Polyamory is all over the news. Two reasons why so much of it is about polyfamilies.

Lots to catch up on. 

Many readers here have noticed a trend: The type of polyamory that most fascinates the media, presumably because it most fascinates the public, is the structurally tightest form: multi-partner polyfamilies. Especially with kids.

I think it's because polyfamilies are two opposite things at once. They are the most radically different form of ENM compared to what people usually think is possible (compared to, say, parallel poly or just an open relationship). And polyfamilies are also the most like the culturally-standard household, just with a twist: three or more adults instead of two.

●  NBC's Today Show, or at least its website, publicized a new word invented by a quad with kids: polyfamory. The group didn't appear on TV, but this article was a hit on Today's website: Mom + dad + mom + dad = One big, happy family. "Meet the parents practicing ‘polyfamory.’ In polyfamory, the possibilities are endless. And poly parents say the challenges are worth it." (Jan. 23).

The piece features two households. The first:

By Danielle Campoamor

As society's idea of what constitutes a family continues to expand, some parents are living in 'polyfamory' households, where multiple partners birth and care for all of their children under one roof.

Alysia Rodgers, 34, says her and her husband, Tyler, were not looking for polyamory — the term for when a person has one or more romantic partners at the same time, with the enthusiastic consent of everyone involved — when they met Sean Hartless, 46, and his wife, Taya.

"We didn't even know what polyamory was, until we started getting feelings for each other," Alysia tells TODAY.com.

Soon, Sean and Taya, 28, were driving nearly two hours to see Alysia and Tyler, 35, in their home in Oregon. Exhausted by the commute and fueled by a desire to see everyone more frequently, the couples moved into a new house together in February, 2020.

And that's how polyamory became polyfamory.

Tyler and Alysia were already parents to two children, now 7 and 8. Tyler says explaining their new living situation to the kids was "really easy."

"Our kids already knew we were dating Sean and Taya," Tyler tells TODAY.com. "We told them: 'You know mom has a boyfriend and dad had a girlfriend and we're going to move in together, and we're all going to be a big family and they're going to help parent you, so we're going to need you to treat them like you treat us — like parents.'"

Since living together under one roof, the family has added two children.

"I birthed one and Taya birthed the other," Alysia says. "We did not regulate the biology" — meaning Alysia, Taya, Tyler and Sean do not know who their 22-month-old's and 15-month-old's biological fathers are.

"We're all equal parents to all of the children and it's not up for debate or discussion," Alysia says. "It's not something that we're trying to hide from the children either. If they want to know where their DNA comes from, we will absolutely go down that path with them. But at this point in their lives, it doesn't matter."

"We wanted to do everything we could to make sure that everybody feels like an equal parent," Taya adds. "At this point, finding out their genetics would change nothing."

A rise in polyamorous relationships

Polyamorous relationships have gained popularity in recent years. One 2021 study of 3,438 single adults in the United States found that one in six respondents "wanted to be polyamorous;" one in nine have been at some point, and one in 15 said they "knew someone who was or is polyamorous."

Still, shows like "Sister Wives" — which depict polygamy, in which one person is married to multiple partners — have caused confusion and even created negative stereotypes about polyamorous families, Sean says.

"'Sister Wives' references always make us laugh, because that's practicing polygamy versus polyamory," he explains. "I think people hear the 'poly' lead in and think that it's the same thing — that's not us. We don't have a hierarchal situation here — we're all trying to be equals and not have the 'patriarch' lead the family."

People magazine soon had their own story about the family: Poly Quad Parents Open Up About Raising Kids, Having Babies Together (Jan. 31).

Business Insider published a piece about them from a different angle: Meet a 4-parent, polyamorous family using 3 incomes and zero daycare costs to beat the US childcare crisis (Feb. 4). The setup "provides the family a unique financial edge: three steady incomes and zero childcare costs."

Then many other media began featuring them.

Back to the Today.com piece: Its second family includes Jennifer Martin, who you may remember for her other media outreach since last summer. She also appeared later as the guest for 90 minutes on the podcast 'Thereafter', "a place where we explore life on the other side of faith change" (Feb. 14). She's an ex-Evangelical who still identifies as Christian.

Jennifer Martin, 34, agrees [about the religious "patriarch" comment by the other family above]. "It's missing autonomy," Jennifer says, who lives Virginia with her husband Daniel, 35, partner Ty Simpson, 32, and their two children.

Jennifer and Daniel both grew up in conservative, evangelical households, where, Jennifer says, "if you fall in love with somebody, you get married." The couple were engaged at 19, married at 20 and had two kids by the time Jennifer was 25.

"I don't even think I ever heard the word 'polyamory,'" Jennifer says. "I didn't know anybody who was non-monogamous. I didn't think that existed."

At 27, after reconsidering what she believed, Jennifer told Daniel she was feeling sexually attracted to and even in love with other people, but was not falling out of love with him, either.

"We took things really slow — we saw a counselor, read books and we went to a polyamory group," she says. "He started dating somebody before I did."

In 2018, Jennifer met Ty. In 2020, he moved in with Jennifer and Daniel and their family grew.

"One of the things that was hard for me in the beginning, was kind of shaking off the mentality that I was taking something away from Daniel and his experiences with the kids," Ty tells TODAY.com. "But it's a community. ... We all have our own roles to play, and at the end of the day, the main goal is to ensure that the kids are being raised to be kind and loving."

Both families say there are both pros and cons to a polyfamory household.

"We have four sets of adult hands to work on things," Tyler says. "It's very rare, I think, for people to have that kind of help."

Alysia, Tyler and Sean all work full time, while Taya is a stay-at-home mom. Sean says knowing the children are always being cared for by at least one parent "is a big sigh of relief" because everyone knows "your kids are for sure taken care of by the right people."

They say their children also learn valuable lessons as a result of their family dynamic — lessons like, "relationships don't have to look a certain way," Sean says, and that however they choose to live is "100% their choice" and that their parents will "love them and support them no matter what," Alysia adds.

Jennifer says she's glad her sons are learning about "autonomy," to question traditional gender roles and how to tap into the power of community.

"We make everything in the house a communal effort," she explains. "They realize that everybody puts their weight in and has a role to play. I hope that that will form a mindset of mutual aid and community when they grow up."

Of course, polyfamory comes with some challenges: scheduling, for one.

"We have to meet weekly and our Google calendars are so chaotic," Daniel tells TODAY.com. "We have to make sure that not only can we coordinate schedules, but that people's needs are met." ...

...Despite the challenges — including moments of jealousy, strangers sexualizing their polyamorous relationships and not being completely accepted by family members — both families say the pros outweigh the cons because their children benefit from having so many trusting, loving adults in their lives.

"At the end of the day, we're just like any other monogamous family — there's just four of us," Tyler says. "Being a parent is so much more than just biology, and that's what we're about."

One of the Polyfamory quad posted on the group's Instagram: "I cannot thank [Today Show author] @daniellecampoamor enough for being an absolute joy to work with. The positivity and education in this article is everything we could’ve asked for."

●  New York Times, Style section: A Handfasting Ceremony For Two … or Three (or More) (Feb. 18 online; Feb. 19 print edition).

"The Celtic ritual has become a popular commitment ceremony for some polyamorous couples" [sic]

By Jenny Block [who presumably didn't write that tagline].

...Handfasting is an ancient practice that “has become more popular across the board,” said Scarlett Mullikin, an officiant based in Kankakee County, Ill., and the founder of Natural Element Ceremonies. And because it involves binding partners’ hands together — symbolizing the binding of two, three, four (or more) lives — it’s “the easiest way to connect multi-partners” or those who are polyamorous, she said.

...The benefits of a committed relationship are the same whether monogamous, polyamorous, legally recognized or not. “There’s a safety and a security to crossing this threshold of marriage,” [Houston counselor Ty David] Lerman said. “Polyam relationships are still just relationships.”

And with a handfasting ceremony, Ms. Mullikin said, partners can “experience the joy and the energy and the bliss that goes into a wedding day.”

●  On TV: CBS Minnesota WCCO-TV broadcast What is polyamory? What does it mean in relationships? (Feb. 8). "There is a broad spectrum of relationship types that address romantic or sexual needs, Dr. Shonda Craft explains." Watch the 5-minute interview. Craft is positive and excellently informative.

● Throuples, ménages and the power of three: Can ‘triad’ relationships really work? (The Independent, UK; Jan. 20). "Throuples, or ‘triad’ relationships, are having a moment."

iStock

“Call us a throuple,” Selena Gomez recently captioned an Instagram photo showing her embracing Brooklyn Beckham and his wife Nicola Peltz. She was apparently joking, but that’s perhaps part of the problem. While various celebrities seem to be vaguely alluding to polyamory lately, everyone’s being decidedly coy about coming right out and talking about it.

...There are countless ways a triad can look. Grace, a 41-year-old civil servant from Bristol, recalls her first throuple experience being a bit of an accident. “We had some really good times and there was genuine desire and intent between both my partners to be together as well as with me, but they were both quite shy with each other and their relationship went slowly,” she explains.

...Many of the hierarchical problems that arise in throuples, though, are down to the way they’re formed: often an established couple who then meet a “third”, with all the problems that arise from that kind of language.

“If two people out of three had a pre-existing relationship that was already well established, those two people have couple’s privilege,” Grace explains, adding that it can impact everything – from “big decisions [that] always prioritise the stability of one of the relationships in the triad, to small things like language that minimises or separates the most recent partner.” Saying to the newest partner “Wanna come with us to the gig Friday night?”, or even “We love you, we’re so happy we met you” reinforces an unequal “us” and “you” dynamic that can lead to pain in the long term. ...

Winter, a 28-year-old from Bristol, says it’s not an uncommon set-up: all her throuple experiences were with herself, the same established partner, and a third. “My aim was always to create distinct and separate relationships between each of us, thinking of it as three pairs rather than one throuple,” she says. ... “I felt the frame-of-mind was important to how things were viewed.”

While it’s great to see more conversations being had around ethical non-monogamy, there’s also a keen awareness among everyone I spoke to that media representation is usually a massive let-down. Anne Hodder-Smith, a sex expert based in the US, says that the well-worn cliché of one man and two women enjoying a string of threesomes is a cis-normative trope that very rarely reflects reality.

...“Stop using the word ‘third’. Nothing says you want to devalue a human being by adding them onto your relationship like that word.”

Winter also recommends taking time and allowing space for it to work. “Go slowly, and make sure everybody has figured each other out and the dynamic has reached stability before really committing to any labels,” she says. “This involves the general relationship advice of strong, open and honest communication from all parties, and turned up to 10. ...”

●  Also in the The Independent, a book author in a same-sex marriage speaks up for poly relationships. Throuples aren’t immoral – and neither is my own ‘scandalous’ marriage (Jan. 26; registration walled)

Why should we think it shocking for someone to love multiple others? We don’t restrict any other relationship to a binary.

"Among polyamorists, erotic pleasure and commitment
are shared rather than narrowed." (iStock)

By Andrew Solomon

...I have spent several years interviewing people in polygamous and polyamorous relationships, and while I started my research feeling suspicious of these arrangements, I ended by thinking they may make perfect sense to the people living them – and that their ideas of affective commitment were ultimately all that mattered.

Why should we think it shocking for someone to love multiple others? We don’t restrict any other relationship to a binary; most people have multiple friends. If some people want to be in multiple sexual relationships, or to make a commitment to one another that is sustaining and defining even in the absence of eros, then why should those arrangements be denied legal status? In fact, there is a social and political interest in sustaining these models, because people who marry one another – in any arrangement – usually take care of one another. This can relieve the state of enormous costs and burdens. ...

...I write as someone whose own marriage would have seemed scandalous when I was growing up, and was illegal until I was in my 40s. ... In his excellent new novel The New Life, the London Review of Books' Tom Crewe describes the struggle that set the stage for my marriage, and I could not read his words without feeling anew how vulnerable we remain to the shifting tides of chauvinism. My finest book has been banned in three American states lest the story of my joyful marriage infect young readers. ...

●  Quebec LGBTQ2S+ minister 'open' to recognizing multi-parent families (Canadian Press, Feb. 3)

Quebec's minister responsible for LGBTQ2S+ issues, Martine Biron, says she's open to developing some form of recognition for families with more than two parents.

...Groups like the Coalition des familles LGBT+ have called upon the Legault government to provide legal recognition for multi-parent families. ...

●  More from Cosmopolitan: 7 Things People *Always* Get Wrong About What It’s Really Like to Be in a Throuple (Jan. 25)

By Abby Moss

My partners and I are at IKEA, in the middle of the kitchen section, arguing about Kilner jars. I’m saying we’ve got enough jars and that everything in our kitchen doesn’t need to be stored in jars anyway. Andrea*, on the other hand, thinks we need jars for everything—rice, pasta, lentils, and so on. Paul* doesn’t care about the jars but is getting hungry and wants to go get meatballs. We’re attracting a few odd glances from the couples passing by. They’re trying to figure out our dynamic. There are three of us, but we’re arguing like a couple. We clearly live together, but we don’t seem like roommates—that’s for sure. ...

●  Conservatives continue to go after the shrinks: American Psychological Association distances itself from panel studying 'marginalized' polyamory community says Fox News, Feb. 16, citing The Christian Post.

The APA "does not have a policy with respect to consensual non-monogamous relationships," a spokesperson said. ...

The APA Division 44 Committee on Consensual Non-Monogamy "focuses on research, practice, and education about consensually non-monogamous relationships," according to its website.

The committee said that it "seeks to address the needs of people who practice consensual non-monogamy, including needs that may arise from the intersection of [consensually non-monogamous relationships] with their other marginalized identities."

The "five primary purposes" of APA 44 include research, psychological practice, education and training, social justice and public awareness.

A Feb. 10 article by Dr. Melissa Martin in The Published Reporter that noted the committee is "circulating a survey and a petition seeking to secure legally protected class status for individuals with multiple sex partners," and the former child therapist also speculated that APA 44 shows the APA "wants bigamy and polygamy to be legalized as group marriage."

APA Public Affairs Director Kim I. Mills pushed back against any claims that the organization supports polyamory, according to The Christian Post.

"APA divisions are quasi-independent organizations that are free to establish committees to represent and promote their specialties within psychology, using the best empirical evidence," Mills told the outlet.

"As such, they do not speak for the American Psychological Association, which does not have a policy with respect to consensual non-monogamous relationships," Mills continued. "The only official APA policies are those that are adopted by the APA Council of Representatives, the APA's governing body of nearly 200 of the nation's leading psychologists, which meets twice a year. ...

●  Easy as one, two, three: Are throuples becoming more mainstream? (Sydney Morning Herald and other Australian papers in its chain, Feb. 3)

Dianne Gain

By Samantha Selinger-Morris

...“Students are much more likely now, than 10 years ago, to say they’re open to polyamory, or that they are in fact polyamorous,” says Dr Samuel Shpall, a senior lecturer at The University of Sydney who teaches The Philosophy Of Sex. ...

QT Hotels and Resorts ... is launching its upcoming ‘You, Plus Two’ Valentine’s Day deal, aimed at celebrating “love that comes in three”. QT’s Australian hotels and resorts will offer free martinis and oysters for bookings of three this February 14. ...

“I find, clinically, often couples come in saying, ‘We want to explore non-monogamy as a way of spicing up our [sex] life’,” says Sydney sex therapist Jacqueline Hellyer.... “It’s often seen as a bit of a quick fix to a bored or jaded relationship.” ...

But her clients often don’t go forward and pursue being part of a throuple, or another consensual non-monogamous arrangement, after she walks them through what they really want from their relationship, and how having multiple partners can play out. ...

Trio in ‘Y tu mamá también’ (Shutterstock)

●  Throuples on film: 9 times movies and TV shows depicted ‘triad’ relationships (UK Independent, Feb. 15). "Sometimes three’s company... sometimes it can be so much more. Louis Chilton picks nine of the best films and TV shows centring on three-person polyamorous relationships."

●  In the Georgia Voice, an LGBTQ semi-monthly: Dating While Queer in The Modern Age: On Ethical Nonmonogamy and Polyamory (Feb. 2)

By Divine Ikpe

...I spoke to two different polyamorous queer people: Opal, who is just starting to consider polyamory as a viable option for herself, and Fay, who is in a long-term polyamorous throuple. ...

●  I tried the hook-up app for Generation Threesome. Here’s what happened next (The UK's Times, Feb. 9, paywalled.) "Wooed by social media, Gen Z is embracing lifestyle choices that were once considered taboo."

●  Have non-monogamy labels on dating apps caused more harm than good? (Mashable, Feb. 14)

Ashley Vargas

In the last months of 2022, the ethically non-monogamous (ENM) community celebrated a huge win. Dating app Hinge launched their 'Relationship Types' feature, allowing their users to mark if they identified as ethically non-monogamous (ENM) or monogamous. Undoubtedly a landmark event, this marked the first mainstream ‘traditional’ dating app to make conscious strides towards inclusivity for the ENM community since OkCupid allowed polyamorous couples to link their profiles in 2016. Speaking to Mashable, a Hinge spokesperson commented: "We believe that everyone looking for love should be able to find it which is why we’re constantly looking at new ways to support daters' needs."

However, the move sparked an increase in anti-ENM discourse on social media and brought up new questions asked about the virtual future and place for ENM people. ...

●  Away from the mainstream apps, a bi guy's take on 9 Polyamorous Dating Apps [that] Will Help You Meet Awesome Partners (Men's Health, Feb. 13, by Zachary Zane). "For poly folks looking for those special someones."

●  Zane also has been given a new column in Cosmopolitan: Mistake #1: Diving Into Polyamory for All the Wrong Reasons (Feb. 8). "Introducing Navigating Non-Monogamy, a new column in which Zachary Zane walks you through all the fumbles he’s made on his polyamory journey so that you, dear reader, don’t have to."

●  Feeld is probably the leading dating app for poly, ENM, kink, and other alternative folx. Document Journal, a classy fashion magazine "of independent thought and culture," runs a photo-heavy feature on the company and its founder: Feeld is the dating app for the next sexual revolution (Feb. 7). "Document catches up with Ana Kirova, the radical platform’s founder, examining the roots, rules, and labels of the modern sexual landscape."

Claire Seka

●  Quite a different take from the student Fordham Observer at Fordham University: We Can All Learn From Polyamory (Feb. 8), by Jessica Wu. "The nine pillars of relationship anarchy provide lessons for people in any type of relationship."

● 'It's a liberation': Belgians increasingly open to polyamorous relationships (The Brussels Times, Feb. 3)

●  Whole Lotta Love: Polyamory Takes Off (in the Pacific Sun of Marin County, California, " the longest running alternative newsweekly on the planet," Feb. 7)

...“I have seen many straight couples open their relationship at the woman’s initiative,” said Diane Gleim, a certified sex therapist (CST) based in Sonoma County. “[The common] assumption is that it’s mostly men who seek polyamory because they want multiple sexual partners. There is research that shows that monogamous, heterosexual women actually desire novel sex and novel sexual partners more than heterosexual, monogamous men.” Several other counselors interviewed agreed.

Even when women are not the instigators, they often become champions of the way of life. ...

UPCOMING POLYCONS.  The annual round of polyamory conventions, retreats, campouts, and other gatherings is opening up again, tentatively, as the pandemic seems to be receding. At least three are set for April and May:

–  Poly Big Fun retreat, April 9–12, in Bastrop State Park near Austin, TX

–  Southwest Love Fest, April 14–16, Tucson, AZ

–  The ever poly-friendly New Culture Spring Camp, May 5–10, Abrams Creek Retreat Center, Mt. Storm, WV.

This summer has a lot of them. See Alan's List of Polyamory Events for all such gatherings on the calendar for the next 12 months. All that I know about, anyway! Tell me about any I'm missing: alan7388 (at) gmail.com .

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Meanwhile...

Why have I been ending posts to this polyamory news site with Ukraine?

Because I've seen many progressive movements die out because they failed to scan the wider world correctly and understand their position in it strategically.

We polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Increasingly powerful people call us a threat to society — because by living successfully outside of their worldview, we expose its incompleteness.

Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, is just one way we depend on a free and pluralistic society that respects people's dignity to create their own lives, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.

The Russian family-cartoon series Masyanya
turned dissident. Watch. The cartoonist got out.
Update: a brilliant sequel of turnabout, with a
coda of empathy in wartime. 
 

Such a society is possible only where people have power to govern themselves, combined with legal structures that are at least supposed to guarantee the rights of all.

Innovative people, communities, and societies who create their own lives, and who insist on the democratic structures and legal rights that enable them to do so safely, infuriate and terrify the authoritarians who are growing in power around the world and in our own United States. Now with overlap.

Such rulers and would-be rulers seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose their lives — by intimidation, repressive laws, inflammatory disinformation and public incitement, abuse of police powers, or eventually, tanks and artillery.

For what it's worth, this site has received more pagereads from Ukraine over the years (56,400) than from any other country in eastern Europe.

For now, you can donate to Ukraine relief through this list of vetted organizations or many others. We're giving to a big one, Razom, and to a little one, Pizza for Ukraine in Kharkiv, a project of an old friend of my wife (story).

But that is only the start. For those of us born since World War II, we are witnessing the most consequential war of our lifetimes. Because we have entered another time when calculating fascism, at home and abroad, is rising and sees freedom and liberalism and social tolerance as weak, degenerate, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. As Russia thought it saw in Ukraine.

The coming times are going to require hard things of us. We don't get to choose the time and place in history we find ourselves born into, but we do get to choose how we respond to it. Buck up and be ready.

Need a little help bucking up? Play this. Another version, on the streets of Kherson the night after its liberation November 11. More? Just some guys in Kharkiv (our Pizza for Ukraine town) helping to hold onto a free and open society, a shrinking thing in the world. The tossed grenade seems to have saved them. Maybe your granddad did this across a trench from Hitler's troops — for you, and us, because a world fascist movement was successfully defeated that time, opening the way for the rest of the 2oth century. Although the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years there.

Remember, these people say they too are doing it for us. They are correct.  The global struggle between a free, open future and a fearful revival of the dark past that's shaping up, including in our own country, is still in its early stages. It's likely to get worse before it gets better. The outcome is again uncertain, and it will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its other problems.

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

PS: Ukraine should not be idealized as the paragon of an open democratic society. For instance, see If Ukraine Wants To Stand for Liberty and Democracy, It Should Rethink Some of Its Wartime Policies. And it has quite the history of being run by corrupt oligarchs — leading to the Maidan Uprising of 2013, the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, and Zelensky's overwhelming election in 2019 as the anti-corruption candidate. So they're working on that. (More.)

Now, writes US war correspondent George Packer in The Atlantic, 

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

They have a word there, with a deep history, for the horizontal, self-organized mutual get-it-done that grows from community social trust: hromada. Learn that word. It's getting them through as well as they've been able. We polyfolks often dream of creating something like that community spirit in miniature, in our polycules and networks. Occasionally we succeed.

Social attitudes in Ukraine tend traditional, rooted in a thousand years of the Orthodox Church, but not bitterly so like often in the US; the ideal of modern European civil society is widely treasured, and social progressivism has room to thrive. The status of women is rocketing, especially since the start of the war (pre-war article). A reported 57,000 women volunteer in the armed forces, flooding traditionally male bastions, including as combat officers, platoon leaders, artillery gunners, tankers, and snipers. Some LGBT folx in the armed forces wear symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, whereas in Russia it's a prison-worthy crime for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin or "say gay."

And in November, Russia made it a crime not just to speak for LGBT recognition, but to speak for "non-traditional sexual relations." Until recently Russia had an active polyamory education and awareness movement.

Polyfolks are like one ten-thousandth of what's at stake globally. Ukraine must have our continued material support for as long as it takes. Speak up for it, loudly.

"Defenders of Bakhmut," where soldiers at the front line gave Zelensky the signed battle flag he presented to Nancy Pelosi. Art by Natasha Le in Mikolaiv; she reinterprets traditional guardian angels as riot grrls for an upcoming generation.

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PS: A real-life version of that icon in Bakhmut; the artwork isn't just fantasy.  Vedma ("Witch") commands a mortar platoon there; watch vid from Jan. 3. In February they were rotated out of Bakhmut after many months, and she recorded this (Feb. 21):

🇺🇦Witch tells the story of the Bakhmut Asphalt Plant❤️ pic.twitter.com/UC3y0NsDjQ

— Sofia Ukraini (@SlavaUk30722777) February 22, 2023

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Mouse puppets voice a polyamory documentary on the BBC. Georgia's first queer nonbinary polyam Iranian elected official and their triad. And other poly in the news.

●  Here's something different. The BBC's online streaming channel BBC-3 aired a television documentary with members of the UK's polyamory community, using mouse puppets to speak their voices. This gives the interviewees both cuteness and anonymity. Filmmaker Emily Morus-Jones says a a reason for the idea was to separate the viewers from making automatic judgments against humans on display. It's titled Diomysus  — More than Monogamy. Watch below. (If the embed won't play, watch it here.)

The 5-minute piece aired on BBC-3 yesterday, October 6. It certainly holds attention, and the interviews themselves are lovely.

An article about it yesterday: Creature Comforts meets Jim Henson in new BBC polyamory doc (on the site It's Nice That, "championing creativity since 2007"). Excerpts:

Capturing a community on the rise – one at best misunderstood, at worst vilified in society – Diomysus floats fresh perspectives on polyamory.

By Liz Gorny

...Emily [the filmmaker] turned to the combination of soundbites and puppeteering so famously utilised in Creature Comforts, this time reaping a particular reward from the approach – anonymity.

...Diomysus certainly discusses sensitive themes. The film presents interviews with a range of people who are polyamorous, discussing their relationships and the backlash they’ve run into when sharing their polyamory with their circles. “Polyamory, although certainly slowly making its way into mainstream culture, is for many people quite a challenging concept to get their heads around, and we live in a very aesthetically driven society,” Emily explains. Puppetry gives space to Diomysus’ contributors to speak freely but also to the audience to absorb challenging concepts in a welcoming format and look beyond the people presenting the ideas.

...“I wanted to find a creature that was sex-positive,” Emily explains. After deciding against other more obvious choices – dolphins, the bonobo – the director finally arrived at mice. “I read somewhere that house mice very often raise their pups as a group,” the director reveals. To Emily, this seemed to speak to what polyamory is all about; working together with your partners to “survive the, often turbulent, world which we live in”.

...Diomysus is ultimately an experiment in unconscious bias. It aims to both shift the narrative around polyamory and see if puppetry can help provide some space for empathy and nuanced thought around the subject. As Emily says: “One of the most joyful things about puppets is that they can get away with a lot of things that people can’t and the audience accepts it. ...

...“I think society at large can learn a lot from the polyamorous community if it takes the time to really understand the depth of the ideas that they are trying to get across.”

●  This one's getting a lot of attention all over:  Georgia lawmaker comes out as nonmonogamous: 'I'm in love with two wonderful people' The story below is from the "NBC Out" subsite of NBC News (Sept. 28)

Atlanta City Council member Liliana Bakhtiari, the first queer Muslim person to be elected in Georgia, has two partners, and the three of them plan to build a family.

Liliana Bakhtiari (center) with Sarah Al-Khayyal (left)
 and Kris Brown. Cats: Moo (left) and Rugrat.

 By Jo Yurcaba

When Atlanta City Council member Liliana Bakhtiari won the 5th District seat last November, it represented two major firsts: Bakhtiari was the first queer Muslim person elected in the state of Georgia and the first nonbinary councilmember of a major U.S. city.

But Bakhtiari, who uses they and she pronouns, wasn’t entirely out of the closet at the time. While they had been with their partner, Kris Brown, for 10 years, the duo kept quiet about what they’ve both described as one of the best parts of their lives: They are nonmonogamous, and are in a relationship with a third person, Sarah Al-Khayyal.

Now, a year after Bakhtiari’s election and two years into their relationship with Brown and Al-Khayyal, the three of them have decided to come out in an exclusive interview with NBC News as they plan to build a family.

Bakhtiari said that too often stories like theirs will come out “in a scandal.”

“But we’re openly showing it and proud of it,” Bakhtiari, 34, said during a video interview, as Brown and Al-Khayyal sat on either side. “It should be destigmatized. It’s a very valid familial structure that people should embrace.”

...Bakhtiari met Brown in Atlanta in 2012 the old fashioned way — at a gay bar. When the two started dating, Bakhtiari said they were upfront with Brown that they are nonmonogamous, meaning they prefer to date and form relationships with more than one person.

“I was like, ‘That’s cool with me,’” said Brown, 33.... “It was the first time that I had been with anyone who didn’t want to be monogamous. For me, it was kind of a relief as well to be like, ‘OK, I don’t have to be this person’s everything all the time. I can be as much of their life as works for us, and we can have this fluidity,’ and I really liked the feeling of that.”

Bakhtiari said their relationship with Brown was the first serious relationship they had, and they were coming into it at a difficult time in their life. 

“I grew up in an overbearing household that didn’t allow for a lot of independence to happen,” Bakhtiari said. ...

Their friends and community members saw how positively the relationship affected Bakhtiari, they said, and it became publicly romanticized. But, Bakhtiari said, that meant “when people would find out that we were open or nonmonogamous, it was like someone destroyed a fairytale for them.” 

...In the fall of 2020, Bakhtiari met Al-Khayyal through a virtual nonmonogamy support group. Al-Khayyal is a policy manager at a nonprofit and is on the Atlanta mayor’s LGBTQ advisory board. 

...“This is the sort of thing that a political opponent or someone who has some ax to grind might pick up on and twist around and turn into something negative, and we want to claim it upfront, and say this is the best thing about our life,” Brown said. 

Bakhtiari said that when they tell people about their relationship, people often respond in two ways: with support and/or curiosity. ... Their families have also been supportive, Bakhtiari said. ...

In addition to allowing them to live openly and address stigma, Brown said that they hope coming out will allow them to raise awareness of barriers that nontraditional families still face.

For example, Brown was in the hospital this year, and only one person was allowed in the hospital room with them.

“There’s an opportunity for us to kind of shed light on that, and be like, ‘Hey, there are nontraditional families out there,’” Brown said. “We’re going to grow our family, and we want those kids to also be able to navigate the world how they want to navigate the world.”

Another example of the coverage: in The Advocate, Queer Lawmaker Liliana Bakhtiari Comes Out as Nonmonogamous (Sept. 30). 

●  Triad interaction patterns. A triad is the simplest polycule that contains an interrelationship bond (since it has three links, as opposed to a vee with two separate ones). This naturally means that triads — never mind whether all three bonds are sexual — are the commonest poly interrelationships you see. 

Any relationship of three people, whether they're friends, siblings, co-workers, or poly partners, tends to develop certain characteristic behaviors, writes polyfamily researcher Elisabeth Sheff on her Psychology Today blogsite: Common Interaction Patterns Among 3 People (Sept. 27). 

...Interactions among three entities—individuals, groups, institutions—are incredibly common. From two older siblings ganging up on the youngest one, to the “theater geeks” and the “stoners” creating an informal coalition to prank the “jocks” in their high school, or the United States attempting to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians... common patterns of interaction appear between three units.

In 1890s Berlin, foundational sociologist Georg Simmel hosted cocktail parties and salons where he would observe interactions among the partygoers. Through decades of such observations, Simmel developed his ideas of social interaction on an interpersonal level and created theories about those at the larger social level, including topics like money, fashion, games, and the social life of urban centers. Many of Simmel’s ideas explore social distance and placement, which he called social geometry.

...These patterns reappear so often that they function almost as archetypes for interaction, not only among individuals but at every social level.

Patterns among three entities take several primary forms: all three united together, two forming a coalition against the remaining one, or one mediating between [or bossing?] the other two.

...When all three entities are together, they strongly align their ideas, behaviors, and goals.

[In] a dynamic of two against one, two of the three collaborate to present a united front....

In other cases, one member of the threesome will mediate between the other two.

...These triadic dynamics will vary tremendously in consensually nonmonogamous (CNM) relationships, depending largely on the type of CNM, the people involved in the interactions, the boundaries they have negotiated, and the distribution of power within the threesome.

The dream for many polyamorists is the three-for-all dynamic when every triad member shares a strong agreement about boundaries and goals, and all are equally invested in the long-term well-being of the relationship and its members.

While that level of connection and agreement can be delightful, it can also be quite challenging to establish and sustain—especially if two members of the threesome had an established relationship before connecting with the third. ...

Some triads create an alternative to the two-for-one ["couple privilege"] dynamic, in which both members of the pre-existing relationship focus on the third person who has joined them. When done manipulatively to get the third person to bond with the existing couple and forsake outside connections, that joint attention might be better understood as love bombing. If it is an authentic attempt to honor and celebrate the newcomer, then a two-for-one dynamic can spur the transition to three-for-all.

Another common expression is the one-between-two interaction, in which one partner wants to be with two other people, but those people are somehow at odds with each other. ... Done manipulatively, the hinge distorts information in translation to control the situation. More often, at least in my research data, the hinge feels caught between the two partners, buffeted and pulled rather than in control of the interactions. In many resilient polyamorous relationships, the two partners of the hinge establish a friendly relationship in which they can communicate directly if needed.

Sometimes these [endpoints of a vee] develop polyaffective relationships, coming to see each other as chosen family members like a sibling, dear friend, and/or co-spouse. Over the years, several of the polyaffective triads in my longitudinal study have transitioned from a congenial one-between-two to a three-for-all dynamic without the sexual relationships changing at all. ...

●  Also by Sheff, just up: What Makes a Resilient Throuple? (Oct. 7). "How Gen Z is changing the stereotypical norms of consensual non-monogamy."

...Rather than the stereotypical one man with two women triad, my findings indicate that the most common and stable form of polyamorous triad among the parents in my [25-year] research sample (primarily the youngest Baby Boomers and Gen X) is composed of a woman with two male partners. In contrast with the one penis policy common in some FMF throuples, these triads with two men and one woman very rarely have a "one vagina policy." Much more often, all members of the triad are able to date others of any gender they desire.

...At their best, the men develop an intimate bond with each other outside of their connection to the woman. This bond between the metamours (the men who are each partnered with the woman but not in a sexual relationship with each other) is so important to the stability of these triads that I named them polyaffective relationships and identified that bond as the core of the stable polyamorous family or polycule. ...

Among the Millennials and Generation Z, the stereotypical one-man-with-two-women triad is less common for an additional reason. Not only do these younger people tend to have a less rigid power hierarchy associated with gender, but many of them also reject stereotypical gender completely.

...Zoomers and Millennials are changing the face of gender, sexuality, relationships, and the associated power hierarchies that go with these complex and intertwined categories. In so doing, they have also largely reconstructed the stereotypical FMF polyamorous triad into something much more fluid.

● And more Poly 101 in pop media: Common Mistakes When Trying Non-Monogamy (Ask Men, Sept.  30). Below are the subtitles. Each gets a paragraph of explanation and one of "What to do instead." The advice is brief but worth passing on to the curious.

By Alex Manley

...So many people are new to this stuff; there aren’t a ton of existing cultural scripts to guide people. 

...AskMen spoke to three non-monogamy experts about common mistakes to avoid. Here’s what they had to say: 

1. Pressuring a Monogamous Partner to Open Up...

2. Not Knowing What You Want from Non-Monogamy...

3. Assuming Non-Monogamy Will Fix a Monogamous Relationship... 

4. Thinking Non-monogamy Is All About Sex...

5. Trying to Avoid Your Emotions:

...“If you want to work through an emotion,” [Jess] O’Reilly says, you could consider these strategies:

    -- Consider how it shows up in your body. 

    -- Look for ways to assuage the physical sensations/manifestations. 

    -- Write down/reflect upon how you’re feeling and why you think you’re feeling that way.

    -- Write down/reflect upon how you want to feel. Consider what it would take for you to feel that way.

    -- Don’t feel pressure to analyze every single feeling.

6. Making Assumptions About What It Will Look Like...

7. Assuming You’ll Get Laid a Ton...

8. Decreasing Communication Over Time...

9. Not Thinking About Scheduling...

●  The newspaper advice lady "Ask Annie" (Annie Lane) comes around. She's published a followup to her column a month ago in which, you may remember, a person signing themself "Three's Company" complained "My future in-laws’ polyamorous relationship makes me not want to be around them."  Annie more or less sniffed off the idea of any triad having a future. Now she takes poly relationships more seriously in a new column: Three's Company followup (Morning Journal, Lisbon, Ohio; Sept. 30).

That's because of a very thoughtful letter someone sent her. Was it one of you? 

Dear Annie: I’m writing regarding “Three’s Company,” who feels uncomfortable around her future brother- and sister-in-law and their girlfriend who now lives with them and their children. You were correct to say that only the people involved know what really goes on in a relationship. I am sure you will hear from others, but polyamory can mean long-term, committed relationships. Just because they don’t look like what the concerned sister-in-law believes they should look like doesn’t make them wrong and it doesn’t mean they are doomed. ...

Many poly people actively spend time learning to better communicate with their partners. I have been in a loving polyamorous relationship for 24 years. My partners care for me and support each other when I have been seriously ill. Even the nuns in the nursing home I was in for a while said they had never heard of it before but that I had the best support system they had ever seen.

Three’s Company should consider supporting her sister-in-law, and maybe she will learn that love may look different for the thruple, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Also, the children may now have another trusted adult to turn to when they need help with homework or are frustrated with their parents. Love is beautiful in many forms. — Pleased to Be Poly

Dear Pleased: Thank you for sharing your insights. You’re right that there is an abundance of love out there, and it looks different for everyone. There are certainly details about the thruple’s situation that we don’t know. I hope their dynamic is as loving and supportive as the one you have with your partners.

●  Podcast on Somerville's multi-domestic partnership law. Meredith Goldstein is a super-popular advice columnist in my hometown Boston Globe. She also has a podcast, "Love Letters," and just up on it is Welcome to Polyamory City (29 minutes; Season 7, Episode 3).  "Polyamory City" is Somerville next to Boston.  

In 2020, Somerville, Massachusetts became the first municipality in the country allowing polyamorous relationships to qualify for domestic partnership status. Meredith talks to one of the first people to register for the new designation. They discuss what it means – and what it doesn’t. Meredith also talks to a [local] legal expert [Kimberly Rhoten of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition, PLAC] about the broader social and legal implications of the Somerville ordinance.

I learned something new from this: You don't have to live in Somerville to get its certificate of multiple domestic partnership!

No, it's not legally valid elsewhere. But if you have that document, you not only have something to frame and hang on your wall, it will also be evidence of your serious, committed multiple relationship at the time of issuance, if you ever need this in family court, housing court, a custody dispute, or who knows what. And of course, if you have kids it could become an heirloom for generations.

●  I note this one because of the headline: The Era Of Ethical Non-Monogamy Is Here. But Are We Just Blindly Following A Fad? (Hauterrfly, a women's-products influencer site, Sept. 27). Despite the headline it's a positive little Poly 101, but the writer lays out the bad experiences she had with today's scene.

If you're "just blindly following a fad" you really shouldn't be doing this thing.

●  A similar reminder: Some — many? — people you'll meet these days talk the ENM talk but don't walk the walk. Ethical non-monogamy is a farce, I know because I tried it. This appeared Oct. 6 in the "Body & Soul" subsite of Murdoch's News.com.au.

Not all ethical non monogamous relationships are as bright and shiny as they may seem from the outside. From a lack of trust to STIs and being ghosted, Shona Henley pens the reality of these (often glamourised) partnerships.

 

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

Meanwhile, much bigger shit gets real.

Why have I been ending most posts to this polyamory news site with the Ukraine war?

Because I've seen many progressive movements become irrelevant and die out by failing to scan the wider world correctly and understand their position in it strategically.

We polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Some influential people call us a threat to society — because by living successfully outside their worldview, we expose its incompleteness. Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, is just one way we depend on a free and pluralistic society that respects people's dignity to create their own lives, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.

The Russian family-cartoon series Masyanya
turned dissident. Watch. The cartoonist has fled.
 

Such a society is only possible where people have power to govern themselves, combined with legal structures that are at least supposed to guarantee the rights of all.

People, communities, and societies who create their own lives, and who insist on the democratic structures and legal rights that enable them to do so safely, infuriate and terrify the authoritarians who are growing in power around the world and in our own United States.

Such rulers and would-be rulers seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose their lives — by intimidation, repressive laws, inflammatory disinformation and public incitement, or, eventually, artillery.

For what it's worth, this site has received more pagereads from Ukraine over the years (56,400) than from any other country in eastern Europe.

For now, you can donate to Ukraine relief through this list of organizations vetted by the Washington Post, or many others. We're giving to a big one, Razom, and to a little one, Pizza for Ukraine in Kharkiv, a project of an old friend of my wife.

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

But that is only the start. For those of us born since World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetimes.

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

Need a little help bucking up? Play this. Another version. More? Just some guys in Kharkiv (our Pizza for Ukraine town) helping to hold onto a free and open society, a shrinking thing in the world. The tossed grenade seems to have saved them. Maybe your granddad did this across a trench from Hitler's troops — for you, and for us,  because a world fascist movement was successfully defeated that time, opening the way for the rest of the 2oth century. Although the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years there.

Remember, these people say they're doing it for us too. They are correct.  The global struggle between a free, open future and a fearful revival of the dark past that's shaping up, including in our own country, is still in its early stages. The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. The outcome is again uncertain, and it will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its other problems.

We'll have a better idea after the election. Whatever else you do, vote.

BTW:  The single most cost- and time-effective thing you can do to Get Out The Vote is urge your friends and family to vote.

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

PS: Ukraine should not be idealized as the paragon of an open democratic society. For instance, see If Ukraine Wants To Stand for Liberty and Democracy, It Should Rethink Some of Its Wartime Policies. And the country had quite a history of being run by corrupt oligarchs — until the Maidan Uprising of 2013, the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, and Zelensky's overwhelming election in 2019 as the anti-corruption candidate. So they're working on that.

Now, writes US war correspondent George Packer in The Atlantic (Sept. 7),   

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

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

Social attitudes in Ukraine are generally traditional, but not bitterly so like often in the US; the ideal of modern European civil society is widely treasured, and social progressivism has room to thrive. More than 40,000 women volunteers reportedly serve all roles in the armed forces, including as combat officers, platoon leaders, artillery gunners, tankers, and snipers. LGBT folx in the armed forces openly wear symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, whereas in Russia it can be a crime for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin. Writes kos in the big lefty news site Daily Kos (July 29),

I find [this] particularly salient given American conservative hostility toward women serving in our military. People like Ted Cruz praising the supposed manliness of the Russian army, while claiming ours is weak because of “woke culture.” Ukraine puts that bullshit to bed, not just with the women serving in its ranks, but with gay soldiers very publicly sewing unicorn patches on their uniforms to denote their pride.

He retweets a meme from a military blogger on the plight of the abused gay Russian draftee:

To hell with any conservatives who impugn anyone’s service as somehow less effective or honorable than white straight men. 

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