Polyamory in the News
. . . by Alan M.



August 12, 2026

Polyamory in the News all over. And upcoming events.

___________________________

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


August 13 – 17, Breckenridge, CO
August 14 – 16, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

♥  Camp Constellation (formerly PolyCamp Northeast)
August 17 – 23, central New Hampshire 

August 21 – 23, Denver, CO

August 30 – September 7, Nevada desert

September 5 – 7, Ávila, Spain

♥  Polytopia
September 19 – 20, Portland, OR

October 4 – 8, Breckenridge, CO


November 6 – 8, Indianapolis, IN

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

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

___________________________


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

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


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


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


By H. Alan Scott

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



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

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

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


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

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

Eli Sheff (Jordan Gale / NYT)


























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

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

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

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

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

Martin:
With multiple partners?

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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





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

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


Pros:
• There's more parents to be there for you and to defend you
• It's very unlikely all three will be working at the same time so there's always someone to go to
• Some people think it's super cool (actually how I made one of my friends)
• If you think a punishment was too harsh, there's two more parents that can reason with your other parent
• It's more love to go around
• As they all have careers it's extra income which means we can have more fun holidays
• Polyamorous parents are much more likely to accept situations beyond the societal norm. When my brother came out as gay they didn't care.

Cons:
• Not having a relationship with grandparents because they don't accept it
• It can be hell remembering which parent had a certain story / liked a certain thing
• I regularly mix up names when talking to Mom or Mama and call them by the others name
• Bullying
• If two broke up but both still want to stay with the other person, it could be an awkward situation for everyone involved, including the kids
I'm sure there's more for both pros and cons but that's all I can think of right now.



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

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


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

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

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



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


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


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



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

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

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


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

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

Nita, Trent, Kami: Not happening
















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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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


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


She lays out her advice:


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


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


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


By Askley Fike

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

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

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

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

What Actually Makes Open Relationships Work, According to Experts

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

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

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


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

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


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


By Christina Fialho and Megan Burke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

BTW, the logo of PolyamoryUkraine:








 


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

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

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

posted by Alan | 0 comments



July 14, 2026

"The Invite" lowdown. "This Is Poly" TV series. We get 9 minutes on ABC's Nightline. And a friendly but very real examination of modern throuples' messes


If you think polyamory and ENM have slowed their 15-year sweep into mainstream fascination — nope, ain't happened yet.

So, at what point does this thing. . . go too far? Are we already there? Repeat after me: polyamory is not for everyone. Not even, perhaps, for most who are now rushing into it.

I say this having evangelized for the possibilities of group romantic love since even before the Zell nest invented the word "polyamory" at the end of the 1980s.

●  The movie The Invite, an indie fave at Sundance last January, is now being mass-released in megaplexes to solid early box office. (Spoilers coming:) Its tantalizing early publicity — that it would show polyamory addressing a fraught dead-marriage situation — was a tease. Near the movie's end the "invite" falls apart, and the story stops just where it could have begun. This is mostly a very well acted bad-marriage comedy — with Oscar potential, some reviewers say.

The ENM on offer is not love-centric polyamory but what you might call enlightened swinging. The upstairs couple tell of their sex clubs where you pick your kinks from a menu, and they are running something like that themselves in their poorly soundproofed apartment. And Hawk's black ring, pointedly fondled and flashed to the camera near the end, is swing-world insider code.

But ENM-wise the movie does represent a positive new twist, as Marie Claire magazine points out (July 4):


The Invite gives ENM [ethical non-monogamy] the nuanced portrayal it rarely gets on screen. The story follows two couples whose dinner descends into arguments, flirtation and, eventually, a proposition. Yet, for once, the open couple aren't the dysfunctional one. Instead, it's the supposedly "normal" monogamous pair (Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen) whose relationship begins to unravel.


It's getting both good reviews (early Rotten Tomatoes: 9.8) and good audience-exit interviews. When I saw it the audience was sparse, but that was at 2 p.m. on a weekday. So far the movie is on track to become a summer hit.

A Guardian story (July 3) begins,


Their movie about marital bed death is this summer’s buzziest, funniest film. ...

By Catherine Shoard

The good-example couple (right) offer something new to the fighting monos.


















Earlier this week, Edward Norton took a night flight from New York to London and felt so dreadful the next day he decided to get a massage. “I hadn’t had one in such a long time,” he says. “And I almost started crying. You’re like: ‘Oh! Ah!’ ”

He has heard similar sounds from cinemas screening his new movie, The Invite, which is about the devastating impact of marriage on your sex life. “People are almost tearful. They’re like: ‘I haven’t had a good, adult laugh that made me feel seen in a long time.’ ” ...




By Emma Loggins

Hollywood has spent decades treating non-monogamy as either a punchline or a plot device headed for catastrophe. ... The Invite lets an openly non-monogamous couple be the most appealing people in the room instead of a cautionary tale, even if the film itself gets cold feet before the credits.

...The marketing dangles an orgy the film has no intention of delivering, and once the night pivots from comedy into something closer to group therapy, The Invite pulls back right when it could have gotten savage. ...

So the framing that this is the film that finally makes polyamory the happy ending is not quite right. What it actually does is subtler and more interesting. It lets Hawk and Piña be desirable and emotionally intelligent rather than doomed, and it uses them as a mirror to expose everything calcified in Joe and Angela’s marriage....

The Cultural Moment Is Real, Even If the Film Hedges
...Intimacy experts keep pointing out that for a lot of viewers, movies and TV are their only window into what [ENM] relationships look like, so when the depictions are relentlessly negative, they warp public understanding of lives that are far less doomed than the screen insists. That is why a movie built to let a poly couple be the aspirational ones matters, even one that flinches. 

The Invite treats Hawk and Piña as people with something to teach rather than a threat to be survived, and that alone is a shift.

...The value here is in the framing, not the follow-through. ... That is a smaller swing than the trailer promised, and I wish the film had matched the audacity of its premise. But a mainstream comedy that can imagine a version of love not automatically ending in a single couple walking into the sunset, and that treats the alternative as attractive rather than tragic, is a real tell about where this is all heading.

 

●  Also new in mass-market media is (oh God) This Is Poly, a reality show on WeTV.  The trailer opens excitedly but turns cringy with "reality" drama (of course coffee is thrown with the perfect camera angle). Episode guide so far.

Confession: I don't watch reality TV, so find reviews elsewhere. And I don't trust AI, but this pithy summary of early reviews from Google's AI may save you time:


While intended as dramatic, trashy entertainment, [This Is Poly] is widely criticized for spotlighting dysfunctional, toxic, and non-ethical dynamics rather than healthy, consensual polyamory.


This from Reddit user Polyamorouspotato seems typical:


I just finished “This is Poly” and I have noted that every dynamic is entirely toxic. From “throuples” to harems. Rules and all the couples dating together. Also notes of poly under duress.

This show made me so angry lol. I understand the choices to show drama on tv but woof there isn’t a single example of ethical polyamory.


Almost all 63 commenters agree. One that didn't:


I LOVED it. It did not disappoint in the entertainment and cringe. I hosted a watch party of CNM folks which was the best way to enjoy the show. BQ and his friend Pauly may be my favorites for having the best douchiest lines of the show and providing me a ton of laughs. But the “999,000 bitches” roster girlies also brought the toxicity and the clipboards.



One of the five polycules on the show told ShowBiz Cheatsheet what they underwent during filming: ‘This Is Poly’ Power Throuple on the ‘Pressure Cooker’ of Reality TV and the Importance of Hard Conversations (June 26). Trent admits the filming "was more than we bargained for." Says Nita (whose three DUI arrests and mugshot are now famous), "I feel like I could have [done] a lot better communicating through a lot of it." She could also have grasped that if you go on reality TV, of course your arrest record and mugshot will come to represent whatever you represent. Kami, having invested so much of herself in the show, tries to see the positive:  


...“One of our main goals for doing it was really to help people see that this is actually a really viable option and you can do it in a healthy way,” she said. “Yes, it might still be messy. There’s not a rule book for it, so it’s hard … it was really showing people that this can be a really beautiful thing. And it is something that if people really want to grow and expand and love, it is something that’s possible.”



●  On a rather higher level, the Presbyterian Church USA (the larger and more liberal branch of the split Presbytherians) just went through some tumult over polyamory, as has been happening in other churchs. A proposal to its recent General Assembly would have expelled ministers in non-monogamous relationships. This made the news.

From the Associated Press, in many newspapers: As polyamory gains visibility, monogamy faces a vote in the Presbyterian Church USA (via Religion News Service, June 12)


By Katheryn Post

A proposal that would require ordained clergy to be monogamous is on the docket at the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly this summer.

The overture, CON-10, has generated strong reactions online but not yet earned broad support from PCUSA groups. A separate proposal asks for theological studies on gender and sexuality, life-giving relationships and the Christian vocation of family that would support the denomination’s commitment to inclusion of different familial realities. Together, these overtures show that as polyamory gains visibility in broader culture, it may have policy implications, especially in theologically progressive Christian denominations.

“I think it is the next big conversation that most mainline denominations will have,” said the Rev. Claudia Aguilar Rubalcava, director of engagement for the LGBTQ-affirming nonprofit More Light Presbyterians.

 La Fabbrica Dei Sogni/ Unsplash/ Creative Commons

















More Light Presbyterians released a statement last month, saying the proposal on monogamy targets queer communities. “It centers a single model of relationship as the only faithful expression of Christian life, ignoring both the breadth of biblical witness and the lived realities of many faithful people,” the statement says. ...

Last month, More Light Pres­by­teri­ans hos­ted a “Faith­ful Polyamory 101” train­ing that framed the Trin­ity as mod­el­ling the kind of mutual, over­flow­ing love that can be reflec­ted in polyamory. ... Chris­tian advoc­ates for polyamory often point to the range of rela­tion­ship mod­els in the Bible — though many con­trast poly­gamy, which often has hier­arch­ical implic­a­tions, with mod­ern forms of polyamory — and emphas­ize the import­ance of safe, con­sen­sual rela­tion­ships with clear bound­ar­ies.

...Aguilar Rubalcava told RNS that at speaking engagements, she routinely encounters polyamorous Presbyterians hungry for support. Kate Davoli, who serves as co-moderator on the board of More Light Presbyterians, told RNS they were dismissed from the denomination’s ordination process for being openly polyamorous. 

...As polyamory gains exposure, other mainline denominations have begun to confront their stance on it. At least three Episcopal priests have renounced their ordination vows due to tensions between their church roles and family structures, and in 2024 the Episcopal Church considered, but did not advance, a resolution intending to study diverse family structures. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada voted in 2023 to create national resources to support conversations that include “ethical non-monogamous relationships.”...


Two for the record:  God’s love is not scarce: A Presbyterian case for polyamory, by Dr. David W. Congdon (The Presbyterian Outlook, June 23). The other side: One flesh, one spouse: A clear standard for Presbyterian ministers, by Rev. Alexander Haines (same issue).

---------------------
The outcome? The assembled Presbyterians punted. They voted 433-44 to send the proposal to a committee for more study.

You church-going polyfolk reading this (yes there are quite a few of you), please make yourselves known if you can. Your silence lets TV shows like "This Is Poly" represent you in the eyes of your church.

-- Lots more Poly and Christian coverage from a while back.

-- My own church, the Unitarian Universalists, voted overwhelmingly at its 2014 General Assembly to add "relationship and family structure" to its list of Welcoming Congregation protections. That drive was led by the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness, which still lives on as a Facebook group: the UU Polyamory Alliance.


●  Just out is a landmark newspaper feature on the boom in people forming throuples and the emotional swamps they often mire in:  ‘They said to me, You were the best sex toy we ever had’: the pain, pleasure and paranoia of life in a throuple (The Guardian, July 12, in its US, UK, Europe, Australia, and International editions.)

This story is long, deeply informed, and friendly to us. But romantic triads have a reputation for being an especially hard dynamic to make work well for everyone, and the writer doesn't hold back about the crises she saw throuples going through across six months.

Rant ahead: Now that we're squarely in the mass-market era of poly and ENM, way too many people try to glide past the steep standards that "ethical" actually requires here. Or, triads don't think to train up, as a group, in both speaking and listening fearlessly. This thing really is, as is often said, "graduate-level relationshipping." The good odds are for people who are brave, secure, and self-examining; and no-nonsense but genuinely good-hearted and motivated by poly ideals. And who are ready for big changes. Did we mention being naturally honest, clear about boundaries, and unusually emotionally intelligent? Such people are willing to let the relationships be what they are, un-mandated and unforced. Because no two relationships are ever alike, and that's okay.

And you don't have to be a naturally low-jealousy compersive meltyheart about your metas. But it helps.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions to every poly rule. You sometimes find happy, easy-functioning, long-term throuples who took every "wrong" approach and are doing great. People can surprise you. (Just not often.)

End of rant. I've been saying this sort of stuff ever since my Central Park bandwagon speech in 2008.

Excerpts from the throuple article:


From Hollywood movies to confessional memoirs, three-person relationships are everywhere. But is it really possible to keep everyone satisfied? Happy trios, bruised couples and rejected lovers tell all.

By Kitty Drake

Priscilla can pinpoint the moment she realised that her throuple was falling apart. Her fiancee, Kiara, had started kissing their shared girlfriend, Olivia, in a way that went on for just a little too long. One night, after the three of them had gone out for a romantic dinner in Savannah, Georgia, where they live, Olivia and Kiara started kissing in the front seats of the family car and it seemed as if they were never going to stop. About 10 minutes in, Priscilla tried to reach out and touch her fiancee’s shoulder, but her seat belt was buckled. Unbuckling and leaning forward felt intrusive. And, anyway, Kiara and Olivia seemed to have forgotten all about her. Watching the kiss unfold, squashed into the back with all the baby seats and toys, Priscilla thought about how by rights it was her turn to sit up front. She was always in the back seat. She felt a flicker of something competitive. “I worried, am I desired less than her?” she recalls now. “Will I be replaced?”

In the early days, Priscilla felt giddy with the excitement of being in a throuple. She and Kiara had been together for eight years, and adding a third person to their relationship felt like a way of exploring non‑monogamy without losing one another, because every new romantic experience would be shared. Olivia was an old friend, so Priscilla and Kiara’s children were comfortable with her. When the kids were in bed, they would walk to the beach holding hands as a three, to watch the sunset. At night, they would curl up to sleep together, and form a kind of cuddle chain. Priscilla would cuddle Olivia, and Olivia would cuddle Kiara.

Priscilla (left) and Kiara, who are engaged, had a shared girlfriend who
left them earlier this year. Kendrick Brinson/The Guardian





















Sometimes in the night, Priscilla would wake up alone on one side of the bed, and see Kiara and Olivia cuddling without her – at first this didn’t bother her. “I felt a little left out, but I was happy that Kiara was happy,” Priscilla says. The problems really began when both Priscilla and Kiara moved beyond lust, and began to fall deeply in love with Olivia. “The thing about throuples is that when real emotions get involved, things get more complicated.”

In a throuple, three people commit to forming a romantic unit together – just like a couple, but with one extra person. In other forms of non-monogamy, you might have multiple partners, but you are typically only ever in bed with one partner at a time. Throuples are different, because they date and have sex and sometimes even raise children as a three. ...

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

On screen today, you see throuples everywhere. ... But as the throuple becomes more commonplace, there seems to be a growing backlash against this relationship structure. Recent research suggests that younger generations are rejecting the complications of polyamory and beginning to yearn again for the perceived safety of traditional coupledom. An analysis of sexual fantasies by the Kinsey Institute suggests that gen Z are turning away from polyamory, with 81% fantasising about monogamy instead.

Being happily polyamorous requires a daunting degree of patience and thoughtfulness, because you have to continually debrief with your lovers to check that their needs are being met – but throupledom seems to require even greater reserves of emotional maturity. Managing the desires and insecurities of three people at once is a feat, and even within polyamorous circles, throuples have a reputation for being fraught. ...

I have spent the last six months talking to people who have been in throuples that have gone spectacularly wrong (and some that are going spectacularly right) about how to manage infighting and rivalry in three‑person relationships. How can you make a throuple work? And what happens when a throuple implodes?

In The Ethical Slut, the authors write that in any menage a trois “there are actually three couples, A&B, B&C and C&A”. What makes the throuple unstable is that, at any time, the mini-couples within the throuple can become more estranged, or entwined, and there can be dramatic reversals in allegiances. In Priscilla’s throuple, it was initially she and Olivia who were the closer pair – and Kiara who felt excluded. In the first weeks of the relationship, Kiara discovered that Priscilla and Olivia had been having sex while she was at work. Sex as a twosome wasn’t technically against the rules of the arrangement, Kiara tells me, but “it was very hurtful and it broke a lot of trust”. ...

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

I speak to Alissa for the first time over the phone from her home in Connecticut, and we have to pause the conversation a couple of times because I can hear her teenage son coming in and out. Alissa and her husband, Rob, have got five children aged 14 to 22, and, while the older children are aware that their parents have experimented with an open relationship, they don’t know the details.

After 21 years of marriage, Rob revealed to Alissa that he was bisexual. Experimenting with another man together seemed like a way to cope with that revelation without it breaking their marriage. Initially when they met Michael, 33, who lived in a neighbouring city, Alissa felt anxious. She worried that Michael was only pretending to feel an attraction to her in order to get to Rob, and remembers one awkward early date where Michael was all over Rob in a cab, and the two of them barely looked at her at all. But as the relationship progressed, Michael and Alissa developed an intense bond, and Rob felt increasingly threatened.

One night when the three of them were in bed together, Alissa and Michael started kissing, and Rob became so distressed he had a panic attack. Alissa had put on new underwear, and Rob started interrogating her about why he had never seen this lingerie before. “He was, like, ‘Well, you haven’t put that on for me lately!’ – but the truth was that Rob and I hadn’t been having sex with each other because we saw Michael two times a week, and who is having more sex than that?”...

Initially, Rob hadn’t wanted to talk to me because he found the breakup too painful to revisit, but a few weeks later the couple call me together so that he can offer his perspective. “I was madly in love with this guy,” Rob says. “Head over heels.” He is speaking to me from his car speakerphone. He says that it wasn’t simply the case that he was feeling possessive over his wife; he also felt horribly rejected by Michael. ...

When a throuple is going right, the amount of love feels almost unquantifiable, because you are “chosen and loved by two people and have two people to love”, Rob reflects. “Having him as part of our equation, I could love her 150% and him 150%”. But when a throuple breaks down, you have to deal with the inverse of that exponential love: exponential rejection. At times, Rob says, he didn’t feel “chosen” by anyone.

Alissa says that her and Rob’s marriage has survived the whole experience, but only just. Sometimes she feels resentful because dating another man wasn’t originally her idea, it was Rob’s. “I was pissed because I had this little tiny seedling that I didn’t even want in the first place and I gave it all the sunlight and all the water, and then when it started to grow Rob was ready to end it.”

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

...The criticism of [Lindy] West’s memoir [Adult Braces this spring] was often cruel, but I think the intensity of the reaction speaks to a real fear many of us have that, as polyamory becomes more mainstream, terms such as “throuple” and “ethically non-monogamous” will be wielded by faithless partners who want to legitimise their desire to cheat. However, having spoken to real-life throuples, the picture looks more complicated because the dynamics in the triad chop and change. The wife who was initially reluctant might end up being the most adored and enthusiastic member of the throuple. The husband who initially begged for it might wind up desperate to leave.

Even within the polyamorous community, throuples are considered messy and potentially unethical – not necessarily because they disrupt an existing couple, but because [they have a reputation that] they exploit the third person who enters the relationship. On polyamorous online message boards, couples who post that they are looking for a third person to join their relationship are often criticised for being “unicorn hunters”. ...

...Caitlin, 31, from London, tells me [such] a story about feeling used and discarded by a couple she met while living in Marseille.... “You know what they said to me? ‘You were the best sex toy we ever had.’ ”

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

I spoke to happy throuples while I was researching this article, and most of them told me that when you feel intensely heartbroken or hurt by a particular member of your triad, the key is to acknowledge it. Rather than leaving the throuple, or exercising a “veto” because you feel threatened, you have to talk through the pain as it comes up.

Rachael, Aaron and Kasey, a throuple from the Tampa Bay area of Florida who have been living together for seven years, say that they attribute their success to diligent emotional housekeeping. The first time I speak to them is in early April on a video call, and they are in exercise gear, ready for an early morning workout together at the gym.

Steady as they go: Aaron, Rachel, and Kasey . . .





















Rachael, who describes herself to me as a “type-A, high-achiever, highly organised person”, tells me that these qualities are very helpful in a throuple. “It’s just 33% more – more to schedule, more to plan, more money to divvy up,” she says. Rachael and Aaron are in their 40s, and were together for 20 years before they met Kasey, 35, but they have worked hard to make sure she has equal standing within the throuple. They have created a trust that outlines Kasey as a beneficiary, and have given her medical power of attorney, should anything happen to either of them. They apply the same organised, thoughtful approach to hashing out emotional issues in the throuple, too. “We joke that if monogamous couples talked half as much about their feelings as we do in our throuple, the divorce rate would plummet,” Aaron says.

...and outside their bunglaow in Gulfport, Florida.
(Zack Wittman / The Guardian)






















The throuple have a weekly date night, but Rachael has a regular one-on-one night with Aaron, too. She also has a regular night with just Kasey. And Aaron and Kasey have their own scheduled one-on-one time. The idea behind the one-on-one nights is to make sure that all the individual bonds within the throuple continue to grow. Rachael explains that she usually leaves the house for the evening when Kasey and Aaron have their couples night, and that re-entering the home at the end of the evening isn’t always easy. She doesn’t feel jealousy, she says: “It’s almost more like I know that they’ve had a very connecting moment, and me coming back to it feels intrusive. It feels like they almost have to baby me and say, ‘Oh, come back in.’ ” Rachael has been completely open with Kasey and Aaron about these feelings. She has developed a system where, instead of greeting them when she comes back at night, she takes a shower and even considers sleeping in the guest room. Then they “wake up and have a fresh day as a three”.

...In a way, people who form throuples are just braver than the rest of us. The fear of the third haunts most relationships. Throuples choose to invite the third into the relationship and live through all the difficult emotions the rest of us are trying to bury. Recently, Priscilla and Kiara told me that they are thinking about trying to form a new throuple. Kiara is wary, but Priscilla is excited. “We’re still discussing it,” she says. “But I think it will be an adventure.”



●  Meanwhile, happy triads continue to represent proudly in public. On ABC News Nightline last night (July 13) came this 9-minute video report: Throuple opens up about their polyamorous relationship. It's lovely!

The creators of “Camp Throuple” open up about their polyamorous relationship. Kevin Jankay, Alana Underwood and Megan Smith say their non-monogamous relationship is the best one they’ve ever had.  


They live in Colorado and are in their sixth year as a closed polyfi delta triad. What fine, great-hearted, smart people these seem to be. Watch and learn.

(If the embed above doesn't work here's the link. I don't find a transcript.)

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


Elsewhere in the world... The current changing tide of the Ukraine war shows how, when a free people don't give up, fortune may swing their way.

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

BTW, the logo of PolyamoryUkraine:








 



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

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

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

posted by Alan | 2 comments