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

by Deborah M. Anapol

  Katie (To Charlie): Why do you need more than one woman, in your relation

  ship with her for fifteen years? Why do you prefer non-monogamy?

  Charlie: It’s more fun.

  Katie (to Ellen): So look into his eyes, honey. You wanted to know. So there

  is his answer.

  Charlie: And there’s more. I find that there’s something. . . . I feel like when I limit myself to one woman, I feel like I’m in a box. . . . It’s almost like it doesn’t feel like love to say that I’m just with one woman. I feel that if I deny myself being open with other people, and that includes sexually . . . , I’m denying something that’s quite natural in me. And I tried monogamy, and it didn’t work for me. I noticed that I punished the woman that I was with, for me not being able to live the life that I wanted to live, I blamed her for the decisions I was making.

  The simple but structured format11 that Byron Katie uses to help people stop arguing with reality and make peace with whatever is happening whether or not they ultimately decide to change things may sound a little odd to those unfamiliar with it. However, it’s a very useful tool that can be applied in many situations to resolve both inner and outer conflict. In this case, it quickly moves Ellen out of her unquestioned assumption that she wants her partner to be monogamous and brings her to the realization that while she’s been resisting nonmonogamy, it’s only her resistance and fear that are causing her to struggle. When she opens her mind and gives up the struggle, it becomes apparent that, on the whole, she likes having a nonmonogamous partner, even though she is apparently monogamous herself because it makes for a livelier, more interesting relationship with more opportunities for personal growth.

  Psychologist David Ley has studied couples in which the wives are nonmonogamous with the approval and encouragement of their often monogamous husbands. His 2009 book Insatiable Wives12 offers evidence that those who practice nonmonogamy tend to have extremely effective communication skills and relationship skills and are no more or no less pathological than any other group. Some of the husbands enjoyed vicariously experiencing the sexuality of other men and welcomed the opportunity to explore their bisexuality from a safe distance. In chapter 8, we’ll discuss how polyamory can provide a context for people to directly explore bisexuality or to dip a toe in the forbidden waters of homosexuality or heterosexuality depending on their existing identity. Ley points out that many of the things that make polyamory exciting and compelling are linked to biological, neurochemical, and evolutionary processes that underlie human behavior. For example, “The biological effects of sperm competition [discussed in chapter 10 of this book] and other evolutionary mechanisms that were intended to prevent or control the risk of cuckoldry are being subverted by couples in a fashion they use to reignite and maintain high levels of sexual excitement within their marriages,”13 according to Ley.

  One woman he interviewed put it this way: “I’ve never met anyone I respect and love more than [my husband]. So it’s not about seeking something that’s missing. It’s about added fun and enjoyment. It keeps our sex more alive, because it’s not the same, it’s broken up, variety in between. I think that’s one of the reasons why sex is just off the charts for us.”14

  MANAGING TRAUMA, INTENSITY,

  AND UNEQUAL SEX DRIVES

  Keeping erotic love alive and maintaining a healthy sense of separateness motivates some long-term couples to adopt polyamory. Both singles and couples often enjoy the greater intensity of having multiple partners. Polyamory can also serve singles who find exclusivity to be an emotional challenge, especially in the early stages of relationship when trust, compatibility, and commitment are still being tested. Dane’s reflections illustrate all these motivations.15

  Dane is a tall, slender man in his mid-thirties. Everything about him is intense, including his sexuality. “In some ways I prefer monogamy,” Dane admits, “and right now I’m mostly monogamous, but most of the dating world doesn’t have time for the deep one-on-one cocoons I enjoy, so it’s easier to find lovers if I don’t require so much undivided attention with me. The first woman I explored open relationship with noticed she was opening up to me more than she had to any other man, in part because she didn’t feel on the spot and had a back door herself. Some women have time enough but get overwhelmed by the energetic intensity that deep communication and lovemaking often brings. I discovered when I had more than one lover my sex drive increased due to the wonderful feeling of being wanted by two or three women rather than being overwhelming for one woman. It’s a real turn-off for me to have energy to give that a partner has no room to receive, which would happen for me 90 percent of the time in a monogamous relationship, simply because I prefer more intensity and have a lot of time and energy I enjoy investing in relationships.”

  Dr. Ley, who specializes in treating trauma, believes that in some cases nonmonogamy is not a symptom of trauma or emotional disturbance but may actually be an adaptive mechanism that allows individuals to overcome effects of trauma and loss. He feels that one of his interviewees who was abused as a child was able to have a truly intimate emotional relationship only in a polyamorous framework. He suggests that monogamy was simply too threatening and restrictive for her to tolerate emotionally.

  Psychologist Peter Thomas emphasizes the importance of developing an internal working model of an effective protector in order to establish and maintain healthy boundaries, a crucial developmental step that is often missed in adults with a history of childhood abuse.16 As a result, these individuals can be easily retraumatized in polyamorous relating because they tend to dissociate and become passive when they feel threatened, making them easy prey for the sexual predators who sometimes show up at sexually open gatherings as well as becoming victims of well-meaning but insensitive partners. However, they can also benefit from interacting with a committed partner who is caring, nurturing, and protective without being possessive. In a committed polyamorous relationship, adults who are recovering from childhood abuse can reap the benefits of developing trust in the reliable protector they missed as children and eventually develop this protective agency within themselves.

  Alex and Janet Lessin are a good example of a couple who are committed to the practice of polyamory as one tool in healing the wounds from Janet’s childhood sexual abuse. Shortly after Janet and Alex got together about ten years ago, Alex arranged an evening with another couple who’d been his longtime lovers. Janet took to Altheia right away but experienced an intense revulsion to Hercules. Earlier that day, she’d learned that her mother was dying but decided to go ahead with the date that meant so much to Alex. Later that evening, Alex, a professional therapist who’d trained in holotropic breathwork with Dr. Stan Grof and G-spot massage with Charles Muir, was using these techniques with Janet when the long-repressed memory of being orally raped and suffocated at the age of four by her mother’s boyfriend, who was bald like Hercules, surfaced. At the time, Janet had left her body and, while presumed dead for more than thirty minutes, observed dispassionately from above while the adults struggled to revive her. She reports that angel-like guides showed her several alternate futures that led to her deciding to remain among the living to protect her mother from prosecution for murder.17

  Alex subsequently applied all the tools in his therapeutic tool kit, including psychodramatically reenacting the rape while he played a protective father role, to help Janet heal from this and other childhood traumas. He reports that her lifelong aversion to oral sex, along with her distaste for Hercules, eventually dissipated. Because of Janet’s unconscious negative associations with bald-headed men, it’s unlikely that she would ever have chosen to become intimate with one outside a circumstance like this. Janet’s childhood wounds have posed challenges to her ongoing efforts to establish healthy relationships, but with Alex’s loyal support, she’s overcome many of her fears and enthusiastically embraced polyamory.

  DEMOGRAPHICS

  There have been two surveys of the American polyamory community
and one in the United Kingdom within the past two decades all relying on demographics gathered from self-identified polyamorists who attend events or participate in online discussions about polyamory. In my experience, people who are active in the polyamory community are not necessarily typical of those who are actively polyamorous but choose not to associate themselves with those groups. My impression is that neither the more socially conservative nor the more socially radical individuals are well represented. In addition, people of color, those of lower socioeconomic status, young people, gay men, and, to a lesser extent, lesbian women are underrepresented in the self-proclaimed polyamory community, although I find abundant evidence, both direct and indirect, that these groups are at least as likely to be involved in polyamorous relationships.

  Walston18 distributed a questionnaire via polyamory e-mail lists on the Internet in 1999 and received 430 responses. Loving More magazine collected data from 1,000 people attending polyamory conferences in the late 1990s.19 Barker surveyed thirty poly people via the Internet in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States.20 All these studies report similar results, except that Barker’s sample was almost entirely bisexual, and the motivations they identified are essentially the same as those put forth by those whose interviews I’ve shared here. Walston reported that more than half the respondents reported that their reasons for practicing polyamory included openness and honesty, personal growth, personal freedom, sexual variety, romantic variety, philosophical ideal, sense of community, and needs not being met by one relationship. Fewer than half the respondents gave these motivators: protest against cultural norms, falling in love, additional adults to help with child rearing, economic reasons, partner falling in love, and other unnamed reasons. Interestingly, the only significant gender difference was that women were more likely than men or transsexuals to say that they had chosen polyamory because of falling in love.

  Both surveys found that polyamorists were more highly educated than the general public and that the majority were no longer identified with the religion in which they were raised, although most had some spiritual affiliation. Both also reported a high incidence of bisexuality, although nearly 30 percent of the Loving More respondents didn’t identify their sexual orientation at all. The Loving More survey found that while individuals had incomes comparable to the national median, 78 percent of households were way above the national median for households, and more than a quarter reported six-digit household incomes, although only 44 percent were married, and only 20 percent were in live-in poly relationships. I suspect that the high household incomes are more likely influenced by high numbers of affluent two-career professional couples than the combined incomes of three or more wage earners, but both factors probably contribute. Walston did not inquire about income but found that 16 percent lived with three or more partners, while 30 percent lived alone, and more than half were married or cohabiting couples.

  Eighty percent of those who completed the Loving More survey admitted that they had experienced jealousy, a topic not included in the Walston report, and 93 percent were concerned about discrimination against polys, with 43 percent reporting that they had directly experienced prejudice, although only 17 percent had gotten negative responses after coming out to spouses, with lower percentages of negative response from others. Almost all the respondents in both studies had come out to their partners, and most who had children were also out to their children but were less likely to tell parents, employers, and neighbors.

  We still have very little data on the demographics, motivations, and concerns of polyamorous people, not to mention the incidence of polyamory in the general population, although extrapolations from the Loving More data estimate that one out of every 500 adults in the United States is polyamorous. Others have speculated that something like 3.5 percent of the adult population prefer polyamorous relationships, which would put the figure at about 10 million, but I predict that by the time a large-scale survey is undertaken, this figure will be found to be much higher.

  THE HISTORY OF POLYAMORY

  There is little question that while nonmonogamy has been prominent in most cultures throughout time, polyamory in its modern form emerged in the United States. Although its roots go back to the utopian communities of the nineteenth century, responsible nonmonogamy began to grow vigorously in the turmoil of the sexual revolution of the 1970s. Twenty-firstcentury polyamory is quite different from these early experiments, but we can understand its origins and evolution by examining its history.

  ONEIDA AND COMPLEX MARRIAGE

  The best known of the nineteenth-century utopian communities is the Oneida Community, founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848. Oneida grew to 300 members in its heyday before abandoning the doctrine of complex marriage under legal pressure. In 1881, Oneida morphed to a corporate enterprise, Oneida Limited, which continues to this day as a successful silverware company. Noyes, who came from a privileged upper-class background, adopted a number of unorthodox beliefs and practices while studying for the ministry at Yale Divinity School. He later married Harriet Holton, a wealthy and well-connected woman whose support, along with that of his own family, helped establish the community in upstate New York.

  The Oneida Community was a spiritual community that, following the example of the earliest Christians, held all property in common and attempted to overcome traditional gender roles. The most controversial aspect of the whole infamous project was the doctrine of complex marriage. In complex marriage, all the men and all the women within the community were considered married to each other. Even couples who were already married when joining the community were required to have separate rooms and open their marriage to others. No two people could have exclusive attachment with each other and would be separated and not allowed to see each other for a certain length of time if this were suspected. Men were required to withhold ejaculation during intercourse unless conception was intended, and more mature members of the community were given the task of initiating the younger ones into sexual and spiritual practices.

  Oneidans felt that achieving perfection and living without sin required that they abandon traditional marriage. Noyes believed that the spiritual dimension of sex brought partners closer to God as well as each other. “The new commandment is that we love one another, not by pairs, as in the world, but en masse,” he decreed.1

  In theory, complex marriage eliminated jealousy and possessiveness by marrying all the men of the community to all the women and encouraging members to enjoy frequent lovemaking and multiple partners. The strategy of managing jealousy through creating an abundance of partners has continued to be used into the twenty-first century with varying degrees of success, as we will see in future chapters. Oneida men took responsibility for birth control by withholding ejaculation, which was intended to provide Oneida women with greater sexual satisfaction and fewer pregnancies than their contemporaries. This in itself was a huge departure from Victorian standards, which did not support women taking pleasure in sex at all.

  Although I have not been able to discover a direct link between Noyes and Tantric teachings, it’s interesting to note that his spiritual doctrine of perfectionism, his emphasis on the sacredness of sexuality, and the sexual practice of nonejaculation for men can all be found in ancient Tantric teachings. Is it a coincidence that many modern-day American polyamorists also mix inclusive love with Tantric teachings?

  Despite its shortcomings, Oneida was so far ahead of its time that it’s continued to be a model for polyamorous innovators to the present day. Twenty-first-century polyamorists have been less inspired by another early experiment in multiple partner marriage that adhered more closely to the patriarchal tradition of polygamy for men only and emphasized traditional sex roles and conservative values. Nevertheless, HBO’s popular Big Love series is based on the spiritual heirs of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, who had thirty-three wives and set the precedent for nearly all the elders of the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) to follow in his f
ootsteps.

  MORMON POLYGAMY

  Joseph Smith’s teachings on celestial or patriarchal marriage, which have come to be known as the Mormon Doctrine of Plural Wives, arose in the 1840s. The doctrine was not officially announced until 1852 by Smith’s successor Brigham Young in a special conference of the elders of the LDS. Although polygamy had its detractors even among the faithful, it was widely practiced until officially rejected as Mormon doctrine under federal pressure as a condition for Utah’s statehood. Even today, it’s estimated that 30,000 to 60,000 renegade practitioners still adhere to this form of group marriage, which seems to hold a fascination for many people.

  Both Oneida and the LDS church are thought to have been influenced by an earlier Christian preacher named Jacob Cochran,2 who advocated a practice he called spiritual wifery, along with communal ownership of property, as early as 1818. Cochran did not consider traditional marriage valid and instead assigned and often shifted couplings as he saw fit, with many of the women paired with him at one time or another. Even though Cochran stayed with the couple concept, his innovations with mix-andmatch dyads were too scandalous for nineteenth-century New England, and he was soon imprisoned for lewdness, lascivious behavior, and adultery. After his release from prison, he founded a new community in New York State from which many members were later converted by Mormon missionaries.

  BROOK FARM COMMUNITY

  New England in the early 1800s was a hotbed of social, philosophical, and cultural dissent. The downside of the industrial revolution was becoming apparent to the intelligentsia, who were eager to explore health-promoting lifestyles. In addition to the previously described communities, New England spawned the Transcendentalist movement, which involved well-known literary figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman and was closely linked with another utopian community named Brook Farm.