Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy With Multiple Partners

by Deborah M. Anapol

  THE ECOLOGY OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

  While twenty-first-century mainstream Judeo-Christian doctrines concur in prescribing monogamy as the only appropriate form for marriage, this was not always the case. Insisting that everyone be monogamous is analogous to monocropping in agriculture where large corporate farms plant thousands of acres with just one crop, destroying the complex interrelated diversity of species that have coevolved healthy, sustainable ecosystems over many generations.

  These are some of the forms intimate relationships often take when people allow themselves to find a niche appropriate for the unique individuals involved. Note that some of these forms may interact. For example, a couple in an open marriage may also be part of an intimate network.

  Open Marriage or Open Relationship

  Both of these are nonexclusive couple relationships, the main difference being whether the couple is married. In this scenario, the partners have agreed that each can have outside partners. A wide variety of ground rules and restrictions may apply.

  Gina and Eric, whom we met earlier in this chapter, have an open marriage. Even though they don’t currently have outside sexual partners, they have a clear agreement that allows for this possibility. Mark and Nancy also have an open marriage, but in contrast to Gina and Eric, who discuss each situation as it arises, Mark and Nancy have a list of guidelines each is committed to follow. Their basic rule is that they ask the other’s permission before making a date with someone else. Each has the option to meet a potential new partner before giving permission. At times, they have had “standing” dates on a certain night of the week with a long-term lover, but Mark and Nancy always have the option to veto the date night if they feel a need for more time with each other. They have also agreed to always be home by midnight.

  Intimate Network

  This is a lovestyle in which several ongoing relationships coexist but usually people do not live together, or they may share housing or land as roommates or community mates rather than as partners. Sometimes all members of the informal group eventually become lovers. Sometimes individuals have only one or a few sexualoving partners within the group, but they generally have close friendships. The group can include singles, couples, moresomes, or a mixture. Another way to describe an intimate network would be as a circle of sexualoving friends. The intimate network is similar to what futurist F. M. Esfandiary called a mobilia in the 1970s and what young Swedish activist Andie Nordgren calls relationship anarchy in the twenty-first-century.

  Bruce, Jane, Cindy, Rebecca, Richard, and Harry have been friends and lovers for over twelve years. Cindy was introduced to Bruce and Jane by her ex-husband Jim, who has also been part of this intimate network at times. Bruce and Jane are a committed couple in an open relationship, and both were lovers of Cindy’s for several years, although this relationship has become a mostly nonsexual close friendship since Cindy got together with Harry six years ago. Rebecca is an old friend of Jane’s who became sexually involved with Bruce two years ago, and Richard is a single man who is lovers with Jane and Cindy and occasionally Harry.

  Group Marriage

  A group marriage is a committed, long-term, primary relationship that includes three or more adults of any gender in a marriage-like relationship. A group marriage can be open or closed to outside sexual partners. It may revolve around one central person who is primary with all the others (called a “V”), or each person may be equally close to every other person involved.

  Peter and Candy had been married for twenty-three years and raised two children when Peter fell in love with Jessica, who was ten years his junior. He knew immediately that he wanted to include Jessica into his already happy marriage with Candy rather than divorcing Candy to be with Jessica. Both women were skeptical but willing to explore developing a relationship of their own. It turned out that Candy and Jessica quickly became best friends, are very compatible, and love spending time together. They experimented sexually, both alone and with Peter, but have concluded that they are more interested in Peter sexually than in each other. They do enjoy sharing Peter in bed, which is just fine with Peter. Jessica moved into Peter and Candy’s large home four years ago and has decided to go back to school and get a law degree so that she can join Peter and Candy’s legal practice. The three have agreed to have an open marriage, but so far they are too busy enjoying each other to have any interest in seeking new partners.

  Triad

  Three sexualoving partners who may be in any combination of primary, secondary, or nonhierarchical relationships. A triad may be open or closed, but if it’s a polyamorous triad, it’s more ongoing than a one-night ménage à trois. It can be strictly heterosexual or homosexual, or it can be the choice of two same-gender bisexuals and an opposite-gender heterosexual.

  Peter, Candy, and Jessica are an example of a triad as well as a group marriage, and so are John, Eli, and Carol, who are all singles who share a flat in Helsinki. John and Carol met in college six years ago and became friends and lovers. When Carol went away to graduate school, they separated, and John decided to explore an intimate relationship with Eli. When Carol returned to Helsinki and met Eli, they were immediately attracted and decided to experiment with a three-way relationship that included John. After two years, they decided to try living together and are now considering having a child together.

  WHO CHOOSES POLYAMORY,

  AND WHY

  The diversity that characterizes the universe of those who’ve adopted polyamorous styles of relating reveals itself most clearly when we address the wide variety of motivations people may have for choosing polyamory. Some may harbor hopes that polyamory will allow them to avoid dealing with problematic personal issues or that it will solve problems in an existing relationship, but this is rarely the case. In a few cases, however, polyamory does allow people to create healthy and functional relationships they probably could not have managed otherwise. In others, one partner reluctantly agrees to polyamory to win the affections of the other, secretly hoping that this unwelcome twist will magically vanish once they are committed to each other. Some are consciously or unconsciously creating a situation in which they can heal childhood wounds or replicate the large extended family they grew up in.

  Some want a stable and nurturing environment in which to raise their children. Some use polyamory to mask or excuse addictions to sex, work, or drama, while others seek utopian or spiritual rewards or want to take a stand for cultural change. Others are simply doing what’s fun and what comes naturally for them or are rebelling against religious prohibitions or family expectations. Some use polyamory as a weapon in a power struggle or to punish a controlling partner. Some want to keep their erotic life alive and vital while in long-term committed relationships or to fulfill sexual or emotional desires they can’t meet with only one person or with their existing partner. Some are trying to make up for developmental gaps or to balance unequal sex drives. Some people do not start out consciously choosing polyamory at all but find that polyamory has chosen them.

  As I was sitting down to write this chapter, I received an e-mail from a woman who had recently read some of the articles about polyamory that are posted on my website. Her comments seem the perfect place to begin this discussion on why people choose polyamory. This woman, who I’ll call Kate, was grateful to find a confirmation of her own experience of polyamory as a spiritual path. “I don’t think I’ve ever engaged in anything that has prompted more self-reflection and intense personal growth than has polyamory,” she concludes.

  The blessing and the curse of polyamory is that love that includes more than one tends to illuminate those dark shadows that many would prefer to ignore. While some people deliberately seek out polyamorous relationships for the purpose of freeing themselves and their children from the neuroses arising from typical nuclear family dynamics, most inadvertently discover that polyamory provides a very fertile environment for replicating any dysfunctional patterns carried over from the parental triangle experienced in their
family of origin.

  Men may find childhood competition with Dad for the attention of Mom rekindled when they relate with a woman who has another lover. If they unconsciously begin to act out the old childhood script of competition with the man for the heart of the woman, an unpleasant and painful drama is likely to unfold. If instead they can consciously find ways to support each other in basking in the richness of loving both each other (which need not include sexuality) and the woman and to creatively manage the only truly limited resource—that is, time, not love—a more enjoyable outcome is possible. Many men have strong competitive instincts that they have been socialized to express very directly. Women frequently have the same strong competitive urge, but women’s socialization has driven competition underground, and it often comes out sideways, making it even more challenging to overcome. Unresolved sibling rivalries can also be rekindled in polyamorous relating. These are situations in which an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so it behooves people who are contemplating polyamory to heal their family of origin issues first.

  Abundant love can bring out our shadow in ways that have little to do with jealousy and competition. I once spent a week vacationing with a man whom I was newly in love with and another couple who both of us were attracted to and who I’d been very close to for several years. I eagerly anticipated our time together, imagining how wonderful it would be to enjoy the company of three people I loved and who loved me. After a few days, I found myself feeling more and more uncomfortable. Feelings of unworthiness I never knew I had began overwhelming me. My usual calm and self-confident self had disappeared, and in its place was an anxious and insecure stranger. At first, I didn’t understand what was happening and tried to push these troubling feelings away, but they only got stronger. I found myself wondering whether I deserved this much love. Was I really good enough for him and him and her? Finally, I tearfully confessed that my self-esteem had hit an all-time low. Held in three pairs of loving arms, I took the invitation to dive into my shadow and experienced firsthand the legendary power of love to light up the dark corners of the psyche, shedding healing light on that which has been hidden.

  SELF-ACTUALIZING POLYAMORISTS

  Nancy and Darrell are a good example of a couple who deliberately chose polyamory for its opportunities for growth as well as to allow a broader sexual context within their marriage. Both were virgins in their early twenties when they married forty years ago. After ten years of being happily monogamous, while attending a relationship seminar they discovered that neither one was invested in sexual exclusivity. It turned out that they had simply defaulted to monogamy, as do so many people, and once they took a look at it, they realized that their only reason for continuing to be monogamous was fear of the unknown. Confident of their love, their compatibility, their communication skills, and their commitment to each other, they decided to open their marriage. It’s less common now than in the past for couples to have no sexual experience before marrying, but I know of many such couples who have found in polyamory a way to jointly embark on the adventures they missed out on in their youth.

  Nancy reports, “When Darrell told me he wanted to know what it would be like to make love to a red-headed woman, I responded, ‘So do I, but she doesn’t have to be a redhead.’ I had squelched my bisexual being to satisfy the demands of monogamy. It was time for both of us to explore!” They began by checking out swinging. Nancy continues, “Swinging was easily accessible. We were uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with strangers, so we chose off-premise clubs, which meant we got to dance, flirt, chat, and get acquainted with potential partners. We both preferred to become friends before making love. The owner of our chosen club explained at the start of each dance, ‘When you want to cum, you need to go.’ That was fine with us!

  “I also ran an ad in an underground paper and met a woman with whom I hoped to discover that elusive chemistry so we could become lovers. Instead, she became my best friend as she and Darrell became lovers, and we established a polyamorous trio. We experienced a sequence of three trios, two of which lasted many years.” Nancy is careful to let me know that they’re still friends with one of these women after twenty-four years, although she is now in a monogamous marriage. Another has been part of their lives for twelve years, although it’s been eight years since they’ve been lovers. Nancy and Darrell also have relationships with several couples that have gone on for anywhere from two to twenty years, so she’s had many opportunities to explore making love with women.

  While Nancy and Darrell consciously chose polyamory as an opportunity to grow together and to deepen their own bond while exploring committed sexualoving relationships with others, they didn’t immediately realize that polyamory would become a spiritual practice. When I first met them about fifteen years ago, they were seeking help in releasing and transforming jealousy. Nancy appeared the more emotional of the two, but both exuded a sensible, good-humored sincerity. Through cultivating compersion (a term describing an emotion that is the opposite of jealousy and discussed further in chapter 6) and incorporating the concept of “honoring the Divine in each other and in every one of our partners,” polyamory became a doorway into spiritual growth for Nancy and Darrell, leading Nancy to write an article, “Spiritual Partnership,” for Loving More magazine, in which she writes, “Within Spiritual Partnership, mutual spiritual growth takes precedence over comfort and security and total honesty becomes part of the bond. Spiritual partners are committed to a personal growth dynamic, even if it is not ‘comfortable and secure.’ Within this paradigm, monogamy becomes a choice instead of a mandate and nontraditional relationships naturally evolve through partners becoming committed to honestly sharing at a heart level.”1

  Nancy continues, “Our relationship has been open for about thirty years now, and we are still deeply committed to each other and to our extended family. Sometimes that commitment means listening lovingly to someone who has lost his job; it may mean my accepting that Darrell will spend time loving a woman who has decided she no longer wants to spend much time with me. Although her decision may have bruised my ego, becoming peaceful despite that bruise is part of my own personal growth process. If poly is a spiritual path, my ego is less involved when personal and spiritual growth remain paramount. This makes it easier to let go of jealousy and allow compersion to counter fear, which results in less drama.

  “We’re now in our sixties and retired, which allows us to have a lot of time and energy for extended relationships. Ironically, during the summer, I am pretty much monogamous by choice as Darrell continues his relationship with two women. One of those two is a heart-centered friend of mine; the other prefers to have her connection limited to Darrell. In the other seasons, we share loving energy with several other couples and an occasional single.”

  Nancy is a retired therapist, so she and Darrell sometimes act as coaches for couples who want to explore how to have an open, loving relationship with each other (and include others) with minimum drama. She feels that “one extremely important part of practicing successful polyamory is the recognition that change is the only constant in multiple relationships. Inherent in each polyamorous beginning is an unplanned ending. As we age, lovers die, become geographically challenged through moving away, or decide to become monogamous, which means we shift into a nonsexual friendship or lose the relationship.” Nancy and Darrell also value their spiritual partnerships with polyamorous friends who have never been lovers but where the love is deep and complete nevertheless.

  Kamala and Michael are a happy and successful thirty-something-yearold couple with a three-year-old son. They’ve been in an open marriage for seven years and have a large extended family of friends and lovers. Kamala is also a relationship coach and poly activist who has made many media appearances in recent years. She is following the trail I blazed a decade earlier, braving the slings and arrows of those who believe strongly in monogamy as a religious ideal. She’s been accused of trying to convert others to nonmonogamy, trying to
prove something to the religious right, and taking advantage of the free publicity to market her books and DVDs. Kamala retorts, “I have no idea what difference it will make in the long run. What I know is that I love my life. My husband, my son, and most of my lovers are truly happy.” Kamala says she’s motivated by a strong desire to be a “voice for freedom and love in the world. I’m willing to be misunderstood, misquoted or misrepresented, whatever it takes. . . . I’m willing to show up and be seen” if it makes the world a better place.2

  Sonia Song grew up in Communist China. She was raised to be a good party member but lost faith in the Cultural Revolution after the horrors of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Eventually, she found her way to California, where she first sought me out about ten years ago because she was looking for an ethical way to expand beyond a loveless and sexless marriage with a husband who didn’t want to divorce for practical reasons. Sonia has long since extricated herself from that marriage and found more compatible partners but continues to choose polyamory because it feels right to her. We’ll hear more about Sonia’s polyamorous life in a later chapter, but for now the conclusion from her book, Donkey Baby, is an eloquent expression of the idealism that inspires some people to choose polyamory.