"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,

‘I feel both thrilled and ruined by this’: Olivia Wilde and Edward Norton on making sex comedy The Invite

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.’ ” ...

Fanbolt says, How Olivia Wilde’s ‘The Invite’ Puts Polyamory in the Multiplex Without the Doom (July 10)

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.

Dozens more reviews.

 

●  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.

I Lost the Remote and Watched 'This Is Poly' — I Wouldn’t Wish That on Anyone (TV Fanatic, June 17).

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.

[Permalink]

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Three new cities to enact poly anti-discrimination laws. Scientific American writes us up well. Two NY Times stories. Upcoming movie, and more.

●  Three more cities seem certain to pass polyamory and chosen-family anti-discrimination measures in the coming days.

Folks from the Seattle Coalition for Family and Relationship Equity
at their June 2025 Liberating Love Festival.

News arrived this morning (Feb. 25) from Brett Chamberlin of OPEN:

Right now, we're on the verge of doubling the number of people living in cities with protections for non-monogamous families and relationships.

Olympia, WA  – Passed first reading unanimously last night; final passage expected Tuesday March 3.

Portland, OR  – First reading today (Wednesday Feb. 25); final passage expected Wednesday March 4.

West Hollywood, CA  – First reading Monday March 2; final passage expected March 16  

These measures prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas due to "family or relationship structure." Similar measures are advancing in Seattle and San Francisco, as told in my previous post, in addition to those already enacted in Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Oakland and Berkeley, California.

Activity is also brewing elsewhere. Want to work to make it happen in your city?

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

The efforts in Washington State got some deeper reporting by Seattle's SGN (Seattle Gay News): Polyamory advocates fight for anti-discrimination laws in Olympia and Seattle: A new Queer civil rights movement emerges. (Jan. 28) 

By Madison Jones, Managing Editor

...Five years ago, [Jessa] Davis founded SCFRE as a way for Washington’s polyamorous practitioners to finally protect themselves legally against discrimination in employment, housing, and healthcare. 

...Davis, who lives in her Beacon Hill home with three other Trans women and two toddlers, related how she had practiced polyamory for several years and had been active in the community before she got involved with the legislative aspect. Her journey began while doing some research into the topic of protections for polyamorous people, after one of her partners experienced discrimination. She told the SGN that her partner was fired from their job in the medical field for being polyamorous, reportedly having been told by their supervisor that it was inappropriate for them in their position to have a “sex-craved lifestyle.”

“This is illegal — there should be something done about this!” was how Davis recalled her partner lamenting about the experience, and having already looked into its legality, she had no choice but to reply: “Well, technically, it’s not illegal.”

 

Since Davis founded SCFRE, the group has made a lot of progress in a short period of time. ... On October 4, SCFRE held its first “Liberating Love Festival” in West Seattle, which featured a discussion panel, and provided prewritten letters requesting nondiscrimination laws for attendees to take, sign, and mail to their district representatives. Davis reported that around 80 people showed up and that it seemed that “people have been really craving this kind of community.”

In November, the event’s discussion panel was released as an episode of the Seattle-based Mistakes Were Made podcast, which is about “nonmonogamy for imperfect people.” ... Davis warned the audience how “the siloing of our communities and identities saps our collective power.”

“Fifteen months ago, I did not think we’d be this far with this,” Davis reflected, as she related the story of how SCFRE ended up persuading the Olympia City Council to vote on the legislation, which would add nondiscrimination language to Olympia’s municipal code. Davis said that since the bill doesn’t look to add an entire new code or repeal one, that has helped immensely in convincing the city councilmembers to sign on. The SCFRE bill was able to garner support from several key players, including City Councilmember Robert Vanderpool as the bill’s sponsor; it also received endorsements from the Washington Human Rights Commission and Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America. She pointed out that even the bureaucratic process of getting the bill heard was fairly straightforward: “It was an email and two Zoom meetings, and now we have a bill being [considered],” she said with a laugh of surprise at its success so far.  

City Councillor Robert
Vanderpool, Olympia, WA

Councilmember Vanderpool, in an interview with KOMO, spoke to why the protections were important: “With issues like this, you constantly find that — not that folks are underground but it’s hard for folks to come forward about these things, because it is a very private thing, and we want them to feel welcome in our community and not ostracized,” adding that “the biggest thing that comes up is housing. Folks that are in polyamorous relationships or nonmonogamous, or even chosen families — it’s hard in a chosen family to put someone on their mortgage.” ...

“A soccer mom in Bellevue shouldn’t be kicked off the PTA for being in an open marriage,” she stated, pointing out the absurdity of people who could lose their jobs, homes, services, and positions solely on the basis of their private romantic practices. 

“People shouldn’t have to live their lives in fear.” 

Update Feb. 26: The two measures in Olympia have passed: Olympia becomes first WA city with protections for polyamorous families (The Olympian, Feb. 26). "...[Vanderpool] said it’s important Olympia take these actions when the federal government is 'acting to harm civil liberties.' " 

Update Feb. 26: The Portland City Council voted unanimously to advance the measure to a Wednesday March 4 final vote. Portland City Council advances anti-discrimination protections for non-traditional families (KPTV Fox12, Feb. 26).

Update March 2: The West Hollywood City Council voted 5-0 today to move the anti-discrimination bill along to second reading. Its approval seems assured. More complicated is the second part of the effort: to create a local registration program for multi-partner relationships. The mayor and council are sympathetic, but much staff work remains to iron out specifics, including to ensure accord with California state law. This might take six months, per a detailed news report: West Hollywood Votes 5-0 On Polyamory Anti-Discrimination Law (WEHO Online, March 2). Further details: WeHo grants protections to polyamorous relationships (Park LaBrea News, March 4).

Update March 5: Final passage in Portland was expected last night but "got bumped to next week when council ran out of time," per OPEN.  

Central to the success of all these local volunteer efforts have been expertise and resources from OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, and PLAC, the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition. Want to do this in your city or town? Here you go. View the Legislative Toolkit with step-by-step guidance, and watch the training vid.

●  Scientific American has been America's iconic science magazine since 1845. It just published a feature article on the nature of polyamory as widely practiced today, based on many research reports and interviews with "more than 100 practicing polyamorists in depth." It really gets us right.

Online the story is titled The Truth About Polyamory (Feb. 17). In the March 2026 print issue (which flags it on the cover) it's titled Everything You Wanted to Know about Polyamory (but Were Afraid to Ask).

Save the link to send to anyone who needs a serious explanation of us.

An anthropologist’s detailed research shows polyamorists focus on intimacy and honesty, not sleeping around.

Klaus Kremmerz

By Rebecca J. Lester

The first time her husband went on a date with another woman, Kelly felt sick to her stomach. ... By the fifth time, she just went to bed early. The eighth time, Kelly met her husband for drinks after his date. Then, she says, they went home and had the best sex of their lives.

Kelly, a trial attorney, is no shrinking violet. She goes on her own dates with other men, and her husband, Tim, is thrilled. “There’s nothing like that feeling when Kelly comes home from a date, and she’s soaring and giddy because it went so well,” he says. “And I’m like, ‘That’s amazing, babe! I’m so happy for you!’ And I truly am.”

Kelly and Tim practice polyamory: They form deep, meaningful, romantic relationships with more than one person at a time, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. This departure from traditional dating and marriage is gaining popularity in the U.S., according to research and surveys. ...

I am an anthropologist and licensed therapist, and I have spent the past seven years researching polyamory the way anthropologists do: by spending a lot of time with a lot of people who engage in it. I’ve interviewed more than 100 practicing polyamorists in depth, and we talked about their experiences, motivations and aspirations, as well as regrets and lessons learned. I’ve heard about how polyamorists view themselves and the world, and I’ve observed what they do. And what I’ve found is, in many respects, supported by other scientific research—but not by popular perceptions.

First, polyamorists are not a privileged elite. They are more likely than monogamous people to earn less than $40,000 a year, according to one study, although they do tend to be more highly educated. They are regular folks. They have jobs and children. ... There is nothing inherently class-specific about the practice. (Nor is it limited to particular race or ethnic backgrounds, although the population skews white.)

Politically, polyamory is a rare place where the left and right meet: You might encounter a libertarian or a Donald Trump supporter or a Bernie Sanders bro. The philosophy and practice of polyamory resonate with people across political divides and are not simply liberal indulgences—in fact, they tie into a libertarian and conservative ethos with deep roots in U.S. society, where people rebel against the powers that be telling them what to do.

Where popular portrayals of polyamory most miss the mark, though, is in the idea that the practice is primarily about having sex with multiple partners. Polyamory is mostly about intimacy, not sex, say the people involved in it, and it has ethics at its core. My observations support this claim, and so does other social science research. ... Respect, consent, trust, communication, flexibility and honesty are fundamental to these unconventional dynamics, according to a large review by researchers at Virginia Tech published in 2023.

And these principles can have beneficial consequences. Psychologist Justin Lehmiller, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that polyamorists engage in safer sexual practices than the people who say they are monogamous—a quarter of whom reported having sexual relationships unknown to their partner—and this caution may reduce rates of sexually transmitted infections.

In short, polyamory is radically different from what many people may envision. Its current flourishing is not just a curiosity or random event: it indexes something important about this cultural moment and how people experience and value intimacy and relationships. ...

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Reality TV shows like The Bachelor, Love Is Blind and Say Yes to the Dress are popular for a reason—they tap into a dominant cultural narrative about “true love” and monogamy. ... If we aren’t fulfilled, then there is something wrong.

Polyamory holds that what’s wrong is the very premise of monogamy in the first place. One person cannot possibly meet all our needs. “It’s like this,” Kris, a 37-year-old real estate agent, says. “We have groups of friends, right? Maybe one you go out dancing with on the weekends, another one is the person you call when you’ve had a horrible day; maybe someone else is a sports fan, so you go to ball games together. Totally normal, right? We don’t expect one friend to be our only friend, because we have different kinds of relationships with different people. It’s unrealistic to expect one person to do it all.”

Love, polyamory practitioners say, is similar. Like friendship, it is not a limited resource—it is additive. More love begets more love. ...

...A 2024 study by gender and sexuality scholar Jessica J. Hille of the Kinsey Institute and her colleagues highlights the flexible definitions of intimacy in polyamorous communities where intimacy is not always predicated on sex. Such relationships are common enough to have their own term, “platonic polyamory,” which describes connections with multiple people that may be deeply significant and intimate but not sexual.

...Polyamorous relationships are generally not fleeting. They might involve commitments that last months, years or a lifetime. A 2017 study of about 2,000 monogamous and nonmonogamous people found no difference in relationship length between the two groups, with an average length of slightly more than 10 years. They were also comparable on measures of relationship satisfaction, commitment and passionate love. ...

None of this means polyamorous relationships are easy. ...

...“It was important for me to acknowledge my jealousy,” Michael says, “and for us to talk about it. But not like in monogamy—the point wasn’t to get Jenna to change her behavior. She wasn’t doing anything we hadn’t agreed to. Jealousy was my feeling to deal with and work through. I don’t own her. Jenna is her own person. It’s a big risk because it means trusting that your partner is still going to want to be with you even though they are free to have other relationships. But ultimately I’d rather she be with me because she chooses to, not because she’s locked into the relationship legally or morally.” Jenna adds that “it makes the relationship about who we are as people to each other and how we value each other, not just about rules about possession and exclusivity.”

...“In monogamy, people have a tendency to go on autopilot,” says Jesse, a 28-year-old bus driver. “You can’t do that in polyamory. You have to be extremely intentional all the time in every single relationship. Otherwise things could go bad fast.” Again, the research bears out these claims. A 2022 study by psychologist Thomas R. Brooks and his colleagues found that, compared with people in monogamous relationships, those in consensually nonmonogamous arrangements reported greater commitment, intimacy, love and passion in their relationships. They favored positive problem-solving with their partners, whereas monogamous participants often used withdrawal tactics.

Not all polyamorous relationships have a couple at their core. ...

Read on.

Interview with the author.

●   Remember the 2013 movie Her? A lonely man around the year 2050 falls deeply in love with Samantha, a young female "operating system" who confides to him that she is, at that very moment, having equally deep, emotionally intimate talks with 641 of her other lovers.

The future came faster than expected. Millions of people today are in deep 24/7 relationships, or simulations thereof, with sweet, thoughtful AI companions always ready to be by their side. Among the best known are Replika, Kindroid, Nomi, Ani, Paradot, and Anima. The resulting obsessions, suicides, manias and life-wrecking delusions are being called AI psychosis.

So in the New York Times: ‘We’re All Polyamorous Now. It’s You, Me and the A.I.’  (Feb. 13. Later renamed to "We’re All in a Throuple With A.I.") 

By Amelia Miller

Do you think A.I. “should simulate emotional intimacy?”

It was the moment I’d been working up to. I was talking over Zoom to a machine-learning researcher who builds voice models at one of the world’s top artificial intelligence labs. ... 

The chatty researcher suddenly went quiet. “I mean … I don’t know,” he said about simulating emotional intimacy, then paused. “It’s tricky. It’s an interesting question.” More silence. “It’s hard for me to say whether it’s good or bad in terms of how that’s going to affect people,” he finally said. “It’s obviously going to create confusion.”

“Confusion” doesn’t begin to describe our emerging predicament. Seventy-two percent of American teens have turned to A.I. for companionship. A.I. therapists, coaches and lovers are also on the rise. ... Some of the frontline technologists building this new world seem deeply ambivalent about what they’re doing. They are so torn, in fact, that some privately admit they don’t plan to use A.I. intimacy tools.

Three’s a Crowd

This is especially disturbing when technology chieftains publicly tell us we’re moving toward a future where most people will get many of their emotional needs met by machines. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has said A.I. can help people who want more friends feel less alone. ... A recent ad campaign highlighted the daily intimacy the product can provide, with offers such as “I’ll binge the entire series with you.”...

...When asked to roughly predict the share of everyday advice, care and companionship that A.I. would provide to the typical human in 10 years, many people I spoke to placed it above 50 percent, with some forecasting 80 percent.

If we don’t change course, many people’s closest confidant may soon be a computer. We need to wake up to the stakes and insist on reform before human connection is reshaped beyond recognition. ...

People are flawed. Vulnerability takes courage. Resolving conflict takes time. So with frictionless, emotionally sophisticated chatbots available, will people still want human companionship at all? Many of the people I spoke with view A.I. companions as dangerously seductive alternatives to the demands of messy human relationships. ...

Relational skills are built through practice. When you talk through a fight with your partner or listen to a friend complain, you strengthen the muscles that form the foundation of human intimacy. But large language models can act as an emotional crutch. 

...Which led many of the developers I spoke with to worry: How much of our capacity to connect with other human beings atrophies when we don’t have to work at it?...

Read the whole thing for the author's ideas about what is to be done.

●  So there I was skimming a story about movie people and ICE, and suddenly I'm learning of the upcoming polyamory-based movie The Invite: Brave Hollywood stars hit Sundance red carpet in defiance of ICE 'gestapo' terror (Blaze Media, Jan. 27)

...Take actor Ed Norton. What was supposed to be a lighthearted chat about his new polyamory sex comedy, "The Invite," with co-stars Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde, soon turned decidedly dark... "What are we gonna do about masked gestapo shooting American citizens?" Norton said. ...

The Invite is coming your way. After its premiere rocked Sundance last month (and got a standing ovation), the mainstream-theater distributor A24 snapped it up for more than $10 million. ‘The Invite’ Ignites First Big Bidding War of Sundance (Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 26).

The tale: A couple in a crappy marriage invite the older couple upstairs to dinner. Those two have a first-rate marriage and turn out to be poly or at least open. From a Hollywood Reporter review (Jan. 25): 

The happy two (at left) meet the troubled.

                 

When it’s cooking... this is a smart, sophisticated and incisively acted adult entertainment that savages the crumbling institution of marriage. [It] dangles the promise of sexual rescue and then brings the walls crashing down in a bitter reckoning that seems irreversible — until a window of hope and healing gets cracked open. That closing note is so lovely, and its visual handling so graceful, that it retroactively smooths the bumps. ...

So what's the angle? A hint comes from the Park Record newspaper in Sundance's hometown: ‘The Invite’ is the cathartic result of actor-director Olivia Wilde’s taste for storytelling (Jan. 28): 

...Wilde said that originality is what drew her to the story, the way it explains something like marriage and relationships in a totally new way.

When Wilde and Rogan’s characters [the miserable couple] finally spend time with Cruz and Norton’s characters, they’re shown a different path to connection — sexually and emotionally. And for the husband and wife who’ve become so disconnected, that example provides both hope and added despair.

“We wanted [Cruz and Norton] to be an example of people who have learned a tremendous amount through life and have embraced the idea of evolution, and really are living lives they’ve chosen for themselves and taking a lot of responsibility within their lives for their own happiness,” Wilde explained. “In the original script, those two were much younger … but it’s interesting to think about, what if they’re sexy and free not because they’re young? [But because] it’s a choice?”

Any of you seen it pre-release? Send me spoilers: alan7388@gmail.com

BTW, opening a problem-ridden marriage or relationship to save it is known in the poly community as an eye-rolling bad strategy. Repair and relaunch your relationship first -- counseling really makes the difference -- live your new relationship well for long enough for it to become the baseline, and then consider whether to add more people.  And make sure they're the right people. 

●   Remember Sophie Lucido Johnson? Her poly memoir Many Love, illustrated with her abundant cartoons, came out in 2018. She later became a New Yorker cartoonist, and now she's out with another book, The Future of Family. Would-be kitchen table and family style polyfolks, take note.

From the publisher's description:

Discover a transformative reframing of intimate relationships with practical steps to build community and combat the loneliness epidemic in this bold and warmhearted blend of memoir and social science...

...To survive today’s age of overwork and precarity, we need to turn to our relationships for the support we need to stay afloat, whether it’s financial, emotional, or otherwise. So why don’t we?

Sophie Lucido Johnson explores the social science of friendship and provides the tools to forge kinship: relationships built on mutual care and shared resources that extend beyond the typical nuclear family or casual friendship. ...Through personal stories and insights from psychologists and sociologists, Kin reveals how to prosper in an increasingly overwhelming and lonely world, that everyone has access to community, and that kin has the power to drastically change our lives for the better.

A review in SGN (Seattle Gay News): Sophie Lucido Johnson embraces possibilities with new book on non-traditional families (Jan. 29)

"[We] were struck by how profound and great it was to be able to share things — including, eventually, our pregnancy journeys,” Johnson said. “Everything about cohabitating made our lives easier. Building on work I’d done in the past around polyamory and queerplatonic partnerships, I wanted to create a guide for people to find a version of the thing we all found.”

Kin dares readers to ask, “What does family look like to me?” and offers a radical answer. “It proposes a future outside of the nuclear family,” Johnson said, “based on close-knit connections among people who exist somewhere between ‘friend’ and ‘family’ — and it offers strategies for building intentionality around those relationships. It’s hopeful and practical.”

●   On Valentine's Day the New York Times ran Love Without Limits: Brazil Flirts With Polyamory (Feb. 14, later reprinted in the Boston Globe)

More people in a still largely conservative and religious nation are rejecting monogamy as they seek new definitions of romance, and of family.

By Ana Ionova and [photographer] María Magdalena Arréllaga

The toddler, still sleepy, wobbled into the kitchen and planted a kiss on the woman helping make breakfast. Her parents followed her and also planted a kiss on the lips of the woman, one of their lovers.

Rafael Pissurno, the father of 2-year-old Hari, began grinding coffee beans, while the girl’s mother, Iuli Duarte, tidied toys scattered on the floor. Visiting them was their polyamorous partner Jessica Couri, who was chopping fresh fruit into a large bowl, along with Victor Souza, another of their lovers, who was scrambling eggs at the stovetop.

On a Saturday morning, this Brazilian household both is, and is not, just like any other.

“It’s a family — these are the people I chose, they are the people I love,” said Ms. Duarte, 28, a graduate student.

“We know we care for each other,” added Mr. Pissurno, 47, a sound technician. “But we don’t have just one friend to do everything with, right? So why should we expect one romantic partner to fill all our needs?”

In Brazil, Ms. Duarte and Mr. Pissurno’s rejection of monogamy is part of a movement in which more people are embracing different forms of love, marriage and parenthood. ... Many Brazilians appear to be questioning traditional family models, a shift captured by mainstream culture in popular podcasts, books and even a reality television program called “Third Half” that showcases couples looking for a polyamorous partner. 

But the rise of polyamory, here and around the world, has faced fierce pushback from conservative and religious leaders who have cast it as an affront to family values. Pope Leo XIV weighed in, warning against the “the fragility of unions, the trivialization of adultery, and the promotion of polyamory.” ...

Read on.

●  UK folks recently formed the nonprofit UK Polyamory Association "to educate the public, support the broad and diverse polyamorous community in the UK, and work towards social and legal change." 

Our Goals

The goals of the UKPA are to advance the cause of polyamory in the UK following the model of other campaigning organisations such as Stonewall. We intend to do this through many methods including the following:

‣  Providing statistics about the uptake of polyamory in the UK

‣  Producing education materials about polyamory

‣  Bringing together and supporting the diverse in-person and online polyamory communities in the UK

‣  Tracking the portrayal of polyamory in the media

‣  Working with companies to create polyamory friendly HR policies

‣  Research what changes are needed in UK law to support polyamorous families

Our Currrent Priorities:

‣  Responding to the Office of National Statistic consultation on the next Census with a view to including one or more questions related to polyamory

‣  Reaching out to organisations like Stonewall to learn what we can from people who have done this before

‣  Research provision of educational resources

‣  Research cost and design of national surveys

‣  Collect examples of existing polyamory friendly corporate HR policies

‣  Work with the Green Party to help them develop their policy position on polyamorous families....

They link to 54 local poly groups in the UK. They have, wisely, posted their Ethics and Values statement and Code of Conduct out front from the start.

And, UKPA is working to restart the UK Polyday convention, an annual tradition since 2004 that's gone missing since 2020. The date: September 19, 2026. They're asking for volunteers to help make it go. Get on their newsletter list for more.

●   Lastly,

Metamour Day is coming right up

 

It's this Saturday, February 28th, Valentines Day times two. "Celebrating polyamory's most distinctive relationship."

Make your plans now, and spread this or other graphics on your social media:

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And... if you don't get what our particular future has to do with the war in Ukraine...  you need a longer view. 

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