Dana is twenty-one and a senior at the University of California. She doesn’t consider herself polyamorous, but she often has more than one lover. This is how she sees it: “I’m not seriously involved with anyone at the moment. I have several ‘friends with benefits,’ but they’re not real relationships. We’re not thinking about getting married or anything; they’re just good friends.”
In my day, these kinds of relationships were called sexual friendships. Among baby boomers like myself, they have proven to sometimes be very enduring, emotionally intimate, and stable, outlasting many marriages or coexisting with them overtly or covertly. In fact, it’s my observation that it is precisely because these friendships are not burdened with all the expectations and conditioning associated with marriage or with coupling up without benefit of marriage that they are often less volatile and more intimate than the relationship between spouses. Perhaps it will evolve differently with the younger generation, but clearly friends with benefits are somewhere in that middle ground between monogamous marriage and an anonymous one-night stand. Dana might not consider it polyamory, but it fits my definition.
It’s natural for people to be reluctant to admit that what they want is something that’s widely held to be immoral and indecent—not to mention impossible. But trying to repress, lie about, rationalize, or otherwise deny one’s polyamorous nature can be very damaging to oneself, to loved ones, and the rest of the world. As we enter the twenty-first century, academic theorists, primarily in countries outside the United States, have begun to address the harmful impacts of heteronormative and mononormative social constructs and are attempting to introduce polyamory into the intellectual discourse on relationships, but mononormativity still prevails for the most part.
THE PRICE OF STAYING IN THE CLOSET
To go through life with the sense that one is guarding a dirty—and possibly dangerous—little secret is to go through life with ever-present feelings of isolation, alienation, and disharmony. Even if you limit your poly expression to the realm of fantasy and desire, you may experience a troubling sensation of not quite fitting in or being different from others in some mysterious, unknown way. The closeted person often feels as though he or she is from another planet. Depression, low self-esteem, and a lack of spontaneity are frequently problems.
Todd is a single man in his mid-fifties. He’s been living with his partner Jane for two years, and they consider themselves married but decided against tying the knot legally because they’ve agreed to have an open relationship. Todd was raised in a fundamentalist Christian home where any sex outside of marriage, let alone multipartner sex, was a sure path to Hell. “I spent the first forty-five years of my life fighting my sexual urges. I married at twenty-one, mostly so I could have a sexual partner, but as it turned out, my wife hated sex and refused to even talk about it. Eventually, I fell in love with another woman and got a divorce so I could marry her. Our sex life was great until she got pregnant and completely lost interest in sex. I still loved her and didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want to cheat, so I mostly fantasized about sex with other women and felt awful about myself. I was sure there was something wrong me and didn’t dare discuss my desires with my wife—or anyone else for that matter. I was miserable. Finally, I got desperate enough that I went for an X-rated massage, which helped some, but I felt really guilty about it and was afraid my wife would find out. Then I saw an ad for a “dakini” that said she would teach me how to make sex spiritual. Well she did, and she also told me about polyamory. I fell in love with her, but I still loved my wife, and I just didn’t know what to do. By this time, our son was two years old, and I knew I couldn’t abandon him, but I didn’t want to give up my dakini either. I was a mess.”
It’s hard to find compatible, like-minded partners without being up front about who you are and what you want. And with so many polys in the closet, it can be hard to locate compatible partners even if you are willing to let others know that you’re not monogamous. As with any suspect subculture, the people most likely to come out initially include those who are already so far out of the mainstream that they have little to lose by revealing themselves. This further distorts the already bizarre picture the public has of polys as well as flooding an already small “gene pool” with potential partners who are unsuitable for the average poly. Then there are people who are still in the early stages of coming out to themselves and who may get frightened and retreat to monogamy when faced with the prospect of an actual poly relationship because they’ve never seen a successful one. Consequently, some people give up and make a monogamous commitment out of frustration rather than conviction.
The dearth of out-of-the-closet role models for creating a stable, legitimate poly lovestyle, combined with the perception of limited numbers of potential partners, can create an atmosphere of pessimism, stuckness, and scarcity. Very frequently, the first questions I’m asked by clients who come to me for relationship coaching are, “Do you know anyone this is working for?” Or, “Do you know any long-term open couples?” Even with more people coming out, many still doubt that a healthy poly lovestyle is really a possibility and have difficulty finding the support they need to overcome the challenges inherent in any intimate relationship. Psychologist Geri Weitzman discusses the difficulties polyamorous people have in finding a therapist who will not pathologize them simply because they are poly and cites a 2002 study that found that 38 percent of polyamorous people who were in therapy chose not to even mention their poly lifestyle to their therapist. Of those who did reveal it, 10 percent reported experiencing a negative response. Even when a therapist was not judgmental, some clients ending up using their paid session time to educate therapists who knew nothing about polyamory.4 Others will seek out a second professional to supplement their regular therapist, who they perceive as unable to help them manage an issue having to do with polyamory.
Beth was in a quandary about her marriage to a man who refused to have sex with her. She consulted me to discuss the possibility of taking on an outside lover. “Mitch won’t even talk about sex with me; he just flat out refuses to have anything to do with it, but he did say that it would be fine with him if I developed a sexual relationship with someone else. I was raised to believe that marriage meant being faithful to my husband, and the whole idea just seemed wrong to me, but then I met someone who’s in an open relationship who I’m very attracted to. It seems like it might work. My therapist thinks I should leave Mitch, but we’re so compatible in every other way, I don’t want to divorce him, and he says he wants to stay married to me too.”
When I asked what her therapist thought about her having sex with her new friend, Beth admitted that she didn’t want to tell her therapist about this because she was too embarrassed and thought the therapist would disapprove. I urged her to bring all this to her regular therapist and told her I would continue working with her only if she first arranged for me to have a conversation with her therapist or if she terminated her other therapy and worked with me instead. Beth was surprised that I saw her effort to create a “secret therapy affair” instead of coming out to her therapist as an extension of the cultural pattern of infidelity. She was just doing what seemed normal to her, but that’s what was creating her dilemma in the first place.
Some people do succeed in establishing satisfying nonmonogamous or extramarital relationships. While they are comfortably “out” to themselves and their partners, they still feel that they must hide their lovestyle from neighbors, employers, friends, and extended family. They may disguise a primary partner as a “roommate” or “housekeeper.” They may camouflage a secondary partner as a “business associate” or “friend of the family.” They may avoid restaurants and theaters where someone might recognize them. They may caution their children against discussing the extra partner with friends or teachers. They may simply keep quiet about their unconventional secret. These people may be less troubled than their solitary closet dwellers because they have each other for company. But they to
o pay a price for hiding out and often feel isolated and afraid of being discovered.
Ricky is a twenty-year-old college student who was raised in a polyamorous household. He recalls, “I wasn’t really aware of my parents’ sex life when I was a child. I just saw the other adults who were around as friends. That changed when I got older and became interested in sex. When I was about thirteen, my mother told me Social Services had the power to come into our house and take me away, so I shouldn’t let anybody know that she had more than one partner. I felt scared. I remember feeling confused and angry too. Why? Why would somebody take me out of my home? I felt totally safe and happy there.”
Hiding your polyamorous lifestyle from your children, particularly as they get older, and pretending to endorse monogamy doesn’t work very well either, as they are likely to reflect the judgments of the mononormative culture they’ve been raised in when they accidentally discover Mom or Dad has a secret life. Those who are actively nonmonogamous without coming out to their lovers, spouses, and children may hide their pain and feelings of worthlessness under the excitement of intrigue and illicit adventure. But one lie—or omission—leads to another, and pretty soon they’re lying all the time. Leading a double life can be stressful as well as effectively limiting deep intimacy with others. When they’re found out, they not only hurt the ones they love but also condition their partners to associate nonmonogamy with the betrayal of trust, a confusion from which they may never recover.
People who choose not to come out, even with admirable motivations, add their weight to the legacy of deceit and infidelity that polys everywhere must contend with and strengthen the bad reputation and mononormative illusion that may have led them to stay in the closet in the first place. Everyone is disempowered by the failure to stand up and be counted, just as all can be empowered by the courage of those able and willing to take the risk of coming out.
However, coming out can come with a price. In the past, admitting to nonmonogamy, not to mention advocating it, could be life threatening or lead to prosecution as a sex offender. Fortunately, these dramatic outcomes are no longer common. But for people whose effectiveness in the world would be compromised by coming out poly, it may be wiser to keep their private lives private from all but their most intimate friends and family. Often, people’s fears are greater than the reality, but, as one professional told me, “The day polyamorists are treated socially and professionally as true equals of monogamists is the day I will come out.”
THE OUTCOMES OF COMING OUT
The prejudice against polyamory can extend to those who merely choose to research it. Perhaps this accounts in part for the lack of academic attention given to polyamory. One bold young social scientist who chose to make polyamory the topic of her doctoral research reports that “defending my dissertation was the worst day of my life so far. One committee member verbally attacked me and didn’t want to accept the research for reasons which would not have arisen with another topic. My chair was aghast at the outburst. The whole committee was open-mouthed shocked about the things this woman said to me.”
Other researchers, particularly those who try to combine activism with academia, find that their colleagues don’t take their work seriously. Worse yet, if they risk coming out, they are sometimes reprimanded for violating propriety. One faculty member confided, “One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was to go back and lecture my students after having been told off for ‘bringing the institution into disrepute’ and also told that other members of staff would no longer be able to look me in the eye.”
Unfortunately, even the most conservative polyamorist can be portrayed as a slut by journalists seeking a sensationalist story, and one television producer who frequently called me desperately seeking out-of-the-closet polyamorous families for a popular talk show told me that she always tried to schedule a polyamory topic during “sweeps week” because it was a sure way to increase ratings.
Another professional woman who took the risk of coming out says that it “led to a big explosion for me personally and professionally, which I didn’t expect at all. I don’t regret it because I care passionately about these issues and am politically committed to outness. But it was very hard to deal with for all kinds of reasons. Particularly, it was hard to know that lots of people who didn’t even know me had strong, sometimes negative opinions about me. I still have a way to go in terms of processing some of what I’ve been through.”
As we’ve seen in other chapters, coming out can also have negative consequences for people in certain professions who have lost their livelihoods and for parents who’ve lost custody of their children. Even when custody has not been an issue, children can be ostracized by peers or by friends’ parents who don’t want their own child to visit a polyamorous home or can be pathologized by teachers, counselors, or neighbors who project their own fears onto the children.
For people in less sensitive occupations that involve little contact with the public or that tend to be tolerant of diversity, such as the computer and software industries, reactions can be more varied and more personal with less potential to adversely affect careers. One computer programmer who came out at work says that his coworkers’ reactions “ran the whole gamut. Some were fascinated in a sensationalistic way, others were personally interested and wanted to have a drink after work and talk about it, some were freaked out—I think those may have been people who’d experienced infidelity. But there were absolutely no negative consequences as far as my job goes.”
Because of the potential for negative reactions, some polyamorous people have decided to change careers or relocate to less conservative areas. In today’s global village, with so many people changing jobs and geography, such shifts can occur for many other reasons, but they can still be disruptive, particularly for children and extended families. Interestingly enough, most people I’ve spoken to who’ve come out to parents and other relatives report that their families have been very accepting of additional partners.
There are always exceptions, but in general the earlier in life one begins one’s coming-out process, the easier it will be. The younger you are, the less likely you are to have created structures in your life that will have to be dismantled as a result of coming out. However, most people go through developmental crises throughout their adult lives. A divorce, a career change, a spiritual awakening, the death of a loved one, an “empty nest,” or retirement are all opportunities to consider embracing a new relationship orientation.
Not surprisingly, the context in which people are most likely to experience painful rejection is coming out to a spouse or other intimate partner who has been promised monogamy. You can be met with a hostile or indignant response simply to the news that you have polyamorous desires or fantasies, even without any violations of a monogamous commitment or effort to renegotiate a monogamous agreement. If this is the case, an open-minded therapist can often be invaluable in creating safety and support for both partners to communicate their fears and reexamine their motivations and bottom lines.
Because of the potential for negative impacts of coming out, everyone needs to evaluate the risks and benefits of coming out for themselves in their particular situation. For many people, the benefits of coming out, at least to yourself and those closest to you, far outweigh the risks. But endangering whatever is precious to you is not something to take lightly, and sacrificing your own well-being to make a statement may be unwise. At the same time, I feel strongly that one of the best gifts a person can give him- or herself is the permission to authentically be who he or she is. Permission to be who you are doesn’t mean giving yourself license to do anything at all, as people sometimes fear. Rather, it’s a way to become more conscious about what you want and why and so become better equipped to find a balance between pleasing only yourself and pleasing everyone but yourself. Accepting yourself as a polyamorous person is an important part of the larger process of self-differentiation and integration. It liberates you from having to hide an important part
of yourself, and hiding tends to slow down or even stop the whole growth process. Worse yet, if you deny your poly nature, you may end up projecting it outside yourself and see sex-crazed demons under every rock that you then try to restrain and control. Or you can unconsciously transform your unused sexualoving potential into hatred and aggression.
Coming to terms with your relationship orientation is an essential—and often neglected—part of growing up and becoming a mature human being. Not only does it contribute to your personal well-being, but it increases your capacity to share intimacy with others as well. Coming out makes it possible to establish ethical and stable relationships. It allows you to be more open and honest with everyone you know because you no longer have to censor yourself to prevent an inadvertent slip.
Each person who comes out poly increases the likelihood that others will become aware of their own poly identity and feel safe disclosing it. The more people come out, the more easily others will be able to find and support each other. The more people take the risk of being openly and responsibly polyamorous, the sooner the confusion between patriarchal polygamy, uncommitted promiscuity, and committed nonmonogamous relationships will be clarified and the sooner mononormative thinking will give way to greater acceptance of diversity. When a critical mass of polyamorous people have come out, the outmoded paradigm of sexualove as a scarce and jealously guarded resource will shift. A new paradigm will emerge in which sexualove is an abundant and renewable gift to be responsibly shared at will.
HOW TO COME OUT
A good way to begin the coming-out process is by reviewing relevant personal history. Asking these questions will help clarify the extent to which a person identifies as polyamorous and how he or she feels about it:
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