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| It is an often expressed notion that we are a monogamous species. Indeed, the religious right would have us believe that
anything else is an abomination against humanity. And yet, few of us mate for life with our first love. Many do, for
better or worse, practice what has been called "serial monogamy" in which we go from one exclusive relationship to
another. Often, there end up being overlaps in the relationships (to put it euphemistically)...sometimes very big
overlaps...with varying degrees of honesty and acceptance about the overlaps. Even in our "monogo-centric" Western
world, it is not uncommon to find societies (France is a good example) where there is a fair degree of acceptance for a man to have
a publicly acknowledged wife and one or more mistresses tucked away. Our grossly patriarchal bias rarely accords the same
degree of acceptance to women who wish to maintain multiple male lovers.
In general, how we deal with having multiple lovers is simple: we lie. We lie to friends, we lie to strangers, we lie to our families, sometimes we even lie to ourselves. We invent explanations for why a certain sexual "indiscretion" doesn't count (if we acknowledge it's existence at all). We tell our new lovers that we're staying with the old one only because of the kids, the house, my job, or what-have-you. Sometimes we really do fall "out-of-love" with someone but, at least as often, we simply fall "in-love" with someone else and the newness and freshness of that relationship (some people call this phenomenon New Relationship Energy or NRE) makes us think we don't love the other person anymore. We pretend that we can only "really" love a single person at a time. When a second (or third or fourth) comes along, we either crucify the new relationship by stoically "doing the right thing" or we invalidate the earlier love and terminate what might well have been a perfectly healthy relationship. "Clearly the old relationship must be over because otherwise I'd never have been attracted to this new person," we tell ourselves. Funny that we admire the man or woman who can be lovingly devoted to a large number of children but we condemn the person who is lovingly devoted to more than one adult...especially (but not only) if it is a sexual relationship. I prefer to live by other rules. What if we were so committed to someone else's joy that what made them happy made us happy? What if we so trusted them that we felt our relationship was safe "even though" they loved someone else? What if we went even further and allowed the joy our spouse felt with their other lover to infuse our relationship with that infectious NRE? These are some of the characteristics of a polyamorous life-style. Apparently, it's pretty threatening to a whole lot of people. Some people think it's about swinging and, hence, primarily about sex. People on the cutting edge of social change publicly decry it (I recently heard a public debate on National Public Radio regarding the legalization of gay marriages. I've forgotten the names of the participants but the man arguing for gay marriages was asked something to the effect of "if we allow this, where do we draw the line?" The gist of his reply was that any sort of monogamous coupling, regardless of sex, was valid but he was vehemently opposed to any notions of plural marriages, mentioning it only as an example of the sort of abomination which he felt gay marriage would never lead to (why, I have to ask, are people so terrified of love?). The media occasionally dip a toe into these waters. An early season of Ally McBeal had an ongoing undercurrent of "will Billy and Georgia and Ally have a threesome?" A recent episode of Will and Grace had an old boyfriend of Grace's asking if she'd join him and his new girlfriend in a threesome. But, predictably, these characters go to the brink and then turn back and, ultimately, such shows approach the topic strictly from a titillation orientation and rarely, if ever, even hint at it as a serious subject. Again I ask, why are people so afraid of love? What sort of sacrosanct social order would be threatened by some people living as threesomes instead of couples? Nobody's suggesting you should live that way if you don't want to. So why is it so God-awful important to protect the world from these people who do have this more-embracing capacity for love? Over the years, I've seen "flavors" of polyamory which cover pretty much the whole spectrum...from folks in fairly traditional monogamous relationships who find themselves with a lover (and I do mean lover as opposed to just sexual partner) several states away to significant groups of well-educated, successful people who gave up more traditional careers, pooled their money and bought a lot of land somewhere where they now live collectively in a mutually supportive community. What all these people have in common is a profound devotion to the idea of being completely honest with their partner(s). Secrets are not kept, there are no buried "indiscretions" and, most importantly, there is a great respect for the needs (not always the desires but certainly the needs) of the people they love. I have spoken to many people who seem intrigued by open relationships. Frequently, I discover that what they really want is some kind of philosophy that gives them "permission" to run around behind their spouse's back. That is not the way of polyamory. Different people choose to tell their partners varying degrees of up-to-the-minute details about their other partners but, in general, these are choices that have been made collectively. I don't tell my wife about every single woman I find myself chatting with but that's because she doesn't have any interest in hearing about anyone until there's some chance that a relationship might actually start to grow there. |
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