

Sex in Silicon Valley: Are millennials better at free love?

‘Despite making rules, they would aim to fail: a concept they borrowed from computer security.’

By Emily Witt

...By 2012, the young people who came to San Francisco were neither dropouts nor misfits. They were children who had grown up eating sugar-free cereal, swaddled in polar fleece jackets made from recycled plastic bottles. They had studied abroad, knew their favourite kinds of sashimi and were friends with their parents. ... Nobody smoked cigarettes. They honed their bodies with the aim of either perfect homeostasis or eternal life. They ate red meat only once a month, to time their consumption of iron with the end of their menstrual cycles. They started companies whose names referenced fantasy fiction. They were adults, but they could seem like children. Their sex lives were impossible to fathom, because they seemed never to have lived in darkness.

...Elizabeth had moved to San Francisco after college. ... Elizabeth had never before lived in a city. ... She met Wes one night in late 2010, when he accompanied one of her co-workers to a boardgame party at her house. For their first date, they attended Nerd Night at a local bar. They watched a lecture about the future of teledildonics. On the walk home, they kissed. Then Wes, with the transparency he thought of as mature and fair, gave a speech of pre-emptive relationship indemnity. He was still getting over his last girlfriend, he said. He did not want to be in a relationship. Elizabeth tried not to roll her eyes – it was the first date! They said goodnight and parted ways.

...They began meeting once a week for drinks, dates and sleeping over, always with a show of nonchalance. Given the choice, Elizabeth would have wanted a more serious commitment. She was only 23, but she had one reaction to Wes’s lack of interest in their relationship: he was acting like a baby. Fine, she decided. She would also see other people.

...One day in May 2011, six months after they met, Elizabeth introduced Wes to psilocybin mushrooms. The trip shifted their relationship. They still did not use the word “love”, but they now acknowledged what they referred to as “emotional involvement”.

Elizabeth did not describe what she was doing – having sex with two men on a regular basis over an extended period of time, with the occasional extra-relationship dalliance besides – as polyamory. The word had cultural connotations for her, of swinging married people or creepy old men.

Although, like most people her age, she had friends whose partnerships allowed for sex with others, those friends tended to use the term “open relationship”, which was somehow less infused with the stigma of intentional weirdness, and did not amount to a proclamation of sexual identity.

Still, whatever accidental arrangement she had created, by the end of that year the lack of sexual boundaries was causing Elizabeth no small amount of anxiety. ... To allay her growing insecurity, she turned to self-help and read The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide To Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures, Sex At Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, and Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up.

These books convinced Elizabeth that monogamy was a choice, not a given. It began to take on the cast of an unreasonable expectation, best suited to people who disliked experimentation: people not like her.

...They agreed that they would think of themselves as a couple from now on, instead of two single people who slept together, but they would still not be monogamous. Now they had to figure out how to manage the logistics. Elizabeth compiled a shared Google doc that was to become the foundation of their research – a syllabus of recommended reading, places to attend discussion groups and sex parties open to the public. They went to a party at a sex club and had sex surrounded by onlookers. ... Elizabeth and Wes felt they could draw upon certain ideas of the older polyamorists, but had to do a lot of the thinking on their own. After their research, they began to draw up rules.

...Despite making rules, they would aim to fail. It was a concept they borrowed from computer security: if an unplanned event occurs, the default is to act first, then worry about formulating responses for the next time.

...Wes said he wouldn’t mind if Elizabeth and Chris started to sleep together. ... By the end of 2011, the three regularly socialised as a group outside work. Soon after, Chris and Elizabeth would also hang out by themselves. ... One night, Chris accompanied Elizabeth and Wes to a queer dance party. They all danced together, dancing that evolved seamlessly to kissing on the dance floor. Chris enjoyed it, but felt a little bit like the third wheel. His friends were on MDMA and he was not. Elizabeth and Wes had planned a foursome with another couple later that night, so Chris ended up going home alone.

It became an unspoken understanding that if the three of them went out dancing, they would probably end up kissing together. This was true for a whole group of friends who began to coalesce at this time around Wes and Elizabeth, who began to be sought after as gurus by other couples who had considered opening their relationships. The shared Google doc soon had multiple subscribers.

...The two men were affectionate with each other, even kissing hello or goodbye, but Chris was surprisingly troubled by his unreturned desire for Wes.

I first met Chris, Elizabeth, and Wes in late May 2012, when their experiment was just a few months old. I was seven years older than Elizabeth and Chris, eight older than Wes. I envied the openness with which they shared their attractions. They did not proceed recklessly. They drew up ethical codes to protect their relationships. Elizabeth and Wes seemed to plunge forward through life without fear. I saw in Chris a little more hesitation.

...Wes and Elizabeth’s relationship had acquired an acceleration, a momentum based on mutual daring. In the way that some couples might spend their energy systematically eating at new restaurants, Elizabeth and Wes went to sex parties. Elizabeth attended two porn shoots, one of them with Wes, the other with a woman who had become another long-term sexual partner. In June 2013, Wes left Google to start his own company. Between ending one job and beginning the other, he travelled around Europe. Elizabeth met him in Amsterdam, where they hired a prostitute.

...They discussed moving in together, and finally did so in late 2013. The decision carried less weight with the knowledge that, at least a few times a month, one of them would be spending the night at someone else’s place.

...In August 2014, Elizabeth and Wes got engaged at the Burning Man festival. In August 2015, I attended their wedding in Black Rock City. To the tune of Somewhere Over The Rainbow played on an electric piano, Wes and Elizabeth, he in a white, button-down shirt and black trousers, she in a white dress, both with colourful face paint around their eyes, processed to an altar decorated with pink fabric flowers and tasselled fringe. Relatives delivered loving statements. Wes’s godfather recited a Druid prayer. We lit sparklers and held them skyward as the sun set, forming a ring of light. The drone of a didgeridoo obscured the couple’s quiet murmuring.

“By the power invested in me by the internet, you are now married,” said the officiant, Wes’s uncle. “You can kiss each other and other people.”

Chris and Elizabeth threw their first sex party in the fall of 2012. In early 2015, I went to the fourth iteration, Thunderwear IV, in a rented loft. A black-and-white portrait of Elizabeth lifting one of her legs up over her head in a full split and penetrating herself with a dildo hung over the room. She had installed a stripper pole. ... Elizabeth, ever organised, told me she had taken out liability insurance for the stripper pole.

The invitation had laid out the party’s rules in a charter, to which every invitee had to agree.....

...I wandered back to the loft, where couples and threesomes had begun to pair off on couches. Nearby was a wheel of fortune that could be spun for instructions. ... Then we went into the second room to do whip-its. ... Around us, groups of people lay together on beds and couches, or stood making out in corners. On a couch, a man lay across the laps of his friends, who formed a spanking train. I sat with Elizabeth and took a whip-it, after which she massaged my head while a man lightly shocked me with an electrified wand.

...My then boyfriend in New York had not wanted me to attend the party at all. I was still thinking of myself as just a visitor, or rather neither here nor there, someone undertaking an abstract inquiry, but not yet with true intention. ... Now I sat in a penthouse with a group of sleepy partygoers. We chatted and looked at the view. In the background was the sound of whip-its, of orgasms, of water falling from a shower into a porcelain tub.

Read the whole piece (Dec. 17, 2016).

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Four great poly reps do a TV morning show

WJLA-TV (Washington, DC)

Remember the cool folks who did such a great job representing for us in the Washington Post last February?

This morning (July 1), some of them joined additional friends for a nearly 8-minute appearance on Good Morning Washington, broadcast on the area's ABC affiliate:

Update: The video has expired, but here's a still:

The blurb on the segment's webpage:

GMW's panel on polyamory

WASHINGTON(ABC7) — Being in love or romantically linked with multiple people, otherwise known as polyamory, has received a lot of attention over the years. But those who identify as polyamorous often report a lack of understanding from those not with the philosophy. Bennett Marschner, Sam Brehm, Vex Chat-Blanc and Zephyr spoke with GMW to discuss polyamory and debunk some myths.

Thanks folks, you did great! And yay for plugging MoreThanTwo.com!

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"Are Young People Really More Open to Polyamory or Do We Just Like to Cheat?"

Sigh. A staff writer for Vice who thinks "polyamory" just means, you know, dating, and who's fixated on cheating and jealousy, interviews Jillian Deri, author of Love's Refraction: Jealousy and Compersion in Queer Women's Polyamorous Relationships. Does he even hear her?

At least she gets plenty of space to explain things to those who do.

Are Young People Really More Open to Polyamory or Do We Just Like to Cheat?

By Jake Kivanç

...My generation's defining romantic issue is simple: we all hate to be heartbroken, yet we're all probably breaking somebody else's heart in the process.

This age of youth — the blasted millennials — have been tagged by the media as "polyamorous": a compulsion for sleeping with and/or dating multiple people. Some people swear by it.... Others think it's just an excuse to cheat, a byproduct of a generation too gung-ho on fucking on the first date.

...What isn't totally accepted yet, however, is how to deal with the jealousy that comes along with that rabid desire for multiple partners, or how that carries over into an actual relationship.

VICE reached out to Jillian Deri, a sex sociologist and professor at Simon Fraser University. Deri authored a book called Love's Refraction, which focuses on how polyamorous couples deal with jealousy and learn to love their partner loving other people. We talked about why my peers seem so compelled to cheat, and whether whippersnappers like myself are truly ready to take the plunge into open relationships.

VICE: How would you describe what polyamory is?

Jillian Deri: It's useful to distinguish between a poly relationship and a non-monogamous relationship. People who are poly tend to have emotional connections to more than one person, as opposed to people who are just dating around. People who are generally monogamous in their heart and are just dating around until they settle down are not necessarily poly, because poly people tend to want friendships, deep connections, or potentially love with multiple people.

Is there any evidence that shows there are people who are able to turn off their jealousy alarms off and have open relationships without the conflicting emotions we associate with monogamy?

Jillian Deri

Definitely, there's lots of people who've done so, we just don't have any studies to really back it up. In my [research], jealousy can range from a slight tinge of uneasiness to full on emotional upset. The theory that I particularly honed in was a word called "compersion," a word coined by polyamorous people to mean the opposite of jealousy. It's when a partner actually feels pleasure by their partner's other love. It's interesting that the English dictionary doesn't have an official word for this. The only potential outcome that we know of in Western society of you being with somebody else is jealous.... I studied how poly people make compersion possible in relationships.

This idea of compersion: Is it something that is learned or are some people more prone to have less jealous personalities?

Who knows? It could be based upon individual relationships and how secure you feel. You might be with somebody who makes you fiery with jealousy, and another person who just makes you feel secure. Often it has to do with the power dynamic and where the relationship is going or if there's potential for growth.... At the start of a relationship or at the end of relationship, we tend to be more jealous because we wonder how the other person feels or if they've lost interest.

...Almost everybody I know that's tried an open relationship has failed because somebody starts getting jealous of how many people their partner is hooking up with compared to them. Is that a common trend in poly relationships?

Not necessarily, it's something that requires planning and maturity....

Read the whole article (April 11, 2016).


● On another note, remember that nice little Newsy video that was going all around the media's nooks and crannies last week? Newsy has since put out five more. They're all from the same sitting, where a friendly interviewer talks about various poly issues with three happy and articulate millennials (one genderqueer) who are raising kids in a vee triad. Yay for great representation! I've updated my post with links to all six videos.

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Washington Post: "To be young and polyamorous in the age of OkCupid"

The Washington Post put up a feature article this morning that will be printed in the Love issue of the paper's Sunday Magazine. Sunday is Valentine's day.

The story profiles a local polyweb of young twenties. They seem remarkably wise, emotionally intelligent, and poly-intelligent. Thank you for representing us extraordinarily well.

To be young and polyamorous in the age of OkCupid

Clockwise, from top left: Rachel Ruvinsky, 22; Sam Brehm, 21; Bennett Marschner, 26; and Hannah Schott, 22. The group of friends carry on multiple relationships simultaneously. (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

By Lisa Bonos

...Ruvinsky didn’t want anything super-casual, so she figured that would be it. But Marschner persuaded her to keep seeing him, reassuring her that it wouldn’t be a booty-call thing. They could both see other people. “I was like, ‘Okay, I like hanging out with you,’ ” she remembers saying.

The next time they discussed their relationship status was a few months later. Marschner told her his other relationships, with two other women, weren’t so casual; there was an emotional attachment. He’d been reading about polyamory, he said, and he thought it applied to their situation.

Ruvinsky did, too: “We knew it was more than casual, but we didn’t have a word for it.” Since then, the two go out with other people separately or hang in a group. “A lot of times,” Marschner says, “if you get more than one of us together, we’re going to sit on a couch and cuddle and make out.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines polyamory as: “The fact of having simultaneous close emotional relationships with two or more other individuals, viewed as an alternative to monogamy, esp. in regard to matters of sexual fidelity; the custom or practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the knowledge and consent of all partners involved.”

Polyamory in the United States has roots in the 19th-century Oneida Community in Upstate New York, where all members were considered married to one other, according to Deborah Anapol, author of “Polyamory in the 21st Century.” Modern versions came out of the free-love movement of the 1960s, but the term “polyamorous,” combining the Greek and Latin words for “many” and “love,” wasn’t coined until 1990 and was added to the OED in 2006. It draws adults of all ages, and online dating has made it easier for the polyamorous and poly-curious to find one another.

...Ruvinsky and Marschner keep each other in the loop on their other dates and relationships. Sometimes Marschner will screen OkCupid messages for Ruvinsky, deleting anything unwelcomingly vulgar, prompting her to jokingly call him her “sexcretary.”

...If one of them feels jealous, they try to pinpoint what insecurity or self-esteem issue might be to blame. “It’s important to realize that it’s valid” to be jealous or envious of another partner, Ruvinsky says, “but not necessarily true.”

More than jealousy, though, the emotion they talk about is “compersion,” a feeling of joy when one’s partner finds happiness with another. Ruvinsky says she feels it when Marschner texts her after a good date with someone else. He says he feels it when he meets women he thinks Ruvinsky might like and those instincts turn out to be right.

Marschner has a couple of primary partners, including Ruvinsky, and several secondary ones. He sometimes introduces his partners to one another and is happy for them to date each other as well. (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Over a year ago, Marschner introduced Ruvinsky and Hannah Schott. They gathered for a night of figure-drawing, each taking a turn as a nude model. Schott now lives in New Zealand, but Ruvinsky still has the picture Schott drew hanging in her bedroom.

Within the “web” of partners, one-on-ones, threesomes and orgies have been known to happen. (They test for sexually transmitted diseases every three months or when a new person joins the mix.) But Marschner says “polyamory isn’t necessarily about sex. Polyamory is about being in love with multiple people.”

Marschner and Ruvinsky say they are thrilled to be free of the constraints that can come with monogamy: They don’t have to be everything, sexually or emotionally, to each other; they can be open about their attraction to others. It might be fueled by youthful idealism that will crash and burn as she and Marschner get older, but for now they seem happy.

Ruvinsky’s eyes light up as she describes having so much love to give, and receiving it, too. “Even the love you feel, feels different,” she says, “not in terms of quantity or quality, just in how it feels.”

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

Asked to map it out for a reporter, Marschner drew a diagram of dozens of people. Straight lines connected people with ongoing relationships; long dotted lines for former relationships; short dotted lines for people who have “sexy times,” as Marschner put it, but aren’t in a relationship.

The connections are fluid, too. An ex of one of Marschner’s former partners is now housemates with one of his current partners.

When members of the web get together, it’s as if a group of high school or college friends is reuniting. Primary, secondary and past partners piled into a booth at Bar Louie in Rockville Town Square in late December.

Some are meeting for the first time. “Are you a hugger?” Zia Frazier asks, and waits for the go-ahead before embracing Sam Brehm, a 21-year-old model and fire performer who met Marschner at a medieval camping trip. (The poly community is big on consent, starting with something as simple as a hug.) At different times throughout the night, Marschner keeps a hand on Brehm’s leg while deep in conversation with Ruvinsky.

...Marschner asks Frazier, who is 23 and just finished her first semester of grad school in San Francisco, about a new guy she is dating who’s poly and straight.

“Is he pretty?” he asks.

“He’s tall as s---,” she says.

...They order extra cocktails before happy hour ends, eat off each other’s plates and offer one another sips and cherries out of their drinks.

When Frazier complains about having to write so many papers and the long lines at the DMV, Marschner says: “That’s what you get for going to California and leaving us all behind.”...

Lisa Bonos is the lead writer and editor for Solo-ish, a Washington Post blog about unmarried life. You can reach her at lisa.bonos@washpost.com.

Read the whole article (online February 11, 2015).

Update: It's been reprinted on the websites, at least, of the Chicago Tribune, the Calgary Herald, the daily Santa Fe New Mexican, South Africa's Independent online and The Star ("South Africa's Most Influential Daily Newspaper"), the Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, and probably elsewhere.

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Fusion: "Seriously, though: What’s so great about monogamy?"

Fusion is an online magazine from Univision and Disney/ABC designed to reach "today’s young and diverse audience," it tells advertisers. It claims 10 million visitors a month. This morning it published a long nonmonogamy thought piece (4,000 words), further evidence that we're considered trendy. Excerpts:

Seriously, though: What’s so great about monogamy?

Bill Rebholz

By Molly Osberg

...They got hitched at 18.

“I thought it was happily ever after,” she says. “I wanted to go with him anywhere he went.”

Fast-forward three years: their marriage is no longer, and Britt’s OkCupid profile acts as a one-two punch of invitation and warning. If you’re into hiking, Little Miss Sunshine, or The Bible, message her. If you’re into one-night stands or want to be monogamous, please don’t. ...Polyamory is making a cameo even in the conversations of otherwise straitlaced young people like Britt.

The old rules certainly felt applicable to Britt and John. Shortly after the wedding, going anywhere with him meant an army base in another Texan town. Britt happily followed her husband, only to find out what couples often do: that people change....

...According to Britt, the “swinger culture in the military is insane,” with vast numbers of people swapping partners for the night or the weekend. But the ideas about sex and relationships Britt talks about valuing—communication, honestly, fluidity, sexual freedom—don’t come from that tradition.

...Nowadays, Rob is in a committed relationship with a woman he loves; they’re moving in together soon, and he still goes on dates with other people occasionally. “It’s not really about the sex even,” he tells me, though making out is pretty great. “There’s a measure of independence” in non-monogamy, he says; he thinks abandoning the idea that he and his lady have to be responsible for each other’s’ every need ultimately makes their life together more sustainable. You can go off and do your own thing sometimes, says Rob, and “still come back to the person you love.”

...Night Nurse—red-haired and tattooed, working the graveyard shift at a hospital—is how Rob got the specter of monogamy out of his system. The two met through mutual friends at a ball game. When they started sleeping together, they kept it intentionally casual—just about the sex. But as any human who has ever attempted such a balancing act knows, intimacy has a way of developing between people who spend a lot of time pressing their naked bodies together, particularly if their fuck buddies are nice people to spend time with.

...Conventional poly talking points will tell you that every relationship is a unique snowflake, that love isn’t a zero-sum game. That doesn’t mean navigating a lover’s level of emotional commitment to another person can’t be absolutely brutal. So, I imagine, is 50 years spent wondering about every flirtation you could have acted on. So is being taken for granted. So is feeling trapped.

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

...Sit on that for a second: “Love is a decision.” If that sounds crazy, think about the fact that all committed relationships, monogamous or not, require all types of choices. Sometimes it’s whether you can accept your partner’s level of financial stability. Perhaps it’s whether helping them wrestle with their various neuroses feels like a worthwhile endeavor. For Night Nurse, it was whether she was into Rob enough to keep dating him, bar guy or no.

That all might come off as overly pragmatic, even a little harsh. But being ethically non-monogamous requires muting some of the most seductive ideas we have about romantic love.

Polyamorists have invented a language to describe ideas not often in currency in modern-day America. One is “compersion,” a feeling of satisfaction and empathy while seeing one’s partner happily fucking or enjoying someone else’s company. NRE—“new relationship energy”—is a topic that blazes across poly communities on the internet, where longstanding couples wrestle with the reality that what’s mysterious and new has a fundamentally different quality than the familiar. Which doesn’t make it better, they say, just different.

Concepts like these can appear hokey or cultish to outsiders. Rob wasn’t the only person I spoke to who felt alienated by the trappings of the “poly scene.” Britt, too, told me she sometimes had trouble finding so-called “normal” people who understood what she was going for. And when I ask 28-year-old Kaela about the poly meet-up she and her dude, Riley, went to recently in Kansas City, her voice drops to a mock whisper. “Oh my god,” she giggles. “It was weeeiiiirdddd.”

...When Kaela and Riley first met a few years ago, it was Riley who initiated what Kaela calls the “relationship conversation” after they’d only been dating a few weeks.

“It really freaked me out,” she says. “I was like, oh god, this guy is gonna try to tie me down.” Actually, though, Riley wanted to talk about them being in a relationship—but also seeing other people. “So I put on my research hat,” says Kaela. “I thought, ‘there has to be books on this.’”...

None of these ideas are particular to 2016. The fact that they’re becoming more legible to mainstream culture, among heterosexual people in liberal islands of conservative states like Kansas, might be.

Read the whole story (February 9, 2016).

Update: At the right-wing site Newsbusters, writer Mairead McArdle is upset: Depraved New World: Fusion Asks “What’s So Great About Monogamy?” (Feb. 10).

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

Chicago Tribune

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

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

Polyamorous relationships and the 'messes' of love

Is the heart big enough to accommodate polyamory?

By Dawn M. Turner

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

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

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

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

Confused? Keep reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

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

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"These Five People Are About to Have a Baby Together"

Vice

An interesting thing about this story is that it treats nonmonogamy as a minor component. The five people are a couple and a triad. They're treated as friends who decided to commit to live as a family.

The media are seeing a trend toward such arrangements: millennials who, partly driven by economic forces, are turning group houses into true long-term communities, families even. Three days ago the New York Times ran a feature on the trend and on real estate developers' efforts to cash in on it: The Millennial Commune.

But this bunch takes it further (even though they live in two domiciles).

Vice picked up the story from its Netherlands edition. I guess that means Vice's other recent group-relationship stories have done well.

These Five People Are About to Have a Baby Together

By Noor Spanjer

Clockwise from top: Dewi, Sjoerd, Jaco, Sean, and Daantje in front. (Photo: Raymond van Mil)

...Another new, lesser known family structure that has emerged is that of multi-parenting — or raising a child with more than two legal parents. For instance, a lesbian couple and a gay couple bringing up a child together as a single family, but in separate households.

That's more or less the family unit that two couples — Jaco and Sjoerd, and Daantje and Dewi — have decided upon. The four have known each other for ten years, and have been considering the possibility of having a child together for about six. That possibility is going to become a reality this week, when Daantje gives birth.

Both couples are married, but Jaco and Sjoerd's relationship also involves a third person: an Australian named Sean who's been their partner for the last three years. "Three and a half," Sean shouts from the kitchen when he hears me asking Sjoerd how long they have been together. Sean is such a big part of their relationship that he will play an equal role in raising the gang's future son.

"Five parents with equal rights and responsibilities, divided across two households — those are the terms of the agreement that we all signed and had notarized," says Dewi....

The laws surrounding parental rights have improved significantly for gay parents in the Netherlands over the past few years, but the issue of multi-parenthood is still a complicated one. In the case of this particular five-parent family, Jaco has taken on the role of legal parent number two — replacing Dewi, who initially held the position because of her marriage to Daantje.

"We wanted to make sure that there was one legal parent in both households, because we're splitting the upbringing equally," explains Dewi.

"The advantage of that is that us men can take our son on vacation without customs stopping us for traveling with a child that, legally speaking, isn't ours," agrees Sjoerd.

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

The vast family (the baby will have five parents, 11 enthusiastic grandparents, and 21 aunts and uncles) seem to be ready for whatever issues that may arise while they're raising the child together. "We're ridiculously well-prepared," says Sjoerd. "We've already picked out schools. It's mainly people around us that expect problems, but that whole myth about the more people being involved with something the harder it being to come to a decision, isn't true. With us, there isn't a lot of room to be irrational — if it's just the two of you, you can easily get stuck in an emotional discussion which you both want to win. But when there's five of you, you're forced to reach a reasonable consensus."

Dewi tells us that she was surprised about the criticism they'd been getting from the LGBT community. "People say things to Daantje and I, like: 'You shouldn't get the men involved,' and to the boys: 'Be careful with those lesbians, they'll take your child away from you.' It is all about ownership, about fears, and ego."...

The baby is due this week and all parents plan to be present for the delivery....

Read the whole article with more pix (August 4, 2015). Here's the original in Nederlands.

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"I Realized I Was Polyamorous… While Engaged to A Monogamous Person"

xoJane

And another poly-mono tale appears in a millennial-oriented webmagazine. This one is happier than the one in my last post.

IT HAPPENED TO ME: I Realized I Was Polyamorous… While Engaged to A Monogamous Person

When I proposed to R, there were two things I still didn’t know: That I was polyamorous, and that R was monogamous.

Sam Dylan Finch

By Sam Dylan Finch

R was a genderqueer dreamboat. Seriously.

We met during undergrad, first at a film screening and then again working in the same office on campus. They were a passionate feminist (this is a very important criterion for me), a brilliant thinker, and just as cynical about people as I was… but still down to watch an episode of Spongebob or play Wii Bowling.

My extroverted, chaotic nature pushed R out of their shell; R’s quiet, introverted nature always seemed to bring me down a notch.

In other words, R was a breath of fresh air. And our relationship, in the beginning, was so easy – almost too easy.

No one was surprised, then, when we announced our engagement a year later.... It felt like everything was finally falling into place.

But when I proposed to R, there were two things I still didn’t know: That I was polyamorous, and that R was monogamous.

Since monogamy was the default, we had never really talked about the structure of our relationship before. What structure? There was only one, right?

Somehow I had missed the signs – signs that are obvious to me now – about my polyamorous leanings.

In the past, I had always had intimate, loving friendships – noticeably deeper than other people I knew – with cuddling, hand-holding, even kissing and sleeping in the same bed. I just assumed I had a bigger heart than most.

In fact, my last relationship ended in part because I was in love with my partner and my best friend simultaneously. I assumed that meant I was confused. Deciding I was a terrible partner, I broke things off, feeling guilty but relieved....

I had never heard of “polyamory,” nor did I understand that there was nothing wrong with having deep and intimate relationships with multiple people simultaneously. I thought you could only love one person at a time, or else you were unfaithful.

It wasn’t until I lived with a polyamorous roommate that the doubts started to creep in. Could I be happy in a relationship like that? Would I be… happier?

I watched my roommate navigate polyamory in a way that seemed so effortless....

I trusted R completely – we told each other everything – and as I started to reflect on my past, we could see clearly what had been right in front of us. My intense friendships that always seemed to blur the boundaries, my crushes that sometimes seemed a little too distracting, and my wandering eye that sometimes made us both a little uncomfortable…

...When I finally said the words, R shifted and quietly responded, “But I’m monogamous. At least, I am right now.”

My first instinct was to assume it was over.... [But] from there, a new kind of relationship opened up....

...I woke up to a partner who wanted to talk through things, who wanted to establish new boundaries and explore our feelings about what happened. A partner who listened when I talked about my feelings, a partner who supported me even when we were both hurting....

...Even though I may never have complete and total romantic freedom, and R may never have the complete and total commitment that is desired, we’re happy to meet each other somewhere in the middle.

It might seem absurd to the rest of the world – how could a poly person and a monogamous person ever commit their lives to one another? But for us, this exercise in defining our boundaries and exploring our comfort zones has only solidified our love and trust in each other.

As long as we’re happy, the labels seem less important. Polyamorous, monogamous, polyflexible, monogamish, whatever – the most important thing is that it works for us.

Read the whole article (June 18, 2015). It's longish, 1,300 words.

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