Why so many triads?! And other polyamory in the news.

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This week brought a spate of polyfamilies in various media, all five of them triads.

I can see the comments already: Why do the media think poly is only "throuples"? Especially, pre-existing couples who get a "third"?

Some people in the online polyam world these days go dissing on all triads, especially FMFs, sight unseen. For this we can blame the damage by stereotyped unicorn hunters: self-centered (or clueless) couples who feel entitled to take lopsided advantage of a new person — to make that person's rules, order them around or gaslight them around.

But dissing every relationship between three people as a result is prejudice (literally, "pre-judging") just as ignorant and crappy as instant-judging a member of a racial or immigrant group regardless of who they are.

As to why we see so many coupley triads in media representations, five reasons:

1.  Most adults are in couples living together, per census data (58% of US adults in 2021). So no surprise that's where a majority of people interested in CNM start from.

2.  Very rarely will three people, all unknown to each other, all run into each other at once and fall in love at once. Triads (and larger polycules) almost always assemble stepwise, one at a time. (Just like molecules in chemistry, and for the same reason: It's very rare for the correct three reactive atoms or molecules to all bang into each other at the same instant.)

3.  Three is simplest number after two, so it will be the commonest polyfamily after two. You see this in poly enclaves all over. So that's what the media are likeliest to find when they go looking.

4.  The smaller the group, the more likely they'll all agree to expose themselves in the media. Read carefully, and a lot of the trios in media profiles have additional links, even additional polyfamily members it would seem, who stayed out of the group photo.

5. "Because triad stories are the easiest to sell to an audience who see relationships as closed bubbles," writes reddit/r/polyamory user ilumassamuli. When people meet any new concept, they usually frame it as, "It's just like that thing I already know, but with a twist." (Marketers know this fallacy and use it.) So, writers and editors new to the subject may immediately think, "Monogamy plus one!" And off they go.

Okay, two years of covid have gotten everybody down, but come on. Educate people about unicorn abuses and keep your own eyes open, but please don't make hostile prejudice-judgments on people you don't know, just like you get mad at your Trumpy relatives for doing.

●  For instance, there's no reason to judge the people in this article as being anything other than the careful, considerate persons they appear: What’s It Like to Be in a Throuple? A Real-Life Triad Shares Their Experience (Jan. 18, AskMen)

How These Three People Make Being in a Throuple Seem Like a Piece of Cake

Celeste, Emily, Jacob

By Rebecca Strong

Relationships with three people — otherwise known as a throuple — are just one iteration of polyamory that has become increasingly common. Not only has media representation of these romantic arrangements been rapidly growing (see: You Me Her, Genera+ion, and Trigonometry), but there are even dating apps geared toward couples seeking to be a part of a triad. 

...To be clear, a throuple can be monogamous or non-monogamous. Some are exclusive (referred to as a “closed triad”), while others may have an open relationship that allows all three partners more sexual and romantic freedom. Jacob, Celeste, and Emily are an example of the former.

“The triad structure is what works best for us, but it may not work for everyone,” they tell AskMen. 

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

...Flash forward to early 2019, the year Emily met Celeste through a roller derby league. 

...We started running together and developed a friendship over the course of a couple of years,” explains Celeste. “We really grew close while training for a relay race and a marathon together.”

...Soon after, Emily and Celeste went out dancing with a group of friends and shared their mutual feelings for each other. Once they began to pursue that connection further and saw the potential, Celeste opted to end her marriage, which she deemed “unfulfilling” at that point.

Celeste then started having conversations with Jacob to make sure they were on the same page about how to best support Emily as a partner. Initially, Emily was the “vee” or hinge.... When Jacob and Celeste eventually started developing feelings for each other, they had to take a step back and reassess their understanding.

“I was very worried about even telling Emily this because I felt like I was imposing on their secure and long-standing relationship, and infringing on their marriage,” says Celeste. “I also had anxiety about it minimizing our relationship as bisexual women experiencing their first lesbian relationship together.”

But it turned out to be a relief for Emily, who had been anxious about being able to fulfill both Jacob and Celeste’s needs on her own.

“This wasn’t anything any of us were looking for,” Jacob tells AskMen. “It just kind of fell into our laps and it made a lot of sense.” ...

...Emily adds that there’s no right or wrong way to handle this in a three-way relationship, as long as everyone is aware, communicating, and consenting. ...

Read on. It's long.

●  A different variety of throuple: ‘I had the perfect life – then both my husbands died’: singer Labi Siffre on love, loss – and happiness. In the Guardian, Jan. 31.

The man behind Something Inside So Strong and It Must Be Love talks about his half-century in music, coming out in the 70s – and his menage a trois on a Welsh mountain.

Labi Siffre (left) with his partners Rudolf van Baardwijk and Peter Lloyd

By Tim Jonze

...Many people I speak to have never heard of him. Some remember his 80s anthem Something Inside So Strong. Others are dimly aware of a solo career before that....

And then there are those whose eyes light up – those who, like me, regard him as one of the key figures in British pop history, and wonder why he’s not celebrated as such. “Labi Siffre’s fingerprints have been on popular music for many decades now,” wrote the electronic musician Matthew Herbert in 2012. “But his actual voice is rarely heard.”

Labi Siffre today
 

...“The most important thing in your life is what happens at home,” says Siffre. “Many people don’t understand this. It is head and shoulders above everything else. And from the moment Peter and I met, I never took [that love] for granted.”

...Perhaps one reason Siffre seems content with his standing is that music always came second to the great love of his life, which is love itself: not just Peter but also a “third husband”, Rudolf “Ruud” Cornelis Arnoldus van Baardwijk, who joined the pair in the mid-90s. The three of them shared an idyllic-sounding life – for some time – in a house halfway up a mountain in south Wales.

“I went looking for love,” he says. “But it was only when I met Ruud and we became three that I stopped looking entirely. For nearly 16 years the three of us lived together in a menage a trois. And I realised I’d made the family that I’d been trying to make for the whole of my life.”

● And another kind. Polyamory is usually sexual but not necessarily. Nor even "romantic." When does it grade off into being an especially intimate friendship? Doesn't matter. The real world overflows with variety, often poorly classifiable. (Hey, I'm married to a biologist!) But three is the simplest number after two.

For example, here is UK psychotherapist Lucy Fry's tale of her current triad group: After years of a tricky polyamorous romance, I’ve discovered a friendship ‘throuple’ that feels just right (in the UK's iNews, Jan. 26).

Stock photo by Jordan Siemens/ Getty

I used to think about friendships as straight lines – a reciprocal exchange where one listens as another talks; one shoulders whilst the other leans, or one jokes whilst the other laughs.

...In the last 12 months, however, I’ve had a friendship epiphany. Something I never expected possible has happened. I have become a crucial part of a three-way friendship that is 100 per cent triangular in nature: where the primary unit is the triad.

Put more simply, I have realised that “throuples” really can work and need not involve the kind of gossip, envy or conflict that I have experienced in the triads of my past. Granted my current favourite throuple is not sexual nor romantic in nature, which probably makes things simpler.

Yet still, I’m astonished it works, since my history with threes has not been pretty. 

I was born the youngest of three children. ... Then I was, for many excruciating years, third wheel in my parents’ volatile marriage. ... I then recreated this destructive dynamic later in my mid thirties, when I became one third of a polyamorous relationship. Ouch. This one was romantic, full of love and jealousy too. It really ripped open those old wounds. In a way that felt hauntingly familiar, I found myself either stuck between warring factions, besieged with my co-dependency and unable to advocate for my own needs, or torn apart, pulled too hard in different directions. ... 

But, as I know from interviews done for my new book [Love and Choice: a radical approach to sex and relationships], there are throuples that make it work. What is less commonly understood is the potential in a triangle, whether platonic or romantic, for beauty and strength.

We met on a professional training course as three females (thirty- and forty-somethings) who knew each other a little before choosing, one night, to have dinner a trois. ...  Something magical happened over that Thai meal as we laughed and cried our way through an incredible bonding evening. Next day, we each admitted that there was something about our (platonic) chemistry, the mix of our viewpoints, stories and senses of humour, something that wasn’t the same with just two members.

Soon our triangular dinners became an essential part of the monthly calendar, held to consolidate a near-daily Whatsapp chat where we shared voice notes and texts including everything from deep anxieties to in-jokes and everyday frustrations. Gradually, the centre of the triangle coagulated as a unique, shared language developed, an understanding and trust between the three of us.

Finally, at the age of 40, the symbolism of triangles make sense to me. It is a shape regarded throughout centuries to represent enlightenment, revelation, and a higher perspective. Our friendship triptych is like this too. ...

●  Canada's nationwide CityNews TV network just ran a 43-minute special titled "Thoroughly Modern Families." One of its segments featured this Ontario triad living in a remade former church: Life, love and struggle in a polyamorous relationship (Jan. 27):

Article on the segment's webpage.

Speaking from a very different place on the same show was social activist Alicia Bunyan-Sampson of the Polyamorous Black Girl blog and author of No Filter, her memoir. 'Polyamorous Black Girl' battles for acceptance with online blog (Jan. 30):

Article on the segment's webpage. 

The whole 43-minute show aired last Sunday, January 30.

●  The Washington Post just put up Meet Janie and Maggie and Cody, a throuple surviving the pandemic together (Jan. 31). These are the @3.mountains TikTok stars that I posted about last November. (This story also ran the same day in The Seattle Times and maybe elsewhere.)

Maggie Odell, left, Cody Coppola and Janie Frank at their home under
renovation in Chattanooga, Tenn. (Michael A. Schwarz/ Washington Post)

By Karen Heller

Couples traditionally vow to stay together for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Rarely do they mention for 24 hours a day, for seven days a week, for every single meal, for so much streaming, for two blasted, interminable years.

So imagine what the pandemic has been like for a throuple, three individuals in a loving, committed relationship. Also one that’s moved seven times since early 2020, including driving nearly 1,300 miles from Denver to Chattanooga in one car with three cats.

Cody Coppola, 31, and Maggie Odell, 28, have been together for six years, and married for four. Janie Frank, 26, is Cody’s girlfriend of more than than five years. She is also Maggie’s. They all work in construction and design.

...Within their partnership, “there are four separate relationships,” Janie says in a phone interview. “The three of us together. Me and Maggie. Me and Cody. Cody and Maggie. All of those relationships need to be cared for and nourished.”

Janie, Cody and Maggie dwell in a couple-centric world. They understand that people are intrigued by their otherness. Few of their friends are throuples, though they recently became acquainted with a foursome, or quad. They hope to enlighten people about their relationship and convey that, rather than some orgiastic outtake from “Fellini Satyricon,” it involves laundry and utility bills. As Maggie says, “it’s actually kind of boring.”

Cody cites two primary advantages to being a throuple, a word he dislikes, though they use it regularly. “When I am completely overwhelmed and need a partner to be supportive and loving, I now have two. It doesn’t fall on one person,” he says. Conversely, “when I’m not in a good place, and I don’t want to be around anyone, I’m not the everything for one person. They get a night to themselves, and there’s no guilt on my end about basically abandoning someone.”

...In the past two years while living through the pandemic, Maggie says, they have “experienced every single stressor that you can put on a relationship”: loss of employment, money issues, change of jobs, moving, home renovation, moving and moving again.

They nursed big dreams to relocate to Prague and, in preparation, shed most of their belongings. But this was the spring of 2020. The coronavirus had other plans. ...

...Their TikTok account @3.mountains, documenting “just your average throuple in the south,” with more than 263,000 followers, tends toward goofiness, hugs, cats and “Newlywed Game” videos, plus Maggie-designed merch and sponsorship from an invisible teeth aligner.

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● A new book is in the news this week: Rachel Krantz's Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy. The most interesting and informative review I've seen so far is on NPR: 'Open' explores polyamorous relationships through personal experience (Jan. 29)

By Ilana Masad

...On their second date, he told her that, should they continue seeing each other, "[she] could still date and sleep with other people, even fall in love again. I don't want to restrict my partners' experiences."

...She was fascinated by and powerfully drawn to him, so she decided to give it a shot.

Her first book documents what happened next, using extensive research, interviews with experts, and her own meticulous record-keeping to flesh out and interpret her personal experiences.

I'll admit that I was trepidatious when I first approached this memoir. I've never really hidden the fact that I am polyamorous, nor that my partner of seven years and I have always had, to one extent or another, a non-monogamous relationship. Though anyone who is poly (or polyam, the short form Krantz uses in the book) or non-monog knows when to share this information and when to silo it away in order to avoid the judging eyes and skeptical questions of the monogamous overculture. Knowing the memoir was about Krantz's introduction to non-monogamy — and not only that, but that she was introduced to it by a straight cis man, who are often assumed to abuse this this relational preference — made me brace myself for a traditional happy ending about how it was a valid life choice but simply not for her.

I couldn't have been more wrong. It's no spoiler to say that Krantz still identifies as polyam, at least according to social media, and while Open is about non-monogamy, of course, it's neither a manifesto of polyamorous ideals nor an argument against it. Instead, more than anything else, it's Krantz's sincere and curious reckoning with the cultural messaging we all receive about gendered expectations and power dynamics in romantic and sexual relationships in general. How do we untangle those from our own desires? ... The highs and lows of a first non-monogamous relationship prove the perfect canvas on which to explore these fundamental questions. ...

Readers should take the word "uncensored" in the memoir's title seriously... "I put myself forward for naked examination because I'm morally opposed to being told to cover up in shame." Sex parties, swingers' meetups, and drug use are unapologetically rendered, but Krantz is no less forthcoming with her anxieties, fears, and attempts to understand what is going on in her primary relationship with Adam. Her vulnerability — along with the 20/20 hindsight... — is precisely why the memoir works so well. ...

-- The women's mag Marie Claire interviews Krantz: Diary of a Non-Monogamist (Jan. 24)

...What do you hope people take away from all of this?

RK: I hope to foster more love and openness and less shame, and also a greater empathy for people who are living different lifestyles. And maybe if people see themselves in these stories, they’ll have a greater compassion for themselves and also maybe for the people who hurt them. I hope it opens up conversations in relationships of potentially more expansive possibilities, because I think there’s a lot in between total monogamy and total relationship anarchy that might benefit a lot of couples. ... Maybe there are some options that would actually be quite fun that wouldn’t challenge jealousy that much. You see in the book a lot of different options, a lot of different outcomes, the pitfalls and the pros and cons.

-- Yahoo Lifestyle reprinted the book's first chapter. It does draw one in.

-- The Michigan Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Michigan/ Ann Arbor, has an interesting take. “The most vulnerable person in the room”: In conversation with Rachel Krantz, author of ‘Open’  (Jan. 31)

By Elizabeth Yoon

...While readers are busy putting together the warning signs of abuse, Krantz flashes her own insecurities about her queerness and positionality in the peripheral. It’s a brilliantly employed and aggressively engrossing tactic. By the midpoint of the book, the readers find themselves at a mental table opposite of Krantz, questioning the binaries they subscribe to and what liberation looks like for them. 

The novel frames ideas and anecdotes through critical feminist frameworks, making reading a treasure hunt for theory and its application in the real world. Krantz is a product of elite institutions (though she does not name or reference her alma mater, NYU, in the novel). ... Perhaps because of Krantz’s past in journalism, scenes featuring Krantz’s queer friends and cosmopolitan lifestyle feel like more than incidental visits; through Krantz and her connections, the reader receives an insight into inclusive queer spaces, guided by a wonderfully expansive accepting network. In sum, the vignettes transform the novel into a conversation that branches out and touches on a great many things other than just non-normative sex and relationships. 

Update: A radio interview with her on WNYC in New York (March 15).

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● The polycons stir from hibernation. As hopes grow that the pandemic will diminish, the annual round of polyamory conventions, retreats, and similar events is beginning to open back up a little. See the signs of life returning on Alan's List of Polyamory Events.

Most will require onsite measures against spreading covid, and admission will usually require proof of vaccination. Ask about their refund policy if either you or they change plans due to pandemic developments, and I wouldn't book expensive travel without a refund provision. Some events — such as Southwest Love Fest in Tucson coming up in April — will limit in-person attendance and have an online option.

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Poly 101s keep popping up everywhere

● The UK's Evening Standard, a Conservative sheet, takes a long and generally positive look at what it claims is a trend: Is London ready for the new wave of polyamory? (Sept. 23)

By Emily Phillips

When Ruby Rare, 28, spotted the pictures of Rita Ora and boyfriend, film director Taika Waititi, both kissing co-star Tessa Thompson a little while ago, she felt elated at seeing a sweet, happy representation of her own relationships at last. ‘It wasn’t this sordid, sexualised thing. But I thought it was interesting how suddenly everyone jumped to, “Oh my God, they’re in a polyamorous relationship.” ’

Rare, a sex educator and author of Sex Ed: A Guide For Adults, has identified as ethically non-monogamous for five years. ...

After arduous lockdowns for many in monogamous relationships, a general sense of openness in the world is reflecting our interest in new ways of doing things: be that ethical non-monogamy (romantic relationships that are not completely exclusive between two people), polyamory (more than one open romantic relationship at a time) or even just being a little bit ‘monogamish’ (testing the boundaries of your coupling with flirtation and sometimes more). ...

Dating app Feeld, the go-to fixer for couples and singles, has witnessed a dramatic surge in this interest. Search terms such as ‘ethical non-monogamy’ and ‘polyamory’ have seen an almost 400 per cent increase among women, while with men they were 500 per cent up in the past year. ...

Ana Kirova of Feeld

The app’s remit has grown organically from its home city, London, across the rest of Europe, the United States and Brazil. But now, [cofounder Ana] Kirova can see that Londoners’ appetites for something else is having a bump. ‘The data shows that there is a clear increase in interest in alternative relationship structures after a lockdown with one partner,’ she says. ... ‘ There’s been a rise in virtual three-ways — people get very creative. They connect on Feeld and then they just make it work.’

...Anita Cassidy, 45... says the Covid crisis has, for everyone, been ‘a big chance to reassess what we’re doing, how we do it, why we’re making the choices we make, in terms of structures and ideas about how relationships should look and how they could look’.

...Rare agrees that the key to a successful open relationship is taking it slow and being honest, both in your primary relationship and with other potential matches. ‘It might make the pool of potential people to date smaller,’ she notes, ‘because there’ll be lots of people who are actually not into that. But I think using dating apps where there is more of a culture of ethical non-monogamy is really good. Feeld is a space where you’re going to find less people who are completely shocked by these concepts.’

The experience may be a slower burn — and potentially time-consuming, contrary to the misconception that switching to polyamory will suddenly mean you’re having sex all the time, Rare laughs. ‘There’s a lot of admin involved in it. I don’t have the capacity to date loads of people. So, when newer people enter the fold, it’s on the basis of friendship that then can have romantic and sexual elements to it.’ ...

...Cassidy just welcomes the normalisation of these feelings and needs. ‘It doesn’t mean we have to act on them, but it’s finding a safe space in your relationship to talk about these things without fear, without judgement.’ It’s time to get out on the scene and get to grips with the monogam-issue at hand.

● Speaking of conservative publications getting on board...

During the Cold War the Reader's Digest was the number-one vehicle showcasing white-picket-fence American life and values around the globe. My Mom was the Digest's personnel director at its Pleasantville, NY, address through the 1950s when I was a little boy. The Digest had grown from a tiny mom & pop startup (she was hired by founders DeWitt and Lila Wallace and worked directly under them) to become America's best-selling magazine.

And it was translated into 21 languages and distributed overseas, by up to 17 million copies a month, with quiet government help from, it turned out, a US anti-communist agency; Mom thought it was the CIA. Every month's issue had one international propaganda article, which sometimes seemed out of place with the rest of the magazine, in exchange for help in enabling this extraordinary global circulation. Mom was friends for a while with the Digest's government liaison who was in charge of these articles. He took her sailing on the Chesapeake.

Yes, the bad guys in those articles sometimes deserved to be kicked — but the Digest also smeared Nelson Mandela about the same way it had treated Stalin.

Post Cold War the Digest got smaller and thinner, and when I skim it at the grocery store checkout it seems like a shadow of its old self, struggling to be relevant in a new era. (Joann Sharp wrote a book; her condensed-book article is titled Rise and fall of Reader's Digest.)

Perhaps a sign of such struggling is this literal Poly 101 just out, not in the Digest but in its subsidiary magazine Best Health in Canada: Polyamory 101: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started (undated; online Sept. 30). It presents excellent basic advice for brand-newbies, and its perky, optimistic attitude is pure Digest from my childhood.

By Sadaf Ahsan

...If polyamory is something you’ve been considering, where do you begin? Consider this [as] Polyamory 101, your guide to the polyamory basics.

Well, first, what is polyamory?

...A common misconception is that polyamory is synonymous with being in an open relationship, where individuals can take on and can involve however many partners at any time. Both are types of consensual non-monogamy, but in open relationships, individuals are free to have sexual partners outside of their relationship while polyamory involves having more than one intimate relationship with the consent of all involved. ...

Shutterstock

Ok, so you want to give it a try. Where do you start?

Amanda Luterman, psychotherapist and founder of the Montreal-based Centre for Erotic Empathy, recommends that everyone involved be on the same page from the very beginning.

...“You want all involved to be open to exploring and pausing the exploration based on how you’re doing. You want to make sure, before you do anything, you have enthusiastic consent moving forward.”

What does that conversation sound like?

It’s an honest and open one, and it’s about establishing your satisfaction within the relationship and interest in discovering a new part of yourself—or a different version altogether.

“The key to both bringing it up to a partner and having a positive experience is seeking what you’re seeking in yourself,” says Luterman. “For example, you can say, ‘I love us, I’m satisfied with us. But there’s a part of me that doesn’t present in this relationship, that I’m looking to experience in my life, and I believe that the best way to do that is to pursue a relationship so that part of me feels active.”...

Great! Now, how do we set boundaries?

The most important thing is ensuring all parties in a polyamorous relationship are practicing safe sex, and that means open communication between all partners and operating in absolutes. For example, always using protection. ... Says Luterman, “Remember: in all sexual encounters, sex is only as good as you are relaxed.”

How do you approach bigger commitments?

Polyamorous relationships can get as serious as traditional relationships when it comes to everything from finances to starting a family. But with several voices involved, things can get complicated. So, the key—as with all relationships—is direct and open communication.

Thanks to the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association, up to three parents can be listed on birth certificates. However, since much of the legal and financial world views couples as dyadic, it can be useful to work with a lawyer and draw up official documents recognizing the way finances and parenting are being handled—and to spare potential heartache down the road.

So how do you handle that and all the other tough parts?

...Luterman advises firming up your emotional regulation skills and considering therapy to help guide you. It can also be helpful to join peer groups for individuals in polyamorous relationships. ...

Ultimately, the best place to start is with a relationship based on love and growth—no matter the label and how many partners are involved.

The whole article. Maybe your elderly aunt, who doesn't believe what you're doing is real, will see it too.

●  More TV that I'm no longer trying to keep up with: 

– Jessica M. writes, "Yet another prime time TV show has featured polyamory.  This time it’s a medical drama called New Amsterdam, on NBC.  In S03 E10 ("Radical"), one of the patients is in a poly quad, and two of the doctors discuss polyamory. It’s just a single episode, but the more it shows up in the mainstream, in a responsible way, the better."

– On CelebratingTheSoaps.com, The Bold And The Beautiful Spoilers: Open Marriage Continues, Eric Insists ‘This Is Who We Are Now’ (Oct. 5): "Eric defended Quinn [his wife] and told Ridge that their bedroom activities – with each other or other people – are none of his business. Eric is tired of having to explain himself and being told how to live his life."

–  In a thread on reddit/r/polyamory, people got going about CNM themes showing up on TV. Bits:

"I recently discovered Wanderlust (TV show starring Toni Collette) on Netflix and although the characters are very clumsy, it does portray a more authentic version of polyamory than is typically shown in the media."

"Scenes from a Marriage [HBO], the new one with Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, has poly supporting characters... Their relationship isn’t ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not a caricature either."

"While not strictly romantic relationships, Sense8 does an interesting way of expressing larger than triad relationships without being closed."

"Does Falsettos count as a media depiction of polyamory?"

"Motherland: Fort Salem...is really a decent show... They don't directly name anything, but it's pretty obvious."

"The Freeform show Good Trouble explores a Z-type relationship in the third season."

"The Politician has a MMF throuple and they’re all older people."

"Both Rick and Morty and Bob's Burgers went the MMF route."

"The Expanse (sci-fi drama on Amazon Prime) has a small poly ship crew of maybe 8 people, male and female, and they love each other, sleep together [at least Drummer and her partners]. Also, one of the main characters has 8 parents that live together on the commune, and he is a mix of all of their DNA."

"Parks and Rec had a closed MMF triad" [or at least a V].

"I'm going to say House of Cards had a pretty good representation of a poly relationship.

The Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold has an MMF triad in the supporting cast."

Many commented on the cluelessness of many of these portrayals. "Wish we generally had better representation in the media. Maybe the high variety within polyamory gives non-poly folks a harder times to get into the nuances? As in, they don't even necessarily perceive what parts of the story are missing?"

● Our jargon keeps going mainstream... and is often misstated. From a Poly 101 in Cosmopolitan titled Everything to Know About the Term 'Polycule' (Sept. 28)

By Eliza Dumais

...Take my polycule, for example. My boyfriend sits firmly at the center of the thing—but as an ethically non-monogamous couple, we both see other people. So my polycule unit consists of me, my boyfriend, and each of our separate, secondary partners.

No, we don’t all share a bedroom, nor do we all gather around the same dinner table to eat vats of Sunday pasta sauce. In fact, I haven’t actually met any of my partner’s second-degree partners IRL. But still, there are key, romantic threads that connect us. We exist under the same “intimacy umbrella” purely because we have a partner in common. ... 

So far so good. But she goes on to say a polycule can extend through links of links of links "to infinity and beyond," and that's just wrong. That would be a "network" or a "web." Polycule in common use means a limited number who feel together to some degree, even if indirectly.

So to get all wordish, polycule exists in the space between the tighter polyfamily (who may live together, raise kids, etc.) and the looser intimate network.

●  Another Poly 101, from MindBodyGreen: A Beginner's Guide To Polyamory: How It Works & How To Know If It's For You, by Stephanie Barnes (Sept. 29). Just the section heads, 'cause this is getting long.

    What is polyamory?

    Polyamory vs. polygamy

    How does polyamory work?

    Polyamory terms to know

    Is it illegal?

    Can polyamory be bad or toxic? [Hint: yes]

    How to know if  polyamory is right for you [12 checkpoints]

    How to know if polyamory is not right for you: [4 checkpoints]

    Explaining polyamory to partners

    The bottom line

    Books to read

●  One sample from the recent British tabs: THRICE AS NICE ‘Throuple’ cut off from family for being ‘ungodly’ are now planning to have a baby together (Sept. 25). They're Gen Z-ers in in Rhode Island.

Joel, Mickey, Jaida

...But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

Despite their love for one another, Jaida and Joel have lost contact with members of their families over the relationship.

Jaida’s mother no longer speaks to her and Jaida says she feels like she’s been disowned.

Joel’s mother also stopped talking to him, however he says the younger members of his family have been much more supportive. ...

[But] Mickey said: “Thankfully my mum is very open and accepting, she says that she has four children now --  she always used to call Joel her son and now she calls Jaida her daughter. ...

“Being in a triad is like having two best friends and life partners instead of one. We’re never alone and there’s always someone else to talk to.”

●  More book news: Jonathan Kent, a former international reporter for the BBC, Reuters, and other outlets in in the UK, has finished a book reporting on consensual non-monogamy around the world today: A World Beyond Monogamy: How people make polyamory and open relationships work and what we can all learn from them. Kent comes at this as a sympathetic journalist rather than an insider advocate, and he lets his 51 interviewees from many different countries (especially in South and Southeast Asia where he was stationed) do a great deal of the talking.

He's running an indiegogo to help raise money for the first printing. You can get the usual range of perks: the book itself (when it comes out next February) and other stuff.

The book is noteworthy not only for the independence of its reporting and its outsider's insights into us, but for its relentlessly global scope. From the pitch:

For this book, Jonathan spent years interviewing people from all over the world. You'll find tremendous diversity of experiences here, with many voices that aren't normally represented in works about consensual non-monogamy. ... [The book] managed to break free of the limitations of previous books on the subject -- many of them very personal accounts, overwhelmingly from liberal enclaves in North America, that offer a narrow window onto a much wider world.

 A World Beyond Monogamy doesn't evangelise for CNM and has little truck with those who claim that consensual non-monogamy is somehow more 'enlightened'. Nor does it suggest that there is a 'right' way to do it. What it does evangelise for is consent, choice, and a willingness to rethink the way we're told to do relationships, both monogamous and non-monogamous.

It has some things I disagree with. But with its global voices, it should be a perspective-broadener at a time when many white Westerners imagine that they invented consensual non-monogamy.

●  Finally, this just in at the ever-growing Non-Monogamous Birds Department: Superb Fairywren crowned 2021 Australian bird of the year winner in hotly contested vote (Guardian, Oct. 8). "Beloved small bird known for its polyamory and shared household labour narrowly beats tawny frogmouth and gang-gang cockatoo."

The male birds are recognisable by their blue feathers, and the species has become famous for its polyamory and passion for sharing household labour.

Males leave the territory during the day and perform courtship displays to other females, but it is the females that ultimately control mate choice as well as the nest.

Holly Parsons is BirdLife Australia’s urban birds program manager and a superb fairywren supporter. “It’s really exciting to see a bird that so many people love and appreciate take out the top prize,” she said.

Holly Parsons/Birdlife Australia

From another story,

Paternity testing of offspring by ANU researchers in the late 1980s found that almost all (95%) broods contained chicks fathered by males outside the territory. Basically, most of the chicks are not related to the “dad”. What’s more, mating does not happen during those elaborate daytime dance parties; females leave their territories before dawn to find the male with the best moves.... They control mate choice (both their social pair-bond male and their extra-pair dalliances), build their nest alone and sit on the eggs.

So much for natural law. Wherever you look in nature — I'm married to a biologist — you're likely to find natural creatures living and thriving by breaking any law of God or man that anyone has ever imagined.

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"Many Love" poly author is in today's New York Times, on the eve of her wedding

Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson, from Many Love

Sophie Lucido Johnson, whose sweet, self-illustrated poly memoir Many Love came out this summer, is getting married tomorrow. And she tells the tale in the Style section of the New York Times . (Update: It went online October 12th but appeared in the print edition of Sunday the 14th.)

Excerpts:

Talking to My Fiancé About My New Girlfriend

After enjoying an open relationship, a couple decides to tie the knot. Just one question: Why must marriage require sexual fidelity for life?

By Sophie Lucido Johnson

Luke came to my front door in New Orleans on a sunny day several years ago with a sparsely decorated cassette tape and said, “I made this for you.” I could tell this was a move he had used with other women, but I had to hand it to him: It was a good one. ... I was charmed that Luke liked music and was obstinately analog about it. ...

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

...Two years later, we moved from New Orleans to Chicago and rented a one-bedroom apartment. ... But I never wanted to give up dating other people, and neither did Luke. In Chicago, we maintained our Tinder accounts and would lie side-by-side in bed swiping right, occasionally showing off our respective matches.

Polyamory wasn’t something my parents easily understood. My grandparents told me they felt “truly worried” for me. But nothing about our arrangement ever felt unusual. ... Before Luke, I had spent almost a decade building and prioritizing a close platonic friendship with my roommate, and she never minded that I went on dates with other people. Why should it be different with someone I slept with?

...Sometimes I got jealous; sometimes Luke did. We talked about our jealousy at length and afterward felt closer. Three years into our relationship, we kept dating other people, but we noticed that the jealousy just kind of stopped. In the spring, Luke filled our living room with yellow daisies and we got engaged.

The next winter, at a party, I met Kat.

She wore a skintight black dress with see-through keyholes on the sides. I couldn’t stop staring. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in real life.

She was there with her boyfriend, Brendan, who was visiting from Portland, Oregon, and they were also polyamorous. I liked Kat and I liked her boyfriend ... finally Luke told me I should ask her out.

I decided I would ask her out by writing her an actual letter and sending it. The letter had a long list of possible dates and times when we might hang out, and I drew cats on the front of it to indicate how whimsical and carefree I was. ...

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

People ask me why I’m getting married, considering my open approach to sexual fidelity. ... I’m getting married because I want to promise, in front of my friends and family, that I am going to love Luke forever. I want to assure him that if he can’t pay his rent, or when someone he loves gets sick, or if his car breaks down in an ice storm and he’s stranded on the highway, that he can call me and I’ll be there for him no matter what. ... More than anything, I want Luke to know that I will tell him the truth, and that when the truth is painful I will stop what I’m doing and tend to him until he feels better.

But I am not going to promise him that our love won’t change, and neither will he promise that to me. The fact that love absolutely will change is one of my favorite things about love. Rather, as the love changes, I hope Luke and I will be able to hold each other with compassion; that we will stay curious and empathetic.

One night, after a December evening out, Kat walked me to the train station. Under the overpass, she pulled me toward her and kissed me in a small, sweet way that threw my stomach into knots. ... Talking with the love of my life about falling for Kat has been an incredible gift. Luke pets my hair and lets me wax poetic in a way that most of my friends can only tolerate for so long. And it goes both ways; I root for him when he goes on dates. Kat says she talks to her boyfriend about me, too.

Right before Christmas, Luke and I went to Portland (my family lives there; we always head over for the holidays) and met up with Kat and Brendan. We all went on a date together. After it was over, Luke and I lay awake in my childhood bed, laughing about how sweet and strange and beautiful our lives were turning out. ...

I know not everyone wants to love this way. I understand fear of loss, and I understand wanting to hold something still when it’s good. Ultimately, this particular shape makes sense to me: love as a blob that can’t be pinned down, as something alive, an animal that ventures from person to person but finds places to call home.

Read the whole article (online October 12, 2018; in the print edition October 14). More about the book.


● More from the author: an excerpt from the book published by Refinery29, How Friendship Can Be Just As Intimate As A Relationship (June 27, 2018). In part:

...We agreed to float a little ways down the river, using our forearms to keep ourselves gently tethered to the ground. We reached a place where the water was deep, but a red maple had fallen across its narrow width. We both grabbed hold of the tree so we could stay in one place, tumbling like wind socks in the current.

By the time we fixed ourselves to the tree, Hannah and I had already spent three hours talking nonstop. The conversation rolled forward unpredictably. There were no lulls or awkward pauses; the things we wanted to say turned up without announcement, and then we broke off into other topics altogether.

Women are especially good at this, psychiatrists Jean Baker Miller and Irene Pierce Stiver point out: they engage in “connective” conversations — conversations that are uniquely healing, and, unfortunately, critically absent in public discourse. According to Miller and Stiver, connectivity occurs when both people are equally invested and share the emotional weight of the conversation’s experience. "Connection in this sense does not depend upon whether the feelings are happy or sad or something else; it means having feelings with another person, aside from the specific nature of the feelings."

Conversation with Hannah was long and easy because we were not seeking solutions to our problems. In discussing the pleasures and pains of our daily lives, we constructed reality together. ...

Sometimes I don’t need a solution nearly as much as I need to be told that whatever crazy thing I’m feeling — terrified of going to sleep at night; palpably angry that my local bagel shop has run out of poppy-seed bagels; in love, unconditionally, with people who can’t love me back — is an okay thing to feel. I’m constantly amazed at the ways in which our world believes that uncomfortable feelings are abnormal and should be avoided or fixed at all costs. Hannah never tries to fix my problems; she sits with me in their shadows, engaging with the darkness.

That was then. . .

"Design for the wedding Go-Cups!"

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"A lesson on what it means to be committed": Sophie Lucido Johnson's new book 'Many Love'

I'm reading Sophie Lucido Johnson's new book Many Love, the story of her very poly life from an early age and her growing awareness that this is an Actual Workable Thing. It's partly a graphic novel, with the words in her drawings continuing the flow of the text.

Illustrations by Sophie Lucido Johnson

Two articles about it are just out, and more are probably on the way.

● In Broadly, an online women's magazine that's part of Vice.com:

What We Can All Learn from Polyamorous Relationships

"Many Love," Sophie Lucido Johnson's new memoir chronicling her years of polyamorous partnerships, is actually a lesson on what it means to be committed.

In the middle of our interview ... [she] casually invites me to her wedding.

“Oh yeah,” the author and artist says, “we’re having an open wedding...it’s October 13, in New Orleans. We got a ton of tacos for hundreds and hundreds of people...it’s going to be in City Park....you can come! Just search 'Luke & Sophie’s Wedding' on Facebook.”

An open wedding is almost too fitting for Johnson and her fiancé; they’re polyamorous, of course.

“But if you come, it’s a flower and dessert potluck,” Johnson adds, immediately balancing expectations, clarifying my role — practices that are integral to successfully maintain multiple partnerships.

Polyamory, a form of nonmonogamy, was the fourth most searched relationship term on Google in 2017, perhaps because the concept is rife with common misconceptions. ...

Many Love offers up a picture of what polyamory has looked like, over the years, for one person — and her many partners. ...

We’re with her as she’s swept away by giddy high school romances, attempting to open up adult relationships, finding best-friendship, finding primary partnership, finding community, finding boyfriends, then falling in love with a boyfriend while staying in a primary relationship. And at each milestone, she narrates her process of making sure she knows herself well enough to communicate her needs and emotions.

...It begins with a FAQ, a list of definitions, and a series of illustrated charts that serve as keys for understanding concepts integral to polyamory. Then, each chapter tackles the fundamental aspects of polyamory: deconstructing myths on singular love, exploring and prioritizing friendship, encountering casual love, having sex, experiencing jealousy, and “checking in.” And throughout, there are candid illustrations and excerpts from the canon of texts on polyamory: Sex at Dawn, The Ethical Slut, Dean Spade’s pivotal [relationship anarchy] essay “For Lovers and Fighters”.

...For Johnson, checking in mandates “transparency, communication, and enthusiastic consent.” Although it can look different for everyone, it’s a process generally fundamental to polyamorous relationships — to make sure that the parameters still work, that jealously is acknowledged, that no one partner has the upper-hand. “You’re always checking in,” Johnson muses, almost lamenting the extent to which the process is at the forefront of her relationships. “I’m so emotional as a person!”

...I found myself wishing the chapter on sex was slightly juicier. But that’s not what Many Love is about, really. ... In Many Love’s introduction, Johnson and Luke attempt to have a romantic evening with another couple, but their DIY sushi night crumbles after their cat has to be rushed to the vet. What’s exchanged between the foursome is not titillating, but tender: The other couple nurtures Johnson and Luke, asking after their needs, making dinner, cleaning up, taking care of them.

Such ability to truly support one another seems to come only after deep understanding — of self and partner — and an acceptance of the fluidity of life. “Polyamory means accepting the ways that love is going to change and checking in with yourself and your partners with the way that is going to change — it’s a great way to let go of your ego a bit,” Johnson says.

...Johnson’s explanation is simple: “I’m pro-commitment. I want people to think about commitment differently, because I think commitment is really cool, but I don’t think commitment is about sex and mononormativity.” This is what Many Love accomplishes, within the canon of texts on polyamory: Transparently chronicling what commitment in the 21st century can look like. ...

The whole article (July 26).


● Insider did an interview. Excerpts:

5 things people always get wrong about polyamory

The author (Emily Rich photo)

Sophie Lucido Johnson [is] a writer and illustrator who lives in Chicago. She has a few partners — a fiancé, a girlfriend, and a long-distance boyfriend. Here's what she says everyone gets wrong about polyamory.

MYTH: Being poly is the same as being in an open relationship.

...In short, all polyamorous relationships are technically open [Hey, not if they're polyfi. –Ed.], but not all open relationships should be considered polyamorous. Polyamorous relationships often involve involve more of an emotional component than open relationships — and can sometimes take the form of friendships.

Part of the confusion comes from the narrow representation of either one in popular culture.

"If you see open relationship models on television, it's always a heterosexual, usually white couple who after years of being monogamous decides to open up their relationship, and it's done in a 'hall pass' kind of capacity," Johnson told INSIDER. "That is just not the only way that this relationship structure can work. I don't even think it's the healthiest way."

In real life, polyamory is much more inclusive.

"There are asexual people who engage in polyamory, communal living can be a kind of polyamory, and queer people often explore the polyamory model in different ways," Johnson told INSIDER. "Polyamory to me is mostly about how much you're willing to communicate and how much you're willing to embrace the inevitable changes that come from this relationship. ..."

MYTH: People who practice polyamory never get jealous.

...In Johnson's experience, polyamorous people simply approach jealousy in a different way.

"I think in a lot of monogamous relationship structures, the strategy is to go around jealousy. In polyamory, the strategy is to go through it," Johnson told INSIDER. ...

This isn't necessarily easy to do, Johnson said, but it gets easier over time.

"There's an initial jolt, and that feels really bad the first few times you go through it, but then it stops feeling bad. Jealousy has become way less of an issue for me than it once was. It's like going to the gym and getting good at doing push-ups. It's no longer something that's so painful that you can't understand why anyone would go through it."

MYTH: Becoming poly can help your relationship if it's on the rocks.

..."I'm sure there are instances where people have done that and it has worked. But in general, that's just a death sentence for your relationship. And if someone doesn't want to be polyamorous, and you do, that's a mismatch. You probably aren't going to be in that relationship long term."

MYTH: Polyamory is all about sex.

It's tempting to focus on the most outrageous aspects of any concept, and polyamory is no exception. ... For Johnson, it's more about making and keeping strong connections, whether they stay romantic or not. ... "I'm so grateful for all my many loves. I feel utterly grateful that I have all these incredible people in my life who are so willing to be honest with me," Johnson told INSIDER. "It's more work at the beginning, but it's like anything else, when you have a habit it becomes easier."

MYTH: Polyamory is an unnatural relationship model.

"I'm a high school teacher, and none of my students are in monogamous relationships," Johnson told INSIDER. "The idea that a book like mine could be controversial is totally over their heads. To them, it's incredibly vanilla."

Johnson suggested that people are gravitating toward a system of "relationship anarchy," which essentially means defining your relationships on your own terms, not by the terms that have been laid out by societal constructs.

There is some data to back this up. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, 16% of Americans viewed the concept of a married person having more than one partner as "acceptable." This, compared to a 7% acceptability rating in 2001, showed a 9% increase over time. ...

Read the whole article (July 26, 2018).

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